Dale Mettam

by The Pub at the Center of the Universe (retail) (epub)

  Rubik sighed and followed her to the bench.

  “First things first,” said Chief Boh Yah Di, pulling out several papers from an inside pocket.

  “These were given to me to pass on to you by a...” he studied the top paper, “by a retired Captain Lett Smakk, the duly elected representative of the Shady Boughs Neighborhood Association...”

  “The Shady Boughs Apartment Complex Neighborhood Association,” Kirk corrected him having an idea what was coming next.

  “That’s the chap,” said the Chief, grinning. “Serious fellow, too much time on his hands?”

  Kirk nodded in silent resignation to his fate. “Apparently you’ve caused quite a stir since moving in there, m’ boy, and I might add that from now on, we at the Universal Securitat would prefer if you handled your affairs with a little more discretion. I realize you’re new here, and this must come as a shock to the system and all, but do remember that you carry the pride of the agency on your shoulders from now on.”

  “Can I see the papers?” Kirk asked.

  “If you want, but this one time, given the situation and all, we will take care of these for you. The fine for failure to comply with the designated color of entryways, the fine for holding a fruit bearing plant, the fine for conducting a lewd act with your upstairs neighbor in full sight of your neighbors...”

  Lu gave Kirk an accusing look.

  “But I didn’t do anything!” Kirk said.

  “Whatever the case, I am sure it was some cultural misunderstanding, just make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said the Chief, stuffing the papers back inside his jacket. “As I was saying, all the fines, including the one for allowing a citizen to be killed in your apartment and the failure to remove said corpse in a timely manner, and I think they mean immediate there, but I’m not sure. All the fines will be deducted from your Securitat salary and paid to The Shady Boughs Apartment Complex Neighborhood Association on your behalf. I have also assigned one of our maintenance crews to go and change the color of your front door.”

  Kirk sank back into his seat, closed his eyes and let out a long, resigned sigh.

  “Next order of business,” continued the Chief turning to Lu. “Special Agent Lu Pillah, I am officially relieving you of duty. You completed your mission and you did it well. I understand you have several cases still outstanding, but I’m willing to reassign those, give you two weeks leave, and let you pick your next assignment when you return. Good job, Lu.”

  “Next. As Chief of the Universal Securitat, and in light of your extensive law enforcement career back on your home planet...”

  “Yeah, about that…” Kirk said.

  “Is there a problem?” The Chief looked at Lu for an answer.

  “I believe that Kirk is concerned that his previous experience is somewhat lacking for the position you’re offering him, sir” Lu said.

  “Nonsense, I have already read Agent Pillah’s initial report of your journey here, and all things considered, I think you handled yourself very well indeed.”

  Lu nodded encouragingly as well.

  Kirk was tempted to protest more, but could see by the look in Chief Boh Yah Di’s eyes he had already decided. Kirk got the impression that the Chief considered himself an excellent judge of character, and no amount of protests, or even acts of total incompetence on his part were likely to change the Chief’s mind. He gave a thin smile.

  “Now I don’t hold with false modesty, m’ boy, so let’s have none of it here. You would not be selected for a mission of this magnitude were you not up to the job. It is therefore with great pride that I confer upon you the position of Universal Securitat Special Agent - Field Duties.” With no more ceremony, the Chief pulled a belt from under his seat and thrust it enthusiastically at Kirk.

  He took the belt and examined the buckle for a moment, studying the simple, yet dynamic design.

  “Well go on, m’ boy,” said the Chief. “It’s not every day you receive a Kuiper Belt.”

  “A what?” Kirk asked, fastening the belt around his waist, where it seemed to adjust itself to a snug, yet comfortable tightness.

  “It’s named after Orb Kuiper, the first Chief of the Universal Securitat,” explained Lu.

  “You’ll see that it comes with a standard issue P.R.P., twelve power cells in those pouches there. You’ll find that while they are designed for the P.R.P., they will also work with your F.R.B. should you ever need them. On the opposite hip you will see that there is a pouch for your F.R.B. If you would like to select your own F.R.B. at this time, we can make arrangements for one more to your liking.”

  Kirk self-consciously glanced down at Casio.

  “Nah, this one will do for now.”

  “Gee thanks, monkey-boy,” Casio whispered in his ear.

  Kirk noticed several more pouches on the belt, and pockets that he guessed held an identity card similar to the one that Lu had shown back at the apartment complex. However, before he could ask anything further Chief Boh Yah Di leaned forward and stared intently at him.

  “I have an agent making some inquiries at this moment, but what can you tell me about the man we found in your apartment tonight?”

  “His name was Chief of Security Skake,” said Rubik. “I never realized up until now that I didn’t even know his first name.”

  “We checked his identity card. His first name was Useles. Useles Skake,” Special Agent Medina Skwair said in a gentle voice.

  “What were you and Chief Skake doing here? Were you working on a case?”

  Rubik wasn’t sure what to say. Yes, he and Chief Skake had been working on a case. But their journey was born of a desire, mostly on the chief’s part admittedly, for vengeance and to maintain the good name of the Titan Spaceport security office. He wasn’t sure whether it was such a good idea to divulge that information. However, he was high and dry, many light-years from anyone he could call on for help, so he did the only thing left to him. He told the truth. If he needed to stretch that truth he decided to make sure the only person who could possibly contradict his story was Chief Skake.

  “The chief told me he had a warrant to bring back four fugitives who he believed were directly linked to the murder of one of our colleagues,” Rubik said.

  “And did you see that warrant, North?” Agent Skwair asked.

  “He told me it was an eyes-only document and I was too junior to risk him showing it to me,” Rubik lied. This troubled Rubik. Not because he was lying, but because he was doing it with such ease. He even managed to convince himself that the lie he just told wasn’t that big a lie, because, having traveled across a good chunk of the universe with Skake, he did have such a document and considered his rookie officer of too little importance to see it. It was also equally possible that Chief Skake would say such a thing and not really have a document. After a stakeout of the Hyper-Luminal arrival lounge, that lasted several days, and having listened to countless anecdotes of the chief’s daring exploits in both the Prion War, and later in a fruitful and busy law enforcement career, Rubik had come to the conclusion that he had a pretty good idea when his superior was telling a lie: Any time he opened his mouth.

  “So tell me what happened when you arrived,” prompted Agent Skwair. “Here, on Sevres Prime.”

  “Well, we made some initial inquiries and found that as we suspected, the group of four fugitives we were tracking had split up. However, we found the first pair that left Titan failed to arrive when they were supposed to. Probably a good thing because it seems there was some incident at the arrival chamber they were supposed to come through. The Chief wouldn’t tell me what it was, but he said that our first two targets had not arrived.”

  “And was one of those targets who you hoped to catch up with here, North?”

  Rubik nodded, yes.

  “Do you know the name of the person you thought y
ou would be cornering here?”

  Rubik shook his head, no. “But I did remember that he was a new-looking alien. One I’d never seen before, and we get all kinds coming through Titan.”

  “You said there were four fugitives? What about the other two?”

  “Well, as far as I could see, these seemed to be the real ones we should have been after, but you know, you don’t like to go against a commanding officer’s orders.”

  Agent Skwair nodded that she understood, Though Rubik was sure she didn’t understand just what a headache it was to question any order given by Chief Skake. Far from the imagined belittling tirade one might expect, stressing the need for a chain of command and that junior ranking members of the group might not be in possession of all the pertinent facts of the mission, Rubik found that Chief Skake preferred to illustrate his position by example. These examples were usually very long, very colorful, and very obviously embellished beyond any similarity with the original events. After just one time questioning an order, Rubik had decided that having his eyeballs polished with wire wool and industrial strength solvent would be preferable to another of Chief Skake’s examples of how he single-handedly saved a small planet from invading Prions, with just a can opener and a slightly-used pair of boot deodorizers during the first campaign of the war. For a moment, Rubik had been tempted to ask if the Chief had been there, fighting single-handed, who exactly he had given orders to, but an imperative sense of self-preservation had stopped him. He was sure that this question would have only resulted in further tall stories, and he also heavily suspected that the orders might well have been given to the can opener and the boot deodorizers.

  “We decided to stake out the arrival lounge,” Rubik explained. “We waited for days, but there was no sign of them. Any of them. Then one day I saw one of the pair we had in custody and were directly involved in the murder of Officer Pobble. He was going to get something to eat, so I followed him and he led me back to his partner. After I reported to the chief, we moved our position to monitor those two. The chief was convinced they were waiting to meet up with their partners again, but were hiding because they knew we were on their tail. He said we should wait for the entire gang.”

  “Did he inform the local patrol officers that you were here and what you were doing?” Agent Skwair asked.

  “I don’t think so. I tried to recommend that,” Rubik lied. “But you know how it is.”

  Agent Skwair nodded sympathetically again. “Then what?”

  “Well, it must have been a couple more days, but I’m not sure. I’m pretty shaken up by this whole

  incident.”

  “Don’t worry, you’re doing fine,” Agent Skwair assured. “If the details become an issue, we can go back to them. Just tell me the flow of events for now.”

  Rubik nodded. “So anyway, the last two turned up. I wanted to make our move then, but the chief ordered me to hold back. It seemed to me that instead of being part of the same gang, the pair who were last to show up didn’t even know the first two were here. We followed them all to this apartment complex. After a while, the female suspect came out and that left the other three in there, but the chief wanted to wait for all of them to be in the same place at the same time, so we didn’t move again.”

  “Then the female suspect came back, and before we could move, she and the strange alien left again, with the other two leaving a short while later. Chief Skake told me they were just being clever, not moving around together so they wouldn’t appear to be an obvious gang, but like I said, it seemed that the female and the weird suspect didn’t even know the other two were there.”

  “So how did you and the chief come to be breaking into that apartment?” asked Agent Skwair.

  “Well, I didn’t know we were breaking and entering. The chief told me he had clearance to do that. Anyway, we entered the courtyard, and the chief knew immediately which was the one we wanted. All the doors were the same color and shade, all except one. Chief Skake said this was obviously a signal of some kind to the gang so we went over to have a look.”

  “And you had just managed to open the door when Chief Skake was shot, yes?”

  “Yes,” Rubik confirmed. “I have never seen anything like that. I didn’t even know that Particle Rearrangement weapons could be refined to such a degree. I always thought the point of them was that they weren’t lethal.”

  Agent Skwair shook her head sadly. “In the wrong hands, even the most safety-conscious items can become deadly. I’m guessing that the weapon was a Sniper’s Particle Rearrangement Rifle, an S.P.R.R. Before the Prion Wars, I remember that there were several divisions on both sides using these modified weapons. Instead of rearranging the atoms of the entire body, the beam is focused into a very compact area, and will only gather and encase the atoms of about six inches in diameter. You can imagine what that will do to a head.”

  “I saw what it did to Chief Skake’s chest,” Rubik replied.

  They sat quietly for a moment, pondering the demise of Chief of Security Skake. Finally Rubik broke the silence. “So do you have any idea who shot the chief?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Restive Pro,” Chief Boh Yah Di said solemnly.

  “Who?” said Kirk.

  “What?” snarled Lu.

  The chief glanced nervously across at Lu.

  “Who’s this Restive Pro?” Kirk asked.

  “You’re sure it was her?” Lu’s voice was low and quiet, yet both Kirk and the Chief caught the dangerous tone rumbling, barely concealed.

  The Chief nodded reluctantly. “It was her signature hit.”

  “Who’s Restive Pro?” Kirk asked again.

  “You think she’s been hired to come after Kirk?” Lu asked.

  “Could be a coincidence. The chap she hit might have been the real target. He just happened to stumble into Agent Deighton’s front door,” Chief Boh Yah Di suggested with little conviction.

  “Hello?” said Kirk. “Anyone remember me? The new guy! The greener agent! Anyone care to tell me who this Pro woman is?”

  “Could she have been hired to come after me?” Lu asked.

  “Possible, but doubtful,” said the Chief. “First of all, if she was making a run just at you, she would probably come straight at you. Also there are a few people who would be bold enough to take out a contract on you. They’d be too worried that afterwards, you would trace it back to them and make them very sorry they even thought of annoying you.”

  “That, and she’d probably do me for free,” Lu said with a grim smile.

  “WHO IS RESTIVE PRO?” shouted Kirk.

  Both Lu and the Chief looked at him in surprise.

  “She’s an old acquaintance of mine,” said Lu.

  “Well, that’s one way of describing her,” said the Chief, glancing nervously at Lu again. “Another way would be as the most feared assassin and bounty-hunter this side of the universe. She is also in the Universal Securitat’s ‘Ten Most Wanted.’ In addition to over 700 attributed assassinations that bear her signature hit, her work has been at the root of seven interstellar wars, and the conclusion of six others. She has been responsible for the death of four of our agents, and had been tracked down once by a Securitat agent, and she still managed to escape, killing another agent during her flight.”

  The Chief gave Lu another nervous look, and Kirk got the distinct impression that the agent who had caught, then lost this frightening assassin, was sitting across from him now and staring fixedly out of the reinforced glass window. He wasn’t sure what he should say to Lu. This was obviously something very important to her.

  They rode on in silence for several minutes, before Chief Boh Yah Di cleared his throat with a fake cough.

  “Your presence has been requested in Destinati, Agent Deighton,” the Chief finally said.

  “Where’s t
hat?”

  “At the center of the universe is a super dense structure. No species has ever managed to launch a successful survey mission to study it in detail. The gravitational field is so powerful that even a tachyon beam cannot escape its pull. As far as we have been able to determine, whatever goes beyond the event horizon is not coming back again.”

  “And you want to send me in there?” exclaimed Kirk. “What is this? Some kind of sacrifice? Instead of throwing me into a volcano, like some virgin, to appease the gods, you’re going to throw me into a black-hole?”

  “Not at all, m’boy!” the Chief chucked. “You have been invited. There’s a big difference.”

  “Invited by who?” asked Kirk suspiciously.

  “The Y’lem.”

  “And they are...?”

  “The chaps who created the Universe,” the Chief said simply.

  “What?”

  “They created the universe, the planets, all life on the planets. They started everything.”

  “You’re telling me that this god, or these gods have specifically asked you to bring me to them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I have no idea. They didn’t say. And just for the record, they do not like the god reference. They feel that it belittles the races that are less advanced than they are.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to belittle those less advanced races now would I?” Kirk sneered.

  “I realize that this is all a great deal for you to take in, Agent Deighton, but please remember that you represent the Universal Securitat now. We have certain standards.”

  This was the final straw for Kirk.

  “What!?” he shouted. “First of all, you simply kidnap me, haul me off my planet and take me to a spaceport that logic tells me can’t possibly exist without someone on my planet knowing...”

  “Well there are people on you planet that know about the spaceport on Titan,” Chief Boy Yah Di said.

  “What? The governments know?”

  “Well not exactly. When I say that there are people on your planet that know, I don’t mean your species,” the chief said. “But I think we’re getting a little sidetracked.”