Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  With the fierce clarity of his adrenaline rush, Nathan watched him tumble away and thought that if you wanted to damage a man, kicks and punches were not how you did it. You needed a whole different technique out here.

  That was when the still spinning Brownly pulled a spring-loaded switchblade.

  He bounced off the curved module wall and as he came lunging back he thrust the knife out in front of him. Nathan saw a small green flash from the tip of the blade.

  With no gravity to slow him down, Goff’s squat build was not a handicap. He leapt to intercept Brownly, expertly avoiding the blade and deflecting his flight. “Not here!” Nathan heard him say. “Not now!” – and Brownly’s knife vanished, as quickly as it had appeared.

  Nathan relaxed a little. Goff planted himself firmly in front of Brownly, who made no more attempts to attack. The Swiss was the controlled and calculating type. If he made a move there would be nothing impulsive about it and it would be the more dangerous for that. But whatever he was here for, violence was not part of it. Not yet.

  “What exactly is it that you gentlemen want?” Nathan asked, trying to keep his face and voice expressionless.

  “A warning,” said Goff.

  “I’ve already given you one,” said Nathan.

  “You’re going to die, Spring,” Brownly said softly. “You are dead meat.”

  “You’re determined to get yourself arrested aren’t you, Brownly?”

  “Try me.”

  Nathan smiled coldly. “Shouldn’t that be ‘You’ll never take me alive, copper’?”

  “It would be wise of you to think of us seriously,” Goff said. “There are many ways to die, once you have left the Earth behind.”

  “So I’ve been told,” said Nathan.

  “You should listen,” Brownly commented. “Some of them are really unpleasant.”

  Nathan, his voice flat and slightly bored, said, “I’ve seen flick-knives before,” and held out his hand, “and they’re illegal, especially with laser-tipped blades – even out here. If you surrender it voluntarily, it may not be necessary to proffer charges.” Brownly stared at him, blank with surprise. Nathan moved towards him. “Or have I got to take it from you?”

  “Give it to him,” said Goff, grabbing his arm. “Stop behaving like a fool and give it to him.”

  Reluctantly Brownly took out the switchblade, and propelled it in Nathan’s direction. Nathan made a show of his difficulty in catching it, and for the first time Goff smiled. It was a wry, knowing smile. “We will not allow you to use us to make your reputation,” he said, as he pushed Brownly in the direction of the access hatch.

  “That’s it?” Nathan called after them. “That’s all you came to tell me?”

  When they had hopped through the hatch, Brownly turned to look back at him. “You’d be amazed,” he said, “at the unexpected dangers there are. Take storerooms, for example. Very dangerous places, storerooms.” He pushed the hatch closed.

  For a moment Nathan did not react, then, as he saw the hatch seals operating, claustrophobia clutched at the back of his eyes. Hurriedly he lifted his feet from the floor and he was about to launch himself towards the hatch when the lights went out. At the same time, the atmosphere scrubber purred to a stop. With the system closed down, he knew the unused oxygen would automatically be cycled out of this section of the module. He would suffocate. How soon? Soon. Too soon. He tried to picture the hatch and its position in relation to where he was floating. He shoved off hard in that direction. Too hard. Fear robbed him of technique and he rolled, flapping his arms and legs in an ineffectual effort to get control. He was instantly dizzy. His breath was short. Was that his panic, or was the air already getting thin? He was in no position to tell. He was in no position to care. Frantically disoriented he groped around the first surface he came up against. There was no sign of the hatch. Where was it? For Christ’s sake, where was it? He knew there was an emergency override switch. It was in the centre of the hatch cover. It was for just this situation. Everything into reverse. Lights, atmosphere purge, way out. Wait, wait, think, it was lit, the override had its own light source, its own small light source, he should be able to see it, he must be able to see it, why couldn’t he see it? He peered despairingly into the darkness, and in a moment’s sudden lucidity he realized that his eyes were tightly closed.

  The small bright glow was below and to his left. He reached down and pressed the switch. An electronic bell registered the emergency.

  Lancine was furious. Her face was set in a rigid mask of iron-willed self-control, but this did nothing to disguise her feelings from Nathan as he made his laboriously awkward way into her office. Even if he had not been expecting her anger, he would have recognized the behaviour of the elegant general manager. She was reacting almost exactly as he did himself. He wondered in passing what else they had in common. Her much derided ambition perhaps?

  He heel-and-toed it slowly across the carpet to the chair she indicted and pulled himself down onto its Velcro pads.

  “Do you wish coffee?” It was no more than a curt reminder that she was civilized and in charge.

  “Thank you, no,” Nathan said.

  “Then I will come straight to the point. I wish to know what ’appened.”

  Nathan shrugged slightly. “I did file an accident report,” he said.

  Lancine said, “I do not expect a groundsider policeman wiz your limited experience to understand ’ow we work out ’ere. ’Ow we all depend on each other.”

  “I take it I wasn’t your first choice for Star Cop Commander?” Nathan asked politely.

  “You showed no wish for the job, nor any aptitude for the life. You still do not.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” said Nathan, and flashed his most charming smile.

  Lancine was not to be mollified. Stone-faced, she said, “You did, ’owever, argue with Auguste Goff and Liam Brownly, did you not?”

  “Oggy, Liam and I had a lively discussion. These things happen.”

  “Not in an environment like this. Where we live so close together, we cannot ’ave arguments.”

  “You can’t have crimes either, but you do.”

  She gave him a long look of cool appraisal. He stared back and wondered suddenly if she liked to make love. Skinny women had never appealed to him much but the thought of Françoise Lancine on her back, all that cool control abandoned in a thrusting rush of hungry sensation… He put the images from his mind. Nothing like a brush with death to make you horny, he thought. My God, walking around with a hard-on was ungainly enough. Floating around with one would be positively grotesque.

  “You ’ave evidence?” Lancine asked. When he stayed silent, she let her anger show for the first time. “I am entitled to know what progress you ’ave made.”

  “No,” said Nathan mildly. “You’re not.”

  “You are refusing? In that case, you leave me no choice but to ’ave you recalled to Earth immediately. I shall recommend that you be replaced by a more reliable officer.”

  Nathan nodded, and stood up carefully. “Thank you for warning me,” he said. “I appreciate your candour.”

  She did not get up as he made his way to the door. “This is not a personal matter, you understand,” she said. “I am responsible for this station. For the personnel of this station. Your behaviour is not in the best interests of their safety. You ’ave conducted your enquiries unintelligently and wizout discretion.”

  Nathan paused in the doorway. Conscious that the gesture was not unlike Brownly’s parting shot in the storeroom, he turned and said, “You overlook one thing. I’m on attachment to the ISPF. The Star Cops may be crap, but they’re independent crap, so I’m afraid you can’t get me recalled. You see, I’m a police officer on a lawful enquiry, and no jumped-up office manager has the authority to interfere with tha
t.” He smiled. “This is not a personal matter, you understand.”

  Nathan found Theroux sitting in the mess. Butler had stopped to chat on his way through to start his shift, but it was clearly not the relaxed conversation that they had previously taken for granted. Theroux looked distinctly ill-at-ease. To Nathan, his difficulty was obvious, easily recognized by anyone who had ever joined the job. As ISPF liaison, Theroux had been stood down from his other duties. Effectively, he was now a full-time policeman. This set him apart, and while neither he nor those around him might understand it yet, there was a distance between them which would be there for as long as he was a copper.

  Nathan nodded to Butler, and noted that, for once, the irritating bastard did not offer any smartarse backchat. Gossip about the run-in with Brownly and Goff had circulated quickly. The other people in the mess stopped talking and looked at him. They did not try to hide their hostility. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said, just loud enough for everyone to hear. “I’ll need to do an EVA after all. And fairly soon. Set that up for me, please, David.”

  “You’re not serious,” said Theroux. “You want to go outside? What in the hell for?”

  “I’d think again if I were you,” Butler said quietly and more-or-less politely, “it’s no place for tourists. The Hendvorrsen thing should’ve convinced you of that if nothing else.”

  “The Hendvorrsen thing isn’t a problem any more,” said Nathan, not lowering his voice. “I know what happened to him. I know how it happened. I shall need to go outside to check a couple of things though.”

  “I don’t think the jumped-up office manager is going to be terrifically chuffed with that idea,” said Butler.

  Once again, Nathan registered the man’s use of the exact quote and wondered whether Butler had mistakenly given away the presence of the bug he had in Lancine’s office, or whether he just didn’t care. “Do you have any other amazing talents, Mr. Butler?” he asked more quietly. “Apart from the superhuman hearing you keep demonstrating?”

  “Modesty forbids,” Butler said, and then added, grinning broadly, “It’s a bugger, isn’t it?”

  Theroux, conscious that everyone in the mess, which was at its busiest now with the change of shifts, was still watching and listening, lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “Listen, Nathan, Brownly’s always been flaky. He’s done a double tour this time, so chances are he’s got cabin fever. And he and Goff are close, you know what I mean?”

  “What are you trying to tell me, David?” Nathan asked more quietly.

  “He’s trying to tell you,” Butler cut in, “that if you’d had that little scuffle, outside you’d have been dead meat.”

  Nathan considered this. “You’re telling me it is possible to kill somebody outside without being detected.”

  “Depends on the detective, I imagine,” Butler murmured.

  “What I’m telling you,” said Theroux, “is that Brownly might just be past caring.”

  Butler raised his voice. “And our careers,” he said, looking round the mess, his smile encompassing everyone present, “couldn’t stand another high profile fatality. Not even one with no mystery involved.”

  “There’s no mystery about Hendvorrsen’s death,” said Nathan, equally loudly, and also looking round to include the audience. “He was murdered. Right there. Right in front of our eyes.”

  Chapter 10

  Nathan slipped easily into the shower bag, and then spent a couple of minutes struggling to seal the neck band. As washing systems went it was not particularly efficient, relying as it did on fine mist sprays of premixed soap and water solution which were sucked and blown around inside the bag. Despite a slightly obsessive concern with personal hygiene, however, it was not the contraption’s cleansing capacity that concerned him this time. He was hoping that by energetic twisting and scrubbing he could thoroughly soak himself and neutralize any short-range, skin scale micro-bugs that might have been attached to him. It was unlikely that Butler could afford anything that state-of-the-art, or would go to that much trouble even if he could, but there was no telling about people’s hobbies, and it wouldn’t hurt to be thorough. He had already damp-towelled his face and head so vigorously that Theroux wondered aloud whether it was displacement activity brought on by stress at the thought of going outside. Nathan had offered him no explanation but instead had sent him to get two pairs of fresh coveralls, with explicit instructions not to say who they were for. That had really got him worried.

  By the time Nathan had finished the shower and blown himself dry, Theroux was back. Nathan made an appropriately ungainly scramble of getting out of the bag, retrieved his discarded coveralls and pulled a note from the pocket. He handed the note across without comment. It read: Have we got the equipment for a bug sweep?

  “A bu-?” Theroux began but was cut off by a fiercely withering look from Nathan, who was unfolding the first of the clean coveralls and looking for signs that they had been opened already and refolded. Frowning, Theroux watched him, then said, “Who we?”

  “Cops we.”

  “It’s a part-time force, for Chrissakes. What equipment we do have is shared, military surplus, or outdated stock.”

  “That’s a ‘no’?”

  “That’s a ‘fuck, no’.”

  “Stick in a requisition for the best that Europol have in their technical stores. In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with Box. Lets hope we’re not looking for this year’s model.”

  Nathan put on the fresh coveralls and, carrying the pair he had changed out of, headed for the sleeping quarters, leaving a worried and sceptical Theroux to follow.

  In the cramped cubicle, Nathan instructed Box using its seldom-needed touch pad, and with slow and careful sweeps scanned the coveralls he had been wearing. As Theroux watched, his scepticism mounted, and it was about to get the better of his patience when Box’s screen indicator flashed the discovery of a thread transmitter in one of the seams which held the garment’s crotch zip in place.

  “Typical,” muttered Nathan, drawing the tiny nylon fibre from its hiding place.

  “Sonofabitch,” exclaimed Theroux.

  Nathan checked the rest of the garment and, satisfied that this was the only bug, checked the same place on the new coveralls he was wearing. He was mildly surprised to find there was a bug there too.

  He floated Box at Theroux and indicated that he should check his own crotch. The result was the same. It began to seem more than possible that all the standard issue coveralls had short-range transmitters concealed in the zip seams. Was it all standard issue everywhere? That would make it a major conspiracy. Who would do that and why? Who could do that? Nathan saw by his face that similar questions were probably just occurring to Theroux.

  Silently they destroyed the bugs, including the one which showed up in the second unused pair of coveralls, and Nathan made a cursory scan of the quarters without turning up any more. Only when this had been done did Theroux say, “What the fuck are they for?”

  Nathan shook his head. Butler obviously knew enough to tune into them when he wanted to snoop on meetings and conversations. The question was, did he stumble across them, or did he know about them from the beginning? Part of the conspiracy or a lucky busybody? “Maybe we should ask your friend Butler,” he said.

  “Simon?” Theroux laughed, his amusement at the notion quite genuine. “Gimme a break. You’re not suggesting he’s behind these things?”

  “I don’t know, David. But I do know he’s been listening into my conversations.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Fairly sure.” And if he’s been listening into my conversations… Nathan thought.

  “Shit,” said Theroux, no longer amused. “And if he’s been listening into your conversations, five’ll get you ten he’s been listening into everyone’s.”

  Obs
curely sorry for the American, Nathan said, “Not necessarily. It depends on what he wanted to know.”

  Theroux turned towards the doorway. “And why he wanted to know it,” he said grimly.

  “Where d’you think you’re going?” asked Nathan.

  “I think I’m going to tackle him. Maybe about chest high. Hit him in the numbers, like they used to say.”

  “No, you’re not.” It was a flat command, and it stopped Theroux in his tracks. “There’s no point,” Nathan went on. “You wouldn’t learn anything you didn’t know already; and he would.”

  Theroux turned slowly. He was still angry, and knowing Nathan was right did nothing to help. “You don’t think he’ll notice maybe, that his bug went off the air?” he asked trying to sound sarcastic, though his heart was not really in it.

  Nathan returned Box to the equipment belt attached to his sleeping frame. “Sooner or later,” he said. “You want to make it sooner, and tell him why?”

  “Smart-ass,” Theroux muttered.

  “Knowledge is power,” Nathan said, “and the fewer people that have it, the more powerful it is.”

  “Very deep,” said Theroux, “What’s it from: Dictatorship for Fun and Profit?”

  “Something like that,” said Nathan. “The good guys should bear it in mind, though, don’t you think?” He smiled his most charming smile. “Assuming they want to survive. So, shall we go and select a suit for me? Preferably one that’ll keep on functioning while I’m out there?”

  Even after the water tank training and all the extra studying, fitting on the spacesuit and checking the seals and systems still felt like a brand new experience to Nathan. The suit was clumsy and confining, and despite the lack of gravity seemed almost heavy. It was like being enveloped in a leather duvet. So much for the rubbish the instructors had given him about weightlessness making the difference. Already he had a touch of claustrophobia, and they hadn’t got to the helmet yet.