Transmuted (Dark Landing Series Book 1)

by Robin Praytor

  “I haven’t contacted CoachStop yet. I’ll tell you what I told Mattie; there’s something else going on, and I want to know what it is before I contact the company.” Doc and Fitz could override him, but they wouldn’t.

  On all CoachStop-managed stations, chief candidates in the three areas of responsibility were profiled and chosen for their ability to work well together. The security chief had the lead, but administration and medical were consulted on decisions that affected the station as a whole. In dire straits, they could band together to overrule security. What constituted dire straits remained untested as far as Drew was aware. Up to now he assumed the term would apply only upon a security chief’s death or incapacity.

  “I’d like to meet her,” Doc said.

  Fitz nodded his agreement.

  “I think that’s a good idea. I mean, she has to understand our situation. Either of you may get a better feel for what she’s up to. She’s a kid, sort of. She dresses like a space bum, a hot space bum, but still . . . after the display she made in my office, what does she expect? It’s life and death out here.” That sounded a little dramatic, even to Drew.

  Doc tapped her chin with a curled knuckle. “You said her guardian, or father . . . anyway, George Speller . . . sent her to you, and he’s missing?”

  Drew nodded.

  “Well, she may really need help,” Doc said. “Why don’t we offer it? You can secure the station systems so that’s not an issue, can’t you?”

  Fitz interjected before Drew could answer. “If she said she’s our boss, it has to be true. She wouldn’t have system access otherwise. Surely you don’t think she’d harm the station and endanger everyone?”

  “I don’t know, probably not. Just having the means warrants pretty drastic measures, at least until we can confirm her claim. I don’t know if I can block her system access either. I’d have to check with our technicians, and I don’t want anyone to know about it until I figure out if she’s legit. We’ll talk after we meet with her and contact CoachStop if we need to.”

  Doc and Fitz agreed.

  “Oh, there’s something else,” Fitz said.

  Drew saw the corners of his mouth twitch as he tried to suppress a smile. He laid down his fork and gave Fitz a meaningful look. “If you say the word ‘pigeon’ I swear I’ll punch you.”

  The emergency channel toned in his ear announcing Benson Capone, Senior Dock Manager. Drew tapped his implant. “Yeah, Benny?”

  “Chief, a Camdu trader just limped into berth four. The captain claims another Camdu trader, a competitor, took a potshot at her ship.”

  “Since when are Camdu traders armed?”

  “Well, this one’s not—they ran for it and their attacker didn’t follow. The ship has minor damage. Nothing we can’t handle here. But the story gets kinda weird from there. You might want to come down and talk to the captain yourself.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Whether his dock manager needed him or not, Drew wouldn’t miss an encounter with Camdulings. They were hands-down the most exotic of the Alliance members, and of the non-aligned races, as well. In the time he’d been on Dark Landing, a Camdu ship had docked only twice. The opportunity to rub shoulders with alien life had trumped his aversion to space and induced him to accept a position with CoachStop in the first place.

  To Doc and Fitz, “Sorry, guys—gotta go.”

  Fitz seemed disappointed at losing an opportunity to nettle him about the pigeon, or something equally aggravating. Since Fitz had never displayed much of a sense of humor, Drew felt almost sorry to deprive him of his fun.

  Chapter 5: Camdulings

  In the sublevel one airlock, Drew donned an EMU-lite, pulling the protective hood and breather tight around his head and neck. Please don’t let this day be an extension of yesterday, he thought as he exited the opposite hatch.

  Benny, similarly attired, was waiting for him. Berth four had been sealed and its gravity and air pressure adjusted to slightly above one-third Earth normal to accommodate the Camdu captain and her two crewmembers. While their suits added weight, both he and Benny skipped more than walked toward the Camdulings.

  There was no mistaking the captain. A willowy female, she stood two feet taller than her crewmen, both of whom topped roughly ten feet. Camdulings had two arms and two legs with the attendant fingers and toes, but were further blessed with a fifth appendage. Retracted against their lower bodies when not in use, the extra limb served as a third arm or leg, depending on the need. With skin a deep azure and sharp, finely drawn facial features, they appeared more human-reminiscent than human-like.

  Benny introduced Drew and the Camdu captain by rank only. Unless phonetically added to the lexicon, Drew’s and Benny’s implants couldn’t translate common names. Drew assumed the translators covering the ear holes of each Camduling suffered the same technical difficulty. While the English translation fluctuated between literal and interpretive, it worked well enough.

  The Camdu captain repeated the story she’d told Benny. “A time back of now, my ship was impressed with light projectiles from an associated Camdu ship who should not have done. She is my born sister’s daughter, but my trader enemy. This act is against Camdu and Alliance law. My ship cannot project, and so I left with speed. My sister’s daughter did not follow.”

  “Have you reported this incident to Camdu and the Multi-world Coalition for Travel and Trade?” Drew asked.

  “Yes. Soon of now.”

  Drew wondered if that meant they’d just reported it or they were going to report it soon. Regardless, it was taken care of.

  “Has anything like this happened before?”

  The Captain shrugged. “No—not for way, way back from now.”

  Drew nodded. “Our dock manager assures me we can repair your ship. Is there anything else we can do to help you?”

  “We are honored by your assistance and thank you. Know that my sister’s daughter’s ship is joined at Truth. It lives in space twice.”

  Drew looked at Benny. “Do you understand that?”

  “I had to ask a couple times myself. It seems her niece’s ship is docked at Verity Station right now.”

  “But that’s not even in our quadrant.”

  “Right. She also claims her niece’s ship isn’t armed, but insists it’s not a case of mistaken identity. The ship ‘lives in space twice.’”

  Since Drew had left the translation link enabled, the Camdu captain had nodded approvingly throughout Benny’s explanation. Drew expressed his privilege at meeting her and his relief that no injuries resulted from the incident. He apologized that Dark Landing couldn’t provide more comfortable accommodations outside the dock area. The captain said she understood the limitations of the station and again expressed her gratitude.

  Drew broke the translation link and took Benny to one side. “Muck will have to sort this out, but I’ll let you know what I learn.”

  The Multi-world Coalition for Travel and Trade, “MCTT” or Muck as it was more popularly referred to on Earth, had grown from the Planetary Alliance. Run by a fifteen-member board with three representatives from each planet, it was self-funded through fees and functioned autonomously to enact and enforce space traffic and trade regulations. At times, Muck security served as an extension of a member planet’s police force, with authority to handle matters themselves or to intercede until planetary representatives arrived. Often they acted without authority, but few challenged them. While everyone agreed they were necessary, most questioned their trustworthiness.

  “Thanks. It’s a curiosity for sure,” Benny said, shaking his head.

  Drew agreed. “And they seem to be coming at us in a steady stream.”

  Chapter 6: Curtis Walker

  In no rush to get to the office, Drew decided to stop for a haircut first. Miss Taleen was probably screaming her head off by now. He didn’t want to face her without the other two chiefs, and his dayshift commander would be waiting for him with questions he wasn’t prepared to answ
er. Curtis wasn’t stupid. He probably suspected a connection between Letty Taleen and Taleen Industries, but he couldn’t know of her claim to be their superior.

  As expected, Curtis accosted Drew as soon as he entered the office mid-morning. “Chief, there you are. Your meeting ran long this morning. I needed to go over a couple things with you.”

  It’s not always about you, Curtis. “Good morning. I assume Mattie passed on my orders for you to take the lead on last night’s explosion?”

  As Drew walked toward his office, he had to maneuver around a small crate topped with a military-style duffel bag. The pile filled much of the space in the already cramped front office.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Curtis turned sideways to skirt the crate as he followed Drew. “Dockside dropped them off this morning with a note from Mattie. They belong to Miss Taleen—the lady in holding. She’s one thing I need to discuss with you.”

  “The staff haven’t been asking too many questions, have they? This is a sensitive situation, Curtis. Mattie filled you in on that too?”

  When Drew entered his office, with Curtis close on his heels, he made a point of glancing nervously back through the hatch before closing it.

  “She just said there was a runaway in holding and you were making inquiries. What’s up?”

  Drew ignored the question. “Has Miss Taleen been causing any problems?”

  “No, she’s been quiet. I had breakfast sent in earlier. I thought that would be okay. I mean, it’s okay to feed her, right? Is she the Taleen heiress herself?”

  “Maybe, or maybe an impostor. That’s what I’m trying to determine. Listen, Curtis, this is a potential career-killer. I want you and Mattie out of the line of fire as much as possible. Understand? The less you know—”

  “Absolutely! I appreciate it, sir. Thank you,” Curtis said.

  Drew detected a hint of sarcasm in Curtis’s thank you. His side of every conversation seemed to include a subtext that Drew found maddeningly elusive. Still, he’d taken the right approach. “Besides,” he continued, “I’m much more concerned about the airlock incident. What do you have for me?”

  Curtis never sat down in front of Drew unless invited. For some reason that annoyed Drew. Mattie would have just plopped in a chair. Space facilities were once manned primarily by military personnel. Modern facilities still operated within a loose, military-style infrastructure. Left standing, Curtis uncomfortably shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Drew could tell he was piqued by the slight, but Drew never felt in a generous mood when it came to his day commander. I should work on our relationship, but I just don’t like the asshole.

  With a fleeting glance at the lounger, Curtis started his report. “I’ve spent the morning going over the records from last night, especially the crew interviews. We’re running background verifications now, but so far everything checks. I’m not sure what to make of the explosive ordinance. The medical database provided a comprehensive report, but it sheds no light on a possible motive. Did you know they used nitroglycerine as a heart medication from Earth’s nineteenth to twenty-second centuries?”

  “No. So what?” Drew was unclear what connection, if any, that bit of information had to the explosion. There was a booming drug trade in the outer reaches. Harmless, legal substances on one planet could prove a potent drug on the next. It was impossible to keep track of the drug of the moment, let alone control its distribution. Utopia tablets were the rage now. A form of nitroglycerine might be the next wave.

  “Well, I don’t know if it’s important, but I thought it was interesting,” Curtis said.

  “Yeah, okay, keep on it. There’s one more thing I want you to do. Flesh out my report on the Praetorian monks. Especially their personal backgrounds and anything they were involved in over the last couple of years. Make it a priority. I want to bring them in for questioning.”

  “Because of the robe?”

  “Right; it’s all we have. That’s it for n—wait, I almost forgot. As if we needed something more going on, the Company wants diagnostic audits completed on all exec command stations covering the last twenty-four hours. They must be preparing for an upgrade. Get someone from admin to handle it and make sure the data is in my queue by end-of-business today. I’ll submit the report myself.”

  Curtis nodded.

  There was no reason the request would raise suspicions. CoachStop made inexplicable requests all the time, perhaps to keep them on their administrative toes.

  “Do you need anything else, Curtis?”

  “What about the Taleen broad’s baggage? We can’t leave it in the middle of the office.”

  “Move it into an empty holding cell for the time being.” He’d ask Mattie to go through it when she arrived.

  “By the way, there’s a citizens’ group forming about the pigeon,” Curtis said. “They’re starting a petition and—”

  “Okay, that’s it; spread the word. I don’t want to hear about that pigeon again unless it’s someone explaining how it got past the environmental scanners.”

  “Yes, sir.” Curtis executed a neat military turn and left.

  Drew cleared his mind of pigeons and Camdulings that could be in two places at once and thought about the Taleen woman. Doc’s approach with Letty may not yield the results she envisioned. Doc always came down on the touchy-feely side of most issues; but it wouldn’t hurt, and it might put Miss pointy-chin Taleen a little off balance. He needed to buy time until he could gather more intelligence.

  He turned his attention back to the explosion. While he trusted Curtis had been thorough, he wanted to read the crew interviews and reports himself. He worked past lunch and into the afternoon, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

  The environmental technician on the airlock scanners indicated that minute vibrations caused by the scanners could have ignited a substance as unstable as nitro. But the airlock vids also showed an obviously nervous Trammel tripping over his own feet just before he came literally unglued.

  The technician defended the scanner’s inability to identify any danger before the explosion. A glass container holding the nitroglycerine was suspended in a water pouch filled with an absorbent gel material. The gel resembled the substance used in modern data vials and confused the scanners. Drew tagged the information as something warranting further investigation.

  He checked his in-file for anything else and spotted an inventory of the Taleen woman’s shoulder pack and findings from the physical search. The list referenced the data vial on his desk that contained Miss Taleen’s travel records. As Drew suspected, she was traveling under an alias: Rebecca Richards, twenty-four, five-foot-seven, black hair, brown eyes, student and pleasure traveler, originating from San Francisco, Oregon, Earth.

  He still had no way to verify her identity. Though her system access would be enough for most people, Drew wanted confirmation. There was nothing to prove she wasn’t Rebecca Richards as the documents declared. Once Mattie’s assistant, Kyle, got back the results of her palm print, Drew would know for certain.

  The rest of the inventory listed normal travel accessories and hygiene items. The physical search had also turned up nothing remarkable except for a small dagger in a leather sheath on her right calf, less a weapon and more a tool and Muck-approved. Otherwise she had only the clothes she was wearing and a silver chain bracelet.

  The pat down and a follow-up scan both failed to find a com implant of any kind. Drew considered that suspicious for someone of her supposed standing. Everyone had com implants. Not having one was as rare as finding a Fahdeenian cave worm. Com implants synced automatically to a person’s location, whether that was a ship, a space station or an entire planet.

  As Drew was reviewing the information, Curtis submitted an update to Mattie’s initial incident report, identifying the four passengers that disembarked the Temperance before Trammel. Letty’s alias, Rebecca Richards, was one of the four, along with a medical technician returning to Dark Landing from bereavement
leave, a replacement astrophysicist for the Space Science Consortium that maintained a base camp on the station, and a mail-order bride for one of the dock workers.

  Drew would ask Kyle to run a background check on the new bride. More likely she was an unlicensed professional, skirting Muck taxes and cloaking her activities by pretending to marry some poor schmuck in trade for sex once a week. There’d been an uptick in hooker complaints recently. One filed by Landers Keep and another by the mezzanine bar. Though they’d IDed two Johns and a Jane, they’d failed to flush out the ladies in question. No matter how deep into space civilization traveled, it managed to pack a little vice along with the rest of its baggage.

  He continued working throughout the afternoon and into early evening, completing routine administrative tasks and updating his logs.

  Doc and Fitz arrived at 1845. They conferred on the correct approach to take with Letty. Doc was appointed the kindly and concerned front man; Fitz would act the suspicious skeptic; and Drew would be the cocky, authoritarian observer. Confident in their roles, they made their way back to the holding cells.

  Chapter 7: Letty’s Cell

  Letty sat curled up on the cot in the corner of her cell staring through the bars. She’d been gifted with the best life offered. Though pampered and protected, she remained unspoiled, with the freedom to do as she pleased. For the first time her beauty, brilliance, and access to the resources of the universe weren’t enough. She felt lost and wretched.

  She missed her dad—her source of reassurance and sound advice. After finding his note tucked in her makeup case, she’d focused on following his instructions to make her way to Dark Landing.

  She trusted her adopted father absolutely and believed him if he thought she was in danger. She had no doubt the note came from him. He’d used their safe word, “gypsy.” The word was to be used between them only in dire circumstances. She convinced herself he’d be at Dark Landing when she arrived. At the least she thought Chief Cutter expected her and could answer her questions.