by Jim Rudnick
“Don’t think that the principal will get much done though,” Tanner said, and that got a resounding snort from Higgins as they went back to work.
#####
David just sat there and didn’t say a thing.
The fact that he’d lost his own mother seven years ago was one thing.
Now, Kendal had just explained to him that he’d lost another family member—Aunt Mariam too.
Lost but not really. She’d tried to soften the blow and then it had all come out.
She had to explain about the Inner Circle and her own mother’s involvement with it decades ago. She’d had to explain how way back when she and Mariam had been just conceived, that the process of culling the set of twins into one superior Issian and one that in fact would be stillborn was a new procedure. That somehow a mistake had been made, and while she was the superior one, Mariam had still been born. But Mariam had lain in restraints for more than thirty years. Yet she could still mind link with Kendal, and that was such a hard thing to experience because while for her it freed her of the horrors of being a captive in the MedWards—for Kendal it made her that captive. She felt what Mariam felt. She knew what it was like as their minds engaged and she cried and spasmed over and over.
He had listened.
He had asked few questions.
He had wondered why they hadn’t just killed Mariam—an answer she did not have.
But then he’d gotten up and moved away from his chair at his net console and went to the rear-facing window. From here, one couldn’t see the dome, as it lay directly in front of the house, but only the whole of Aporia, as it stretched out to the far side of the city. He stared at the city skyline, nodded a couple of times, then came back to sit down once again, and looked at her.
“Aunt Kendal—I am so sorry about your twin. I had no idea, of course … and my mom never mentioned her either. That all said, I know it must be tough on you—but what I want to know is—why are you telling me this now?”
Smart boy, she thought, and she looked down at her palms. They were so dry usually, but now she could see the sheen of perspiration.
“I need your techie skills, David. I know that you were once a great leader over at the academy in their IT division, and I’m hoping that you can help me somewhat,” she said.
“What do you need, Aunt Kendal,” he said.
She explained that she was allowed only one trip a year into the MedWard to see Mariam. That she was never allowed in the room—actually on the secure wing itself. She saw her only through a side window, and it hurt her so much to see her twin imprisoned that she’d forgone some of her yearly visits. Too often. Too many times.
But she also knew that as she’d looked around the whole patient room, anywhere but at the thrashing twin tied to the bed, that there were cameras there. Many cameras.
So security—maybe via AI—she didn’t know, was high.
But there would be archived footage of same.
And she wanted some of that for her use.
When David nodded, she thought that was easy, but then he asked more.
“And when you’ve gotten these tapes, what are you going to do with them, Aunt Kendal?”
She looked away for a moment over at the walls of his room. He had played pretty good rugby in high school, she remembered. She’d driven him to games and practices, and in his senior year, the team had made the RIM Planetary finals. That they’d lost to some other planet was long gone … but the smiles on this nephew’s face were what was important. On the wall was a big poster that one of the parents on the team had made, and a younger David smiled back at her, wearing his red-and-white-striped rugger shirt. Days gone by … and she shook her thoughts back to the present.
“I intend to make them public so that the city council knows what is going on right here in Aporia. So that the citizens of Eons learn what our Inner Circle is up to as well. I intend to become—what’s the phrase—a whistle-blower!”
She looked at him and then pointed to the console screen in front of him.
“Can you do this—this hack, is it called—and not get caught?”
He nodded. Years back as a part of the program team he’d led, their group had done things like this as a part of competitions. Only competitions had often been challenges to find a way in to various Eons systems, institutions, and businesses too. While he’d not bothered with the MedWards, he knew a fellow who had, and he might still have an archive of that month’s messages and examples. Otherwise, he knew whom to message.
“I can. It will take a bit, but yes, I can download much vid footage, and then you’d need to see what parts you want to use, and I can then turn it into a working vid for you. But Aunt Kendal, I wouldn’t think our local city council gives a crap about this stuff …” he said, and she could hear the plain truth in what he said.
She nodded but then held up a finger. “Except that I know that in a couple of months, the MedWard expansion funding is coming to the council for their verifications—so I’ve already registered as an interested party and a speaker on behalf of my Twins Cooperative storefront business. I need that video in that kind of time—we okay with that?”
He nodded. “No problem, Aunt Kendal—one more thought, will I ever get to meet Aunt Mariam?”
She shrugged and a tear came to her eye. “I do not know, David … but if I can, then yes … yes, indeed!”
He smiled at her and said, “Just like meeting you, right?”
That made her cringe inside, but she smiled back at him.
When he sees the video footage, he’ll know better.
She got up and went back to her kitchen to work on her speech to be used in a few months’ time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As he applied CPR to the young man’s chest, Tanner thought that no one could have seen this coming.
He took a second to push the cadet’s head a little straighter to make sure the airway wasn’t clogged.
Blood bubbles were forming on his chest, where something had pierced his lung, and the resulting air that Tanner was blowing into the young man was coming back out.
He kept it up—he’d been working on this one for over five minutes, and the EMTs from Dessau were just now flying in. He continued to pump the chest to try to circulate the blood, thirty compressions at a time. Then back to doing the two big rescue breaths and then thirty more chest compressions.
He looked up as a pair of shoes suddenly appeared in front of him, squishing the broken green flyer windshield glass, and found an EMT looking down at him.
“Sir, quick triage and I’d like to get in there, okay by you?” the tech said.
Tanner nodded, carefully got up, and tried to avoid the broken hulk of the flyer that he’d been able to crawl into to drag the cadet half-clear.
He caught his arm on a splinter of metal that was the flyer doorway frame, and it cut him slightly, but that was the least of his worries as he surveyed the damage and mayhem around him.
The EMT looked up and said, “Thanks for your help, Captain, this one is gonna make it, I think.”
Tanner nodded back and looked around.
From where he stood, he could see that the automatic AI built into Tower Number One had been called to duty as huge hoses still poured foam and water onto the floor where a teal blue flyer jutted out after crashing directly into the tower around floor seven. Four more lay in wreckage now around him, and he pushed away from the one he’d been able to help on. He noted one still burned.
He looked over at the cadets who were milling around those flyers and yelled at them all. “Someone get into the tower and go to the utility corridor at the back end and get some fire extinguishers out here STAT.”
He was pleased to see that almost ten of them ran off quickly to follow his orders. He rubbed the blood away from his uniform sleeve and strode up to the balance of the cadets.
“All of you—there’s going to be a full investigation into this—but can anyone offer up what they saw? How’n the
hell did this happen?” he said, and his voice was like a blow.
Most of them snapped to attention but not all, he noted, as he said, “As you were,” and the one who seemed to be off to one side pushed through others to stand before him.
“Sir, I have no idea why this happened, nor do I know who any of the cadets are. But I was stopped by the Provost guard at the gate here, as it seems there was an issue with my ID card.
“While he was messaging someone, I could hear all of a sudden the noise from a whole group—more’n a dozen I’d say, Sir, flyers all come screaming around the tower—like they were racing, Sir. I do not know if that was true, but they did at least two more laps around the tower, ‘til someone in that bright yellow one,” he said as he pointed to the still burning flyer hulk thirty yards away, “cut off the one that hit the tower itself. That made the yellow one yaw badly to starboard, and it took down all the rest of these ones, Sir,” he said.
No one spoke.
Tanner didn’t know if what he had just been told was true, as he’d been inside coming down the elevators when the flyer had hit the tower, and that had stopped the elevators. He’d been able to force the door open, climb down to floor five, and then run down the last few flights to get out of the building. Once outside, he saw that cadet trying to get out of his green flyer, and he’d run to give CPR.
Tanner didn’t also know if this student cadet had just done something right or wrong either. There was certainly nothing wrong in telling the truth, but then again, perhaps among students was a code of silence that might have ruled on this kind of storytelling. He didn’t know, but a look at all the other cadet faces showed him that the cadet who told had done the right thing.
At least he said what he saw.
And the fact that student cadets were racing their flyers was also surely not a new thing either—but the accident surely was.
He nodded. “And your name, Cadet, is?” he asked politely, turning on his PDA which was missed by no one standing there.
“Cadet Herbert Fleen, Sir. Of the Duchy d’Avigdor, Sir. Third year cadet graduate, going into my final senior year, Sir,” the cadet barked out.
Tanner nodded. “Right, all present will be my own crime scene party. Ten of you, please form a perimeter around the crashed flyers, and allow NO ONE to enter the areas except for Provost guards or EMTs. I am Captain Tanner Scott—2IC here at the towers, so my word is law. Anyone has any questions, you send them to me. Ten more of you, I want you to report to that Provost—uh—Provost corporal over there, and tell him you’re assigned to help him with whatever might need to be done. You, you, and you,” he said as he pointed at Cadet Fleen and two more, “you belong to me, follow closely—record all on your PDAs too, that’s an order for you all,” he said as he turned and strode away to enter the tower.
At the doorway, a Provost guard attempted to stop him, but with a pointed look at the guard, he backed off immediately, saluted, and said, “Yes, Sir, no problems here, Sir,” over and over.
Tanner went straight through the lobby that still had students, retail store personnel, and staff pouring out of the stairs and racing out of the building.
He turned to the long corridor that went past the reception desk area and then took the first doorway to the left. Next was a jog down that short hallway to an unmarked door on the left side again, right up tight to the west wall of the tower.
Opening it by jamming his palm against the security plate on the door frame, he went up the stairs that were empty of anyone else, and he took the stairs two at a time. Below, he could hear his three cadets struggling to keep up but he didn’t slow until he reached the sixth floor, and he went out the door at a fly. He raced down the utility corridor once more, making his way to where the flyer might have hit and found he was a floor—at least a floor—short.
He went back to the private stairs and up one more floor, his cadets now almost able to keep up.
Again, out the stairwell door and ahead of him after the first left-hand corner, he could see Provost guards, students, and some laundry staff all milling about.
He barked “Coming through” at them all, and they moved aside clumsily, but he was able to force his way through them all to get to the doorway that still had small billows of smoke wafting through it. He could hear the AI running the sprinklers and even directing the hosed extensions as he had to squat to look in any farther. He said “Wait” to his cadets as he edged in and found his way blocked by what looked like the aluminum wall frames and twisted shards of this residence room—desks, beds, and even some plumbing lines too. The smoke was coming from the flyer, and he dropped to his knees to slowly crawl over those metal frames and found himself at the rear end of a Provost sergeant who was backing out of the room.
He tapped the man on his back and the Provost half-turned toward him.
“Sergeant, what about the cadet?” he asked plainly.
The Provost sergeant shook his head. “Sir, the flyer twisted before impact—the side that the cadet was on hit first, and I’m afraid the impact alone would have killed him—or the resulting fire that the AI only now is getting under control. He’s gone, Sir, I’m afraid.” His tone was one of sadness.
Tanner nodded, clasped the guard for a second on his arm, and then he too backed up and out of the room.
Moments later, the Provost sergeant stood up beside him and rubbed his face, still coved with soot from the room’s fire.
“So sorry, Sir … surely this could have been avoided,” he said as he pushed past Tanner to get out of the mass of people.
Tanner motioned for his cadets and outlined their jobs. In less than two minutes, all the rubberneckers were gone, and the area was clean of all except for a couple of Provost guards positioned at the residence room doorway and the EMT who also had come back out of the room.
He took off his short mask, wiped his forehead, and looked at Tanner.
“Sir, that one is gone. We’ll await the settling of the fire routines, the Provost guards, and I’d expect someone from the local Dessau Police force too—but once they’re all done, we’ll remove the remains, Sir,” he said with respect.
Tanner nodded.
He’d have to call Rear Admiral Higgins immediately as he and Admiral McQueen were over at the Issian walled city in a meeting with the Master Adept.
He’d have to get the EMTs to identify the body so he could notify the boy’s next of kin.
He’d have to get the body properly looked after, and he’d have to find out how to do that—maybe the admiral’s aide, Lieutenant CoSharan could help with that one.
He’d have to get statement interview times coordinated with the Dessau Police so that each could help with their case.
And lastly, he’d have to see if he could get this all done with a minimum of notice by the rest of the RIM Confederacy … the big opening day was less than four weeks away, and this kind of an accident did not bode well for the new academy.
Accident. Yes, this had been an accident—and not a stupid cadet race.
That’s the card to play, he thought.
#####
About ninety lights outward off Lambda4, the SN Majestic was in trouble.
The huge liner, with its hundreds of passengers and sleepers too, had been on this run from Lambda4 to Juno in the RIM Confederacy for more than a hundred years. Seenra-made, she ran at two lights a day, and for the most part, the daily monitoring of gauges and displays was the only thing that ever happened on board.
Like all the previous cruises outward from the center to the fringes of the galaxy, the Majestic was following her normal course. She turned the twenty-six degrees to port when they hit the seventy-four lights out of her last port to avoid the huge nebula ahead, and this time she had done so perfectly, as always.
The thing was, this reflection-class nebula was not something that could be counted on to stay put, year after year, as it swirled and slowly gave up its path to local gravity wells. This was something to not worry about, as
most nebulas were simply huge gaseous swirls of color—most but not all. Some, like the one that now surrounded the Majestic, were also carriers of particulate materials—dust, as the reflection nebula around them reflected local star shine in its normal bright neon blue colorations.
This nebula had changed its course, for whatever reason, and the Majestic had cruised right into a gigantic lobe of the bright blue layers of dust and gas. Not a problem, normally, as there really was nothing inside the fog to hit; it was only a problem for the navigation AI and its supporting Ansible navigation controls, as the alarms began to chirrup up on the bridge monitors.
A crewman put down his vid player and listened to the bleating of the alarm for a moment before telling the AI that he had it.
He got up and went over to the NAV console, and as he was the only one on the bridge for this shift, he sat and looked down at the monitor.
The Majestic had inadvertently run straight into the massive blue arm of the nebula and was flying blind, but all the gauges read that the ship was fine. On course. On time. “No other items to worry about,” he said to himself, as he killed the flashing AI alarm on his screen and then looked out the front view-screen.
“Go to infrared,” he said to the AI, and the screen changed from the fog of blue to the normal star field that lay ahead. He keyed in the map function and again got a verification that the ship was on its true course.
“Run from J to Z band, three seconds each, on screen,” he then told the AI, and as he watched, the infrared display changed but didn’t change at all. Not a thing ahead in the fog. Distant stars of the RIM only far, far ahead.
He nodded.
He made notes in his log and filed that away in the pass-along log that the next shift would read when they came on duty.
What he didn’t know to check on was the ionization of the dust that the Majestic was now flying through at two lights a day.
It collected slowly on many of the instruments and various arrays on the ship and began to thinly coat them.
He didn’t know that as this lobe of the nebula was almost five lights thick, that the Majestic would be coating its arrays for a couple of days.
