The Knockabouts

by DK Williamson

  “So why didn’t the EMP damage the data?”

  Asie shrugged and looked at the case again. “Looks like quite a dynamic opening. Power equipment?”

  Teller pointed at Ord. “You might say that.”

  Asie’s eyebrows rose as he looked at the giant. “Remind me to stay on your good side. The EMP discharged, but it wasn’t in close proximity, so no damage. Just a pulse in the wind.” He walked back to his workstation. “Let’s see what we have,” he said as a smile spread across his face. “There’s stuff here they don’t want us to see. The best kind.”

  “Why didn’t they fill up the space to be pulsed with junk?” Ned asked.

  “Your guess is as good as anyone’s. Maybe they were stupid. Maybe they didn’t know any better. Maybe someone technically familiar with all this could tell if they knew what to look for?” He held a hand up. “Before we get to the data, one final message sent to Miz Gomez. I think you’ll like it. I quote, ‘They are early! Keep them in the landing area until our people arrive.’ There’s no identifier for the origin of the message, but there’s a routing code. If you have access to the commo system where the message was sent, you could probably identify them.”

  “Has to be Commerce Station,” Jessop said.

  Teller nodded in agreement. “That also means she didn’t just blunder into the ambush. She was there to stop Ursula and Helen Nix.”

  Asie smirked. “So she was half successful.”

  Ursula gave him a hard look.

  “I have considerable communications data I captured while we were on Commerce Station,” Ho said. “Perhaps the routing code matches something I have stored.”

  “Remind me to give it to you,” Asie said. He looked past his display panel at Riga. “What do we have?”

  “As you’d expect, data is observe-only. Try and copy it and you jangle it into nonsense. You can image scan it of course, but you won’t see all the system instructions and other background fandango that make up the program.”

  “So a rival couldn’t replicate the program?” Ursula said.

  “Sure they could. The meat’s here, a programming team would need to provide the bones. Not easy, but if it was, everyone would be a progmole.”

  Teller’s expression made it clear he didn’t understand.

  Riga gave him a condescending look. “Programming mole, Tell. A mole is an animal that burrows underground. It’s a metaphor for beings that—”

  “I get it. So, if we have a lot of data that was intended to be destroyed, this stuff is worth something. Another corp could have a surveillance system up and running before too long.”

  “Conceivably, yes, but it would entail—”

  “No,” said Asie as he stared intently at his display. “This program is junk.”

  Riga glared at him. “What do you have?”

  “Look at your display. There’s a lot of innovation here, but it won’t function as intended… at least not without years more effort.”

  Riga scanned the screen and nodded. “This is on the part of the storage device that was supposed to get frazzed. Makes sense.”

  “Why do this?” Ord said.

  “Oldest reason in the galaxy.”

  “Not revenge,” Teller said. “I doubt it was for love either.”

  Riga glared at him again. “You do that just to irritate me. It’s not money either… at least not directly.”

  “CYP, that’s why,” Jessop said. “Cover Your Posterior. The first lie ever told was for that reason.”

  Ursula stifled a smile and nodded. “Go on.”

  “If the program won’t work, those in charge of the project stand to lose a lot. That means Sodall and his people. Early retirement and shame might be the best they can hope for. I’ve seen similar underhanded practices in the aerospace field. I don’t know what Altairie’s game is here, but it may be as you surmised before, a rogue element within Altairie.”

  “I said that, didn’t I,” Ursula said with a look of discomfort. “The rogue element hired us to take the blame for their failure. Tell said we were plats. Token sacrifices. We take the blame for exposing the existence of this program. We go to prison or die for it, the planetary governments that were going to purchase the system get pilloried, and Altairie walks away a bit poorer but relatively unscathed. That’s what much of Feng’s information covered. It wasn’t just unsatisfactory, the program was a failure.”

  Asie looked impressed. “Poorer? Did Altairie ped the bill or was it the govs? If it was the latter….”

  Ned sighed loudly. “I’m thinking it was the latter. Recall the mention of ‘a return on your investment’ in the intro message? Altairie may end up not losing much out of this… if they can take care of us.”

  “There are several notations here about the program’s inability to adapt to encryption efforts quickly enough to satisfy the contract requirements,” Riga said.

  “On sectors that would have been zilched by the EMP,” Asie added. “That’s just sloppy. This was probably not perpetrated by coders or proggers.”

  Ursula grimaced and shook her head. “Sodall and his staff are behind this, not those that worked on the program.” She looked away for a moment, obviously troubled. “They’d kill us? They would do this just to cover up a failure?”

  “A failure that might cost them their careers,” Teller said. “You have to look at the big picture, you know? Put it into perspective. What’s an old Mech, a freelance corporate girl, a misplaced engineer, and a couple of nobody spacers compared to a corporate director’s career?”

  “When you put it that way….”

  Teller smiled. “How are you ever going to bludgeon your way to CEO if such things surprise you?”

  “It’ll have to be my own startup. After this I’ll be lucky to find any Syndic gig again.”

  Ned laughed. “I have only myself to blame for being here. I could have taken a commercial flight from Vachsblad. If I had, I’d be watching vid feeds now and telling people how fortunate I was able to escape before you four launched your nefarious scheme.”

  “All of this…,” Ursula said, gesturing at the workstations and data cases, “is it enough? Can we clear ourselves with this?”

  Ned ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. We have a couple of options. Follow through on Feng’s contact or we go see this Nikira.”

  “We’ll need to discuss it before we depart,” Teller said.

  Jessop nodded. “Why didn’t Sodall’s group take Feng’s offer to buy up the info he’d collected?”

  “Were I to hazard a guess…,” Ursula said, “there would be some accountability within corporate financials. Someone from accounting or another branch within Altairie looks into why credits were spent to purchase compromised data, they might inquire about what that data consisted of. If they discovered it was not actually data and saw what was being discussed, questions would be asked, outsiders might peek behind the curtain.”

  “Makes sense,” Jessop said. “If Sodall’s group leaked the information this case was to expose, why didn’t they simply do that in the first place?”

  Ursula shrugged.

  “I’ll take a guess,” Asie said. “They watched too many spy vids and thought that’s how you do it. Complex and convoluted, that’s what works in fiction.” He pointed at the data on the screen. “That’s what happens when you make things complex and it doesn’t work out. You get beings like Riga and me crawling through the program.”

  “And it was supposed to end up with us as dead or imprisoned,” Ned added. “If they’d leaked it themselves, there would be a trail, wouldn’t there? Like with the Feng situation?”

  Ursula nodded. “Possibly, but they could deny, deny, deny, and it would probably go away. Their careers might still be in jeopardy…,” she trailed off with a look at Teller, “but they value them enough to sacrifice other beings lives.”

  Riga’s face expressed her disgust. “I’ll stick with my job dodging the law and military patrols and helping
out smugglers and such. The corporate types seem a bit too underhanded for me. Asie and I will dig through this and see if we can glean anything else.”

  Teller nodded and turned toward the door, then stopped. “Charlotte still with you?”

  Riga nodded. “Of course.”

  “Mind if she gives Ho here a once over? He’s a Mech that’s been plugged.”

  “Her shop’s in the Scuttler. Same as always.”

  . . .

  Teller led the way up an inclined ramp and into the Scarab class freighter dubbed the Scuttler. A climb up two stairways brought them to the upper deck and Charlotte’s workplace, a bright and confusing but ordered area of robotic parts, tools, diagnostic equipment, and work surfaces.

  A broad ash-blonde looked up from her work as the group walked in. She smiled at the sight of Teller and Ord. “Heard you were here. Nice you thought enough of me to stop and say hello.” Her eyes locked onto Ho then back to Teller as her expression hardened.

  He held his hands up. “Look, Charlie, this visit is dual purpose. We would have come—”

  “Right.”

  “Our—”

  “I can see, Tell. You have a Mech with you.”

  Ord pointed at the Mech. “Charlotte, Ho.”

  “Manners,” Charlotte said with a smile for the big man. The smile left as she looked at Teller again. “See that? You could learn a thing or two from your pal.”

  Teller looked exasperated. “What did—?”

  “Nice to meet you, Ho,” Charlotte said. “Looks like you ran afoul of the Protectorate.” She gestured at the plug in his chest. “I recognize their work. Have a seat and let me take a look.”

  Ho sat in a reclining seat not far removed from those used in medical procedures for bipedal biological beings. Charlotte connected the Mech to several devices that scanned his systems.

  “Good news, bad news, Ho,” she said.

  “I might guess the bad news is the plug is not removable.”

  “It’s possible all right. The likelihood of it scramming your mind is awfully high though, at least with this gear,” she said with a wave at the surrounding equipment. “That was the bad news by the way.”

  “The good?”

  “I can clean up a lot of what those mind-manglers put in there. Ought to be able to restore some memories and wipe some of the added inhibition programming right the smoke out of there if you wish.”

  “If you feel you can do so safely, then I wish.”

  “Not feeling, fact. Let’s open you up and see what we can do.”

  It didn’t take long for Charlotte to remove Ho’s breastplate and begin poking around inside. “You’re in good shape, Ho, but you could use a few subsystem updates.”

  “I’m sure. The company that owned me was lax in performing such tasks.”

  “It’ll take just a few ticks and then we’ll see about the inhibitor mess.” Charlotte pressed some keys on a nearby console before she leaned over Ho’s open chest cavity once again. “All set. Let’s see what we have here.” She looked at a pair of display panels. “Oh yeah, we can clean some of this mess up.”

  She grasped a delicate looking device from a tray. “Sloppy, sloppy work here. Slop can be mopped up if a gal knows what she’s doing.”

  “You know what you’re doing?” Ho said.

  “Better hope so, Ho. I’m poking around in your brain.”

  “Your worktable manner is not comforting.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I left med training. I can do nice or competent. You choose.”

  “Seems to me you do curt and nasty too,” Teller said. “At the same time.”

  Charlotte spared Teller a glare. “Too bad you’re not a bot, Teller. You could be repaired.”

  . . .

  “Stop me when you’ve heard of one of these places,” Speedwell said as he bounded into the dining area where the Lance’s crew awaited. Riga followed carrying a satchel.

  “These the ship registrations or our fake identities?” Teller said.

  “Ship regs.” Mal read from his data pad. “Oztrilia.” He looked over the group. “No? Thought you’d know that one. Brenner’s World, Fohrta’s Gulag, Setlan-Two, Doodar, Farnsworth.”

  Teller, Ord, Ned, and Ho all raised a hand at the sixth.

  “Well, a good place to stop because it’s the last one. Obscure and unknown, that’s what we’re looking for. There’s a lot of Lancer class birds still flying out of places on the fringe, so it fits.” Mal placed several plates, a data pellet, and a small stack of bound pulpsheets on the table in front of Teller. “For your safety and ours, don’t tell us where you’re headed.”

  The knockabout picked up the pulpsheets and flipped through them. The thick cover was stamped SETLAN II, HOUSE OF REGISTRATION. “What’s this?”

  “Counterfeit Setlan registration pulpsheets. That’s what they use there.”

  “Won’t these attract attention? Who uses pulpsheets for such things?”

  “Attract attention? Sure, but the right kind. Lawdogs or customs beings won’t know what to do about those. They don’t know authentic from fake. They’ll think you’re rubes from the Setlan system out to see the big galaxy. Spout something about spreading the truth or looking for new lands free of the taint of beings and you’ll be fine. I placed notations with each one so you won’t be surprised by reactions, looks, or questions should some folks wonder.”

  Teller shrugged and looked over the permalloy registration plates. One caught his eye. “The Botany Bay? Let me guess, Riga came up with this one.”

  She smiled. “Sure I did. Seems fitting.”

  “We’re not mutineers.”

  “No, but you are on the run and I was rather hoping the crew might leave the Botany Bay’s skipper on some hellish forsaken rock far, far, away.”

  “They could just leave me here then.”

  “With you here, it would be hellish.”

  “Funny, that’s what I was getting at.” He looked at the registration plate again. “We’ll use this one first.”

  Riga placed the satchel beside the ship documentation. “Here’s your identities. Three per Human and Charlie gave us a couple Mech registries for Ho. Some match up to the ship registrations.”

  “Thanks. You didn’t do anything cute with mine?”

  “I made a few suggestions, but they didn’t follow along. Dull and generic, that’s what all of you have.”

  “Thanks. We should get moving before this place gets raided.”

  . . .

  Lance’s crew were all on board after saying farewell to Malcolm and Riga. Only Teller remained. He shook hands with Speedwell.

  “You can pay me back down the way,” the older man said.

  Teller’s expression soured. “Generous of you. You replace a simple part and tap out a dent and you’ll want what? The Protectorate Emperor’s head?”

  “Don’t forget what Asie and I did for you,” Riga said.

  “Yeah? Don’t forget we let you keep the images of all that data. We know. Not to mention the disseminator Ord and Ho designed and built. You start churning those out for Endeavoring Spacers, we’ll come looking for our percentage.”

  “Ah, you’ll never change,” Malcolm said with a smile. “Get this corporate thing off your back, kiddo. See you down the line.”

  “Thanks, Mal.” He looked at Riga. “You too.”

  “No, Tell. Not again.”

  “I said thanks. That’s it.”

  “That’s how it started the last time.”

  “And it was just that, the last time.”

  Her face flashed blue with anger. “You remember that.”

  “I remember the shrieking. It was like two banshees yelling at me at the same time from one green-lipped mouth.”

  Riga opened her mouth, but stopped before she started. She pointed a finger and sneered at Teller, then walked toward the office.

  Teller waited until she had covered a considerable distance before speaking. “She’s still not over me. T
hat’s the price I have to pay for being all that I am. Take care of her, Mal.”

  “I will,” he said with a smile.

  Teller moved up the ramp and punched the controls as he went past them. He waved at Speedwell and headed for the command deck as the ramp and upper empennage section closed.

  Malcolm shook his head and smiled as he turned and made for the office. “Too much alike those two.”

  . . .

  “Director, Julia is here to see you. She says she has urgent news,” sounded from the media panel on Blake Sodall’s desk.

  “Send her in.” He dimmed the display on his data console and stood. Moments later, the staffer rushed in. “It worked! A military expedition eliminated not just Miz Raik and her group, but Feng as well,” she said in a burst of words. Her hair was ruffled and her face flushed. Sodall smiled, sure she had sprinted from her office to his.

  “When did this occur?”

  “Four Standard Days ago. In the Sessler system. A military ship from Boddan-Three made a foray into Confederation space and found them both in the same location.”

  “We have comfirmation of this?”

  “Feng’s body was positively identified. The military reports the ship Raik and her comrades were aboard was utterly destroyed by fighter craft.”

  Sodall nodded. “The data cases?”

  “Presumably destroyed.”

  He nodded again. “I would prefer to have the cases in hand, but I suppose this will suffice. The next board meeting is in two days. I guess I’ll have good news to relay. Is the rest of the staff aware of this?”

  “Some, Director.”

  “Instruct all of them to remain silent about this. Say nothing until after the board meeting.”

  . . . . .

  . . . . .

  12

  Business as Usual

  . . . . .

  Excerpt from, Cap’n Cosmos’ Guide to it All, the Interstellar Guide for Endeavoring Spacers.

  Cap’n, how many sentient non-Human species are there? Are there dangerous ones like they show on the vids?

  -Xen E. Fobe