Suicide Run

by Nathan Lowell

  Allen nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “The evidence is in the logs. You can easily verify their story,” he said.

  “Why isn’t the ship here?” Bixby asked.

  “It was taken off our hands by a tug from Pulaski Towing,” Panko said. “They intercepted us a few stans after we jumped back in.”

  “And you just gave them the ship?” Bixby asked.

  Panko shrugged. “I told them they didn’t need to do that, but maybe they knew something we didn’t.”

  “Like what?” Bixby asked, his head titled slightly to one side.

  “Like we were about to be summoned here.”

  Bixby snorted. “Point taken.” He sat back in his seat and nodded to Allen.

  “That does raise another question,” Allen said. “Why didn’t they bring the ship here for the inquiry?” He looked at Pittman. “Did you order it?”

  “No, sir,” Pittman said. “I was content to wait for Serendipity to return with the prototype.”

  “Where is the ship now?” Allen asked. “Who’s safeguarding the evidence?”

  “Evidence?” Vagrant asked.

  Allen frowned at Vagrant. “Of course. If nothing else, those computer cores may show who tampered with the programming and when. Who’s running Pulaski Towing?” He looked at Pittman again.

  “Winfield Tweedie,” she said. “He goes by Win.”

  Allen looked at Captain Adams. “Please, flash a message to Tweedie. Find out what’s going on with that ship.”

  “Yes, sir.” Adams slipped out of the conference room.

  “You have any other questions, Mr. Vagrant?” Allen asked.

  Vagrant crossed his arms and glowered. “Yes. My understanding is that this ship isn’t actually the one that’s going into production.”

  “That’s correct,” Pittman said.

  Vagrant looked up at her with a scowl. “Perhaps you’d like to join them here in the front?”

  Allen held up a hand. “Ease up. You didn’t ask a question and you addressed your comment to the room at large. Ms. Pittman—as director of Pulaski Yards—is the one person with the most direct knowledge.” He paused and looked at Vagrant out of the corner of his eye. “Now, do you have a question?”

  Vagrant leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “Why did you change the design?”

  “Who would you like to answer, Malachai?” Allen prompted before anybody else could speak.

  “Panko purports to be the design genius,” Vagrant said.

  Allen nodded to Panko. “Can you answer that question?”

  “I can, sir, yes. But Ms. Pittman brought me aboard to make the change after she made the decision. You might be better served to ask her.”

  “I’m asking you,” Vagrant said.

  Panko looked to Allen, who shrugged.

  “Well, several things are wrong with that design. First, construction costs are too high. The ovoid hull shape with all the curved parts is expensive—both in materials and time. It’s purely aesthetic, serving no functional purpose. Worse, the ship’s performance suffers because all those curves cut out useful volume inside the hull.

  “Second, it has a single Burleson drive. Nobody runs a single drive. Smaller ships generally use a paired drive design—two drives in one case—to cut down on volume in close quarters. My understanding is that the original plan called for two drives but the decision to remove the second drive happened before I came on the scene—”

  “That’s rather speculative, isn’t it, Mr. Panko?” Vagrant asked, interrupting Panko.

  “Which part?”

  “That there was a prior plan? One that had both drives?”

  Panko frowned and gave a little shrug. “I’d think more hearsay than speculation, sir.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, that’s what I was told. I had no reason to doubt that information but it had no bearing on me redesigning the ship.”

  Dorion raised his hand. “If I may...?”

  Allen acknowledged him with a nod. “Mr. Dorion.”

  “I was shown a design some months back that showed a second drive. I still have the design document in my office. Logically, somebody had to make a decision to change the ship in order for the prototype to be so different from the approved design.”

  Allen looked at Vagrant. “Satisfied with that point?”

  Vagrant chewed his lower lip and glowered. “I suppose. Go on, Mr. Panko. You were saying?”

  “Third, its specs are all out of whack. It claims to have very long legs. It’s supposed to be able to jump eighteen or twenty Burleson Units, but that’s a ridiculous jump. The random jump error is still only five percent but that’s a whole BU and may well put the ship in danger. It doesn’t really matter, because whoever spec’d out the power system shorted the capacitors. It only has enough power to jump five or six BUs.”

  Allen scowled. “Who the hell approved that?”

  “Before my time, sir,” Panko said.

  “Alison?” Allen asked, looking up at her.

  “When I took over, that was the plan on the ways. We built the first prototype and had ten more on the ways when Ms. Regyri and Ms. Usoko started finding problems.”

  “Yes, but who approved the last plans?”

  “I’d have to go back to the yard and look, sir. Tony Downs might know, if you can find him here and if he’ll tell you after I booted him off-station,” Pittman said.

  Vagrant leaned forward and slapped a hand on the table. “You what?”

  Allen turned his whole body toward Vagrant, his jaw clenched. “Mr. Vagrant, director or no, if you cannot control yourself, I’ll have security remove you. Is that clear?” He bit the words off through clenched teeth.

  Vagrant didn’t back down. “She had no right—”

  “Think real hard before you say another word, Vagrant.”

  “Or what?” Vagrant all but sneered. “You’re just the CEO of this outfit. I’m a member of the board of directors and you work for me.”

  “I work for the board,” Allen said. “Right now, my board-authorized duties require me to find out what the hell went wrong with that ship.”

  “But they’re not even building that ship anymore,” Vagrant said, lowering his voice to something approaching a civil tone. “That doesn’t negate the fact that she fired one of the key people managing that project.”

  Allen didn’t look away from Vagrant. “Ms. Pittman, please state your job title.”

  “I’m vice-director of Pulaski Yards.”

  “Does your job involve hiring and firing personnel for the yards?” Allen asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you fire Anthony Downs?”

  “Yes, sir. I had cause.”

  “What cause?” Allen asked, still pinning Vagrant to his seat with his gaze.

  “Profiteering.”

  Allen blinked at that and he looked at Pittman. “Profiteering?”

  “He was skimming off the project budget by giving contracts to his friends and relatives for overpriced goods, then taking a kickback under the table.”

  Allen cocked his head to one side. “That’s a pretty strong accusation. Can you prove it?”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “What I can’t prove is how much he’s actually stolen from the company.”

  Vagrant drew a breath but clamped his jaw shut when Allen glared at him.

  “We’ll talk about this after,” Allen said.

  “Yes, sir. I filed a report through HR at the time. It was copied to your office.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Pittman,” Allen said. “Ms. Usoko, why did you make a short jump instead of coming all the way back to Ravaine?”

  “We jumped as soon as we had enough forward momentum to get through the hole. We had barely sufficient capacitor to fire the drive and we wanted to get out of that location ASAP.”

  “Why?” Allen asked. “How much longer would you have had to wait?”

  “Probably another couple of stans. We were pushing the pow
er system pretty hard,” Zoya said.

  “So why jump?” Allen asked again.

  Natalya glanced at Zoya and gave her a little nod.

  Zoya shrugged. “Well, sir, the ship was sabotaged by somebody who knew the limitations of the design. We thought that—since they knew where they’d jumped us—they’d be waiting to scoop us up. When we spotted an unidentified ship braking hard in our direction, we took the short jump rather than risk being taken.”

  Vagrant’s jaw clenched so tight, Natalya could almost hear his molars grinding. “And how do you come to that conclusion, Ms. Usoko?”

  “Which one, sir?” Zoya asked. “That the ship was sabotaged? Clearly the case, since the computer system refused console commands. It didn’t simply malfunction. Just before the air locks vented, it displayed a taunt. That’s not random malfunction.”

  “No, Ms. Usoko. That the saboteur knew the limitations of the ship.”

  “Somebody went to a lot of trouble to remove the ship from Ravaine,” she said. “If they believed the ship could jump as far as it says, they could have gotten a lot farther away. There are dozens of open holes out there at ten BUs. Far enough that even Serendipity couldn’t follow. They programmed a four-BU jump after boosting the ship along a specific axis at high enough speed that it cleared the local threshold. That’s almost as far as the ship could go with its limited power supply. We might have gotten another BU out of it, but the capacitor would have been redlined.”

  “Yes, yes,” Vagrant said. “What of it?”

  “If they’d programmed it for—say—six BUs, the drive would have shut down before firing. It’s a safety feature. It can’t jump if it doesn’t have enough power to bend space. The program would have run. The jump would have failed. We’d have been sitting out there in Ravaine and only needed to turn the ship around to bring it back.”

  Vagrant frowned. “Assuming it was sabotage. Assuming the perpetrators knew how far the ship could jump.” He shook his head. “You have no proof.”

  “We have the ship,” Panko said. “Or we should have the ship, assuming it didn’t get misplaced somewhere between the hand-off and the yard.”

  “Enough, Malachai,” Allen said. “We’re here to gather what information we can. Nobody here has done anything wrong. It was an experimental ship. Whatever else may have happened we’ll leave to security, right?”

  Vagrant turned a fulminating glare on Allen. “This whole program is a mess. You’ve let this get completely out of control and you’re wasting company assets.”

  “There it is,” Natalya said, leaning over to Panko. “Didn’t expect to be here to see it.”

  Allen ignored Vagrant, looking at Natalya with a slight frown. “Ms. Regyri?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You have a comment for the board?”

  “No, sir.”

  He stared at her for several long moments while Vagrant seethed, not quite silently, beside him. The other members of the panel kept casting sidelong glances at Vagrant. Bixby seemed quite distressed, while Caldicott wore a bland expression of boredom. Wallace kept peeking around Allen as if to see whether Vagrant was still there and still fuming.

  Finally, Allen sat back in his chair and looked left and right to the panelists. “Does anybody else have something they’d like to ask?”

  Caldicott lifted her chin. “How soon will we have transcripts?”

  “A couple of stans,” Allen said. “Anybody else?”

  The door at the back of the room opened and Captain Adams slipped through, closing it behind her. She strode to the front of the room and handed Allen a tablet. As he read it, his eyebrows started scaling his forehead. After several very long moments, he lowered the tablet and looked around the room. “Well, it seems that the idea that somebody wanted the ship badly enough to hijack it wasn’t so far off as it might have seemed. Tweedie didn’t send a tug out to haul the ship back.”

  “Who did?” Vagrant asked.

  “Good question,” Allen said. He looked to Panko. “What do you know about the tug?”

  Panko grinned. “PY-1412. Skipper was Dick McDaniels. Yes, I recognized him—and the tug—from the yards.”

  “Then what the hell is going on?” Allen asked.

  “I’ve an idea,” Panko said. “Let’s ask the people who are searching my ship right now.”

  “Searching your ship?” Allen asked.

  “Well, I assume they’re searching. They breached my lock about three ticks after we came through the security perimeter.” He checked his tablet. “Nobody’s left yet so I assume they’re still there.”

  Vagrant sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. His scowl evaporated and his expression smoothed out. “What makes you think they’re searching for something?”

  “Well, there’s nothing to steal. The ship’s unique, so it’s almost impossible to sell even if they can get it underway.” He shrugged. “They could be trashing the place. Probably are, because by now they’ve got to be really frustrated that they can’t find what they’re looking for.”

  Vagrant blinked a couple of times, his face going slack for a moment before his mask came back up. “You know what they want?”

  “Not precisely, no.”

  Allen broke in. “Captain Adams, would you secure the docking bay? Keep whoever’s in there bottled up.”

  “Of course, sir.” She held out her hand and Allen handed her the tablet. She started typing before she even turned around and strode from the room.

  Vagrant’s lips tightened but he leaned forward placing his elbows on the table, his forearms flat on the surface. “You know what they want,” he said, staring at Panko. “Stop playing around.”

  “Apparently, so do you,” Panko said. A small smile played around his lips.

  Allen waved a hand in the air, raising his eyebrows at Panko. “Perhaps you might fill us all in? Some of us haven’t any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Roughly half a million credit chips,” Panko said. “I don’t know the denominations but I’m guessing something small. Innocuous. Probably under a hundred credits on each.”

  “Ten million credits?” Allen asked.

  “I don’t know precisely. And I could be off on the count.”

  “You’re insane,” Vagrant said.

  “Quite likely,” Panko said. “What’s your point?”

  “Stop, Malachai. That’s my second warning. One more word and I’m booting you.”

  “You don’t have the right,” Vagrant said.

  “He does, actually,” Wallace said. “We’re here as witnesses, not judges, and serving at the will of the CEO according to the by-laws. He can run the inquiry any way he likes. This is a fact-finding inquiry only.” Wallace shrugged as if to say ‘sorry’ but his expression said he really wasn’t.

  Vagrant stood, shoving his chair back out of the way, and stormed for the door. “I don’t need to sit here and be insulted by a jumped-up bureaucrat.” He didn’t stop at the door but burst through it as if being chased by a horde of demons.

  Caldicott’s expression shifted ever so slightly. “Gauche,” she said.

  Natalya frowned.

  “Something, Ms. Regyri?” Allen asked.

  “Does he have a ship handy?”

  Allen looked perplexed by the question. “Probably. If not a private one, one of his company ships is almost certainly docked. Why?”

  “He’s running.”

  “Running from what?” Allen asked.

  “My guess is that he’s cutting his losses and bolting while he can,” Natalya said.

  “That would be my guess as well,” Zoya said.

  Allen shook his head. “What has he to do with any of this?”

  “I can’t prove anything,” Natalya said. “I’d hate to make any accusations. I’m just guessing.”

  Allen’s eyes narrowed. “What does this have to do with the space trials of that ship?”

  “I’ve got a question of my own. Who stands to gain if the project fai
ls?” Natalya asked.

  “Why would it fail?” Allen said.

  Natalya started ticking the points off on her fingers. “One, the design—which looked pretty good when I saw the original—was gutted to the point where it can’t do the job it was designed for. Two, that change didn’t happen until the original project lead took a short walk through an open lock without a suit. Three, all the original project architects got scattered to the winds just before the ways started gearing up to build the first prototypes. Four, the new administrator has no experience in ship design or construction.” She looked over her shoulder. “No offense, Ms. Pittman.”

  “None taken,” Pittman said. “I’m filling in my gaps as fast as I can, but I’m only now beginning to realize how much I don’t know about ships.”

  Natalya looked at Allen with a slight shrug. “She’s a great administrator, but she’s over her head. Somebody knew that when they recommended her for the position.”

  Allen frowned at that. “I recommended her.”

  “Who suggested her?” Zoya asked.

  Bixby cleared his throat. “She’s a great department head. As poorly as the project was going, we thought she’d be a good, solid hand on the helm. As it were.” His voice tailed off as everybody looked at him.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bixby,” Pittman said. “I should never have accepted the post. I’m HR, not ship design.”

  Allen looked back and forth between Bixby and Pittman for a few moments. “Why did you, Alison?”

  Pittman shrugged and stared at her hands clasped together in her lap. “I felt like I was at a dead end in HR. There’s nowhere to move up from there. When Mr. Vagrant approached me about the post, he convinced me that it could be life-changing.” She gave a short, brittle laugh. “He was certainly right about that.”

  “Vagrant?” Allen asked. “How did he get involved?”

  “I did some recruiting for him,” Alison said. “Well, the department did. His requirements were difficult to fill but we eventually found him the people he needed.”

  “How did he get involved with the replacement director?” Allen asked.

  Wallace said, “Routine. When we lost Jeffrey, I checked with all the directors for their recommendations. We always do that for high-level posts.”

  “Vagrant suggested Ms. Pittman,” Allen said, his voice dropping at the end as if he couldn’t believe it.