Here Be Monsters - Chapter 26

     Rollie and Bujdoso had rejoined Dirk's team, the general consensus being that there was safety in numbers, although what threat they might face on a derelict ship, adrift in a far flung system, and open to space like this, was up for debate.
     "So how can you be sure this is the same guy?  You said that he got out the year after you got in."  He asked Dirk, as they stood around the body,  "Including the last three years with us, that makes, what, almost eight years since the last time you saw him."
     "Trust me Rollie, its him.  The real question is:  Who killed him, and why?"  He replied, his voice hard, leached of all feeling.  "Bull was as good as they get, but someone broke his arm, ripped his face up, and put a knife in him where it would do the most damage without having to get through his body armor.  That takes a hell of a lot of skill, considering how well trained he was, and how heavily enhanced his reflexes were."
     "Maybe Doc Ujio can do an autopsy, or something; either way, we have to report this back to the Captain, don't we?"  Interjected Hicks, her voice sounding haunted.
     Xu decided to get his own ideas in the open.  "Look, what do we really know right now?  We have a man who appears to have been murdered, but no idea why, or by whom, right?  The Captain's going to want more information anyway, so why not finish our job, then report?  Maybe we'll find out something along the way."  He stopped to gesture at the drifting corpse, "It's not like he'll mind waiting."
     Rollie watched for a reaction from Dirk at the casual lack of respect being displayed for his late friend, but it was difficult to gauge what he might be thinking since his face was behind the solid faceplate of his helmet.  He was relieved when Dirk appeared to shrug his shoulders, and said:  "Xu's right, let's finish what we came to do; trust me, if Bullard was able to talk, he'd tell us: 'mission first', but let's all stick together for now, the forward sections can wait."
     They made their way aft through the ship's 'Broadway' maintenance/transfer tube, and Rollie could see that the bulkhead doors heading aft were only partially shut, which made little sense, unless they had been forced open after the power was lost.  The corridor was as dark as the rest of the ship, and their hand held flashlights, and suit mounted spotlights, threw noonday circles of light around them with almost no peripheral illumination in the airless vacuum.  It wasn't until the beam from his own flashlight washed across a dark blotch on the floor, however, that he began to see any cause for concern.  The spot looked suspiciously like dried blood, but it was smeared along the floor as if someone had dragged a body away.  The smear came from the forward area of the ship, which they had reserved for later inspection, and Rollie was just as glad they were headed toward the stern.
     Dirk and Hicks led the way to the next set of doors which, while partially open, were still too close together to let them through in vacsuits.  The two of them grabbed a door each, and with their feet braced against the opposite, used the augmented strength of the exos they wore to force the doors open enough to let them pass.  Without waiting for instructions, Bujdoso and Xu joined in, adding at least something to the overall effort.  Rollie hung back to observe, since there wasn't any more room for another body on the doors, and he would need to activate the manual lock that would keep them from slamming shut when they let go.  He could imagine the racket that the pneumatically actuated mechanism being forcibly reversed would have made if the ship had air.
     "OK guys, that should do it."  He told them, once they had gotten the doors apart wide enough, and pulled the lever under the control panel locking them open.
     They moved into the next section, focused on finding the access stairwell to the areas below Broadway, and as a result, they had ignored the dark corners of the corridor.  A sudden hint of movement caused Monika Bujdoso to pan her hand held spotlight above her head, and she found herself less than half a meter away from the outstretched arms of a nightmarishly grotesque figure drifting in her direction.
     Her screams came one after the other, as her hands battered the controls of her vacsuit's EVA flight pack in a panicked effort to get away.  Her thrashing had the opposite effect, and she sent herself careening right into the figure's waiting embrace.  In the seconds of confusion that reigned, as everyone else tried to understand what was happening, Bujdoso suddenly went silent, her voice drifting off to a murmur, then stopping entirely. 
     Rollie quickly maneuvered over to her, and pulled her away from the body with which she had collided.  The body was a frightening patchwork of cybernetic grafts, implanted demal enhancements, and Saints only knew what else, but it was as dead as the rest of the ship.  He looked at Bujdoso through the clear visor of her helmet, then checked her vitals using their suit's emergency communications network, but her life signs were reading within acceptable limits.
     "I overrode her suit's medical support unit, and pumped her full of sedative.  She'll be out for a while.  As of right now, I'm putting the survey on hold, and you're all heading back."  Dirk told them, while carefully examining the latest gruesome find in the house of horrors in which they had found themselves.
     "Wait just a second, what do mean 'you're'?  Just what do you think you're gonna do?"  Rollie asked, acidly.  "And another thing, how the hell did you override Bujdoso's MSU? That's supposed to be impossible."
     Hicks was clearly shaken, but managed to interject:  "Who cares?  Let's just get out of here, this fucking ship is creeping me out."
     "I have to agree, Rollie,"  Said Xu, "something's definitely weird about all this.  And that - thing, is not what I'd have expected to find here."
     Rollie, fuming in the relative privacy of his own vacsuit, wasn't giving up without making one last argument:  "OK, fine.  But DJ, you know as well as I do that you can't go on alone without violating at least a dozen safety regs; so Xu, Hicks, you two get to tow Bujdoso out to Mule-1 and wait.  DJ, I'm coming with you."  He ended with finality.
     "Rollie, I don't think you underst -"
     "Forget it pal, you ain't gonna go alone, and that's that.  If you wanna stop me, shoot me."  He said, cutting off any further argument.
     "Suit yourself, but I have a feeling you'll wish you'd gone with them."  Dirk said, pointing at their crewmates, who were wasting no time getting underway.
     Rollie had no real desire to continue further into the ship's interior, but he wasn't about to allow his friend to risk himself, alone, in the most hostile environment known to humanity.  He decided to err on the side of caution, and issued one last instruction to the others:  "Xu, start a countdown clock; if you haven't heard anything from us in six hours, then call the Captain and tell him what happened."
     "Last chance to back out, Rollie."  Dirk said, as the two of them watched the others head back.
     "Fuck you, DJ.  Let's go."  He replied, caustically, still annoyed with Dirk for trying to shut him out of whatever was going on.
     Dirk didn't say a word, he simply headed for the stairwell that gave access to the central areas of the ship.  With only the two of them, Rollie now found that the shadows seemed deeper, and the darkness enveloping them more profound.  His Davis-Arctica vacsuit lacked the LIDAR, radar, and image enhancement of Dirk's Baccardax exo, but he really didn't need any, since the amps in his cybernetic eyes gave him full low light vision.  He placed a diffusion filter over the front of his flashlight, and dimmed it until he fount a level that optimized his eyes' abilities, without compromising their image resolution.  His immediate surroundings became clearly visible, and he saw a few scattered objects drifting weightlessly in the stairwell.  His eyes were recording an image of each object he saw, just in case it was necessary for later reference.
     Their descent was interrupted by the hatch that sealed off this part of the ship, which was sealed shut, and resisted their efforts to open it.  After five minutes of trying, and little to show for it, Rollie was becoming frustrated with the idea of continuing further.
     "This is pointless.  Why don't we go back up, and move on to the next section?"  He suggested.
     Dirk didn't appear to hear him, instead he pulled an interface cable from its compartment on his exo's forearm, and plugged it into the socket on the door's control panel.  Rollie couldn't see the point, there was no power to move the door.  After half a minute, Dirk detached the cable, and retracted it back into its compartment.
     "Satisfied?  Now can we move on?"  Asked Rollie.
     "Let me borrow your hooligan bar for a second."
     Rollie shrugged his shoulders and handed it over, watching as Dirk jammed its flat end into the slot in the door designed to accommodate it, and braced himself while pushing on the opposite end, using the frame of the door as a fulcrum.  He was about to point out the futility of further effort, when the door slid open a few centimeters
     "OK, that shouldn't have happened.  What did you do?"  Rollie demanded, incredulously.
     "Used my cranial interface to disable the lock, the exo's cable can run enough power to the systems to make them work as long as they're plugged in.  An old Marine trick.  Give me a hand with the door."  Dirk explained, handing back the hooligan bar.
     They pulled on the door by hand, opening it enough to allow them through, and found themselves in a room unlike any either one of them would have expected to find on a colony ship.  It was an open area with two sets of elevator doors opposite a sealed hatch between two security desks.  Rollie moved to the sealed hatch, which had 'LAB 03' stenciled on it, and a small window inset at eye height, to try and see what lay on the other side.
     "Uh, Dirk?  Something's blocking the window, want to try your voodoo on this one?"
     Dirk didn't say anything, but he didn't hesitate, and plugged into the data port on the coded entry panel next to the door.  He remained still for more than a minute before the door popped open.
     "Whatever's behind this thing, somebody didn't want unrestricted access to it.  I almost didn't think that my old military overrides were going to work."  He said, grabbing the edge of the door and forcing it back into its recess in the wall.
     "Holy vestments of the Saints!  What the fuck is this?"  Rollie asked, looking into the room ahead.
     The open hatch revealed a room populated only by the dead.  It was full of bodies, and parts thereof, all of which were distributed randomly throughout the space beyond.  Random objects drifted among the bodies, giving the whole scene the look of a twisted and macabre piece of modern art.
     Rollie stood there, motionless, trying to unsee the horribly mutilated corpses in front of him, swallowed nervously, and said:  "You were right DJ, I wish to hell I'd gone with the others."
     Dirk was silent as he stepped into the chamber of horrors.

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 25

     The Monolith-class colony transport was more than 700 meters long, and had a cross section of 77 meters by 42.  The ship was double hulled, with a sealed, airtight inner hull protected by an outer skin consisting of a highly flexible laminate of foamed titanium-aluminum alloy and boron fiber reinforced metaceramic.  The interstices between inner and outer hulls were filled with a low density elastomer foam designed to absorb any residual shock from impact on the outer hull, and prevent spall from compromising the inner.  Far from being indestructible, the hull of the ship was nevertheless proof against damage from impacts that would have destroyed or crippled it without those layers of flexible, passive defense.
     Dirk was cocooned in his Baccardax PA-2M exo, listening to the subliminal hiss of its life support system as he drifted along the ship's exterior, the relative silence of being on extravehicular activities broken only by the occasional burst of chatter from the Jester, or Rollie and Hicks on the suits' comm channel.  His exosuit's LIDAR showed him a range of information on the helmet's heads up display, regarding the very large hole in the outer hull at the location of the ship's main cargo bay.  He saw that, at its widest point, the hole was 5.73 meters, and the edges were bent outward, meaning that the explosion which had created it had been internal.  It was his last stop along the section of the ship's hull that he was responsible for inspecting; Rollie, Hicks, and he were doing a preliminary exterior survey, before moving into the ship itself.  His survey had turned up several curious bits of data, not the least of which was the fact that the sockets for the emergency escape vehicles were all empty, and the ventral bay for the shuttlecraft was open to space, and empty as well.  He used the EVA pack to maneuver away from the ship's hull, making it easier for him to get a good comm signal.
     Time to check with the others
     "Rollie, what's your status, find anything out of the ordinary?" He inquired over the suit channel.
     "I'm just about finished my sweep, but aside from some minor damage caused by micrometeorites, it doesn't seem too bad.  I should be headed up your way in two or three minutes."  Replied Rollie, succinctly.
     "Good enough.  Hicks, got anything on your end?"  He asked her.
     "Nothing unusual, but the FTL drive module is still intact, so we've got that going for us.  I tested the forward airlock, but it looks like even the backups have failed.  If we want to get in, then we'll need one of the CATs to make a door."  She reported back.
     Dirk had considered loading up one of the CAT-Hyundai salvage mechs on Mule-1 for the trip over from the Jester, but had decided against it in favor of a more rapid departure.  Fueling, prepping, and loading one of the CATs took several hours, and he had wanted to get things moving along, so he had gotten one of the tug drivers to bring his small survey crew out on the Mule.  The other three members of his team consisted of Sung Kwon, their tug driver, Monika Bujdoso and Yong-Bai Xu, both of whom were first rate salvage operations techs.
     Monika and Yong-Bai were currently examining the hole in the Monolith's main cargo bay, looking for any structural safety issues that might present a danger to working in that area.  The ship had lost all power, having been abandoned for what was probably several years, as a result, gravity and life support had failed a long time ago.  The loss of gravity was problematic, but if the ship's inner hull was entirely without air, if too many of the essential crew sections were open to space, or at air pressure too low to sustain long term operations, then the value of their discovery would be far lower than had originally been hoped.  The Jester had very large air reserves for just such problems, but they were nowhere near the size needed to get a Monolith aired up, except perhaps in the most critical areas.  The transport should have its own reserves, however, the condition of the ship made it unlikely that those could be counted on to be available.  The large hole in the hull had opened the largest single space in the ship to hard vacuum.
     He could see Bujdoso and Xu packing up the survey equipment they had been using, and a quick glance at his exo's HUD showed that Hicks and Rollie were headed his way.  He already had the information directly through his cranial interface, but he occasionally felt the need to do things himself, just to keep the skills sharp.  He was using the CI to continually monitor his life support and power levels, however, and he had direct neural access to the EVA pack patched into his exo as well, giving him the ability to maneuver with far greater ease than with only the manual controls.  Hicks' suit was completely fly-by-wire, using a pair of cranial interfaces - one behind each ear, and could literally move herself around just by thinking about it.
     "Bujdoso, did you and Xu get a good look at the damage to the hull?  Can we head inside now?"  He asked, impatiently, wanting nothing more than to get to it.
     "Internally, the ship is OK, but the cargo hold isn't going to be aired up anytime soon.  The explosion that made the hole doesn't appear to have hit any of the major structural supports, or load bearing framework, although it goes without saying that there's a lot of debris floating around in there."  Bujdoso reported back, her last statement a subtle warning.
     "OK, let's switch things up a bit.  Bujdoso, you and Rollie, get to work forward; Xu, you, Hicks, and I will work our way aft.  Remember, this is just survey work; if you get jammed up, don't force your way in, just mark it off, and double back.  On the other hand, if you see something interesting, tag it, and we'll check it out later.  Ready?"  He waited until he had four thumbs up, "Alright, let's do this."
     He and the others drifted silently towards the looming bulk of the colony ship, which had appeared small from afar, with only the starry black of space to which to compare it, but as they landed on the portside outer hull, their immediate frame of reference made them realize just exactly how large the ship truly was.  Rollie was the only one who didn't bother to orient himself feet to the hull, Dirk and the rest had done so automatically, to give the comforting impression that they were standing on the edge of a hole in the floor, Rollie simply hung there directly over the hole, positioned at an angle that allowed him to see into its Stygian depths.
     Dirk could hear the grin on his face over their shared comm frequency.
     "Oh, this is gonna be fun.  Beware the curse of the flying dutchman, spacers.  Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"  He joked, in a hokey impression of some cheap thespian of the early 20th century, as he drifted slowly into the unknown.
     The small upward tilt, and slight shaking of Bujdoso's helmet told Dirk that Monika was probably rolling her eyes, in a time-honored expression of exasperation mixed with disbelief.  He thought that Xu might have snorted, either in disgust, or amusement he couldn't tell, but Hicks was vocal with her opinion.
     "That's not funny, you little runt!  Cut it out!"  She said, angrily, her voice subtly edged in fear.
     "Cut the chatter, both of you, I need you focused on the job at hand."  Dirk chided them, before he stepped off the edge of the hole and initiated a short burst of thrust from his EVA pack, dropping into the darkness.
     The cargo bay was of fairly conventional layout, with a main floor for palletized freight, and secure cargo modules stacked, and clamped in place, along the walls to port and starboard.  The fore and aft bulkheads were left clear, for storing the equipment to move the cargo around, and was also where the doors to the areas of the ship fore and aft of their point of entry.  Dirk, Xu, and Hicks drifted toward the aft doorway, their suits' external lights casting hard edged shadows across the bay, the absence of air leaving the beams of light undiffused.
     "DJ, we're in," called out Rollie from the forward doorway, "I'll see if we can't get this done quick, and then we can help you guys out."
     "Right."  Dirk replied, curtly.
     Xu went to work on the door, prying open the panel for the manual release, and pulled the handle inside, disconnecting the door's primary motor and safety locks.  Once he was done, it took little effort to get the door open using a spacer's pry bar, often called a 'hooligan bar'.  Dirk was given to understand that the term was derived from the name Halligan, presumably the inventor's, and he was always glad to carry one on EVA.
     The corridor beyond was a mess, there was debris floating everywhere, making it virtually impossible to use his exo's LIDAR array to make his way along.  With a disgusted sigh, he activated his suit's external cameras, and the corridor became visible in full color high resolution inside his helmet.
     "Hicks, Xu, there should be a stairwell just up ahead, let's see if we can't get into it.  Maybe we can get to Broadway, and take a straight shot all the way to the engineering sections, then make our way forward."  He said, with more optimism than he really felt.
     Hicks was in the lead, and headed up the short hallway to the main stairwell, only to find that the horizontal pressure doors between the decks had been closed.  Xu went to work, but they were stopped yet again, and again at every level.  The ship was completely without air, and that meant the doors had been sealed before the air bled out, otherwise why bother.  Dirk was trying to figure out what could have gone so catastrophically wrongful, as they made their way up the stairwell.  He still couldn't understand why anyone would be crazy enough to want to colonize a planet this far out.  He was using the time he had to wait, while Hicks and Xu opened the last door, to do some speculating.
     Maybe their preliminary survey turned up something really valuable.  Something so valuable that the cost of a colony ship was made practical.  If that was the case, Dirk, they should have come back for it, shouldn't they?  Maybe Cam was right, and the information got lost in the -  His train of thought was violently derailed by Hicks' scream of terror in his ears.
     "SHIT!"  Exclaimed Xu, at pretty much the exact same time.
     Dirk, without conscious thought, grabbed his 11mm pistol from the holster on his chest, and used his cranial interface to activate the exo's HUD targeting system, before he saw what had elicited such a reaction from his two companions.
     It was a body.  A very dead body, wearing what appeared to be a uniform and light body armor, common to corporate security personnel.  Dirk pulled Hicks and Xu out of the way, and holstering his pistol, took a closer look at their grisly discovery.  He grabbed the armor the figure was wearing and saw that a knife was sticking out of the right side, just at the armor's weak point.
     Nicely done. He thought, admiringly.  I doubt I could have done better.
     He used both hands to turn the body around as it floated in zero-G, and he was able to see what had probably caused the reaction from Hicks.  The face looked like it had been savaged by an animal.  The vacuum of space had preserved the body, and he could see that there had been little blood loss around the damage, meaning that it had probably happened after death.  He looked over the rest of the body, and saw a Velcro name tag on the armor vest and pulled it off to read it.
     Dirk spent a long time looking at it before doing anything else.  A flood of memories washed over him, from his first year in the Alliance Marine Corps, and the man who had mentored him through the initial, perilous months of his first tour of duty on Draconis.
     The name on the tag was T. Bullard.

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 24

     Rebecca Hicks had been shocked when, for no apparent reason, Dirk had simply bolted out of the Crypt, and left her to do the prep of the vacsuits and EVA gear by herself.  He hadn't said a word, but she had gotten the impression from his facial expression that something had been very wrong, She had just decided to tap into the ship's internal communications, when Rollie had come back through the hatch and yelled, "Hicks! Damage control stations, now!"  Startled by his barking voice, she had assumed at first that it was another of their sophomoric jokes, and turned to say something offensive, but had stopped cold when she saw the look on his face.  She had dropped everything in her hands and sprinted to her assigned damage control station in Engineering.
     The engineering section had a realtime feed directly from the bridge, and Hicks was able to watch in horror, as they came within a few millimeters of the Jester being hulled.  The chief engineer, Brostowski, had shown her where the last missile would've hit them, had it not been intercepted.  She had quickly walked to the head, and promptly vomited after realizing that the engineering bay in which she was standing would have been completely destroyed.  Hicks was beginning to suspect that she had been more than slightly foolish to take this job, but she had been thinking with her wallet instead of her brains, and the idea of a big salvage bonus had tipped the scales.  Now, she just hoped that she got out alive.
     Once the immediate crisis had passed, there was work to do, and she headed back to the Crypt to finish preparing the EVA gear for when they located the ship they'd come to find.
     Dirk didn't show up until two days later, when the Captain announced that they had - finally - positively identified the colony ship drifting along in the space between the Omega locus, which it turned out, had been along their own vector, and was being heavily guarded by remote AADS units.  The one that had fired on them had been closest to their flight path, and if they had altered course in the opposite direction, they would likely have been fired upon by as many as five of them.  The ship was almost directly between the locus and the planet, and appeared to be dead in space; emissions were limited to a slightly elevated rad count from the main drive, but at a level that suggested the ship had been dormant for some time.
     "So what do you think happened, Sinclair?  A whole colony ship, lost in space, and no one comes looking?  That doesn't seem weird to you?"  She asked Dirk, as he was prepping his exo for the work ahead.
     "Yeah, I admit, it's more than passing strange, but companies the size of ARA Corp can trip over their own dong just like we can.  Resodyne bought them out, and they're even bigger, so the scale of any potential screwup increases as well.  This is just an example of a bureaucratic fuck-up of epic proportions.  Try not to obsess about it.  I sure as hell don't."  He replied, without taking his eyes off of what he was doing.
     "OK, I get that it doesn't worry you, but seriously, what do you think happened?"  Hicks repeated, insistently.
     He set down the diagnostic testing equipment and turned to face her before speaking, and the look on his face was hard.
     "Let me be clear:  The fact that a colony ship slipped through the cracks is immensely worrying to me.  Those colonists must have had families who would eventually have wondered why they never heard from them.  More than that, is the location of this system; we are at least a dozen light years beyond the edge of the Known Sphere, and there's got to be better systems closer to the core.  Believe me when I say:  I'm worried.  And I'm worried because I have no clue what happened, but I won't let that distract me from what needs to be done.  Now, if you plan to hang around, then make yourself useful, I got work to do."  He answered, with an edge of hostility to his voice.
     His answer gave her mind something new to consider that she'd not thought of before:  Families.  They would have come looking for answers eventually, and no company, even one as large as Resodyne, wanted the kind of public exposure that inability to answer those questions brought.  She decided that further information on the ARA Corp/Resodyne merger might hold answers, so she picked up her personal tablet and left the Crypt.  She went up to the crew lounge, and used its wireless network to access the ship's internal server, looking for any information on Resodyne's acquisition of ARA Corp.
     There wasn't much.  The ship's computer had one digipedia entry which contained little more than the contents of a corporate brochure.  The lack of information was galling, but not entirely unexpected, and she tried to take Dirk's advice, and not get obsessed.  She was just starting to think some impure thoughts vis-à-vis Mr Sinclair, when Alex happened to walk into the room.  She saw Hicks sitting alone, walked over to the couch, and dropped right next to her.  Alex was looking at her with a knowing grin; she made herself comfortable, propping her feet on the edge of the coffee table, and let out a long breath.
     "Chased you out of the Crypt already, did he?"  She asked, still smiling.  "Try not to take it personally; he likes to work on his exo alone.  Says it's a Zen thing.  He's the same way with the ship's weapon systems."
     Hicks knew the type, and she was the same way in most respects, but at least she could carry on a conversation while working.
     "Zen, huh?  No offense, but I don't know what you see in that guy.  How did the two of you hook up, anyways?"  She asked, without really expecting an answer.
     Alex looked at her with obvious incredulity, then laughed so hard that tears were running down her cheeks before she got herself under control.  Hicks didn't get the joke, and was about to get up and leave, when Alex grabbed her arm and pulled her back down.
     "Whew!  Sorry, you just caught me off guard, there.  I wasn't laughing at you, exactly, but the first thing you said was - word for word - what Cam asked me when we had our recent blowup.  Actually, I tried to jump him his first day aboard, but he wouldn't be caught.  I was 17 at the time, and DJ's got some really strict ideas.  I had to wait almost six months, and I wasn't 18 a day when I finally nailed him down."  Alex said, without modesty.
     "So, love at first sight, or just six months of celibacy catching up with you?"  She inquired with a theatrical wink and a nudge.
     "Oh, it was pure lust at first, and I mean Lust, but I realized that I'd made an emotional commitment after it was too late, so I just decided to roll with it."  Alex shrugged.
     Best of luck with that.  Hicks thought to herself.
     "So what's your take on this job we're doing?  I tried asking DJ, and ended up with more questions, not less."  She asked Alex, with a mild note of frustration.
     "In all honesty, I find the idea of a colony ship just getting lost, without anyone saying a word, to be more than slightly nuts.  The really bizarre thing, though, is the fact that it seems to have been drifting in space for several years now.  Years.  You'd think someone would have come and take a look.  If it turns out to be loaded, then we're going to make a fortune, but even empty, there will be enough to make the crew very happy.  Hell, the bounty on that thing's FTL drive from DTI alone, would take care of our fuel costs for the next year."  Voicing an opinion that Hicks hadn't contemplated.
     Hicks was considering what she'd just heard, and she couldn't find any fault with the young woman's logic regarding the probable windfall regarding DTI's standing bounty on its FTL drive technology.  It was the seeming indifference on Resodyne's part to the loss of an asset whose value had to be in nine figures, easy.  Likely more; a lot more.  There was something strange going on that she simply couldn't verbalize, but it was there; hanging on the periphery of her thoughts, like a sort of mental hangnail.
     "I hate to sound like I'm not thrilled with the idea of a fat payday, but I just can't shake the feeling that this whole enterprise is gonna go sideways in particularly gruesome fashion."  She said, ominously.
     "Oh, come on!  You need to relax, girl."  Alex popped up off the couch and smiled down at her.  "It just so happens, I have a copy of the key to the liquor cabinet, so why don't I fix us both a couple of stiff drinks, and we can talk about all of the fun stuff we'll spend a ton of money on, when we make it back to civilization."
     Hicks found that the offer met with her approval, and she grinned appreciatively.
     "Now you're talking."

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 23

     Cameron sat in his bridge command chair and watched the main screen in front of him as the countdown timer ran down to zero.  They had been in FTL transit for ten weeks, two days, eleven hours, and 47 minutes.  His crew's nerves had frayed nearly to the breaking point, and now everyone on board was anxious with anticipation; hoping that sometime in the next couple of hours, their Captain had pulled a big, fat rabbit out of his hat.
     The trip out had actually gone better than he had feared, the only real problem had been Dirk and Alex; as always when two people lived and worked with one another, there had been an argument.  Cameron didn't know how it had started, but it had ended with Dirk losing his temper and calling Alex a dirty word, which was probably how he had gotten a split lip.  Nobody had seen her hit him, it had happened out of the view of the ship's security cameras, and Dirk, for all of his anger, had managed to keep a level head, and refused to accuse Alex of having done it.  Alex had admitted to it the next day, and had explained the circumstances, knowing full well that she was risking her career.  Cameron had already guessed most of what had happened, but hearing that he'd been right had annoyed him, and he'd given them a dressing down that had left both wondering if they would have a last paycheck, much less a career when they got back to Alliance territory.  He had finished by putting them on separate shifts, then giving each of them increased work loads.  The combination had kept the two of them apart for almost two weeks straight, and by the time Cameron let them have their original shifts back, they were more than ready to kiss and make up.  They'd set a new ship record for official noise complaints in a single shift, which was some kind of indicator, at any rate.
     The rest of the trip out after Vulcanfall had been boring to the point of insanity.  If it hadn't been for Dirk and Rollie's penchant for springing practical jokes on their unsuspecting crewmates, then the tension might very well have done some damage.  They had even managed to get him with a prank that involved causing his communication badge to make random flatulence noises whenever he walked within two meters of another member of the crew.  It wasn't exactly high class humor, but it kept people laughing, and with little to do except routine maintenance, a little comic relief went a long way.  He could sense the excitement of the bridge crew as the countdown reached double digits, and everyone called out the last ten seconds.
     The transition from FTL drive to sublight was always something he had to sit down for.  It wasn't something that he could explain to anyone who had never experienced it, but the closest accurate description would be to say that, it was like your brain was riding a roller coaster, while the rest of you was standing still.  It was like a split second of the worst vertigo ever, then it was gone, leaving you with a feeling of having been stretched out like a rubber band, and then let go.  Most of the time when asked, he just said that it felt 'weird'.
     People all reacted differently to FTL transition stress.  Some, like Rollie, could be doing needlepoint and not miss a stitch.  Others simply couldn't take the strain at all, but the only way to find out was to go through it, and hope that it didn't cause much of a reaction.  Cameron had read somewhere that approximately 15 percent of the population was incapable of making an FTL transition without being sedated first, but the percentage of people who seemed to be completely unaffected was less than one percent.
     His crew were shaking out the cobwebs, and there was a steady stream of data coming up on the screens around his command chair.  Alex was scanning for any activity of any kind on the standard commercial communication channels, and as many military frequencies as she could think of.  Dirk was using his access to the passive optical sensors on the main guns to try and identify potential planets in the system, while keeping the radar and LIDAR arrays sweeping the area around the ship for any objects that might pose a threat.  Erwin Koch had come up from Engineering to assist with monitoring the long-range sensors.
     "Hah!  I got one!"  Exclaimed Dirk, triumphantly, two hours later.  "Unless I miss my guess, there's a Jovian planet at 277.3 by 87.391 and a distance of approximately 39.2 AU."
     "Bao-Jian, can you confirm that?"  Asked Cameron, in a rush.
     Bao-Jian loaded Dirk's position data into the navigation system that controlled the high resolution cameras and electronic telescopes, and waited while they shifted position and focused on the new search location.  The air on the bridge was thick with anticipation, while the Jester's pilot very carefully focused on his work. 
     "Confirmed, Captain!  There is a large gas giant almost exactly where he said.  Best guess at this point puts it at about 25 percent larger than Jupiter, and best of all - it has rings."  Bao-Jian told him, excitedly.
     There were cheers on the bridge, because discovery of rings made the job of figuring out where the plane of the elliptic was, much simpler.  Rings tended to line up with the equator, and the equator tended to align with the plane of the system, as a result, finding the planet where the ship for which they were looking was likely to be, just got a whole lot easier.
     The ship had been drifting along under minimal thrust, but generally in the direction of the local star.  With their latest discovery, Cameron ordered Bao-Jian to put the Jester on a higher acceleration vector for a point about 1.2 AU from the primary.  He figured that if there was a colony transport ship in the system, then it only made sense for it to be in one place, and that was near a planet capable of supporting life.
     Hours passed, watches changed, as the Jester went deeper into this system; a system without even the dignity of a proper name.  As their proximity to the inner system increased so did their information about its geography, and they cataloged several moons orbiting the gas giant, now tentatively named 'Blacksad', due to a curved band of dark cloud making the planet look like a cartoonish sad face.  It was less than imaginative, but it was easier to say than EL51376-B3, which was the official designation according to the UniSys Stellar Cartography Group.
     Three days after they had made their FTL transition into the system, they found what they were looking for.  An infinitely small blue-green speck that was picked up by one of the long-range telescopes, and Cameron ordered the Jester's course altered to make a least-time approach with the planet, consistent with the need to conserve fuel for the trip out.  Once the course was laid in and set, all anyone had to do was sit back and relax for a couple of days, since the planet was passing around the sun away from them, and they would have to swing around it to avoid unnecessary risk of radiation exposure.
     Cameron was beginning to think that this whole trip might have been for nothing as they came up on the turn over point, when they would flip the ship 180 degrees, and begin decelerating so that they were at rest relative to the planet when they got these, but tried to remain optimistic about what they would find when they got there.
     He had sent Rollie, Dirk and Hicks to check over all of the ship's EVA gear, so that when it was needed, it would be ready to go.  As a result, Dirk wasn't at his station on the bridge, when the Jester's threat warning radar picked up a radar anomaly more or less directly in their path.  The ship's navigation radar had missed it because, whatever it was, it had been designed to be hidden.  Cameron  knew what the warning tone was, but with nothing coming up on the primary navigation radar, he was slower to realize what that meant than he should have been.
     The only reason the defensive system's radar had picked it up before the navigational radar, which had an extremely long range, was that it was *deliberately* stealthy.  The defensive system's radar was controlled by software designed to look for anomalous patches of space that were totally devoid of all EM signature.  Dirk's cautionary habit of leaving the threat warning radar to passively search the space around the ship was standard operating procedure for the Alliance Navy, and had struck Cameron as good policy for traveling through systems with an uncertain level of insystem law enforcement.
     Cameron was jolted out of his seat when Dirk's voice came over his com badge at a God-awfully loud volume.
     "Captain!  Bring the ship around, 90 degrees in any direction, perpendicular to our present course, and at our highest possible acceleration!  Now!"  Dirk demanded, his voice warbling as if he was running and talking at the same time.
     "What the hell, Sinclair?  What's going on?  I've got an alert on the threa -"  He was cut off as Dirk suddenly came through the bridge hatch, and sprinted to the ship's weapons control station.  "Dirk!  Talk to me!  What's going on?"  He repeated.
     Dirk didn't reply right away, but Cameron could see him begin bringing the Jester's point defense systems, lasers and autocannons both, on line, while simultaneously activating the short-range millimeter wave radar.
     "Captain, you need to alter course, now; there's no time to explain, please just do it."  He said in a voice laden with fear, without turning to look at him.
     Cameron had never seen Dirk like this, and it worried him enough to give the orders.  He watched the navigational display at his seat, and was horrified to see that the navigation radar was now tracking three small objects that had separated from the larger one, from which they were now rapidly moving on a reciprocal course.  The three new objects were accelerating, and shifted to intercept the Jester with increased velocity.
     Cameron was not reassured when he heard Dirk say "Oh, fuck!" in a voice bordering on panic.
     "Come on, talk to me, Dirk!  What's out there?"  He asked, confused by his gunner's obvious anxiety.
     "Captain, three missiles locked on to us from an AADS; it was lurking in our path, waiting for us to get close enough to enter its firing envelope, and once we did, it launched those missiles.  I had the Jester's tactical system programmed to alert me if it detected something, but I never suspected anything like this."  He explained, his voice strained.
     Cameron could see that the missiles were closing faster, and for the first time in a while, he was worried that he had made a colossal mistake.  He had brought his ship and its 47 crew members out to the ass-end of nowhere, and there was a good chance he had just killed them all.  The missiles were still accelerating, and closing the distance with increasing speed every second.
     "Captain, we need to change direction away from those missiles, and start randomly shifting course.  That will give me a little more time to refine the defensive system's targeting solutions, and give us a much better chance of taking them out before they get within detonation range."  Dirk told him, without taking his eyes off his work.
     "Bao, do it."  He ordered the pilot, quickly consulting his command terminal, and continued.  "Maintain our current acceleration, but bring us another 35 degrees off our present course away from those missiles."
     Bao-Jian wasted no time setting the course corrections after muttering, "Yes sir."
     "Captain, I have the best possible data for taking out those missiles, but we are going to have to turn broadside to make the best use of the Jester's weaponry; meaning we're going to be completely exposed if anything gets through, but we'll never outrun them, so..."   Dirk trailed off, not needing to finish the thought that was on everyone's mind.
     Cameron knew that what Dirk was proposing was a massive gamble, but he didn't hesitate for more than a few seconds before turning to Bao-Jian, and said:  "Bao, on my mark, cut our accel and bring us port broadside onto those bogies.  In 3.  2.  1.  MARK!"
     The Jester's main insystem drive had been throwing out a dense plume of white hot monatomic plasma, and it suddenly went out, as Bao-Jian cut the ship's acceleration completely, and pushed the Jester's maneuvering thrusters to their limits to bring them around in as little time as possible.  Everyone else was watching the main bridge display, which showed the incoming projectiles' cones of probable trajectory shrink rapidly as they got closer.  Dirk's firing solutions were preprogrammed to activate when the ship's weapons came to bear on their assigned targets.
     The Jester, in addition to its two 76mm railguns, mounted three pairs of 6-barrel, 30mm rotary cannon in turrets, one ventral, two dorsal, with a combined rate of fire of approximately 24,000 rounds a minute.  The ship also had six, 35 megawatt antimissile lasers, as well as decoy flares and chaff dispensers.
     Dirk fired them all.
     The vibration from the autocannons could be felt throughout the ship, along with the intermittent thumping of the chaff and flare dispensers disgorging their own payloads.  The lasers were silent save for the whine of their servos coming through the hull, only audible to crew members in close proximity to them.  The railguns were totally silent, their contribution to the effort was limited to only a dozen rounds, but those rounds were canisters of tungsten cubes with a programmable fuse and those twelve rounds added 36,000 projectiles to the enormous cloud of destruction on an intercept course with their targets.

     The first missile died when it moved to avoid a stream of incoming 30mm AP rounds, and wound up being immolated by a pair of infrared beams of coherent light.  The second was all but obliterated when a lucky 76mm canister load detonated in front of it, with a compound velocity of horrific proportions, and most of the 3000 tungsten cubes hit nose-on tearing it apart lengthwise.  The last missile almost got to within detonation range, when all of the autocannons locked on to it simultaneously, and ripped it to shreds, some of which still had enough momentum to pock the ship's hull plating.
     It was over as quickly as it began.
     Cameron sat back in his chair with a loud release of breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and heard Dirk yell "Ooh-Rah!", which seemed to jolt a second cheer from the crew.

     "OK people, let's take a survey of any hull damage caused by that last one, and get the repair remotes on any work needs doing.  Dirk, well done.  Now, tell me what just happened."  Cameron demanded, once the noise had died down.
     "Without a good look at what fired at us, I can only speculate, but my guess is that it was an automated area denial system, or AADS.  What the fuck it's doing in this system, I have no idea.  If it's all the same to you, I'd like to take one of the Mules, and go have a look.  Chances are that its only programmed to fire on something like the size of this ship."  Dirk said, confidently.
     "No, way.  I have no intention of finding out otherwise the hard way.  Do me the courtesy of finding out if there's more of those out there, and get us around them.  If we come up short on what we came for originally, then we'll revisit this conversation, but for now:  No."  Cameron told him, with obvious finality.
     He sat back in his chair and watched the main viewer, which was linked to the optical feed on one of the ship's repair drones, and tried to project an aura of calm.  This job was just getting started, and had provided more than enough excitement already.  If this kept up, and they survived, he would write it all up and sell it as a screenplay.  The fantasy was a pleasant distraction from the thought that lurked in the shadows, waiting for him to pay attention to it:  Why would any colony need anything like an AADS?
     He couldn't think of an answer that made sense.

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 22

     "So, what's the plan, big guy?"  Said Rollie to Dirk, after seeing the size of the lineup outside of the Hyperwave.
     "Like I said before:  Have faith, and follow my lead."  Dirk replied, with a grin that belonged to a used car salesman, and turned to Alex.  "Ready to go?"  He asked.
     "I was born ready, Marine.  Let's do this."  Alex said, as she stepped off the curb, and they headed for the door, where a two hundred meter line of people waiting to enter began.
     Rollie nearly blew it when the three of them got to where the club's doormen watched the entrance, and he nearly freaked out when the door opened, giving him a good look inside.  One of the club's bouncers was an FBR.
     Full Body Replacement cyborgs were rare, since very few people could pass the extensive screening process, much less afford the cost of the procedure.  Dirk doubted that there were more than a handful of FBRs on Minotaur, certainly no more than a dozen.  The resources to maintain - not just the cybernetics, but also mental health - were far more limited outside of Earth's solar system.
     FBR Cyborgs were a byproduct of the fracturing of the United States of America into the United Northern States, the Western American Federation, and the New Confederate South.  The second war of secession had been a long, drawn out affair, that only ended with the dissolution of the USA into three new, independent nation states.  The UNS decided to move forward with cybernetic enhancement of its soldiers as a way of balancing the Confederacy's numerically superior military strength.  The WAF followed a few months later, and were the first to field soldiers who had undergone total body prosthesis.  Most of the original FBR cyborgs were soldiers who were facing major trauma to limbs and organs, or who were terminally ill, and even a few volunteers.  The first series of soldiers fielded didn't quite meet the high expectations of the military commanders, but their successes gave enough proof of concept to warrant continued research and production.  It was only after a few months that some of them began showing signs of psychological stress, and from there it was a matter of weeks until the first one had a full blown psychotic episode.  That nameless soldier had the great misfortune to be at a public event when he finally lost control, killing over 30 people before an urban antiterrorism unit used an anti armor rifle to stop further bloodshed.  There were other incidents over the next few years, as other FBRs also became catatonic, committed suicide, or turned into combat addicts.  A few seemed to have no problem adjusting to their new circumstances over the long term, but even among those, there was the odd one who became a truly frightening sociopath, reveling in acts of horrific violence, yet outwardly normal.  Needless to say, the newly formed Confederacy's religious leaders had no problem turning out propaganda that painted cybernetically enhanced, and modified soldiers, as 'the footsoldiers of Satan'.
     The individual at the entrance to the club was over two meters tall, and had his body done in a mottled earth tone.  He had a half dozen optics in the face of his chassis and the 'rabbit ears' that made up a part of his auditory sensors probably housed microcameras that could be used to see around corners without exposing him to things like enemy fire.  He was dressed in ATACS camo fatigue pants, with a black T-shirt bearing the logo of a Marine Corp Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit, and the following message: 'I am an EOD specialist.  If you see me running, try to keep up!'
     It was a joke as old as dynamite, but it still got a laugh from people who'd never seen what high explosives did to the human body.
     He was standing at the entryway when Dirk, Alex, and Rollie strolled up, and the cyborg twitched an 'ear' in their direction, and one of his optics turned to give him a visual ID.
     "Line's over there, kids."  He said, neutrally, tipping his head in the direction of the crowd snaking along the side of the building, and around the block.
     Dirk grabbed Rollie, before his fear of FBRs - which were rooted in prejudices that originated on Earth, where he'd never been, ironically - got the better of him, and propelled him towards the door.  Having made certain he wasn't going to bolt out of sheer terror, Dirk turned his attention to the doorman.
     "You might want to check the list, mister, under the name 'Jester'.  Pretty sure that we're on it.  I can wait "  He said to the cyborg, in a tone of martyred patience that he'd learned from an old Drill Sargent.
     The 'borg must have recognized the tone more than the content of the request, because he kept his eyes on the three of them while checking the club's records.  He muttered a 'Hunh' as he discovered that, indeed, there was a reservation under that name.
     "Says here that the reservation was made today, which is mighty impressive, considering as how it normally takes up to four months.  Unless you got an in with the owner that I don't know about?"  He said, conversationally, now looking Dirk over with four of his six eyes.
     Dirk simply smiled, and shrugged his shoulders without saying a thing.
     There was very tense minute where he figured the game was up, and he was getting ready to grab Alex and Rollie, and make a run for it, when the 'borg lifted the old-fashioned red velvet rope across the entryway, and stepped aside to let them through.  Dirk was smart enough to see that it would be a good idea to be generous, and palmed a 50 ASC note into the cyborg's hand as he shook it on the way in.
     They stared at one another in recognition that they had both saved face, but said nothing further as the inner doors opened, and the lights, music, and background noise of the Known Sphere's hottest nightclub rushed up to greet the trio.
     The club was built in an old building that had once been home to some kind of light industry, but had been completely gutted, and turned into a multi level combination of bar lounge, and a dance floor, with a stage at one end for live entertainment.  Booths ringed the upper level on three sides, and there was a bar to cater to the clients who preferred to drink in comfort.  The lower level had bars to either side on railed platforms along the walls with small, high tables at which patrons could stand, without having to juggle their drinks in a crowd of gyrating revelers.
     Alex was already headed for the main floor, and Dirk let her go; she loved to dance, but Dirk was totally out of his depth on a dance floor, so he settled for watching her instead.  He had to admit - if only to himself - that watching her swaying and twisting in time to the music resulted in a reflexive desire on his part.  She waded into the sea of strangers unselfconsciously, and interacted with them completely without inhibition.
     He caught her eye from the platform along the side of the floor, and gestured that he and Rollie were headed for the upper level bar to order drinks.  She gave him a thumbs up, before turning back to the rhythmic chaos around her.  He and Rollie made their was to one of the two wide staircases that gave access to the second level lounge, and found a table near the edge overlooking the dance floor.
     "OK Dirk, I give up, how the hell did you manage a last minute reservation on the guest list?"  Asked Rollie, finally.
     Dirk smiled, and said, in a patronizing tone of voice:  "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you." 
     Rollie gave him an old-fashioned look, and rolled his eyes.  Turning around to get a better view of the patrons in the lounge, he was able to flag down a server, and promptly ordered several drinks on the basis that, if the club is busy, service will be grudging, and sporadic - so place a big order up front.  Dirk took his cue from Rollie, and ordered a couple of drinks for Alex, as well as his own.
     Dirk let his eyes roam across the crowd in the lounge, and he became peripherally aware of something he couldn't quite put his finger on.  The hard lessons of his youth caused the sudden awareness to sharpen his focus, and he started paying close attention to his surroundings.  He got up off his seat, and told Rollie to save their place, then moved away from the table, towards one of the exits for the restrooms.  He was almost to the restroom door when his gaze wandered along the bar, and he saw a man staring at him over the rim of a coffee cup.
     The cup came down giving dirk a good look at the man's face, and his blood ran cold.
     It was Thorne.
     Did he know?  He thought frantically.  And if he did, was it because he was on the job?
     The face behind the coffee cup was one he never thought he'd see again in person, or rather, hoped he'd never see in person.  He was as professional a contract killer as ever lived, and he seemed to have a very keen interest in Dirk.  There were a large number of people, now dead, who, could they talk, would say that if Thorne took an interest in you, it was time to settle affairs.  Thorne had once worked for Dirk's father, but they'd had a falling out, and Thorne had left under something of a cloud.  It was rumored that he had worked for the Cartel as their top tier enforcer, but had left them to strike out on his own.  The fact that the Cartel had let him go was a testament as to just how dangerous Thorne really was.
     He decided that the man sitting at the bar was worth the risk of approaching, since they were both exiles of the same sort.  He walked through the restroom door, waited for two minutes, then walked out, and headed for the bar where his observer was still seated.  He walked up and waited until the bartender had taken his order before speaking.
     "You on my case for business?"  He asked, simply, without looking directly at the man.
     There was no immediate reply, but Dirk could feel the man staring at him.
     "Do your friends know who, and what, you are?"  He asked, finally breaking his stony silence.  "I mean, I can tell at a glance, but they wouldn't be able to, would they?  Are you slumming, or did I miss a meeting, or something?"
     Dirk considered the risk of trying to kill the man, sitting within arms reach, and just eliminating the threat now.  He didn't get to think very hard.
     "Don't even think about it, kid.  I may have left a long time ago, but I can still kick your ass."  He said, giving Dirk pause.  "Calm down.  For what its worth, I didn't know you were offworld, and I - sure as shit - did not expect to see anyone from your family here."
     Dirk was, to his embarrassment, relieved that Thorne wasn't here at his family's request, but he needed to know that he wasn't going to be exposed.  He didn't think that his friends knowing who his family was would be a very good idea.
     "Look, I just need to know that you aren't planning to Judas me out, OK?"  Dirk asked, without pleading.
     "I'd be willing to bet that, if I did, you'd have no qualms about letting your people know where to find me; so you can safely assume that your dirty little secret is safe, as far as I'm concerned."  Thorne replied.
     The implication, that others might be able to identify him, and quietly leak such information to interested parties, hung in the air between them, unsaid, but acutely understood.
     Dirk finished his drink, said "Thanks." And walked back to his table, where Alex had finally joined Rollie, and the two of them were engaged in a lively discussion of some sort.  He was greeted by Alex with a kiss, that he somehow managed to put up with, and tried to put the old anxieties surrounding his family's reaction to his leaving the fold at rest.
     The music changed to something slow, and Alex grabbed his hand, pulling him to his feet.
     "I promise, DJ, just the slow songs.  Come on, Marine."  She said, when he resisted being dragged downstairs to dance.
     "OK, just the slow songs."  He parroted, and followed her.
      He was waltzing along, Alex's head tucked against his jaw, when he caught sight of Thorne, looking down at him from the balcony above.  He was smiling, and shaking his head slightly, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.  Dirk understood, after all, he knew exactly what his family would think of his relationship with Alex.  He had rejected their blind, unthinking bigotry without hesitation, and he was a happier person for it.
     The song faded away, becoming something faster, more electrifying, and Alex twisted away from him.  She held her arms up, and was swaying her hips to the beat, maintaining eye contact all the while, the invitation plain.
     Oh, what the hell, he thought, at least I won't look any more idiotic than the rest of the people out here.
     He danced, and after a while, he managed to have fun.

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 21

     DeSouza.
     The officer with the thick neck's name was DeSouza, and he had barged into Cameron's private office, raving about his investigation being hampered by the ship's crew.  Cameron had listened to him complain for the better part of five minutes, which was about four minutes longer than he normally would, but he wanted to see how deep the man was going to dig the hole he was in.
     Very deep, it turned out.
     "I demand that you recall your man for further questioning, Marshall, and that he be restricted to this ship until I'm satisfied with his answers.  If it were only up to me, I'd just impound your ship, and -"  the sharp, gunshots crack of Cameron's hand suddenly slamming down onto the top of his desk cut DeSouza's voice off mid rant, and he sat, motionless, simply staring at the man before speaking.
     "It's not up to you, though, is it?  In fact, I've actually given you broader access than I'm required to, haven't I?  All I'm legally expected to do is ensure that witnessed depositions have been provided, and you've got those.  Now, I'm telling you that you're off my ship before the next watch, and if you even so much as think of interrogating a member of my crew without my express permission, you'll find yourself facing harassment charges.  Now, get out."
     Cameron's tone made it clear that he was uninterested in debating the matter, and very pointedly ignored the USPF officer by picking up one of the data tablets on his desk, and beginning to review the reports thereon.  He was becoming impatient with the officer still sitting in the chair across from his desk, and addressed him without looking up.
     "If don't leave my office on your own, I will have you dragged out.  By your balls."  He told DeSouza, genially.
     He could hear DeSouza grinding his teeth as he got up and turned to leave.
     Obnoxious prick,  he thought to himself,  probably couldn't get a job in real law enforcement.
     Corporate investigators would never dream of acting like that on a privately owned ship.  Especially if they didn't have a security team waiting around, and Minotaur's planetary law enforcement arm, the Space Enforcement Agency, had armed cutters at its disposal for investigations, which gave them some teeth if they needed to press a point home.  The USPF had ships for its various enforcement agencies, but these two were clearly not part of UniSys' elite, since they had arrived on an orbital tug.
     The USPF was predominantly made up of two kinds of people:  Those who were new, and still brimming with idealistic beliefs about what the United Systems represented; and those who had fucked up so badly in another law enforcement branch, be it local, planetary, or Corporate, that they had no choice but to join the USPF in order to avoid a drastic change of work environment.  He had met both in his career in space, and he would be more than willing to bet that DeSouza was one of the latter.  He'd probably gotten on the wrong side of someone higher up the food chain than himself, and been too stubborn to call it quits when it became obvious that he was heading for a fall.
     Cameron had almost pitied DeSouza.  Having to interview Dirk - about anything - was bound to be a pain in the ass, but he had been incredibly rude and needlessly boorish, so Cameron had settled for just keeping an eye on things to make sure that nothing got out of hand.  Rollie had called to explain what he'd done before the cargo transfer shuttle had left, and Cameron had been forced to admit that he had probably saved lives, so he'd told them to grab their bags and go planetside with the cargo.  They'd been planning on going anyway, so this was just killing two birds with one stone.
     Having worked the better part of a decade for a good sized multisolar corporation, he knew that, where the Alliance was the 300 kilo gorilla, UniSys was a 500 kilogram grizzly bear.  Most privateer ship captains wouldn't bend over backwards for UniSys police officers, but tended to regard the United Systems Defense Force with far greater trepidation.  The fact that the USDF tended to regard privateers as little more than spacegoing mercenaries at best, and undisciplined outlaws with a taste for piracy in general, tended to cause people like Cameron to tread lightly.
     The USDF was the military branch of UniSys, and regardless of the name, its ranks were almost exclusively Terran. The officer corps was even less diverse, and tended to be made up of Europeans, Asians, and North Americans.  Less than one percent of the people serving in the USDF came from outside the Sol system.  Cameron was of the opinion that the reason for the lack of representation from other worlds was simply because Earth had a far larger pool of desperate and unemployed, for whom the risks of military service off-planet were more desirable than poverty or starvation.  It was a widely known fact that most colony worlds had near zero unemployment, and crime rates that fell well below the average compared to those of even the European Hegemony.
     He was just glad that the UniSys office hadn't sent investigators with any real talent, because, although rare, every once in a while UniSys managed to snap up an agent with real skills, and they were trouble.  He was aware that his crew were no angels, and most of them probably had reasons for wanting to avoid an agency with powers of detention that crossed interstellar borders.
     All of which was irrelevant, next to how much of a world of shit you were going to be in if you crossed a Multisolar the wrong way.  Haro-Ryushi MS was one of the smaller multisolar corporations, and their last quarterly report to shareholders had proudly announced that the company had an annual gross corporate product of 3.85 trillion Alliance Standard Credits.  Their profits for just one quarter were over 36 billion ASC which obviously meant that the shareholders stayed happy.  His modest holding of Haro-Ryushi stock paid a decent dividend, and helped him keep his ship and crew going during lean times.  Which made it imperative for him to make certain that his actions didn't cause them any trouble.  The company was more diversified than most people would have believed, and although they were technically a company that specialized in planetary engineering, they maintained lucrative sidelines in land settlement, mining, agriculture, light manufacturing, and space exploration, just to name a few.  Even though H-R was relatively small, they still maintained a security force of around 3700, all of whom were hired from national militaries, and law enforcement agencies.  Which sounded like a lot, until you found out that Haro-Ryushi employed over ten million people in over half a dozen systems, including Earth's.
     The Cartel was more than twelve times that size.
     If corporations were like autonomous organisms, as many economists have said, then the Cartel was an apex predator.
     Founded sometime in the latter half of the 21st century, the people who had set it all in motion had planned to get rich.  What they hadn't counted on, was that their creation would become one of the very institutions it had been intended to control, and then turn on them.  Like the ancient Hebrew story of the golem, the Cartel had been brought to life for a purpose, but it had developed a will all its own.  It was not just astronomically large, it was omnipresent, amorphous, and amoral to the point of sociopathy, and it reached out into just about every corner of the Known Sphere.  It controlled a pool of resources rivaled by only the Imperial family of Darkael, who claimed an entire solar system as their personal demesne, with a subject population of over 75 million.  The Cartel's enormous wealth was nearly impossible to comprehend in human terms, and viewed from a distance, appeared to control the people around it, rather than it being controlled by them.  That disconnect happened at Haro-Ryushi, if on a much smaller scale, and the realization had been the spur to Cameron's decision to make an exit on the best terms possible.
     Now, he was poised to make his own fortune; the like of which most privateers could only dream of.  He just hoped that his planning hadn't been in vain, and the assumptions around which he had engineered those plans didn't turn out to be so much wishful thinking.  Regardless of the eventual outcome, he could sleep well, knowing that he had seized the opportunity when it had come around.
     Fortune favors the bold.  he thought, as he picked up another report.

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 20

     The rain was coming down in warm, fat drops that splashed onto the concrete landing field of the spaceport.  In the .87G of Minotaur's gravity, the large drops impacted surfaces gently, giving the impression of a light rain, when in reality, it was a deluge.  The humidity carried a scent of salt water from the east, where large cargo shuttles were using the relatively calm waters as a landing field, and a vaguely spicy, floral scent from the north where Banghi was known to flourish.  The scent was an olfactory assault for which it was difficult to prepare, and Alex felt a sneeze coming on.  She always sneezed the first day on planet, but some planets were worse than others; she wouldn't go planetside at Vulcanfall, because sneezing was all she could do there without wearing a facemask.  It was a mild type of allergic reaction to the local pollens and airborne particles, but it rarely lasted more than a few hours on Minotaur.  Of all of the planets in the Known Sphere, however, Nova Sol was her favorite, it was the planet on which she'd been born, and the only one that didn't make her sneeze.
     The spaceport was linked to Níngjìng Bay by a high-speed maglev railway that continued along the coast to several smaller cities south of the capital, and to several communities in the interior of the continent.  The dozen crew members of the Jester who had signed up for shore leave besides Alex included Bao-Jian and Jinx, both of whom had family here.
     Bao-Jian's parents had emigrated to Minotaur from Earth; his father from Hong Kong, and his mother from Vancouver.  Jinx was descended from four generations of Minotauran Chinese on both sides of her family, and she took a certain pride in the fact that her family were all native born, from the first wave of colonists, no less.  Both of them were looking out the window, chatting in Minotauran dialect Chinese, which was fairly close to Mandarin, but Alex's comprehension of the language was limited, and she couldn't keep up with the conversation.
     She turned to look out the window, next to which Dirk was sitting, and looked past him to the picturesque scenery of coastal farms, and wharves where small, recreational boats were tied up.  She wanted to try out sailing, just once, before they had to head out.  It looked like a lot of fun.  She would have her work cut out for her if she was going to take Dirk along, though.  He had a strange aversion to natural bodies of open water; not that he couldn't swim - he swam like a fish, but just an odd paranoia she couldn't figure out.  She snaked her arm through his, and rested her head on his shoulder, the smell of his peculiar spice-scented soap filling her nostrils.  She felt a deep contentment, and looked forward to the next three days, because the workload going forward was looking to be anything but restful or relaxing.
     "You two make a cute couple, you know."  Said Jinx from where she sat directly across from them, next to Bao-Jian.
     "I like to think I did OK, pairing up with this fine specimen of manhood, here."  Alex replied, grinning, and squeezed Dirk's arm with proprietary affection.
     Dirk said nothing, but kissed the top of her head in an incredibly rare public display.
     "What about you, Jinx, any prospective partner on the horizon that you'd like to share, hmm?"  Alex teased, knowing that she lived a nearly monastic life while on the ship.
     "My family has some very old-fashioned ideas about ethnic purity, not ones I agree with, but we are also practitioners of Falun Gong, which places a great degree of importance on personal moral responsibility.  So, no, not really.  There's always hope."  Jinx answered, without really answering at all.
     "How about you, Bao?  Anyone interesting in your life lately?"  Alex asked the Jester's pilot, and Jinx turned in her seat to look at him as well.
     "I had a brief, but fulfilling, affair with a well-hung Greek gentleman while we were at New Detroit.  Other than that, nothing serious."  He told them, and continued; "Naturally, my folks would like me to settle down, and start a family of my own, and I will no doubt have to endure their gentle reminders that I'm not getting younger.  But they'll do it while setting homemade noodles and dim sum in front of me, so it's not all bad."  He concluded with a smile.
     "I have been craving Níngjìng Bay clawfish dumplings since the last time we were here, with fried noodles, and crisp vegetables."  She said, excitedly, and the conversation turned to favorite places to eat in the capital, until the train began to decelerate.
     When the train stopped, Alex watched as Dirk patted himself down, in a habit she was willing to bet he didn't know he had.  He did it before he left a vehicle, a building, or even a room.  There was a time when it had driven her crazy, but she reined in her frustration when it dawned on her that it was a habit he'd probably picked up in the Marines; to check his gear and placement of equipment, making certain he had everything he needed where it was supposed to be.
     She waited for him to finish, then got her handbag from under her seat and pulled out her personal data tablet.  She had spent some serious money for the gold-edged, gunmetal gray Saad-Nanotek unit she held in her hands.  She ran her finger over the logo engraved into the body, which caused the 10 by 15 centimeter slab to open up, into a tablet a mere four millimeters thick.  The screen was a nanofilm almost as strong as the metaplast casing that held it.  She was already hooked into the local network, and proceeded to look up restaurants specializing in clawfish dumplings close to their hotel.  She had one picked out, and reservations made, by the time he had their bags out of the overhead storage compartment.
     "You'll be pleased to know, I've managed an early evening supper for the two of us.  It's a bit pricey, but they use indigenous marine life exclusively, and they're highly recommended."  Alex said, as Dirk handed over her duffel.
     "That takes care of tonight, but what about this morning?  And lunch?  And tea?  We landed just after local sunrise, y'know."  He asked, more in jest than anything else.
     She stepped in close, hooked a single finger into the collar of his shirt, reached around with her other hand to grab his backside, and pulled him close.
     "Last time I checked, our hotel had room service."  She whispered suggestively into his ear, and nipped his earlobe gently with her teeth, before grabbing her bags and turning to exit the train.
     Jinx and Bao-Jian were looking at Dirk with barely concealed amusement; his aversion to public displays of affection being well known to both of them, and he was unconsciously looking around to see if anyone else had noticed.  Jinx decided to make him even more uncomfortable.
     "Do you think you will be able to debark with your manhood in that state," she nodded her head while staring at the front of his pants, "or will you want to wait for the swelling to go down?"  She asked, in a voice that, without shouting, still managed to carry to every corner of the compartment.
     Ignoring the friendly jeers and laughter of his crewmates, he shouldered his own duffel bag, and walked out onto the platform with his head up, his face set in a neutral expression that displayed a solemn dignity.
     The effect was ruined by the bright crimson flush of embarrassment on his face.