by Lee Bond
Garth laughed bitterly. “Hah. No. No, I was the only one to ‘escape’. Everyone else got killed seriously dead by automated base defense systems. Took … took a lot of doing. The … damage was extensive.” Thinking back to those moments was like watching a television show; the memories were terribly surreal, and he still didn’t have any real answers as to what’d happened. Nor was his story all that truthful. As chatty as he was feeling, there were some lies he wasn’t about to dispel, least of all because the truth might make its way back to The Trinity AI.
No one anywhere in the entire Universe knew that he wasn’t the only survivor. Two others had made it out of the Pluto Mining Facility. One, a woman calling herself Lisa Laughlin, had dematerialized in front of his eyes. The other, a flame-haired angry person impolite enough to refuse the common courtesy of giving up his name, had first tried to kill him stone cold dead with an attempt at chopping his head off and had then basically jumped into outer space.
Since Investigators hadn’t asked him –the sole survivor- why anyone would be so desperate as to leap into the vacuum of space without a suit, the only assumption was that the red-haired would-be murderer had done something as impossible as Lisa and her amazing teleportation trick.
Garth knew no one had come up with new information; only a decade had passed, and if Investigators had discovered anything … different … about what’d happened that fateful day, the ex-SpecSer had vanishingly few doubts that they’d track him down and make him spill his guts.
And he knew so much more about Lisa Laughlin now. So very much. It did him no good to think about what she’d become, so he pushed thoughts of the young woman from his mind.
The cell had grown chillingly quiet with Garth’s introspection. Steve, eager to fill the air with noise, broke through the man’s reverie. “So what happened then?”
Garth blinked, shook his head clear of Lisa and the implications of her impossible existence. “Do you have any idea what happens when you piss off an entire Conglomerate, Steve? I mean, I know you’re a Voss_Uderhell system and I hear some pretty fucked up stories about them, but really, they’re a baby compared to Tynedale/Fujihara.”
“I … I’ve worked for Voss_Uderhell. In Collections.” Ever eager to make money doing less than savory work, Steve would never go back to working for the ‘baby’ Conglomerate unless his situation became a million times worse than it already was; system-spanning business enterprises played by rules so bloody and vicious that actual criminals shivered and looked the other way. An entity like Tynedale/Fujihara, spread across hundreds of systems within Trinity’s domain … there were rumors that Collections for the EuroJapanese Conglomerate had foreclosed on entire planets, displacing the citizens to ‘somewhere else’ before strip-mining everything of value and moving on to the next world.
“So you’re getting the picture.” In addition to being seriously underpowered in terms of transforming spaceships and warp drive and talking balls of light, this brave new future he’d been enduring for a decade was relentlessly mercantile.
“D-debt accrual.” Steve tried to grasp at the concept of owing an entity like Tynedale/Fujihara money and failed. “What did you have to pay them for?”
“Everything.” Garth snapped contritely. “From lost time and missed bonuses to battery replacement for their weapons and corpse removal and every goddamn thing in between. Hundreds of millions of dollars, Steve. Even though my Trinity-sponsored representative proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I hadn’t been responsible for the breakout or any of the damages, I was still ‘a part of the group originating from inside the ship’ and therefore financially responsible all the same. It didn’t even matter one of my own ‘people’ had tried to chop my fucking head off.”
When someone owed Voss_Uderhell a thousand dollars, they sent someone out every day as a reminder of that debt. They weren’t even pressured for the money; debt collectors talked about the weather or a new movie because you couldn’t get water from a stone. They only bothered with money questions when automatic trackers monitoring bank accounts detected reasonable activity. Then it was all about the money. Things could turn very nasty, very quickly, then.
Steve had never heard of anyone owing any Conglomerate –even a lowly planet-bound one, let alone one of the Big Three- anything remotely approaching that dollar value. From his short time with Voss_Uderhell, Steve knew that a million dollars was the cap. Anything more than that and the accountants began urging for a pound of flesh approach; a paltry number of regular men and women could come across that much in their lifetimes, and so if it became obvious repayment wasn’t going to happen, it became about reputation and fear.
Hundreds of millions! That was … impossible. It was the unlikeliest story that Steve had ever heard in his life, and as a man who’d spent most of that life in the Tenerekian criminal underground, he’d heard just about every kind of a story a person would tell. Invisible ships, disappearing women, men jumping into space and vanishing … it was a fairy tale.
Except … except the man standing next to him was no imaginary being. Six foot one with black hair and eyes so blue they seemed to glow, Garth Nickels was very, very real. As were the emotions he was feeling; Steve was no rocket scientist, but he was fairly adept at reading people. It was a skill you picked up in Collections.
Either Garth Nickels was the most amiable psychopath living in his own dream world or he really had come from thirty thousand years ago and had –somehow- managed to pay off Tynedale/Fujihara.
Garth chuckled. “He gets it.” He said this offhandedly, to an invisible third party.
“What did they do?”
“Ohhhh,” Garth yawned, “well, Tynedale/Fujihara wanted me for … research. Certain elements of the escape attempt made their way to TF scientists, see, and suddenly everyone was very keen on the nature of genetics even though Kant and his machines –some of the best equipment in the Universe- had failed to prove anything beyond some basic enhancements. They were willing to waive the whole damn cost as the price of doing business if Trinity would let them, ahem, ‘plumb the depths of this mystery as only a Conglomerate devoted to scientific exploration can’.”
Steve furrowed his brow. “What’s that mean?”
“They wanted to cut me open, pal. Grind me into paste and sift through my brains in search of answers. Don’t forget: humans possessing a technology so far in advance of today’s benchmarks that Quantum Tunnels look like a sideshow parlor trick built that ship and everything in it. Oh, their reasoning was sound enough. If today’s machinery could barely even prove there was a ship plugged into their scanners, the possibility that we were just as weird wasn’t just high, it was certifiable.”
“But that didn’t happen.” Garth’s tale was interesting. Steve decided it was probably a complete and total lie, but it was interesting nonetheless. There were just too many improbabilities.
Garth laughed. “Hah. No. Trinity told them to go screw. Said ‘owing to the extreme nature of this ancient human’s abilities in warfare, he is needed elsewhere’. Then It threw me into Special Services where I … oh, hey, officer, what’s up?”
Officer Markum stared fish eyed at Seteven for a long, wordless moment. Tilting his head back and forth and switching between his ‘old friend’ Seteven and Garth Nickels, Markum tried to reconstruct the events leading up to the Tenerekian having his head shoved through the bars. Then he went up to the bars and put one of his hands between two to measure the distance. Scrunching his face up thoughtfully, Markum looked at Garth. “Did you do this?”
“What, bend the bars like that?” Garth took a step back, amazed that anyone would even imagine such a thing. “Those are, like, really thick.”
Markum looked at Seteven, who was extremely red in the face. It was apparent their lifetime criminal didn’t realize that he was very close to hypoxic shock; the bars on were pressed very tightly against either side of his neck. “Did you do this to yourself, Seteven?”
Steve laughed and tr
ied to shake his head. “Call me Steve.”
Garth saw that the officer was more interested in jib-jabbing with Steve and wanted to draw the conversation back to him, so he rudely interrupted by slapping a friendly hand on Steve’s back and talking very loudly. “Hey, so, are you here to give me my new jacket or what?”
Officer Markum narrowed his eyes at Garth Nickels. “No. We’re still having a difficult time finding any Trinity documents supporting your claims. I’m here to move you to an interrogation cell.”
“I could totally solve your problems…” Garth smiled brightly when the officer quirked an eyebrow. “But legally I’m not allowed to. Take me to the interrogation room. And when you finally do find out who I am, I want a new jacket. And an apology. You guys blew a bus up on me.”
Markum opened the cell door and motioned for Garth to move out. “Don’t try anything funny, Nickels. You won’t get out of here alive.”
Steve, who’d been feeling weirdly for the last few minutes, burst out laughing.
Garth rolled his eyes at Steve. “I know, right? Oh, hey, what we talked about? Total secret, right?”
“Absolutely.” Steve tried to take a deep breath and couldn’t. Spots appeared before his eyes. “You should tell someone to get me free, Officer Markum. I don’t feel so well.”
“Don’t worry Set- Steve, we’ll take good care of you.” Officer Markum took up a position behind Garth, hand on his sidearm. “What did you talk about?”
Garth laced his fingers behind his back and started walking. “About this black car I once had. It could talk. Together, we solved crimes for this small company called Knight Industries. I had the most amazing hair. Oh yes, and an awesome jacket…”
Interrogation Room
“You guys know what the difference between interrogation rooms and bathrooms are?” Garth smiled pleasantly at the two officers standing on either side of the door. As with every other Tenerekian officer, they were dressed in the absolute worst color purple a human being should ever wear. Since most Tenerekian men fell heavier to the Indonesian side of their IndoRussian heritage, they were almost always terribly sallow, which definitely did not work with puce.
The guards, Rikvell and Markase, exchanged glances and said nothing. They’d been informed that there was a very high chance that the man they were babysitting was very dangerous and that they shouldn’t listen to a thing he said.
Squinting a bit to read the nametags embroidered onto the officers’ jumpsuits, Garth automatically shortened their names as he always did. Rikvell and Markase. “Richie, Mark, I’m not divulging systemic secrets here. It’s a simple question: What is the difference between a bathroom and an interrogation room?”
Richie risked another glance at Mark, who was staring resolutely at their images in the one-way mirror on the opposite wall. “What? What’s the difference?”
“And Richie wins the award for actually being interesting! Hooray. Mark, sorry, you’re the weakest link. Goodbye.” Garth made crowd-cheering noises for a moment before continuing. “Nothing. There are no differences whatsoever.”
Richie stepped forward. “There are so.”
“Look,” Garth countered with an easy smile, “take away this one-way mirror, the cameras in the ceiling, the intentionally uncomfortable chair –which, by the way, is making my ass hurt like a soprano choir boy’s rear end, congratulations- and you guys and all that’s left is a room designed for pure functionality. Sure, fine, one is designed to remove waste and the other is built to terrify people into spilling all their secrets, but really, 99% of the people you bring in here are probably human waste to begin with. Hah! Hey, that actually made sense. Go me.”
Richie looked over his shoulder at Mark, who was stilling pretending he was alone in the room. Their captive, self-identified as Garth Nickels, was busy making weird cheering noises with his mouth. “Been in a lot of these kinds of rooms?”
Garth nodded industriously. “Loads of them. On both sides of the glass, too.”
Mark watched Richie sit down opposite Garth. “Don’t do it, Rikvell. There are better ways to get promoted.”
Richie nodded. “Probably, but how often do you get a chance? We’re gearing up for another policy-shift in four months. If I’m not above this pay grade by then, it’s another two years. I’ve got to risk it.”
“Fortune favors the bold.” Garth grinned.
“Exactly.” Richie nodded, ignoring Mark’s grunt of disgust. In the mirror, he watched his friend leave the room. There wasn’t going to be too much time to get anything interesting; Markase was happy where he was, so was undoubtedly on his way to get the Chief. “So you’re what, a mercenary, then? A … what do they call it these days, a ‘fixer’.”
“Fixer. Haha. That’s funny.” Garth shook his head, then changed his mind, throwing in kind of a half nod. “Sort of, now that I think about it. Well, I used to be. Yeah, I spent a lot of time in rooms like this, like I said. Usually waiting for my team to finish blowing the shit out of something or someone. Occasionally I got to stand on the other side of the glass.”
“Do you know why we arrested you?” This was a tricky question, because as far as he’d been able to look, no one in the precinct had a clear answer. There were plenty of theories.
“I dunno. I mean, I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything wrong.” Garth admitted this honestly enough. The last thing he’d done before suddenly being chased by cops was buy a spaceship. It was one of the reasons he’d come to Tenerek in the first place. The last time he’d been in this system had been well over six years ago, hunting down some illegally obtained Hammer missiles. Cue one Garigtch Porfol, sometimes ship-dealer oftentimes stupidly unlucky weapons dealer; always on the lookout for deals and dangerous weapons, Gary’d put his feelers out hoping to entice the possessor of the Hammer missiles, unfortunately drawing the attention of the SpecSer team.
Rather than arrest Gary for attempting to purchase the missiles, Garth –who’d found the guy way ahead of the rest of his team- had cut Gary loose with the warning that he might come back one day looking for a deal. Gary, not a complete loser, had agreed, thinking the terrifying SpecSer would return looking for guns and ammo.
Suffice to say, the slender, seedy arms dealer had been pleasantly surprised to sell Garth a ship.
Richie smiled easily, just like they taught in training. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, why would we arrest you?” Richie raised a hand. “It doesn’t matter. Even if you didn’t do anything wrong when you were approached by that first officer, the ensuing chase through the downtown core caused innumerable damages to both vehicles and officers.”
“Hey man, I got a really solidly defined sense of self-preservation.” Garth retorted indignantly. “It’s not my fault your guys started shooting at me.”
“When we go from a simple stop-and-talk to a mad dash through a city in a stolen bus –complete with kidnap victim- the response does tend to escalate. If you haven’t done anything wrong, why would you run like that?”
“Okay, look, see … I don’t really know if I did anything wrong. It’s an assumption. And don’t say anything about making asses out of you and me or I’ll punch your lights out. If I did do something illegal, it was in front of people who aren’t gonna say anything to anyone. It’s how this planet works.”
“So you did do something illegal.” Richie countered.
Garth went to throw his hands up in the air, grunting when his restraints prevented the motion. “Never said that. Said I might’ve. Great big difference.”
Richie nodded. “True enough, true. You seem very unhurt for having a bus blown up around you.”
“Resilient, me.”
“You don’t seem overly bothered by all of this, sir. You are in a lot of trouble.”
“Meh.” Garth said with a casual air. “I’m used to it. I’m used to being treated with suspicion, doubt, and paranoia. Being the awesome expert I am in the fine arts of infiltration, dissemination, and espionage, I’ve spent a
n awful lot of time in rooms just like this one, answering the same tiring questions over and over again while supremely freaked out governments, gangsters, or businessmen tried to figure out just what the hell was going to happen, how bad it was all going to be when it was over, and why I’d done ‘it’ in the first place.”
“And?” Richie asked, curious.
“Oh. Well. As they always found out, sooner or later the answer always involved explosions and was always worse than imaginable. Fun stuff, really.”
Richie couldn’t believe his ears. “Are you saying you’re a terrorist?”
“Wait, what?” Garth frowned. “How do you get to terrorist from what I just said? Are you sure you’re a real cop? You don’t jump to terrorist from that. You could go to ‘spy’ just as quickly. I could be a spy.”
“Are you a spy?”
“If I was, I couldn’t tell you.” Garth rolled his eyes. “You’re not a real cop. You don’t even know why you arrested me.”
“Do you know why we arrested you?” Richie was well aware that it was the second time he’d asked the question, but talking to Garth was … difficult. The man seemed like he was lying all the time.
“I’ve given that a lot of thought, actually. I mean, I’ve been in this cop shop for, like, three hours and twenty-two minutes. Gives a guy a long time to think.” Garth licked his lips. “Are you sure you want to know what I think?”
Richie surreptitiously checked his watch. Without checking the logbooks for absolute verification, Garth’s count on the time seemed eerily accurate. “Amaze me.”
“At first, I thought it was Tynedale/Fujihara looking to kill me. Again.” Garth almost laughed at the look of absolute terror that bolted across Richie’s face. “I mean, paying them off after ten years was probably really upsetting, especially since the interest on Debt Accrual of several hundred million dollars was a lot. Their accountants were probably hoping to collect on me until the Heat Death of the Universe.”
