Jump Gate Omega

by Tom Shepherd

  “No, no. It has not been fully inspected and cleared for flight.”

  “Paco was working on it. He could finish in a few hours.”

  “Your husband is unavailable,” Zhao said.

  “Sir, you know he is innocent of—”

  “Please leave for the day, or return to your inventories, Dorla. Let me manage the shipyard.”

  “Aren’t these gentlemen Matthews Corporation attorneys? Maybe they could get him released to complete the job.”

  “Thank you for the tea.” Zhao picked up his cup and sat back. “I shall speak to you later.”

  “Excuse me,” Tyler said. “What ship is Mrs. León talking about?”

  “Two days ago, a Kazloŭ smuggler died in a knife fight at a casino. His transport ship was parked in one of our bays for maintenance. Paco León was the supervising technician on the overhaul crew. When the Kazloŭ failed to return, Port Authority confiscated the transport ship, and she was forfeited to Matthews Interstellar for unpaid fees.”

  “Is she a fast, long-range FTL craft?” J.B. said.

  “I don’t know,” Zhao said. “Paco never finished his evaluation, so the vessel was not cleared for departure.”

  “But you looked it over personally?” Tyler said.

  “Briefly.”

  “And…?”

  Zhao shrugged. “She was a contraband ship. They must evade customs patrols, hostile aliens, and pirates. Theoretically, the smuggler could meet your needs. However, with Paco in the Sedalia jail, I must find another Chief Maintenance Supervisor with the proper FTL Propulsion Certificates to finish the job. I only have three of them left, and they are booked with enough work to keep them busy until Christmas.”

  “When is Chief León scheduled to get out?” Tyler said. “Maybe we can expedite his release.”

  “That would be most difficult.”

  “What are the charges?” Tyler expected drunk and disorderly, or a bar room fight.

  “He killed the smuggler,” Zhao said.

  “Oh, dear God,” J.B. said.

  “In front of one hundred witnesses,” Zhao added.

  Tyler grinned. “That’s all they got?”

  J.B. leaned toward his brother. “Ty, we’re not criminal attorneys.”

  “We have tons of litigation experience.”

  “Suing patent violators, not defending murderers.”

  “Paco’s not a murderer! It was self-defense.” Mrs. León said.

  “No problemo, Dorla.” Tyler turned to Master Zhao. “J.B. and I will spring Paco. If he certifies the ship, we’ll wave legal fees. Then we’re off to Suryadivan space and you’re homeward bound, paintbrush in hand.”

  Zhao returned to his viewscreen. “That would be acceptable.”

  “Thank you, thank you!” Dorla León hugged them one at a time.

  J.B. shook his head. “We haven’t seen the ship yet.”

  “This ain’t a beauty contest, Bro. All we need is a fast ride to the Rim, preferably with a boat deck for Suzie.”

  The Yard Boss held up a hand. “A word of caution. Justice out here is swift, unconcerned with individual rights.”

  “We’re swifter,” Tyler said “And we never lose.”

  Zhao nodded. “Then I hope you are very good lawyers. Paco León faces expedited trial in forty-five minutes.”

  “Come on, Bear. We’re due in court.”

  When they stepped from the climate controlled building to the fiery streets, J.B. pulled out his datacom. “I’ll see if the legal data base has anything on Sedalia, Criminal Courtroom Procedures.”

  Tyler snorted. “We wouldn’t have to try a murder case if Dad had sent us out here in a warship.”

  “He didn’t.” J.B. tapped the pad. “So, we do.”

  Tyler set his jumpsuit for maximum cooling. “Read Procedures to me on the way. Maybe it’ll take our minds off the heat.”

  Except the hot pavement was far from Tyler’s mind. They needed that fast FTL ship released for transportation to the Rim, or they’d be stuck on this arid rock, unable to seek legal remedy in a Suryadivan court of law. Without legal action by Matthews Corp, the Sacred Protectorate will seize and shut down the Alpha Site. In twenty-three days, Jump Gate Alpha will be offline and miss the incoming shot from Andromeda, ending four generations of work with complete failure. And he’d get the blame.

  Eight

  Esteban and Rosalie had no trouble finding the Safe Harbor Police Station, which dominated a stone pier jutting into the bay. The brick building rose five levels above the street and had no air conditioning. They rode a creaking, metal cage elevator past floors of sweating prisoners in barred cells and intake lobbies full of citizens seeking redress of wrongs.

  Stepping out at the roof brought immediate relief from the breeze off the sea. Esteban shaded his eyes and scanned the port city below. Lines of drying laundry stretched between buildings, where residents roofed their houses by pounding scrap metal together. Some larger pieces, salvaged from wrecks at the shipyard, still bore commercial logos of deep space trading companies. Streets ran helter-skelter, which made an activity as easy as pub-crawling a daunting challenge, even without the booze.

  It was a sensual jungle, too. Music screeched from apartments; spice-rich cooking smells mingled freely among the dwellings; and uncollected trash tumbled onto the sidewalks forcing pedestrians to sidestep around the heaps. Signboards flashed bawdy messages above the blazing light of high noon: Two-Girls-for-One at Candy Stripe Dance-and-Grab, Corner of Sandstorm & Pier Streets.

  Safe Harbor was anything but safe during the hours of darkness. Violence after sunset was legendary, and the sources Esteban consulted recommended traveling with bodyguards or in large groups if visitors intended to forage for nocturnal amusements. Esteban vowed to get Rosalie off the streets before the Sedalian sun touched the horizon.

  The rooftop operations center of the Shore Patrol looked as dilapidated as the town it served. Open-front booths—little more than corrugated metal canopies supported by steel rods with a look of salvaged parts—housed senior officers and the support staff needed to run an over-burdened law enforcement department, which by all accounts was barely making a dent in local crime.

  An Asian policewoman in a white uniform with knee-length shorts greeted them. The embroidered black nametag over her left breast identified Officer Yumiko Matsuda. Esteban found the ages of Asian women hard to guess, but from her smooth face and thin, athletic build, he put Officer Matsuda in her early thirties.

  “Are you Señor Solorio and Miss Matthews?” she said politely

  “We are,” Esteban said.

  Unlike mere locals, Rosalie and Esteban were recognizable off-world dignitaries—representatives of the Family—and suffered no lengthy delays filling out forms in the sweltering floors below.

  “Please follow,” Matsuda said.

  She ushered them to white mesh chairs in the shadiest office on the roof and offered chilled water bulbs, which Rosalie and Esteban downed while waiting for the Station Chief. A sand-colored lizard scooted under the metal desk to escape the noonday heat. Officer Matsuda reappeared frequently to ask if they needed anything. They waited half an hour before her boss finally showed up.

  Chief Inspector Demarcus Platte’s glaring white uniform contrasted sharply with his midnight skin. Despite the bustle of street patrols and administrative personnel reporting to his rooftop command post, Inspector Platte had an easy, unhurried smile, white as his attire. But the bulging muscles along his arms and his massive shoulders suggested this top cop could handle himself in any situation. He annunciated every Neo-Terran syllable crisply, like Esteban had heard among the island blacks of Earth’s Caribbean region.

  Yumiko Matsuda hovered beside the Inspector in his open-air office. She spoke in Japanese to Platte, bowed and scurried away.

  Rosalie switched languages effortlessly. “Where did you learn Japanese?”

  “Eight years working security for Tsuchiya Galactic at the Nagoya colony,”
he said. “It is a difficult language.”

  “Very difficult.”

  Esteban redirected the conversation to Terran Standard. “My sister, Julieta Solorio, has not contacted our parents for several weeks.”

  “Dr. Solorio visited this station two months ago,” Inspector Platte said. “She wanted to access our data banks for some kind of medical research. At first, I told her it was against police protocols, but she assured me it was not related to law enforcement. Since she was a member of the Matthews-Solorio Family, I made a work station available to her briefly.”

  “You have more to tell us,” Esteban said.

  “Yes, Señor ,” Platte admitted. “Despite her assurances, your sister hacked Shore Patrol data files, copied documents and deleted the originals. That’s a criminal offense, but I didn’t follow up. Well, I did order our patrols to keep an eye on her, but that was just my curiosity.”

  Esteban felt waves of hesitation flowing from the Inspector. “There is more.”

  Platte raised an eyebrow. “Patrols stopped encountering her in Safe Harbor six weeks ago. My hunch is the good doctor left Sedalia by independent transport, but I have no idea when, or where she was bound. Indies are not required to file flight plans.”

  “Why didn’t you arrest her?” Esteban said. “At least she would be safely in custody today.”

  “I regret the fact that she is missing, Señor .”

  “Specifically, what did Julieta copy?” Rosalie said.

  “That’s why I didn’t arrest her. She accessed biomedical data about the Suryadivan Sacred Protectorate, but since she deleted the originals I don’t know what specific information she took. However, no personnel files or sensitive police material is missing. I have trackers in place to monitor any tampering with that. Perhaps she really was doing medical databank research. She is a med-tech procurer for the Company, correct?”

  Rosalie said, “Don’t you back everything up in your community secure net?”

  “Miss Matthews, we have no clouds on this desert world; no secure general storage net.” He reached into his desk and removed a thin folder. “All my notes on the case are here. I reproduced one of the data bits she accessed, that’s all. It was previously stored as a duplicate file.”

  Platte handed Esteban a hard copy flier, printed in 3-D color. It was in a language unknown to him. Squares with mixed components arranged in sequence, like a series of stamps from old-fashioned signature rings, interspersed with alien lettering that resembled alpha-numeric characters.

  “I have not determined whether it is pictographic writing or a catalog of official signets,” Platte said.

  Esteban handed it to Rosalie.

  “Neither.” She turned the page upside down, and then on its side. “This is Sawn-Zhu, a syllable-based, logographic writing system used by all Suryadivans.”

  “You can read that?” Inspector Platte said.

  “Just the basics.” Rosalie studied the document. “You have to know fourteen thousand characters plus five supportive alphabets to be fluent. Oh, good! It’s present-tense, contemporary language, with limited vocabulary. An advertisement, I think, inviting the Suryadivan people ‘…to attend the biennial Hunt—ketara ko-megath l’han Adao.’ Maybe, ‘beside the holy trees’? No, no. That’s wrong. Okay, I get it. ‘Amid the sacred forests of Adao.’”

  “It’s a travel brochure?” Esteban said.

  “A call to pilgrimage. Adao is their name for a heavily wooded planet beyond the edge of the galaxy, at the outermost boundary of Suryadivan space,” Rosalie said.

  Esteban studied the document. “You amaze me, Cousin.”

  She smiled coyly. “I’m an exo-anthropologist.”

  “Why was Julieta interested in polytheistic religious festivals on an undeveloped world?” Esteban said.

  Inspector Platte shrugged. “Maybe to study native plants with therapeutic properties. Or maybe Dr. Solorio wanted to attend for personal reasons. To get a spiritual high.”

  “Our family is strictly Catholic,” Esteban said.

  “Julieta is curious about alien cultures.” Rosalie folded the paper and tucked it into her pocket.

  “May I see the office where she accessed the data?” Esteban said.

  “That area is restricted now.”

  Rosalie smiled sweetly. “Demarcus-san, you have been so kind. Can’t you please let Esteban visit the last place where his sister was seen? It would mean a lot to him.”

  “I suppose we can bend the rules that far. For the Family. Officer Matsuda will show you.” He signaled the young Asian, who bowed slightly. “If I can be of further service, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Yumiko Matsuda led Rosalie and Esteban to the creaking, open-side elevator and rode down with them to the second floor. It was stifling below the roof, with no breeze to relieve the heat. Paint fumes hung in the air from old metal desks, recently coated blue-and-white, so administrators could pretend the equipment was strong and new.

  Their guide traversed the maze of cubicles like a warren-dwelling creature who knew the tunnels well. She halted at a door, fished a mini-datacom from the pocket of her white shorts, and entered a code. The door slid open slowly, grinding at the creased floor line. Inside a dozen computer stations idled, power indicators at standby.

  Yumiko gestured to a gray, unpainted desk with an obsolete console and keyboard. “Julieta-san accessed this unit. You may sit in the seat, please.”

  Esteban slid into the place where his sister had looked up the biology of a planet in the Suryadivan Sacred Protectorate. He closed his eyes and concentrated.

  “What are you doing, Señor Solorio?” the policewoman said.

  “He has gone into meditation about his sister,” Rosalie said. “Shall we give him space to center his thoughts?”

  “Hai.”

  Esteban heard Rosalie beckon Yumiko aside with a question about policing a frontier town. Satisfied he wouldn’t be interrupted, he continued to expand all senses until his astral body emerged from its physical housing. Esteban floated free above the room and looked down at Yumiko and Rosalie, who now chatted in Japanese. He widened his field to the floors above and below where police and civilians went about their business. Except a blonde woman and her dark lesbian lover, who ignored the scorching heat on the roof and slipped into a storage shed for some heavy petting and kissing.

  Esteban shook off the extraneous activities of the moment and dialed back time. First to the early morning, and then last night and yesterday, and finally flipping whole days like pages on a calendar until he reached the moment when Julieta entered the room where he now hovered.

  Julieta tossed a handbag on the desk next to the work station, sat, and accessed the unit with skillful speed. Whatever codes or passwords this Police HQ employed, they failed to slow her down in any way he could detect. Esteban floated closer to her, wishing he could embrace his lovely, black-haired sister, terrified that she might no longer dwell among the living. He had no way to know; his powers of observation stopped at the door of death.

  Inside his vision, her screen came online, and she flashed through assorted screens until reaching the data she sought. Highly complex algorithms. Esteban recognized the math as a problem in organic chemistry but had no idea what processes the equations described. The screens zipped by again, propelled by Julieta’s facility with of the research process.

  He squinted at the screen. Now the text was in a language he could not recognize, square characters inside boxes of assorted sizes, arranged in sequences that Esteban guessed were similar to Chinese radicals forming larger characters. He had no clue what it meant. He stopped the action, ran it back slowly, and finally found a search page indicating the trail she was following. Exobiology of Planets in the Suryadivan Region.

  He froze time flow and studied the screen Julieta called up. It showed a strange, bulky species with two trunks, like a cross between an Indian elephant and North American bison. Too sleek for a pachyderm and lacking the signature floppy e
ars, too thick and hairless for a true bison. A creature who could run hard and manipulate objects with its dual proboscises, with a tough hide and short hairs for hot climates.

  He released the flow of time and heard Julieta speak for the first time in months.

  “Esos hijos de puta!” Those sons-of-bitches! What did his sister discover? He had no idea.

  Esteban watched her download the data onto a storage wedge, delete the resident documents, and close her search program. She grabbed her handbag and quit the computer room. He longed to follow her, but he lacked physical objects to touch along her path. Esteban knew he would lose the psionic scent a few steps from the chair where she had worked. He released time and flowed back to the present, sank into his resting body, and opened his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” Rosalie said.

  “We must go.” Esteban thanked Officer Matsuda and she bowed deeply in return.

  When they reached the hot street, Esteban paused under a lone shade tree. “How long have you known about my gifts?”

  “Not long,” Rosalie said. “Don’t worry. I will keep your secret.”

  “Bueno. I trust you.” Esteban described the vision in detail. Rosalie listened attentively, then strode briskly toward the shipyards.

  “We need to get back to the Sioux City to see if my brothers have shaken loose a fast ship.”

  Esteban rushed after her. “What is wrong?”

  “From what you told me, Julieta was headed for trouble.”

  “How do you know that?” Esteban increased his stride to keep up with her.

  “Your sister reacted with anger to the ancient Suryadivan ritual of the Hunt. And when Julieta is that rattled, she takes action.”

  Esteban agreed. “She is strong-willed.”

  “We have to find her before she meddles with the sacred practices of a society ruled by religious fanatics. Julieta’s vendetta could scuttle Papá’s Jump Gate and get herself executed for sacrilege.”

  Esteban stopped, clenched his fists, and muttered in Español Nuevo.

  Rosalie touched his shoulder. “Have faith, Primo. We will find her.”

  The blazing yellow sun lingered mercilessly overhead as they hurried along empty streets. Esteban felt strangely uneasy, as if someone watched from the shadows, but they traveled at high noon when shadows were few.