“I wish he’d cark it,” Ariel shouted. “Only damn fools believe him and those who condemn him seem unable to stop him.”
“And he needs to be stopped!” Cassy yelled.
“Pfft,” Duffy blurted. She spoke no further, opting to continue to scroll through, read, and tap her compu-pad in furious silence.
“This news is devastating,” Maxo said. “Such wanton greed and disregard for life is unprecedented. It’s not what we are about.” He nodded at Zeke and said, “I slipped up earlier. Not just today, but at other times too.”
Eli leaned into a sensory display and coughed up a bit coffee he had just sipped. He waved at Ariel to join him.
“Better angels guide me now,” Maxo continued, “which is why I decided I should turn over this ship and Captain Duffy directly to the CLF rather than continue to run blindly after D’Rump and…a promotion that I don’t really want. You deserve better than that and I am sorry for endangering you.”
“Those signals look like Caprices to me,” Ariel whispered to Eli.
“Sir…” Eli said. He waved at Maxo and removed his eyeglasses. “Look closer, Ariel. What else do you see.”
“I had planned to dock at Themis,” Maxo continued. “I think we should still proceed there to help in the recovery effort and let the CLF fleet find and apprehend D’Rump.”
“Fuck!” Ariel shouted, “their weapons are hot, Eli.”
All eyes fell upon Ariel and Eli, except for Duffy’s. She bobbed her head and continued to read her compu-pad.
“What is going on over there?” Maxo asked.
“Uh,” Eli replied, “that CLF fleet appears to be arriving off our port bow, sir.”
Everyone looked out the wide, front-facing windows and witnessed four Caprices slow to all-stop several hundred meters away. Their forward patrol lights flashed red and blue.
“Sir,” Eli announced, “a ship-to-ship call is coming in.”
“Put it through, please,” Maxo replied. He walked toward Eli’s station then stopped in his tracks when he heard the all-too-familiar voice.
“Greetings, Candy Lady, this is CLF patrol one-fiver-Charlie and I am Squad Captain Shineer Havlock.”
“Sir, they have locked in their F.S.-L.S. override,” Eli said. “We are under their control.”
“On behalf of the officers and crew of CLF Caprices Protector, Sentry II, Valiant, and Trident,” Havlock crooned, “I am pleased to announce that I am placing all of you, including Detectant Maxo Magnaveer, under arrest.”
“Geez,” Leo said, “he sounds like a jerk.”
“Yeah,” Maxo replied, “a real shit clod.”
Chapter 7
The Compass We Follow
Detectant Nadonna Bergeron’s beater exited hyper-weave near Ceres. She engaged the DynaFusion engines, set half-speed, and backtracked along the last known course of the Comets that were captured by Charger. Havlock was right about who flew Comets—the Colonel. His exclusive use of them drove interested customers to other products for fear of being perceived as pirates. As a result, D’Rump could name and get his price for the interceptors, saving coin and bolstering his profit margins.
The beat boat’s pilot seat felt snug and the view from the flight deck was unrivaled, reminding Bergeron of her early CLF patrol days, when she was Nathaniel Bergeron. Now, as Nadonna, except for serving under Havlock, she was the happiest she had ever been in life, but she was worried. Society’s bonds were weakening. People said the system was broken. She had always thought we are the system. If something broke, we fixed it. Better yet, we solved problems before they turned into failures, before anyone got hurt, before someone like D’Rump could exploit our brokenness for their own selfish desires.
While she couldn’t stop D’Rump in a beater, she could possibly find him, so she hoped her excursion to the outermost reaches of Charlie space paid off.
“Where is he,” she said aloud. “Where is that puss bucket.”
She made a ship-to-ship call to the CLF’s asteroid belt outpost, two-niner-David, the one that had detected the Comets. According to the outpost’s officer, the trajectory of the Comets put their origin somewhere in David space near Jupiter.
“But we don’t believe that’s correct,” the outpost officer said in a heavy Norwegian accent.
“Why is that, two-niner-David?” Bergeron asked
“Well, Jupiter and its moons are like a miniature solar system,” the officer explained. “It is the heart of David space and where we patrol, all the time.”
“And there’s no sign of the Colonel there, eh?” Bergeron said.
“Right, he’s all about the Mars anyways.”
“I see,” Bergeron said. “What about Jupiter’s Edge?”
“The Trojans?” the officer asked, referring to the large asteroid fields, known as the Trojans, orbiting ahead of and behind the gas giant. “Like finding the nål i en høystakka, you know, needle in the haystack.”
“Roger that,” Bergeron replied, “but have David patrols searched—”
“Negative,” the officer said. “We know more about Planet Nine than the Trojans. They are each a large, dense asteroid feltet, uh, field. We may call them ‘Jupiter’s Edge,’ but they may as well be black holes. If you go in there, you might never come out.”
“Understood, two-niner-David,” Bergeron said.
“Feel free to poke around, detectant” the officer said. “I’ll let our squad captain know. Her name is Elana Turev and she is aboard Striker. Answers to ‘one-two-David’.”
“Roger,” Bergeron said. “Call me ‘one-one-Charlie.”
“Copy that,” the officer said, “and have a good flight. I hope you find that kronidiot!”
***
In the stern of La Corona, the Colonel lounged in the ship’s tropical resort by one of the six-million-gallon swimming pool’s many private coves. Under fake palm trees, one with a built-in video monitor, he watched with glee the reports about the bombing of Themis as relayed by Porto Blago News. Major Schilling stood nearby. His face emitted a gleaming smile, which framed glimmering eyes, a look of unbridled pride and radioactive warmth he had perfected.
“More, more, Millie,” D’Rump said, shaking his champagne glass.
While Schilling opened another bottle and refilled D’Rump’s glass, several bikini-clad ladies with large breasts and glossy, plump lips splashed in the cove’s shallow water. D’Rump watched them and patted down parts of his yellow hairdo. He brushed half-eaten fried potato slices off the front of his bath robe, then slipped one of his tiny hands inside. He caressed his orange chest and pinched one of his lemon-slice-sized nipples, inducing a muffled groan…from Schilling.
“Oh, here it is!” D’Rump shouted. He stopped groping himself and grabbed the video screen’s remote control, then tuned up its volume.
“…said in a message from his Porto Blago enclave that he will not stand for any resistance by authorities. The Colonel’s work to improve and protect the lives of colonists continues, and he expressed concern about the lengths out-of-touch technocrats will go to stop him from achieving his goals…”
A video of D’Rump on the bridge of La Corona appeared on screen. Watching himself on television, D’Rump mouthed many of the words he had spoken for a camera crew on the bridge a short time earlier.
“These people,” he stated, “the Solis people and the police people, are desperate, bad people.”
The camera view widened, showing D’Rump in his full regalia of finger extensions, black pantaloons, red tunic, and thigh-length cravat fluttering about his crotch.
“…They are not right in the head,” he continued, “unlike me. I mean, if they were me, we wouldn’t be in this situation, right? We’d have a deal, and all would be really, really, I mean I can’t think of better situation to have.”
Interspersed with his speech were shots of La Corona, in particular, its missile bays, blaster cannons, and gamma beam emitters.
“…But from now on,” he said, �
�even though my message of salvation is clear, I mean, I can’t make it any clearer, they still want to keep me from doing what’s right.”
Video footage featured a wide shot of the food barge, then the camera panned from the ship’s bow to stern, which was timed to catch sight of eight Comet interceptors racing past in formation.
“…So, I fear they may take some desperate measures. They may do things that only help themselves and nobody else. Can you imagine? How selfish is that? It is criminal!”
D’Rump turned off the television, closed his eyes, and smiled.
“Sir,” Schilling said, “that was wonderful. You, you were wonderful!”
“Yes, I was,” D’Rump replied, opening his eyes. He gazed around the pool, then waved at the women swimming in the cove. “The two pilots, uh…”
“The Comet pilots?” Millie asked. “The innocent scientists who were captured by the CLF and forcibly incarcerated?”
“Yeah, those are the ones,” D’Rump said. “They’re dead, right? Killed in the explosions?”
“Without a doubt, sir. We’ve sent condolences to—”
“Good, I wouldn’t want any loose ends.”
“No, sir.” Schilling took a small sip of champagne. The taste curled his lips, so he dumped the glass into the sand. “Since Solis et Novem continues to deny your claim to the shipping lanes, are you ready to begin the next phase?”
“Yes, but Spider says our transport is delayed,” D’Rump grumbled. “He says he will resolve the situation quickly.”
“But without the transport,” Schilling said, “we can’t effectively offload the bulk cargo from the food barge as we had planned.” He clasped his hands behind his back and stared at the tropical expanse. “We could go ahead and dump the food barge now?”
D’Rump frowned. He closed the bathrobe and folded his arms on top of his rotund belly. “But we will lose all of that money,” D’Rump whined, “from trading its cargo on the Martian black market.”
“Well, we know we have to dump the barge at some point,” Schilling replied.
“And make it seem like those Solis people are the ones at fault.”
“That was always the plan, sir,” Schilling said. He stepped toward D’Rump, then knelt in the sand next to him. “As we know, the CLF does not patrol Jupiter’s Edge.”
“Uh-huh. That’s why it is such a good hideout.”
“Exactly,” Schilling continued, “that’s why no one has ever located Porto Blago, and no one will.”
“Uh-huh.” D’Rump looked puzzled. “Then why do we have to rush dumping the barge into Jupiter’s atmosphere?”
“What do you want more,” Schilling said, “money from smuggling the food or smashing Solis et Novem into oblivion with their failure to feed the colonists?”
“Mmmm,” D’Rump’s expression mutated from confusion to ecstasy. “I want to smash them. That will make me happy!”
“And when do you want to smash them?” Schilling asked.
D’Rump’s smile widened. He bared his teeth and hissed. “Now. I want it now!”
***
Alice wandered toward Trident’s bridge to speak with Detectant Freida Perez. Given their high-alert status, she was not certain whether Perez would have time to talk to her but given the oddities with her compu-pad, Alice felt obligated to find out in person.
CLF officers and their compu-pads were inseparable. These lightweight, durable, and stylish tablets combined multiple functionalities. They had been discontinued many decades ago when Personal Access Devices, a.k.a. pads, were miniaturized, embedded within humans, and interfaced with brain implants. A short time later, when humans began to be hacked and manipulated by other humans, embedding ended and hand-held pads returned to common use.
In Alice’s case, her compu-pad updated while aboard Trident, as if it had been released from some sort of mysterious control. It displayed expected CLF items, but also showed several unusual messages and alerts.
One included a request from Maxo, a copy of which automatically transmitted to her as his designated CLF partner, for information on a privateer named Spider.
Another was an alert that indicated her data logs were offline. When she reactivated them, they listed proximity data which did not match her actual location that afternoon. In other words, she was at Mercury or enroute to the Moon but not according to the pad’s data. According to those, she had been on a slow boat from Earth heading toward Mars.
Baffled ever since Perez stated the CLF had never ordered her or Maxo to return to headquarters, Alice looked at these additional items and calculated something wasn’t right. This time, both her head and gut were speaking to her in the same language.
As Alice entered the bridge, she expected to find the crew and Perez hopping. Instead, the tech corps crew were at their stations chatting. A tech corps cadet, a young Digi with curly red hair pushed a quartermaster cart from one side of the bridge toward the CLF officers seated at the communications and weapons consoles. And Perez, sitting in her flight seat, sipped from a Ranger Maid carrot juice box.
Alice approached the detectant and gasped as she looked out the forward windows.
“You alright, Alice?” Perez asked. “Would you like a beverage or snack item?”
“I’m okay, ma’am,” Alice replied. “I didn’t expect to see Candy Lady off our bow surrounded by CLF Caprices.” She glanced at the quartermaster cart and said, “A chilled tea would be great.”
“You got it.” Perez waved at the cadet and said, “Please swing by here again, Aiden. Do you have chilled tea?”
“Aye, mum,” Aiden answered. “We have classic and honey with cinnamon.”
Perez and Alice chuckled. “Classic is fine, thanks,” Alice replied.
“You know,” Perez said, “Maxo is being placed under arrest by Havlock.”
“For what? Why that little piece of…,” Alice paused, and accepted a sippy box of chilled tea from Aiden, who then pushed the cart away and exited the bridge. “The CLF authorizes commandeering in exigent circumstances. Although I disagree with Maxo’s decision, he does have the authority to take command of that ship.”
“Of course he does,” Perez said, “so the arrest charge isn’t for unlawful seizure of private property. He is accused of reckless endangerment.”
“What?” Alice exclaimed.
“Yeah, can you believe it. He didn’t file a flight plan.” Perez waved her hand around the bridge. “You can see how seriously we are taking this. We powered down our weapons once we knew the score and I ordered up refreshments.”
“That’s good,” Alice said. “But this is exactly why Havlock shouldn’t be a squad captain. How he ever got promoted is beyond me. He must know someone.”
“Well, it’s just like today,” Perez continued, exasperated, “first, he breaks up his squad to conduct a crime scene investigation, then he spends the afternoon plodding along from Earth to Mars, retracing the route of the food barge. Now we’re sent to help him find the Colonel and this is what we’re doing?” She pointed at Candy Lady. “I’m more than half tempted to continue on without him.”
“Earth to Mars?” Alice asked. She glanced at her compu-pad’s screen. “Was he all-slow ahead?”
“Yes,” Perez replied. “Why do you ask?”
Alice sipped her tea, closed its spout with a snap, and then slid the drink into her pocket. Stepping closer to Perez, she showed the detectant her compu-pad. “Earlier, during the interruption in communication, I was apparently transiting Earth to Mars, not Mercury to the Moon.”
Perez cocked her head and said, “According to…?
“My pad’s proximity data,” Alice said, scrolling to the data display in question. “According to it, I was on a sluggish cruise from Betty to Charlie space. And then there’s also this inquiry from Maxo about a secretive privateer working with the captain of Candy Lady. There’s been no response to it.”
“What’s the privateer’s name?” Perez asked.
“Spider.
There’s no CLF record of that person, so that’s why Maxo sent the request.”
“Well,” Perez said, “there won’t be a response transmitted to him. Spider is a problem and Maxo is not in the loop.”
Alice cleared her throat and asked, “Who is Spider, detectant?”
Perez stiffened, then took a deep breath and turned to face Alice. The detectant’s demeanor softened. “Alice, you are a good officer.” Her voice sounded caring and respectful. “And you should be proud of your service.” She gestured at the bridge crew and said, “All of us here, including you, share the same North Star.” Perez paused and placed a hand on Alice’s shoulder. “To answer your question, I would have to disclose highly classified CLF intelligence, so let’s just say, Spider is someone who ignores the compass we follow.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Alice said, nodding. She gazed around the bridge and enjoyed a sense of camaraderie with her CLF colleagues.
“So, let me get this straight,” Perez said. She stood and walked toward the Caprice’s bow windows. Alice hurried to keep up. “You and Maxo board Candy Lady. He sends you back to the Moon and inquires about Spider, then all-the-while you aren’t getting anything from the CLF.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Alice said. “Nothing after receiving an order to file a report on the link sats.” She pursed her lips.
“Detectant?” the communications officer announced. “We are receiving a ship-to-ship call from one of Protector’s beat boats.”
Perez pointed to her ears, signaling that she wanted the channel opened. The communications officer gave her a thumbs-up. Perez put her hands on her hips, widened her stance, then said, “You’ve reached Trident, mighty guardian of truth and justice in the vast ocean of space. How may I assist?”
“Bravo!” Havlock replied. “You are indeed captain material, I must say.”
Showdown at Jupiter's Edge: A Maxo Magnaveer Adventure Page 8
