by Jerry Boyd
Dingus said, “Gene, please page John and Jane to the ready room.”
Gene said, “Of course, Mr. Sloan.”
I asked, “What are you thinking, Dingus?”
He replied, “I’m thinking none of us has enough knowledge of Earth politics to know if you are making correct assumptions, or not. No offense, Diego, but you haven’t been on the team long enough for me to get a feel for where you stand.”
Diego replied, “None taken, Dingus. This is an important decision. You need the best council you can get.”
Gene must’ve taken it upon himself to give Jane and John transit priority, because they showed up in almost no time at all. John said, “Wow, I’ve never had the transit get hijacked before. What’s up?”
I said, “We’ve got a tricky situation, and we need your help deciding what to do.” I filled them in on what was going on. Jane said, “Well, Bob, your plan sounds safe for the company, but are we missing a trick, not interviewing the taikonauts?”
I asked, “You’re thinking we might be able to recruit one or more of them?”
John said, “Well, it’s plain you’re not going to let them return to China safely. Anywhere they go on Earth, Chinese intelligence is going to be looking for them.”
I said, “Can we trust Steve’s methods on someone from an entirely different culture?”
Jane replied, “They seem to work on Galactics just fine. I see what you mean, though. They might see it as perfectly acceptable to work for us as long as it took them to get ahold of one of our saucers to take back to China.”
Gene said, “Steve is on the line, if you’d like to ask him.”
I said, “Definitely hanging out with Topper too much. Put him on.”
“Hey, Boss, what’s up?”
“Need to know how well your cold reading techniques would work on someone from China.”
Steve said, “I’d have less confidence in it, for sure. Between the translation problems, and different facial expressions, I wouldn’t want to risk much money on it. Why do you ask, Boss?”
“We’re out on the edge of the system, chasing a drive flare. Turns out the Chinese captured a pirate ship and flew it out here. We’re debating what to do next.”
Steve said, “You’re considering interviewing the crew, to see if they want to join up?”
“The notion has been raised. How do you feel about it?”
He replied, “I can’t think of any skills they might have that would make it worth the extra risk, Boss.”
John said, “You really don’t think you could read them?”
Steve replied, “The only time I lost money playing poker when I didn’t mean to, was playing against a Chinese fellow. Their culture is different enough to make their reactions hard to read. If I had a lot more practice, maybe, but I know I’m not good at reading people from that part of the world.”
Dingus said, “That settles it. If our expert doesn’t think we can trust the technique, we can’t use it. That leaves us the truth helmet, and I’ve seen those beat a time or two. I’m in favor of Bob’s plan. Anyone disagree?”
Zoom said, “It’s too bad we couldn’t just dump them off on the Patrol and let them figure it out. It seems like we wind up taking care of an awful lot of stuff that should be Patrol business.”
Nikki said, “That’s for sure, but if we turn them in, the Patrol will be up in our business, too. That’s the part we’re trying to avoid, right, Bob?”
I said, “It is. So, what you all are saying, is that none of you can come up with anything better than my weak plan?”
Sally said, “I believe that to be the case, Captain.”
“Let’s get this done, then. Zoom, let Scotti know we’ll need another crew to haul a ship to Earth space. Meeting adjourned.”
I went back to the bridge, trailing spectators. Topper sang out, “Captain on the bridge!” I replied, “As you were. Mr. Topper, I have the conn. Ruth, ease us up into stunner range.” I looked over to make sure Tex was on the weapons console. “Tex, when she gets you close enough to be sure, zap ‘em good. Sensors make sure they all go down like they should.” The ‘Aye, Sir’s were hot and heavy. Ruth eased us up, and then asked, “Close enough, Tex?”
He replied, “I’d like it if you could shave about ten percent off our distance, Ma’am.” She went back to her console. Tex said, “That should do nicely. Let’s see.” Sensors called out, “I show all the occupants passed out.”
I saw that Sally had followed me to the bridge. I said, “Sally, could you get the Marines over there to put on some nighty-nights, and prep that ship to be brought aboard a freighter?”
She replied, “On their way, Sir.”
“Good work.”
Nikki spoke up. “Captain, I’m in their computer. I could fly them aboard a freighter, so the Marines wouldn’t have to worry about maintaining pressure while they go aboard.”
I said, “Sally, does that work with what you have planned?”
Sally replied, “Very well, Boss. I’ve told the Marines what is happening, and they are ready to take care of business, as soon as the ship comes aboard. Luckily, they’re in a ship big enough to hold that junk heap.”
Our freighter lined up on the smaller ship, and Nikki greased it in, smooth as could be. Topper switched us to the internal cameras, so we got to see the gravity slowly coming up in the bay to secure the ship. The Marines stormed aboard, and shortly Andre’s second-in-command came over the comm. “All secure, Sir. Do you want us to collect anything for intelligence?”
I said, “Sally, can you take charge of that? You can scan his input much faster than I can. He doesn’t need to be waiting around on a slow organic to figure out what to do.”
Sally said, “On it, Boss.”
Topper gave us video taken directly from one of the Marines, showing the inside of the Chinese ship. Apparently, Andre’s boys had put the taikonauts in their bunks after they put the nighty-nights on. Sally said, “They want to know what to do with the small arms locker, Boss?”
I looked at John. He said, “Might as well empty it out. If they’re unarmed, they’re less likely to cause trouble when they get back.”
I looked at Sally. “You heard the man. Do they know procedures for safing the weapons?”
She said, “Yes, Boss. Mr. Topper has provided them with plenty of instructional material on the subject.”
The Marines opened the weapons locker, taking out several bullpup rifles and service pistols. Then we saw a light machine gun, and a grenade launcher. John said, “What did they expect to find, that they thought they needed that kind of firepower?”
Nikki said, “I got everything off their mission computer, maybe there is something there that will shed some light.”
Sally said, “The Marines got good images of all their paper documents, once we get them translated, they might help.”
I said, “Good job clearing that weapons locker, but I think we need to make sure none of these fine individuals have personal weapons hidden somewhere.”
Dingus said, “Yep. If they’re paranoid enough to have that big a weapons locker on that small a ship, I doubt they would be trusting enough to put everything in the locker.”
One of the Marines spoke up. “Sir, we’ve found a demolitions locker as well. How do you want us to proceed?”
I said, “Hold, until I get our demolitions man on the line to take a look. Gene, can you hook Steve in with video of what he’s looking at?”
Gene said, “On it, Boss.” Once Steve was on the line, he said, “These fellas brought a lot of party favors. Wonder what they figured they were going to come up against?”
I said, “We’ve been wondering that, too. Can you help the Marines get that stuff out of there, safely?”
“No problem, Boss.”
Steve worked with them to clear the locker. While they were doing that, the other bots found that everyone aboard had at least one personal weapon. When everything was clear and safe, they left the ship a
nd closed it up. Their freighter came back to the Gene. After a pause for unloading, it launched again, vanishing from sight when it went to FTL. John said, “I better go check all that stuff into the armory.” Jane asked, “Need a hand?”
He replied, “Sure. Thanks.”, and off they went. Dingus asked, “Do you think we need to set up some kind of lookout, so we can get ahead of these people trying to fly between stars without any know-how?”
I replied, “Sounds like a good idea, but how would we tell what star they were headed for? There’s not a way to track ships in FTL, is there?”
Sally said, “No, Boss, there isn’t. The only thing we could do would be to break into their computers and find out their intended destinations before they jumped.”
I said, “Let’s all think about it, and see what we can come up with. So far, we’ve been lucky, catching these suicide missions before anybody gets hurt. No offense, Diego.”
He said, “None taken, Boss. With all the sabotage we had, it looked like our mission was designed to fail, for whatever reason.”
My comm rang. That was unusual enough for me to check the caller ID. Nearly all my calls were coming through Gene by then. It was Mike. I answered, “Hi, Mike. What’s up?”
“Sorry for the deception, Bob. It’s Bill, I needed to talk to you without being recorded, so I borrowed Sergeant Darning’s comm.”
I said, “What can I do for you, Bill?”
“You could quit sending me confused travelers who don’t have any idea how they came to be rescued, but I doubt it’s likely that you will.”
“Oops. I wish you had called a few minutes earlier. We just sent out another batch.”
Bill asked, “Are they going to sneak into the system with no drive flash as well?”
I said, “Most likely. I’ve been trying to keep that tech company confidential. I thought if it got out it would make your job harder.”
“You’re right about that. Thanks for thinking of us. Who are you sending this time?”
I said, “A ship with Chinese markings. Zoom says it used to be a pirate ship, with probably the worst maintenance in the fleet, because the Captain wouldn’t let her get ahold of it.”
Bill asked, “Where did you find them?”
“That planet we agreed not to make public.”
“I see. The other crews said they were at a different planet. What can you tell me about that?”
I said, “It looks like an interesting place from orbit, but the air is contaminated with chemicals that make people aggressive. Not a fun place to visit.”
“Dare I ask how you happened to find it?”
I said, “Phonelia and her crew found it, while they were out looking for marooned saucers.”
Bill asked, “So, were there any marooned saucers there?”
“Nossir. We found a couple of colonies, and they would probably be better off moved to somewhere the air didn’t make them assholes, but we didn’t have enough people with us to accomplish that, or anyplace to take them.”
“I always get the feeling there’s more to a story when I talk to you, Bob. Do I want to know what you’re not telling me?”
I said, “Well, Bill, I don’t know if you’ll want to know or not, but I do know I don’t trust the comms enough to tell you right now.”
“If it’s more fun than these two specimens from the Space Force you dropped off, I don’t want to know.”
“They didn’t make it home?”
Bill said, “They managed to set off a distress beacon that I was legally obligated to answer. I’ve got them in holding, till I can figure out what to do with them. The female has me tempted to give her the opportunity to do something I could space her for.”
“Be careful. She gave us a real ‘suicide bomber’ vibe.”
“She claims she never talked to you.”
I replied, “She didn’t, but we did clean all the weapons out from under her bunk. We also found all the parts she had removed and switched for inferior replacements. By the time we found them, there was only one crew member conscious. We put the right parts back in before we dropped them off.”
“Her partner claimed he was attacked by military robots.”
“The bot that got shot was a medbot, trying to get him into an autodoc. He did get stunned after he did that.”
Bill said, “The female also says that most of their crew was kidnapped by the evil alien robots.”
“That should read, ‘Hired by the ornery native hillbilly’, Bill.”
“How’s that?”
I said, “The fellow that was awake didn’t think he would live through going home, so I offered him a job. He talked the other two folks on his crew who didn’t have cranio-rectal inversions into coming with him. I guess it would have worked out better if I could have hired them all, instead of leaving you a mess, but there was just no way I was going to trust those two.”
Bill said, “I hate to be a butt about it, but I need to talk to one of those folks to make sure.”
“Do you have your voice stress gizmo set up, Bill?”
“I do.”
“Hang on one.” I motioned to Diego. “Talk to the man. He thinks I’m holding you captive.”
Diego took the comm and said, “Hello?”
It took a few rounds of back and forth before Bill had enough data on his truth detector to cover his tender hindquarters. Diego handed me back the comm and said, “He’s satisfied.” I said, “Will that do it, Bill?”
Bill said, “Yes, he’s happy with his new job. Sorry, but the regulations say I need to have proof on file, I can’t just take your word, no matter how much I trust you.”
“I understand. I do need a favor from you, though.”
“I shudder to think. What do you need, Bob?”
I said, “Dingus will probably be home in time for paintball, but I may not be. In that case, would you mind being the other team captain?”
“Let’s see, you want me to embarrass myself against the amazing tactical knowledge of the storied Dingolus Slongum? Isn’t that a lot to ask?”
“Well, Jane could do it, but she might not be back either.”
Bill said, “I’m just giving you crap, Bob. Of course, I would do that. There is one other thing I needed to ask you about, while I have you on the line. That Guide crew that came back had a strange story about their Captain willfully marooning them and destroying their comm so that they couldn’t call for help. By the time they managed to overpower him and throw him out the lock, the damage was done, and they had to resort to the autodocs.”
“Would you like me to send you copies of the logs, from before they monkeyed with them to try and cover their butts?”
“You mean the real story is different?”
I said, “Just a little. Captain Slongum attended a party thrown by a General Rottum. One thing led to another, and Captain Slongum was found outside playing tonsil hockey with the General’s daughter. His ship was assigned to survey that system as a punishment. Their FTL and comms were sabotaged. Captain Slongum went for a walk of his own free will, because they were one autodoc short.”
Bill asked, “You have proof of that?”
“We have the copies we made of the ships logs. Whether they will hold up in court, I don’t know. Chain of custody is going to be a pain, because Bob’s Saucer Repair will have to disclose a number of things, we would rather hold confidential in order to prove we were where we say we were.”
Bill said, “Send me what you have. There have already been accusations of tampering regarding their log. Your copy will show no such evidence, I hope?”
I said, “None, Sir.”
“Thanks, Bob. Their story is building tensions between Slongums and Rottums. None of us want to go back to that mess.”
“Nope. I’d much rather have you as a friend. You’re way too good at being an enemy.”
Bill said, “I’ll take that as a compliment. I’ve taken up enough of your time. When should we expect that next ship?”
“They left just before you called. I’d say two or three days.”
“We’ll be watching. Talk to you later.”
I said, “Bye, Bill.”
Nikki asked, “What was all that about?”
I said, “The Major had a few questions about what we had been up to lately. I figured it was better to tell him what he wanted to know and maintain good relations with the Patrol. Topper, could you send Mike a copy of the logs of that Guide ship we found marooned? The Major wants to keep it out of official channels for some reason.”
“On it, Boss.”
I said, “Ruth, could you take us back to the planet, please? I’m ready for some shore leave.”
“Right away, Boss.”
“Mr. Topper, do you have any business on the planet?”
Topper said, “I’d like to see Charlie before we leave, but other than that, no.”
“Do you mind if I go ashore before you?”
“Of course not, Boss. Once all you organic types are dirtside, we’re going to have the galaxy’s biggest game of Frisbee, all through the passageways.”
I said, “Maybe I should leave Snitz here. Sounds like his kind of party.”
Topper replied, “I’m sure there are lots of smells that need to be investigated down there, Boss.”
“You’re probably right. You have the conn.”
Ruth spoke up. “Could I be relieved? I’d like to see how Morning Flower and her friends are doing with their piloting.”
Topper said, “Once the fighters are recovered, I will page you a replacement. No one aboard right now is qualified to fly Gene.”
Ruth said, “Understood.” Topper looked at me and asked, “Do you have a problem with me turning loose a ship for her to come down in?”
I said, “Nope. Anybody who wants, and doesn’t have a vital job to do, is welcome to come ashore. Oh, I almost forgot. Please keep enough crew aboard to fight the ship, if need be.”
Topper asked, “You expecting trouble, Boss?”
“I didn’t send an invitation, but you know how it is about just showing up.”
“Murphy is our shepherd, Boss.”
