Back From the Dead (28 page)

The Ship AI’s voice gradually becomes more mechanical. “That is an interesting guess. Galt actinide Charlie turtle adenine thymine thymine adenine guanine adenine cytosine thymine.
Idem
. Cladistic Profiler.
Forte
.”

“What was that?” Helton asks.

Its normal male voice returning, the Ship AI replies. “Nothing, sir… Minor subroutine glitch. A recently noted pattern was continued unexpectedly. Internal data possibly affecting optimal path selection protocols. Further testing will be needed at another location. No significance at the moment.”

“Okay,” Cooper announces, “everything seems to check out. We can make a small jump to cut about half the normal-space flight time, then take an easy path in, slightly more than a day conventional.”

“Good, good. Anywhere close to the robo-moon?”

“No, well clear of it.”

“All righty, then. Let’s make another little hop, unless someone has a problem.” Helton picks up the mic. “Any problems to report, now’s the time.” They are rewarded by a few moments of silence. “Can you use the pair of Sokolovs here? We can test them a bit, too.”

“Should work. Yes, adds about … sixteen seconds on this jump. An hour conventional.”

“Not too bad. Double-check with Stenson and spin ‘em up.”

Taking Delivery

Tajemnica
arcs across space, headed for the nearby planet, Emirate II. It is a vivid mix of blue seas, greens, tans, with a goodly scattering of clouds. They pass an orbiting space-dock with numerous attached ships. Most are small private craft; some are larger liners and cargo ships, including the liner on which Helton met Lag and Bipasha.

Lag sits at the tiny desk in his cabin. On the screen in front of him is the liner’s Chief Flight Engineer. “Best hire I’ve had in a while,” he says. “Knows his stuff and is learning our particulars fast. The arm re-gen is going well, gives the doc something to do other than band-aid little old ladies.”

Lag’s smile at the news is wide and genuine. “Glad to hear it. Always a pleasure to help good people out. Now, about that custom manufacturing shop you recommended to Stenson on Geminorum…”

Lag stands in the doorway of the bridge at a casual parade rest. Helton, Cooper, Kaushik, and Bipasha are standing or walking slowly in their usual stations.

“We’ll need to be careful,” Lag says. “They got really lucky on the terraforming and pulled through the Dark well, but this is a real know-n-blow system now, so–”

“A what?” Bipasha doesn’t care for the sound of that.

Cooper fills her in. “
Know and Blow
. Everything happens because of who you know, or who you blow, bribe, have leverage on, or family name. It’ll be safer if you and Allonia stay aboard until it’s all squared away; you can go ashore on Geminorum or New Texas. Allonia knocking off the wrong favorite nephew who thought she was cute and tried to take a free sample could be awkward.”

“I’d hate to think what would happen if they tried that with Harbin’s niece,” Helton adds.

Lag nods, “Quite.” Bipasha and Allonia exchange a knowing, disgusted glance.

“How much bribery did you account for in the contract, Helton?” Kaushik asks.

“Never been here. None at all, I’m afraid.”

Lag winces only half-jokingly. “Ouch. Well then, be careful. They can be some very friendly folks when there is no business at stake, or if you get introduced by the right person, but they always put family and tribe first in business dealings. Finding out who you’ll be dealing with and what sort of skeletons they have in various closets would be time well spent.”

“Lovely. Just lovely. Guess we’ll get on that as soon as we know who we’re after.”

Twilight at the Dangerous Materials Storage area. It sits on a dry, rocky plain, nothing more than a set of numbered buildings with variously sized landing pads, arranged in a wide rectangle with roads to and away from and between them.
Tajemnica
glides carefully down next to Building 6 and settles smoothly on the landing pad, her stern toward the building’s main door. The warehouse is surprisingly busy inside, with numerous people, several sizes of forklift, and many large pallet-loads of metal and plastic crates.

Tajemnica
’s cargo bay ramp lowers, and the inside sliding doors are already fully open. Helton, Lag, Harbin, and Kaushik are silhouetted against the brightly lit interior of the bay. All four are heavily armed, and the three Plataeans are wearing armor. When the main ramp hits ground, the bottom angle ramp flips out to get clear to the surface, and the Warehouse Master (male, immaculately dressed but sleazy-looking, swarthy, greasy, bad teeth, soft-looking, overweight but not obese) trudges up to greet them.

“Welcome to Emirate! So delighted to see you have come to remove this headache for us!”

Helton steps forward. “Glad to see you are ready, a lot to do. Surprised it’s down here, not in orbit. Loading would be much easier there.”

The Warehouse Master shrugs nonchalantly. “I don’t ask questions, I just put things where they tell me. Shall we get started now? Your contract did stipulate machine loading, did it not?” Lag and Harbin exchange glances. The Warehouse Master looks around the interior of the ship and affects concern. “Will it all fit in here? And this looks like an old ship. Is it rated to haul this much mass?”

“I think it will,” Helton answers, “if we pack it tight and standard packaging is used. We ran the loading calcs on the run in and it should be fine if we follow the load plan. Mass ratings are okay, too.”

“I don’t know. We were not expecting to be loading on a ship like this.” The Warehouse Master frowns. “Well, let’s see how the first pallet loads. What would you like first?”

“The 120mm canister rounds.”

The Warehouse Master taps away on his tablet, then turns and waves to a Filipino-looking driver on a forklift. He scoops up a pallet and trundles over. When the forklift reaches the bottom of the ramp it becomes obvious to everyone that the ramp angle is too steep for it to drive over. They all turn to look into the warehouse; all of the material-moving equipment is similar, just different sizes. Helton gets an “oh, shit” expression.

The Warehouse Master turns to them, outwardly obsequious, but with a devious glint in his eye. “Oh, I’m very sorry. It looks like we will have to move it by hand. That might take a while. My humblest apologies, but handling that much material might be rather expensive.”

“Can an empty forklift get up the ramp?” Helton asks.

“We can see,” the Warehouse Master replies. He motions to the forklift driver. “Drop the pallet there and just see if you can get on board.” The forklift driver sets the pallet down, raises the forks, and drives up the ramp carefully, then spins easily around with plenty of room. “I guess we will only have to hand-carry it up the ramp. Again, deepest apologies that this will take so long.”

The side hatches above the ramp area open and a pair of the multi-joint mechanical arms unfolds, now with simple forklift attachments. One reaches down, delicately scoops up the pallet, and with a slight whine of high-speed hydraulics, gracefully hoists it up and deposits it neatly next to the waiting forklift at the top of the ramp. Then the arm lowers the forks back down to a waiting position. A flash of annoyance crosses the Warehouse Master’s face before he plasters on a false smile. “Oh, very good, most convenient! That will help.”

“May be quirky,” Helton says to Lag in a quiet aside, “but
damn
if the AI doesn’t know when shit’s gotta happen.” Raising his voice, he says to the Warehouse Master, “So, if we can get three more forklifts up here the rest can start lining up the pallets in stack order, and we can move this along.”

“That many at once will not be safe. Only one aboard at a time would be better.”

“Are you saying your drivers are incompetent?”

“Oh, they are the best!” the Warehouse Master says indignantly.

“Then we have enough room here for four.”

The Warehouse Master looks indecisive for a moment, then stabs viciously at his tablet. Three more forklifts head for the ramp, each carrying a heavily loaded pallet. When they get close to the ramp, the Warehouse Master vigorously signals them to stop. “Take it BACK!”

The lead driver points to the screen that flips down from the roll cage on his forklift. “It says this one goes next.”

“Well I didn’t call for it!”

A handheld scanner with a screen on the back drops down next to Helton on a coiled cable. He looks up, a little surprised, then grabs it and aims it at the pallet. He glances over at a bulkhead-mounted screen, then at the scanner readout. “Yup, that’s next.” He waves to the forklift driver to drop his load and drive up the ramp. Lag, Harbin, Kaushik stand aside, and the drivers start up the ramp. At the top they spin around, receive pallets on their forks, and head back to the stacking points their screens show them. The Warehouse Master fumes and stomps away.

Soon the back wall of the cargo bay is stacked to the rafters with pallets of ammunition. The mechanical arms transfer loads from the line of forklifts on the ground to the two pairs of forklifts running back and forth in the cargo bay. Helton takes a break from watching the progress and walks to a wall-mounted com. “Bipasha, any skeletons yet?”

“Nothing big. Lots of minor sketchy stuff but nothing to make him stop trying to squeeze you. His older brother is an environmental law judge. Cousin is a mayor. Uncle is captain of a light cruiser, the
HMS Hussein
. Father is a low-level admin on the far side. Two wives, but that’s legal here. Not sure who he pissed off to get posted here.”

“Well, keep me informed of anything new.”

“Will do.”

“How much cash do we have on hand?”

“You are not going to pay him off, are you? I mean, he might get around to asking for more than we have.”

“How much?” Helton repeats.

“… About eighteen thousand.”

“Should be enough. Ask Allonia to count it all out into a bunch of packets of five hundred, and keep looking for dirt or connections. Out.”

Helton walks out to the middle of the cargo bay, watching the forklifts. They work in pairs, carefully and steadily, but not very fast. He waves at the two drivers heading side-by-side for the ramp, signaling them to stop.

“What percentage of his bribes — I mean personal service and paperwork-handling fees — do you get?” The drivers snort.

“Hourly?” Head shakes.

“Salary?” Nods.

“So, fast or slow, your pay is the same?” Nods.

“Tell you what. As soon as he leaves, you start to haul ass. Port versus starboard. The side that gets loaded first gets eight thousand bonus to split, cash. You get it all loaded in the next six hours, with no injuries, and everything in its proper place? An extra four thousand to split — however you want — for both sides. Not done in eight hours, no bonus. You figure out how many people you really need to get it done and how fast you can move safely. Deal?”

The forklift drivers look at each other, grins spreading on their faces. They pull out their personal com units, and start whispering into them.

The cargo deck, nearly half full, is a beehive of high-speed activity, with six forklifts zipping around and no wasted movement anywhere. The wall-mounted screens display large countdown clocks.
Tajemnica
’s mechanical arms whiz back and forth, lifting pallets directly off the forklifts on the ground before they stop moving, and placing them the same way on forklifts at the top of the ramp. Clearly, the proper incentive has been applied.

The horizon to the east of the Dangerous Materials Storage facility glows with pre-dawn light, and the loading is nearly done. The cargo bay is stacked with pallets nearly to the top, all the way to the back, but with a narrow gap on one side to allow access to the stairs. It’s full enough that the mechanical arms at the doors can place each pallet directly into the correct stack. The last forklift hands off the last pallet to one of the mechanical arms, and the countdown clocks all stop at 00:31:22 as the pallet is laid in its place. The drivers let out a ragged cheer, and those not already out of their forklifts hop down and gather around Helton, who directs them to line up in two rows, then walks down the line handing out envelopes, hurriedly shaking hands and offering thanks.

Getaway

“Well, that went much more smoothly than I feared it might,” Helton says, as he walks on to the bridge. Lag, Kaushik, Cooper, Allonia, and Bipasha stand at their stations, rapidly finishing the pre-flight checklists.

“Until we hit transition, don’t celebrate too much,” Lag cautions.

Allonia shoots the Colonel an annoyed look. “Must you look at the dark side?”

“I’ve worked here before. It’s never this easy.”

“I’m not sure if I’d call spending twelve thousand in cash easy.” Helton protests.

“To load a hundred million dollars worth of ammo in a place like this, that is absolutely a miraculous best-case scenario. Usually you are looking at more like five to ten percent of the cargo value. Twenty if you piss them off.”

“Twenty? We couldn’t do that!” Allonia exclaims.

Bipasha is more angry than shocked. “You let us come here knowing that, and you didn’t say anything?”

“The price was very good, and we needed the ammo. I was ready to put in a sizable chunk to make the deal go through if required, but no point in offering if it’s not needed. I also wanted to see how you operate in a shark pool like this. Pressure makes diamonds, after all.”

“Gee, that’s nice of you to be so free with my money,” Helton says.

“You did quite well, at the top of expectations. It looks like we don’t have to spend that much cash, so the ammo was a very good deal. Though with no leverage on the warehouse master, I’d say we leave as soon as we can. I’ve concluded nearly all my business. Everything except finding out about a new system interceptor they were supposed to have.” Lag shrugs. “Other contracts filled or filed, though.”

“We’re buttoned up and ready to lift,” Cooper reports. “Let’s hope we don’t blow anything hauling the extra mass. We came down on the Sokolovs, shall we take off on them too?”