3rd World Products, Inc., Book 2

by Ed Howdershelt

  "Ed, you're being very difficult about this. About everything to do with me."

  "Leslie, if there's nothing else on your mind, this call's finished. If the seat is still vacant when I meet with Caitlin tomorrow, someone else will get the offer. Bug Caitlin about why you're getting the offer and tell her your answer. Bye."

  Once Leslie was off 'line one', I finished my pepper steak and went to replace my destroyed wardrobe. They didn't have what I wanted, so I placed an order that I was told would arrive on the next transport.

  I was standing in front of the ice cream parlor, watching some blonde walk down the hall, when Stephie told me that Caitlin wanted to speak to me.

  "Put her through, Steph."

  "Caitlin here. Pratt told me why she thinks you're offering her Carlton's job, sir. I'm not sure I can support the decision now."

  "I told you there was reason to think it wouldn't fly well, didn't I? You two work this out, Caitlin. I don't care who gets the job, as long as whoever gets it is fairly competent. If that seat's open tomorrow..."

  "Yes, sir. I got that from her. Okay, then, I'll review the record of our conversation and see how I feel about it then."

  "Caitlin, my name is 'Ed', not 'sir'. I prefer my name to a generic term."

  "But I prefer the generic term of respect to unearned familiarity with senior officers, sir. Do I still have a job?"

  "Well, a backbone is required in my outfit, so I guess so. Anything else?"

  "Not at the moment."

  "Bye, then."

  "Goodbye, sir."

  Heh. Caitlin may turn out to be the outfit's Sergeant Major.

  "Steph, ask Linda why Caitlin was only the second in command of Security, please, and send her a copy of our thoughts concerning Brinks."

  "Done. Awaiting reply, Ed."

  As I waited, I walked. The station was like one of the fancier Army bases I'd so often visited while in Europe. The GI's didn't have to step off base to see a first-run movie, buy groceries, participate in most sports, or do much of anything else they wanted to do. The station was like a small, well-equipped city in space.

  "Your answer is here, Ed."

  Linda's voice said, "She was second because Merrit had two years time in grade on her when they converted from the Air Force to station Security. He'd been a Colonel and she'd been a Lt. Colonel who was up for promotion to Colonel. No other reasons. Don't lean on Brinks unless you have solid evidence, Ed. His uncle is a bigwig politician who pulled some strings to get Brinks, senior, a job on the station."

  "Send back: Got it. Roger that. Over and out, Fearless Leader."

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Back in my room, I used my pad to check my email on the internet. The station's orbit, like that of the asteroid belt it mined, lay in the area between Mars and Jupiter, so surfing the net engendered command delays each way.

  Page loading times were abominably slow compared to what I was used to, even when the Earthside server gathered all the pages and images from a site and preassembled the pages before sending them up to me.

  On the other hand, the station's server hosted hundreds of websites for station personnel, and some of them were fascinating. I spent quite a while prowling the station's branch of the internet before it occurred to me to run a search using Brinks's name. Maybe that represents a downside to having a computer like Stephie at your side. You can become too dependent and forget other avenues of research.

  Yes, Brinks had a website. It was like deja vu for me to see all the rhetoric so long used by so many to manipulate the minds of others on behalf of some '-ism' or '-ist' organization. Brinks seemed to have borrowed freely from all the big names; Trotsky, Marx, Lenin, and many others, regardless of their political positions.

  His page wasn't specifically Communist or Socialist. Quotes from leaders of democracies and ancient civilizations were equally prominent. It appeared as if he'd quoted materials from all sources, solely for the purpose of supporting his own platform of beliefs about the Amarans, the station, and the world in general.

  I wasn't about to read his sixty-something pages of plagiarized rhetorical bullshit. I wanted a summary, and the shorter the better.

  "Stephie, can you boil his pages down? What's he actually saying?"

  "His quotes and actual statements tend to contradict themselves almost evenly, Ed. Whatever seems to reflect a pro-something stance is ripped apart a few pages later in every instance. I don't think I'm equipped to evaluate the true purpose of this website because I can't discover one. The only recurring theme has to do with his distrust of women. He advocates removing women from all positions of responsibility, making them dress to conceal all skin, and he seems to think that a woman's punishment should in all cases be twice or three times that of a man's."

  "That just means he'll probably never get laid if he can't keep his mouth shut and that he may be somewhat insane. Is there any hidden code of any sort on any of the pages? Anything that might cause problems for a computer, Amaran or other?"

  "Nothing that I can detect on his current pages."

  "Current? Are you saying there are some that aren't current?"

  "Yes. Some pages and files were recently erased and many have been partially or completely overwritten, but I think I can..."

  "No. Don't restore that stuff, Steph. Copy them to a lesser computer and isolate them first, then have that computer restore what it can and verbally report its findings. Don't remain connected to it while it works."

  "Okay. I'll use a flitter core and remove it from the network."

  "That should be good enough. Let me know when it's done."

  "It shouldn't take long. There are only a hundred and six items to decipher... Ed, the flitter just crashed."

  "Crashed, as in the programming collapsed?"

  "No, Ed. It crashed, literally. It fell to the deck and appears to be nonfunctional."

  "Don't try to contact it. Tell Caitlin's office to get someone to it and remove that core. Tell them what happened. I want to see it, too. Where is it?"

  "In the parking zone under the shell with the others."

  "Is it one of the Earth flits or the export flits?"

  "I used one of the Earth flitters, Ed. It seemed to me that if you suspected a problem, there was reason not to use a fully-powered and equipped flitter."

  "My brilliant Stephie. Smart move, ma'am. Back up the crap that caused this and save it to a separate core for Linda's people. We'll send it to her first chance."

  Fifteen minutes later I had arrived at the sub-shell surface of the station. There was no reason to make my option five field suit public knowledge, so I used one of the maintenance space suits to join Caitlin and another officer at the fallen flitter. Other than some denting from its short fall, the flitter seemed unharmed.

  "I thought you'd be asleep by now, Caitlin."

  Until Caitlin addressed me and gestured to the other officer, who was holding the core, I had no idea which bright orange suit contained whom.

  "Sir, we've removed the core and your computer told us what happened. Do you want us to pick up Brinks now, or do you have other plans for him?"

  "You're the cop, Caitlin. Go by the book, whatever it says. Deleted stuff from his website killed a flitter computer, but his DNA and prints won't be on the programming, so evidence is probably a factor to consider."

  I'm sure she gave me a wry look, but I couldn't tell through the suit's faceplate.

  "Then the core and flitter are hereby impounded as evidence and Brinks will be picked up this evening for questioning only. Do you wish to be present, sir?"

  "Not in the room when you talk to him, but I would like to be able to watch."

  "There's an observation room. I'll let you know when we've got him."

  "If he isn't home, check arboretum six."

  Caitlin paused in reaching for the hatch panel.

  "How would you know to look for him there, sir?"

  "Get a playback about that from Stephie."


  Maybe she nodded assent; I couldn't tell. She said nothing and didn't seem to move for a couple of seconds, then she entered the airlock and held it open for us.

  In the prep chamber, we unsuited and redressed ourselves. You didn't just climb into a space suit; you had to strip to your skivvies in order for the air conditioning system in a suit to be effective.

  Caitlin skinned out of her suit and hung it back on the wall rack in a very unselfconscious manner. She seemed to care not a whit that she was wearing nothing more than her bra and panties as she reached to hang the fifty-pound suit.

  As I slipped off my own suit, I watched the muscles play under her skin and wondered what she did to keep herself so fit. She had the body of an athlete, and her proximity had an effect on my own body. I half turned away and pulled my pants on.

  "Wow, Caitlin. How do you..?"

  "Aerobics. Swimming. Stop staring and get dressed. Sir."

  "Sorry. Ma'am."

  Williams was already straightening his jacket. Guess he'd seen her before or he wasn't about to be caught staring at his boss's fantastic body. He gave me a look that seemed to ask if I were sane. I shrugged and finished dressing.

  Caitlin organized her posse as we walked to the elevator and the hunt for Brinks was well underway by the time we arrived at her office. She waved at someone and held up three fingers, then led the way to her desk.

  The woman she'd waved at delivered three coffees moments after we were seated. As expected, my coffee was scalding hot. I waved off condiments and aimed a cold spot into the coffee as Caitlin and Williams stirred stuff into theirs.

  Cop coffee, I thought as I sipped it. It was like Army, Navy, or any other such coffee. You couldn't see the bottom of the pot if there was a quarter-inch left, and nothing else that was non-prescription could keep you awake quite as well.

  Williams and Caitlin watched me drink a third of it and glanced at their own coffees, undoubtedly wondering why I wasn't screaming from a mouthful of blisters.

  As we waited for word from those searching for Brinks, Caitlin reviewed my discourse with Stephie concerning the arboretum. When it finished, she looked at me oddly for a moment, then sipped her coffee.

  "Your cover story is bullshit," she said. "No offense, of course."

  I grinned. "None taken."

  "Graves sent you up here, didn't she?"

  "Ask her."

  "I'm asking you. Sir."

  "Same answer. Ma'am. Just do your job and don't worry about me."

  "I checked you out. As far as is possible, anyway, which doesn't amount to much, since I had to use routine sources and systems. I didn't like what I found because I didn't find out anything that didn't look like boilerplate from something else."

  "That would seem to mean that it's none of your business."

  "You're on my station, sir. It's my business to know who's here."

  "Until I leave, it's my station, lady. You work for me. You do your job as it should be done. That's your business. Not me."

  "That's just the point. I'm not sure how you came to be in charge of the station. It isn't in your job description. Come to think of it, damn little is in your job description that doesn't translate to 'investigator' or 'observer'. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a less descriptive job description."

  "Your job description could soon be in question, too, Caitlin, if you continue in this vein. Why are you pushing me?"

  "I want to know how you wound up running the station. Who authorized it? Nobody at 3rd World knows what the hell you're doing here, but they're all afraid to talk to me about you. Nobody in Security Earthside seems to know, either. Yet, here you are."

  "Yet here I are, indeed. And nobody is telling me that I can't fire high-ranking goldbricks like Carlton and Hawkins. Doesn't that tell you anything?"

  "Yes. It tells me that your cover is bullshit."

  Williams snorted and tried to hide a chuckle.

  I shook my head and said, "Live with it, Caitlin. Now, do I have to leave in order to keep you from running on about this?"

  "No. Sir. I just wanted you to know where I stand. Without reason to do otherwise, I'll accept your orders. But be prepared to explain any that don't make perfect sense."

  "Happy to, as long as they're followed when I give them. You may have to wait until afterwards for an explanation, though."

  Her gaze narrowed.

  "Caitlin, I could have ordered you to pick up Brinks earlier, before the core crash. What would you have done?"

  "I'd have asked why."

  "And if I'd just told you to do it and hold him for questioning?"

  "I'd have asked why."

  "You'd have been out of a job, Caitlin. Fired with prejudice and replaced instantly. These aren't normal times. I won't ask or tell you to do something that I can't explain later, but if I tell you to do something, you'll do it or you'll be gone."

  "I see. One moment please, while I call Graves." She reached for her pad.

  "Stephie, open a link to Linda Graves for Miz Caitlin."

  "Open, Ed."

  I said, "Go, Caitlin."

  Caitlin eyed me warily as she sent a message asking for absolute confirmation that I was in command of the station. Nobody spoke as we waited a few minutes for the reply. When the outer office woman peeked in, Caitlin again held up three fingers, and three more coffees were brought to us. Caitlin thanked her as she turned to leave.

  "Linda's reply, Ed."

  "Let everybody in the room hear it, Steph. Send a copy of it to Caitlin's pad."

  Linda said, "Confirmed, Caitlin. Stop rooting around. He's one of ours."

  Caitlin said, "Send her a thanks and thank you, too, Stephanie."

  "You're welcome."

  I was about to cool my coffee again when someone reported in. When they'd entered his room, an alarm had sounded, then an explosion had killed the two officers and injured another. Brinks was nowhere to be found.

  Caitlin said, "You've checked the arboretum?"

  "Yes, ma'am. He isn't there, but he was just before the alarm sounded, according to the gate log."

  "Okay. Keep looking. Assume he's dangerous and possibly armed."

  "Um, armed how, ma'am? A stunner?"

  Caitlin looked at me. I nodded and said, "A modified PFM. Don't laugh."

  The voice snickered anyway, of course.

  "A PFM? How's he going to hurt anyone with a PFM?"

  Caitlin quietly asked, "What if one locked onto your clothes and hauled you fifty feet into the air before letting you go?"

  A moment later the guy soberly said, "Uh, yes, ma'am. I'll pass the word."

  There was a commotion in the background, then the voice came back on.

  "We just found Masters! She's not breathing, but Price is trying CPR on her!"

  I looked at Caitlin and said, "He logged out, but he didn't leave. Tell them to..."

  There was a choking sound and a thud as the watch arm hit the ground.

  "Stephie, they'll all need CPR and oxygen. We'll meet you there."

  "Okay, Ed. I'll set up fields to provide both and dispatch med 'bots."

  I got up to leave, but Caitlin took a moment to reach in her desk drawer. She brought out an extra stunner and tossed it to me. I tossed it back and pulled my stunner from my sleeve. Her eyes narrowed a touch, then she nodded and dropped the extra back into her desk.

  When we got to the arboretum, one of the officers was back on her feet - on her knees, really - and trying to help the other two. We got there just ahead of the medical 'bot and two human medics and stood guard as the unconscious officers were taken out of the arboretum. Price asked to remain with us.

  Caitlin asked her, "Are you sure you're okay, Price?"

  "Fine, ma'am. Let's get him."

  "Not yet. I sent for more people."

  I consulted Steph.

  "Stephie, can you get a reading on Brinks? Maybe save us a long search?"

  "No, Ed. The only people on my sensors are you and Caitlin's peopl
e. I've searched the entire station and there's no sign of Brinks."

  "Then we'll assume he's still in here."

  When the other two squads arrived, Caitlin said, "We're going to lock the gate and fan out. Everybody stay in sight of someone at all times."

  And so it was. Half an hour later, we were more than halfway to the other end of the arboretum with no results. Caitlin called a halt and told everyone not to get careless because Brinks was running out of room and might pop up at any moment.

  "Stay in line and stay alert!" she yelled, then she referred to her pad for a moment and approached me, her finger poised to point out something on the pad to me.

  At odd times you may see, or hear, or even smell something that your conscious, thinking mind is too busy to register at the time. You may be talking to someone or be doing something when your subconscious mind begins screaming a warning at you for no apparent reason.

  I have no idea to this day what sparked my anxiety, but suddenly it was there and I followed my impulse to get flat on the ground.

  I muttered, "Option five on," and yelled, "Get down!"

  Caitlin had been talking to me when my subconscious went off like an alarm bell. She must have seen it in my eyes during the split-second before I dropped.

  Caitlin screamed, "Down! Get down!" as she, also dove for the dirt.

  All I knew was that I wanted to put something between me and the direction we'd been heading. One of the larger imported trees was near me. I quickly crawled to it and got to my feet behind it.

  Maybe half a dozen of the others had fairly instantly followed Caitlin's order to get down. Too many others hadn't. Caitlin made it behind a tree and hunkered there with her back to it, screaming at the others to get down or to get behind something.

  Simply getting flat is considered good initial procedure before an explosion, but it wouldn't have done much good that time. The entire top of one of the trees was converted to wooden shrapnel that ripped into and through people every bit as well as metal shrapnel.

  Quite a few of Caitlin's people were down by then, but damned few had made it to adequate cover and a few were still on their feet or only then getting flat when the shockwave from the blast slammed into them and past them.

  An explosion is like thunder. If you can hear it, it's too damned late. You're either hit or you aren't. I peeked out from behind my tree to see more than half a dozen people lying unmoving on the ground and several more writhing in agony.