by Patty Jansen
Like Melati, the woman was natural-born, probably from the Jupiter system, where all the rich people lived. That family name said enough. The Hasegawas owned most of Europa and Ganymede. They probably thought of signing up with ISF as community service.
At the front, Major-General Sandy Cocaro strode into the room. Guards on either side of the door saluted and stood at attention. People fell silent or hushed others to do so.
She went to the table at the front, pulled out the middle chair and sat down. Since Melati had last seen her, she’d had a haircut and her hair was now shorter than that of most of the constructs, grey and spiked-up. Her gaze roamed the room fleetingly, but her face betrayed no emotion. She put an infopad on the table before her.
Her assistant, Marius Vorcak, followed and sat next to her, also with an infopad. ISF staff called him Mr Beanstalk behind his back, except all the beanstalks she had ever seen in the Ag Division were straight, and he walked with his back bent looking as if someone had pulled his shoulders permanently in the most forward position. Rumour had it that this was because he had grown up in one of the asteroid mining colonies where, through lack of money, he had missed out on gravity-simulated therapy.
Behind them came Jocar Bassanti: a man several heads shorter than Vorcak and three times as wide, dressed in a lime green jacket that was too narrow to do up at the front. He wore a red- and white-striped shirt underneath and black pants belted below his belly. The top of his head was bald, but he had patches of fuzzy white hair growing just above his ears. The rest of his head gleamed like a polished ball. He sat down, put his elbows on the table and leaned his chin in his interlaced hands and stared intently into the crowd, jiggling his leg.
God, what was he doing here?
The man from the flight crew behind her whispered, “Who’s that clown?”
The woman replied, “I don’t know, but look at how wide his eyes are. He’s on some drug or other.”
Was he? Melati had never noticed, but hyperactive was probably a better word for what ailed him. That was a fairly common issue in the older construct population. Was she so used to it that she didn’t notice it anymore? Rumour had it that he was sixty. She knew no constructs of similar age. Her boys left, and she never heard from most of them again. They had moved on, were too far away or died in combat.
The man directly in front of Melati, a junior officer, said to his neighbour, “What is the difference between Bassanti and a nuclear explosion?”
His neighbour said, “I know that one: one is a disaster and the other a nuclear accident.”
“No, no, this is a new one.”
Someone at the front yelled, “Quiet!”
And everyone was quiet.
Jocar Bassanti wiped sweat from his forehead.
Major-General Cocaro’s gaze swept the room. There were probably about five hundred people in here, seated in rows that fanned out from the front. Other essential staff on duty would be watching this via the vid link.
“This is a general staff briefing on the situation in Epsilon Eridani III Station, known to us in the region as New Pyongyang,” Cocaro began. She sat up straight, her fleshy shoulders straining against the dress jacket. She wasn’t one for formality and she probably hadn’t worn the jacket for such a long time that it had shrunk while she wasn’t looking, or she had grown.
“We have received reports thatthere has been major unrest in New Pyongyang. Our Taurus Army allies there have long been fighting a battle against illegal business conducted at the station. They obtained evidence and shut down a number of private commercial operations and arrested their owners. These individuals had been given repeated warnings to clean up their act, but had not complied.
“The affected individuals gathered for a protest which was peaceful until rogue elements became involved and started smashing property and looting businesses. The peaceful protesters tried to stop them, but fights broke out, and when the authorities tried to stop the fights, they were outnumbered. They could not use their usual crowd control measures because some elements in the worker population managed to get hold of prohibited firearms. Mobs of looters set fire to the offices of the administrative centre. There was a large explosion in the station’s number two power hub and the station’s hull was breached. The fire doors closed off the sector but safety escape hatches were blocked and did not allow everyone to escape.”
Melati shivered. Imagine the chaos and fear of those people. If a fire happened in the B sector, would those large fire doors even close? Would the safety escape hatches operate properly or would they be gummed shut with gecko shit? The main doors were tested regularly, but she had seen no tests on the smaller ones for years. There probably hadn’t been any. If StatOp had done these tests, they would have found where all the chickens lived.
Major-General Cocaro continued, “New Pyongyang is live, but limping. We understand that they have a skeleton crew of ten in the control area. Emergency power is providing backup but it won’t last forever. Station authorities established a semblance of order in a limited section of the C sector, but the chaos in the rest of the station is dire, and the supply situation precarious. Many vessels have already fled the station. Much of the surviving population has been evacuated, and most will be coming here.
“ISF presence at New Pyongyang is small, and there is little we can do except mop up the mess. Stationside authorities are dealing with the fallout. There are many dead, including authorities, who were caught between the rioting mob and the fire. Our troops will assist them in restoring order. As for the state of the station, we received these images.”
She brought up a holoscreen from the projector in front of her. It showed a 3D image of a station very much like New Jakarta minus the ISF ring. The stations were built at the same time to the same design.
Cocaro hit a command on her screen and a net of red passages was superimposed over a quarter of the station.
Jocar Bassanti leaned further over the table as if he were shortsighted. He was jiggling his leg.
Cocaro said, “There is little external damage visible at this distance, but the lines in red show which corridors have closed themselves. The orange dots . . .” She hit another command and the dots appeared. “. . . are where the fires are. This is their D sector—” She moved an arrow across the screen to point at a section of the curved ring. “—where the hull breach is. Their A and B sectors are unaffected by fire, although rioting has taken place throughout the station, notably in the docking area.” She pointed at another part of the ring. Another difference, New Pyongyang didn’t have a docking ring.
“As to the cause of the unrest and the unusual severity of the damage, a few things are becoming clear. We have several witness reports that a group of people inserted themselves into the station population specifically to create trouble. It is unclear who they were, where they came from and what, if any, their aim was. A number of people were arrested, and are currently being questioned by the authorities. Others will have escaped the station and are underway to other stations, probably us and New Hyderabad, being the closest. Amongst the station’s communication logs, there were many encrypted messages which Station Operations are trying to decipher. We will be checking specifically if any of this material can be traced to Tau Ceti.”
Now everyone fell quiet. There were no jokes. Tau Ceti was where Allion had its headquarters.
“Spies,” someone behind Melati said.
Someone else added, “If they’re trying to turn us into another Mars, they’ll be sorry.”
A man further at the front said, “Shhh!”
Cocaro continued, “The population of New Pyongyang is more volatile than New Jakarta, and we have advised that the authorities do their utmost best to continue to engage all of the population in discussion in an attempt to flush out potential enemy elements embedded in their tier 2.
“Meanwhile, we need to send assistance to help them deal with the situation. In addition to the emergency response unit, a team of negotiat
ors will be sent, as well as frontline medical personnel. Those affected will be from incident response units B-76 and F-39. Initial deployment will be fifty-two medical, social staff with back-up, logistic support and a 14-strong support unit of combat troops, half from the Special Forces Department. These troops, and those affected by their departure, have been notified. Further deployment may require backup troops, relief, additional medical personnel and whatever repair crews cannot be sourced from the Taurus Army. We are in full cooperation with the Taurus Army, who will run the system security for us.” She gestured at Jocar Bassanti, who unlaced his fingers, sat up stiffly and put both his feet on the floor. “I have asked Jocar Bassanti here to outline Station Operations response to the threat to station integrity of New Jakarta. The first ship from New Pyongyang is due to arrive at B5:22.”
A sudden murmur arose.
“Yes, we were late hearing about it. The normal radio capabilities were compromised by the explosion, and the refugee ships hesitated to contact us until they were close, due to fearing that the Allionists might intercept the communication. The first refugees are on a commercial vessel with a hundred and twenty-six civilians aboard.” Cocaro sat down.
Jocar Bassanti rose and spoke for about five minutes on the details of securing the station. Increased checks. Personnel now needed ID when going off-base, even if only to their own ships stationed at the general docking ring. What he thought to achieve with that, she had no idea. It was not as if the ships could change crew in mid-space. All through this talk, Jocar Bassanti fidgeted in his seat. His behaviour was so much like Esse that it creeped her out. The intense look, the need to keep a body part constantly moving.
When Bassanti finished, Cocaro spoke about the base now being on yellow alert, which meant no visitors and no inessential trips. Thankfully, going home classified as essential, but at orange alert, Melati would not be allowed to leave the base anymore.
A chill went down her back. When she signed up as local civilian member of the force, they’d given her long documents that spelled out all her rights and obligations. She’d read the impenetrable language of the part that said peacetime operations; she had merely glanced over the section that said wartime operations.
When Cocaro asked if there were any questions, Melati rose, and people around her gave her frowns.
Major-General Cocaro’s eyes met hers. “Yes, Miss Rudiyanto.”
“I have a question for Jocar Bassanti.”
The silence deepened.
The man in question stopped looking at the ceiling and frowned at her from under his bushy eyebrows while fingering the buttons on his jacket.
“Are the blockade and repeated inspections in the station related to the trouble at New Pyongyang?”
Several people around her muttered.
Jocar Bassanti asked, “Blockade?”
“Level 1 alert relating to merchant operations, whatever you want to call it. And the checkpoint that stops people from the B sector getting to their work.”
“It is loosely related to this issue. We were tracking undesirables even before this trouble blew up.”
“Those undesirables can only potentially be found in the B sector?”
“Well—um. Who suggests that?” He jiggled his leg.
“Enforcers have been systematically turning over the B sector since yesterday.”
“Well, there’s not much to check in the A sector, is there? The people from New Pyongyang who are a danger to us would be the illegal merchants. They are not tier 1.”
“So by your assumption, they hide in the B sector.”
“That seems obvious.” His face was red. “That’s where they can most easily hide. Also, the A sector is not such a mess, so we have already secured that. Now we need to sort and register the B sector.”
And so it came to that: at the very root of all ideas put forward by StatOp was the desire to fix their neglect of their administration system by scaring the barang-barang into registering for ID chips which were painful to have inserted as adults. And then they complained that the little people got angry.
She said, “If you’re looking for criminals, it seems more logical to me to start with the dockside hotels.”
“We did that.”
“Then why don’t you move the checkpoints to the entry into the station from the docks, and stop anyone who does not live at the station coming in? Check us once, and then leave us alone.”
He gave her a blank look. His leg went jiggle-jiggle-jiggle. She felt a strong urge to yell at him sit still! He was a grown man, not a young construct boy.
“Those checkpoints inconvenience mining workers going to their jobs. They are not effective anyway because they target only tier 2.” And what about the constant raids? “The mining workers cannot work when the checkpoints are where they are now. They are already getting angry.”
“They are not inconvenienced if they have ID.”
“StatOp has accepted for years that many of them don’t. All of a sudden, these people find themselves unable to work at a time when stability of the worker population is important. I thought the threat came from outside the station. Targeting tier 2 is useless.”
His face turned red. He pushed himself up from the table. His chair fell over. “Now, that’s what I call an accusation, ma’am.” He shook a finger at her.
Some of the people around Melati sniggered.
“I can’t see any accusations. If the enforcers have established that none of the tier 2 are from off-station—and enforcers have checked all of us many times—the place to set up a checkpoint would be at the entrance to the docks, and not on the main thoroughfare from the lift hall to the B sector.”
“I don’t need to be told how to do my job—”
“The question is fair,” Cocaro said. She scratched her head and frowned at him, in a sort of Do sit down, we disapprove of theatrics here way. “Can you outline to us how your side of the station is going to deal with the inevitable influx of refugees, shady or not, from New Pyongyang? How is the safety of the station going to be upheld, in particular the integrity of the station’s worker section? It seems to me that you’ll need help from them to manage the situation.”
Jocar Bassanti went into a long rambling discussion about the New Hyderabad mafia and their way of mingling with tier 2, and that this was why the checkpoints were where they were, all of which was nonsense, because the New Hyderabad mafia rarely ventured out of the BC block. He went on about the StatOp computer systems and how they could never be breached, while Melati knew that Ari and his friends could get into anything, especially if they had the help of the hypertechs. She didn’t even understand why he believed his own ramblings. She didn’t understand why Cocaro believed them.
In the end, the checkpoints just came down to the usual stuff. He didn’t trust or like tier 2 and therefore, all problems originated in the B sector. Because they were criminal—true—they pilfered things—also true—and their very essence was to fight tier 1, and that was not true. All the barang-barang wanted were opportunities tailored to suit them, to help them start legitimate businesses, to send their kids off-station for education. What they wanted was an equal chance to become something other than a criminal, whore, mother or miner, or a combination of all those. Was it a wonder they were angry? Why didn’t he see that his attitude made things worse? God, they should replace him on the council, not Wahid.
But arguing had little point, certainly not in this hall surrounded by people who neither knew nor cared about New Jakarta.
Major-General Cocaro closed the meeting with, “I want all of you to be vigilant. Any outside contact must be viewed as suspicious, any incoming vessel as a potential threat.”
People got up and made for the door in groups.
Melati rose, realising that she had almost forgotten about the troublesome cohort, and wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad thing. At work, she expected to be away from the chaos of the station. Anyway, she had better go to the Learning Unit t
o relieve Christine, and see if the boys—
“Wait, Miss Rudiyanto.”
Melati turned to see Major-General Sandy Cocaro coming towards her.
“If I can have a quick word, please.”
“Ma’am.”
Melati had never seen Sandy Cocaro this close up. She dwelt in the base’s admin offices and spent her days on the observation deck talking to captains of rotating wars ships and other places where Melati could never dream of going.
She looked older than she seemed from a distance, and stockier. Her arms were twice the width of Melati’s. And her bosom . . . did they even make bras that size? She had taken off her uncomfortable-looking jacket and carried it over her arm with the string of decorating ribbons facing Melati.
“Miss Rudiyanto, since you asked that question during the meeting, is there anything unusual you have noticed going on in the station?”
“Just that the enforcers are very nervous and have been for the past two days or so. There is a new batch of them, and they’re constantly checking us, even though they’ve set up a checkpoint. Some people who can’t work are getting angry. I don’t think it will be long before they start to cause trouble.” The young guys in the lift suggested that they had weapons.
“It’s been like this for two days, you said?”
“Yes, why?”
“Because the news of New Pyongyang only broke at the end of C shift. Either they’ve known about New Pyongyang for longer than we have, or there is something else going on.” She fixed Melati with piercing grey eyes.
“I couldn’t tell, ma’am.” Melati felt small and insignificant, and hated that feeling. From birth, barang-barang were taught to fear people in uniform and it was so hard to break that habit. She straightened her shoulders. “The guard at the base entrance said that Stat—um, I mean Station Operations discovered some sort of crime racket.” God, she’d almost said StatOp in the presence of Cocaro. “I don’t know any details, but it’s been going on for more than a day. They checked me at my uncle’s business. They seemed upset that I was ISF and left soon after. My cousin said he’d been checked three times. They wouldn’t say why they were there. I had no authority to demand their reason.”
