Kill Station

by Diane Duane; Peter Morwood

  Evan smiled slightly as they walked through the airlock into the next dome. The airlock doors neither opened before them nor shut behind them, having been jammed open. Joss looked at the control panel, which had been sabotaged with a power tool of some kind, to judge by the cracks hi its front, and said,

  "These people don't look too worried about losing atmosphere, do they?"

  Evan shook his head. It was an almost unbelievable level of carelessness, unless you had just been through the docking they had, in which case belief became a lot more accessible. "Seems that way."

  "And no welcoming committee at all, it looks like. Not even from the people who almost crashed us into the bay doors at too damned many mips. A bit unfriendly."

  Evan shrugged. "I'd like to see those people myself

  20 SPACE COPS

  . . . and I will, sooner or later. But as regards anything formal, it's not something you're likely to see.

  Places like these aren't as regimented as inner-system stations. No customs, no immigration—as a rule—or it's handled differently from any way you expect. Some places, records aren't even kept on computers ... on purpose. I know some places on the other side of the Belts that don't care where you've come from, or what you've done, as long as you're willing to give them all your money. There are lots of people who think that's a good deal."

  Evan saw Joss make a wry face. He knew that Joss was no fool about such things. The man had been partnered with him, he suspected, specifically because his mind was so quick and his knowledge even of things outside of his experience was so considerable. Such a man was a natural choice to partner with a powersuited officer. But Evan suspected that the basic untidiness of an environment like this would annoy Joss mightily, once he actually got into it himself. He had been raised in order, on the Moon, in an environment where things were controlled and kept rigorously correct. The sloppiness of the Asteroids would be trying for him. Evan was committed to making sure that this wasn't too much of a problem for Joss, but at the same time he had never promised not to be amused by it.

  The small dome into which they had walked was indeed a storage area for vehicles, and a service area as well. More ships, most of them one- or two-man vessels, were sitting or lying about in various states of repair. Some were little more than stripped-down chassis; others showed signs of having pieces of five or six different vessels bolted together, the matings often looking rather crude, and occasionally positively unsafe. It was the spacecraft manufacturers themselves who had made this possible, in the days when the Belts were first starting to open up. Most people going out had very little venture capital to work with, and the shipmakers had decided that if they were going to get any of this eager money at all, they had better come up with something cheap, simple, and easily re-SPACE COPS 31

  placeable and repairable. So VW and Skoda and Lada had decided to cut most of their potential losses. They and the other major marques had pooled their r&d money, largely duplicated one another's designs, and brought out ships that could be put together in pieces, suiting the needs of individual spacers: heavy hauling vehicles, ships with lots of extra storage, or bigger engines, or better power arrays that could manage more tools inside and outside the ship.

  Naturally, when you sold your ship on, the person who bought it secondhand might find it wasn't exactly what he had in mind—though it was close. So he would detach the module that didn't work, or just chop it off if he had to, and add another bit that did, possibly bought from the same dealer. Within brands, of course, the module parts and their fit worked perfectly. But if you had a VW body and wanted a Lada cargo module, which was bigger than the VW's, what to do? You naturally had no intention of staying with all VW parts—though that had certainly been VW's intention.

  The pooling of designs had not been that complete. So you went to see your local mechanic, and for the right price, he made the Lada rear end work with the VW front.

  At least, you hoped he did. Naturally, none of this work ever came under the warranty, and the person who did the repairs tended to be a long way away if something went wrong. For the first twenty years or so of the opening up of the Belts, as many spacecraft mechanics died as miners did, usually at the hands of the miners' friends or relatives.

  After that, most of the survivors had gotten the hang of making the customizations work, and had in turn trained replacements who knew how, too.

  Joss was looking around at the handiwork of the station's mechanics with some concern. "Not sure I want anyone from this place touching our ship," he muttered.

  "You and me both, boyo," said Evan. "You locked it up, did you?"

  "Hell, yes. It's on voiceprint."

  22 SPACE COPS

  Evan smiled. "Just make sure you don't say anything that sounds like the opening code."

  Joss laughed. "Are you kidding? It's not that kind of voiceprint reader. Ours wants to hear your pulse and see your EEG as well."

  Evan was impressed. "You've been tinkering again."

  "Two weeks from Earth, what was I supposed to be doing? Watching old vids?"

  "Ouch," Evan said, for he knew a gentle dig when he felt one. "Never mind that. How close do we need to be for all this hocus-pocus? Is the ship going to be able to make out details like this if we're heading for her at a run?"

  "Absolutely—that's her business. You can check her later. Meanwhile, I guess we should find out the local time."

  "It's twenty hundred," Evan said. "I saw two of the chronos on those people that just went by me."

  "You just hope they're not keeping personal time," Joss said, "and it's actually three in the afternoon. Or eight in the morning."

  Evan merely smiled and pointed up over the door into the next bubble. It said 2002.

  "Smartass," said Joss: but he said it cheerfully. "Well, there'll be someone in the radar room; we can still go pay them a visit.''

  "I was looking forward to it," Evan said, with feeling.

  "But it's too late to go to the station police office and get our onsite briefing. That'll just have to wait till morning."

  "So it would seem."

  "So after we go see the people in Radar, we'll just have to go out to get something to eat."

  "Indeed."

  "And something to drink!" Joss said with relish. Their ship, like all SP patrol vehicles, was dry.

  "Heavens, what a concept," said Evan.

  SPACE COPS 23

  They headed out through the airlock to the next dome, which was also jammed open.

  Behind them, a tall lean figure stood up from behind one of the craft under repair, and stared, fingering the gun at its belt.

  THEY DID NOT GO STRAIGHT FOR THE FOOD

  and drink, of course. There was first the matter of the radar installation. When they got there, Joss had been just about ready to kill someone, but they had found only a lone technician, gangly, painfully young, and terrified at the sight of them. He had been left on his own by the older technicians and told not to touch anything, since the autodocking system was in the middle of being repaired. Indeed, its parts were all over the floor when they arrived. The other technicians were off on their dinner break. They had told him just to keep an eye on the place and not to worry, since no one was expected in for several days. He had heard Joss's call, but hadn't touched anything, and didn't know what to touch anyway.

  Between them, Joss and Evan had managed to calm the poor boy down. There had been no point in waiting for the techs to come back. But the two of them had promised to stop by tomorrow. Joss suspected that he would dream of that final approach as soon as he dropped off tonight. He felt pretty sure of being able to adequately communicate his feelings on the subject to the techs in the morning.

  Then there was the matter of finding a place to stay. The station itself was not supplying accommodation; that wasn't their business, they had apparently told SPHQ when the initial arrangements for the investigation had been made. Any accommodation in the place would accept the visitor's chit or
voucher, of course, but it was unheard of to take bookings in advance: the policy was strictly first come, first served.

  The young tech, once he got over his initial terror of

  24 SPACE COPS

  two men in SP uniform, one of them unusually large and fierce-looking, had been able to recommend a couple of places where they should be able to stay. There were not hotels as such; there were never that many visitors to Wil-lans. The closest equivalents were domes or parts of domes that had been sectioned up as "rooming houses." The youngster had given them directions, and they had set off into the depths of the station, though Joss had had some misgivings about the whole thing. The directions had been issued at high speed, and were of the "third left, fourth right, turn south at Murphy's Bar" sort that assume you know your way around better than you actually do.

  It had turned into a long walk through domes and corridors that to Joss's mind were ill-lit, ill-kept, and dirty. He kept reminding himself that little outposts like this could hardly afford to have sweepers coming through every thirty seconds: that even mechanized labor was expensive (though having seen the way the domes were patched, he had his doubts whether the maintenance available here was sufficient to keep any cleaning robot working for long), and that people were busy making enough money to keep body and soul together. But at the same time, the place looked grimier than it needed to. There was litter in the halls—stuff that should have been picked up and recycled—and dirt that should have been swept up months back. Worse, in all this mess there were no graffiti, a sure sign of a sick place. Everywhere else Joss had been where there had been dirt like this, there had been scrawls on walls and doors, expressions of outrage or despair. It was as if no one here could get up the energy to complain—or worse, as if no one cared.

  The people they met tended to look furtive and nervous. Joss suspected that was probably due to the formidable uniforms he and Evan wore. Even their smile got no response from anyone. People slipped hurriedly away around a corner, or through a doorway, whether they seemed to belong there or not, and vanished. "Oh, well," Joss said after about twenty minutes of this, when they were finally SPACE COPS 25

  approaching the rooming house they had been heading for. "They'll get used to us soon enough."

  "Mmf," Evan said. He had been paying more attention to the people than their surroundings, but that was often his way: after a day of it, he always compared notes with Joss, and the details he picked up were sometimes surprising. It was one of the things about Evan that had most delighted Joss when they were first partnered: the acute observation, and the compassion, in this big hard-looking man with the chilly blue eyes. Most people who saw Evan immediately pigeonholed him as a thug, and probably a stupid one, equipped with big guns and too much inclination to use them.

  That misprision had cost various people very lucrative criminal incomes. It had cost some of them their lives, but not because Evan had encouraged them to throw them away. People will shoot at a suited officer, Joss thought, and then be surprised when he shoots back—and doesn't miss. . . .

  They came to the door of the rooming house, a small dome off one of the minor corridors. Just inside that door was a desk, and at the desk was a small, balding man with a pinched, narrow face and an expression that Joss would have sworn came right out of an eighteenth century woodcut of some grasping, greedy moneylender. He looked at Joss and Evan as if they were some new and interesting kind of bug: ones with money that he might manage to get before swatting them.

  "Help you?" he asked, in a tone of voice that made it plain helping them was the last thing on his mind.

  "Yes," Joss said pleasantly. "We'd like two rooms, please."

  "How long?"

  "Hard to say," Evan said. "We're on assignment, and it may take a while. Two weeks?"

  "Eighteen hundred creds."

  Joss looked at Evan incredulously. It was even worse than he had expected. Strangers could expect to be taken 26 SPACE COPS

  for three or four times the usual fee. But five was pushing it a bit. "Fifteen hundred."

  "You're on account," said the man, "and y'won't do any better anywhere else." And the glint in his eye said, because I'll be on the comm to every other flophouse in this place within minutes.

  "Eighteen, then," Evan said.

  "Plus utilities."

  "Fair enough."

  "And air."

  "Now, wait a moment," Joss said mildly. "We pay the O2 charge with our landing taxes."

  "Haven't paid for it yet," the man snarled. "Don't know if I'll get reimbursed, do I?"

  The question, "How do you know we haven't paid for it yet?" didn't even bother coming out. In a place this small, it was plain that news traveled faster than an ion-driver gone critical.

  "Fine," Joss aid at last, knowing when he was beaten. "Let's see the rooms."

  Scowling, the man led them through a curtained doorway behind his desk. The doorway gave onto a corridor lined with more doors. The man opened one, then the one next to it. Joss stepped in and noted the equipment: one plastic-seated, tube-metal chair, rickety, one single bed made up with dingy grey linens, and extra Kn-firm—the mattress sagged as though it had been used by a herd of elephants—one sink and 'fresher unit, the water meter mounted prominently nearby (where they would have to stare at it while they were shaving); one desk, composite-topped and cigarette-burnt, its legs well kicked.

  Joss glanced at Evan, who had been looking at his own room. Evan shrugged, the yes, what choice do we have at the moment? shrug.

  "All right," Joss said. "The keys, please?"

  The man gave them over with ill grace. They were standard reprogrammable cards, of the kind that had been

  SPACE COPS 37

  common for a hundred years now. Joss thanked him, pocketing his.

  "Is breakfast included?" Evan asked sweetly.

  The landlord gave Evan a look that had an infestation of swearing swarming underneath it, the way a rock has centipedes. "That's all right," Evan said. "We'll manage our own. Be back later." He turned and went out.

  Joss nodded politely at the landlord, bought another cuss-laden look for his trouble, and headed out after Evan. When they were a safe distance down the hall—not that there were safe distances in a place like this; doubtless the neighbors would run to inform on them in seconds if they overheard something juicy—Joss asked, "Breakfast?"

  "Where I come from," Evan said, "people who let out rooms for a living know how to make a proper breakfast, as a matter of course. But they wouldn't do that here, I suppose." His eyes glinted a little over the innocent smile. Joss thought he heard a rustling in the walls as they passed. Surely not mice . . .

  Evan entertained him for a while with tales of Cumberland sausage and Chester sweet cream butter, and bara brack all hot from the oven, while they wove and twisted their way through the dirty corridors and in and out of the occasional dome, where numerous corridors would meet near some living area.

  Eventually, Joss, his stomach growling, said, "For a man trying to pick a fight, you do it in some funny ways."

  "Oh?"

  "Making fun of their breakfast? Come on. "

  "I am just a traveling groundhog," Evan said in a mild voice, but with a sidelong look that had a sly touch to it, "and if that's how they see me, so much the better. Meanwhile, here's a bar."

  They went in. It was in another small dome, not quite as big as the one where their rooming house was.

  The bar proper was circular, in the center of the room. At least, what they could see of it was, for the lighting in the bar was almost nonexistent. There were faint gleams from 28 SPACE COPS

  lights on the tables, and a few around the walls; and there were people sitting, leaning, standing here and there. Other details were hard to make out for someone standing outside in the bright corridor. A sour smell of spilled beer, cheap gin, and homemade potato vodka came floating out to meet them, along with more savory cooking smells.

  Joss walked in first, because his ni
ght .sight was slightly better than Evan's, and because he hated people to think he was sending Evan in ahead to take the brunt of first looks and assessments. As his eyes started to accustom themselves to the dimness, Joss found himself wishing they hadn't. The place began to get quiet, like bars in old western vids when the sheriff walks into the Dry Gulch Saloon. Every eye in the place was turned on them and their black and silver uniforms. People stopped moving, except very slightly—toward weapons, Joss suspected.

  He and Evan made their way to the bar in silence. The barkeeper was a young woman with long dark hair and a long somber face, pretty but serious-looking. Joss found himself wondering what she was doing in a place like this, then began to take himself to task for thinking in cliches.

  "Beer, please," he said softly. Evan echoed the order, handing over his credit chit to be run through the bar's accounting system. The barkeeper nodded and went off to the other side of the bar, where the taps were, to see about it. The men stood there in the middle of the thick silence, until Joss said conversationally, "So how about those Mets, then?"

  Evan looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

  Around them, conversation began to start again, though at nothing like its original volume. "You know,"

  Evan said, "they don't have a chance this year. Tokyo will win."

  "No way. Not after those last three trades."

  Their beer arrived, and Evan's chit with it. "The annoying thing is," Joss said, when he thought the noise level had increased enough, "we don't have hats to take off."

  SPACE COPS 39

  Evan smiled at that. In his part of the world, it had been traditional for an off-duty cop to remove his hat or helmet when entering a bar to have a pint on his lunch hour. A cop who came into a bar with his hat on was on business, probably to ask someone uncomfortable questions, and the sign of unremoved hats tended to ruin the patrons' enjoyment of their drinks. "Perhaps if we had lighted signs for our shields,"

  Evan said, "that said 'HERE TO GET DRUNK'. . . ."

  They drank, and Joss looked around him with increasing misgiving. Forms hunched over tables stared at them; eyes glittered in the dimness, though there were no sudden movements. "When we have to start asking questions," he said softly, "these people aren't going to be a lot of help to us."