Stiff Welcome

By Edward M. Erdelac

Considine eased the Zirconian shuttle through the magnetic field and cut the engines, automatically kicking in the stabilizers, which allowed the small ship to float easily in and down to the deck.

It was one of only three shuttles the Zirconian branch of the Peacekeepers employed. There was hardly any call for interplanetary transfers beyond shipping the occasional convict to Sheba. Most prisoners were put to work in Zirconia, so even that was a dubious requirement. They’d once had four, but the fourth had developed some kind of debilitating mechanical failure and had been cannibalized by its three comrades.

This particular shuttle handled sluggishly, and had a faulty rear left stabilization emitter, which caused it to dip in that quarter at random intervals, making the drink containers in the cabin mostly useless.

Considine spied a pair of suited Enforcers in their pristine tactical combat armor flanking a third man in a tailormade long coat, whose balding pate he recognized as belonging to his old partner Gorsh.

As he settled the ship down and unbuckled his safety belts, Brendermeyer was already heading for the hatch.

“Avenir here I come,” he grinned. “Big time.”

“You’re not going to find a warm welcome, I’m afraid.” Considine said. “Remember, they’re expecting Croix. You’re going to be something of a disappointment, I’m afraid.”

“I’m a comedian, Inspector,” Brendermeyer said, winking back at him as the hatch shot open. “I’m used to disappointing people.”

Considine had never yet caught Brendermeyer’s act. He couldn’t say he even remembered the moonlighting Enforcer ever telling a joke. At least, not one that he had remembered as funny.

It turned out, he never would.

Brendermeyer barely waited for the gangway to descend before he swung down onto the deck.

He was still taking in his brand new surroundings, so he didn’t notice the gaunt man in the red jumpsuit and pulled down cap pushing the air-dolly with the mag-clamps for the shuttle struts. Why should he? It was standard procedure to secure the ship to the deck for safety.

Except that the worker was vaguely familiar. Considine’s homunculus began to kick his teeth like mad.

Brendermeyer didn’t see the worker break into a run, shoving the air-dolly straight at the shuttle. Briefly out of control and speeding from the momentum, the floating cart whizzed towards Brendermeyer.

Considine shouted a warning, and the funnyman Enforcer did manage to side step the runaway air-dolly. It struck the gangway and promptly detonated, as no air-dolly bearing mere mag-clamps should have.

The force of the explosion ripped Brendermeyer to pieces and flung fire and metal and blazing bone up into the shuttle.

Considine was thrown against the canopy and slammed back down onto the console. He heard the emergency klaxons sound and the hissing of the flame retarders. At least they worked. He experienced the shocking sensation of being bathed for a brief moment in intense heat and then he was doused with a mound of cool but foul smelling chemical foam.

Avenir, he thought for one brief, bitter moment, before he lost consciousness.

Approach

by Edward M. Erdelac

“You sure this is a good idea, Inspector?” Brendermeyer asked for the fourth time.

“The Peace Council is expecting me to arrive with a passenger, Brendermeyer. It’ll look fishy if the compliment scan only shows up one life form,” Considine explained for the fourth time.

The police shuttle rose through the upper atmosphere and shuddered as the fiery sky turned black and starry.

“Never been up to Avenir,” Brendermeyer muttered, his eyes wide and full of stars. “Never even been in space before. Is it true you used to work up there?”

“I did. A while ago.”

“Why the hell would you transfer down to Zirconia?”

“I liked the view better.”

“You can’t see a damn thing down there.”

“Precisely.” Considine said, angling the shuttle for the huge ship. “It’s not all stars up here, Brendermeyer. There’s all that blackness in between.”

“I hear the women are choice, though.”

Considine pursed his lips. Brendermeyer wasn’t listening. There was a hell of a lot of politics on Avenir. A lot of clean fingernails with dirty palms. It had got to him. He had been ordered to overlook one too many shady deals, ordered to let one too many cases cool. Avenir was a stagnant place, with its unchanging air, its never shifting castes.

He much preferred Zirconia. He saw the underwater city as a happy medium between Avenir’s static, festering rot, and the violent upheaval of the surface of Eclectica. He liked the leaky hallways and the shifting light that played on the floors, filtered through fathoms of ocean and the thick viewing ports, chilling the raging red skies far above until they were no more than a placid shimmer. 

He liked the glimpses of sea life in all its forms, from the flitterfish to the ethereal angels themselves, going about their alien, inscrutable business on the edge of the Boatic Trench.

The dark waters. Dark waters. Croix had said he was sinking into the dark waters. Then something about the wardens, rising, and freedom.

He puzzled over this when the panel began to blink and Brandermeyer nudged his arm.

He keyed the receiver.

“Zirconia Peacekeeper Shuttle ZP-40, you are cleared to land in docking bay 882.”

“Understood, control,” Considine answered. “882.”

They’re certainly putting us in the proverbial boondocks. Why hadn’t they been directed to the police bay, or even the Peace Council?

“Keep sharp, Brendermeyer.”

Brendermeyer took his sidearm out from under the passenger’s chair and belted it on.

“You expecting trouble?”

“Just keep sharp.”

The Trouble With Croix

by Edward M. Erdelac -

“He’s dying,” said the Doctor outside the interrogation room where Croix was sitting peaceably.

Considine wasn’t overly surprised. The man looked almost as if he’d died already. Lung deterioration was a common cause of death to Topsies. They worked half their lives to get out of the poison air only to find it had already killed them long ago. Sometimes the knowledge drove them to a nihilistic kind of crime. It made a kind of sense. He just wished he knew what Considine’s target had been.

“What of? Not his injuries, surely.”

“Without a complete scan I can’t say, but by his symptoms, a multitude of things.”

“A multitude?”

“Pneumonia, syphilis, orange and yellow fevers….”

“What?” Enforcer Brendermyer interjected. “Is he contagious?”

“Oh yeah. But most of the things he’s got we’ve all had inoculations for. The thing is, he should’ve had them too prior to entering the city.”

“Couldn’t he have slipped the requirements?”

“Not on your life. The Zirconia Medical Bureau is extremely tough on topsy immigration. Even the crooks don’t bypass the physical requirements. Nobody wants some nasty bug bite disease running rampant in Zironia. Could deep six the whole population.”

“How could he have contracted multiple viral infections?” Considine wondered aloud.

“I don’t know,” admitted the doctor. “I’m going to have to request that he submit to a full scan back at the Medical Bureau before I release him to psychiatric care. I’ve got to catalog all he’s got, make sure he’s safe to move.”

“He’s not going to psych. The Peace Council’s requested he be extradited to Avenir.”

“Well he’s not going anywhere till he’s released medically.”

“Alright, Doctor. Can you arrange transport?”

“I’ve already alerted the ZMB. They’re sending a haz-mat team to bubblewrap him and take him back.”

“Fine.” He would have to tell Gorsh Croix wouldn’t be ready in two hours.

Considine looked through the porthole in the door at Croix. The man smiled at him, a little wearily, but still present of mind.

“Could his condition affect his mind, Doctor?”

“Definitely.”

“Will you alert me once the scan’s complete?”

“Sure thing.”

Jelly came tromping down the corridor in his Enforcer gear.

“Hey Inspector, that freight jockey’s gone through the personnel pix from Morgenstar, says she thinks she’s got a match.

“Thank you, Jelly,” Considine said, going off toward the room they’d left her in.

“Hey Inspector!” Brendermyer called.

“What?”

“The club! My gig! Can I go or what?”

“Once the ZMB comes and picks him up, and as long as the Doctor checks you out, it’s alright with me.”

“I’m not gonna have time to change out of all this crap,” he said, gesturing to his tactical wear.

Considine shrugged.

“Maybe it’ll improve your act. Make it a gimmick. Brendermyer: The Laughing Enforcer.”

Jelly at least, chuckled.

Extraction

by Ed Erdelac -

Inspector Considine called the team in at 0300.

Considine had traced the illegal sale of some mining explosives to an ex-grit-breather named Croix, but somebody had tipped him off and he was barricaded in his cabin with the stuff, threatening to blow the entire southeast habitation ring into the Boatic Trench if he wasn’t given safe passage to Avenir.

There was a negotiator cooing at him like a babe through his door com, but Croix sure as hell wasn’t going to Avenir.

At 0305 as he laid out his demands, the Enforcers had suited up on the north end of Zirconia. Haj began passing out standard-issue GTL’s and pneumatic pistols, but Wilfort pointed out Croix’s cabin pod on the outer edge of the habitation ring and laid out the standard extraction plan. No need for hardware, but Haj was trigger happy and brought his pneumatic along anyway.

At 0310 Croix and the negotiator were arguing over the details of the shuttle that would take him up to Avenir. He wanted to pick the pilot himself from the duty roster. At the same time, the team was already wet, gripping the handlebars of a six-man sea-sled and puttering the long way around the city. Haj spotted an angel, a bioluminescent ghost stroking its way across the blue-black. He tried to take a shot at it, but Galveston, the pilot, warned him not to, and backed the warning with a meaningful tap on the diving knife on his belt. He was the only believer on the team—Jelly, they called him—short for Jelly Roller, the name some called the ones who attributed divinity to the angels.

At 3:17 Croix had the duty roster and was combing it for a name he knew. The team had ditched the sea-sled and cut their external suit lights, freefalling to the habitation ring, being careful not to bang their equipment against the hull. They hand over fisted their way to Croix’s outer shell connection joints and broke out their ratchets.

At 3:19 Croix selected Arden Pacoy as his getaway pilot. Considine made a mental note to nab Pacoy for questioning and checked his watch while the negotiator assured Croix his shuttle had been scrambled on floating launchpad B and was just about fueled and ready.

3:20 Croix was pacing his cabin, getting impatient. The team could see him through the portholes, a wiry, unshaven man with the terminally dirty, red-eyed look of a grit-breather. He hadn’t lived in Zirconia long enough to shake the look yet, long enough to know about the emergency surfacing apparatus installed in every habitation pod. The automatic release controls were on the wall beside Croix’s bunk, hid by a gaudy antique hula girl lamp. In the event of some catastrophe, the controls blew the explosive bolts that held the inner titanium pod in place, and the air-filled sphere would shoot to the surface like an inflatable toy. Of course, the ride wasn’t a smooth one by any means. It was fast and dangerous and survival wasn’t even guaranteed. Even if you lived through the ascent, you still had to get to a hyperbaric chamber or your blood would bubble up in your veins. The team was doing it the old fashioned way, from the outside. They’d bypassed the safety casings and were halfway through loosening the shell bolts. Brendermeyer was moonlighting as a comic in the Starboard Bar. He started to tell a joke about how many grit-breathers it took to empty a CO2 scrubber, but the punchline was lost at 3:22.

3:22. Croix asked the negotiator if Pacoy was ready to go yet, but received no answer. Considine and the negotiator had retreated beyond the emergency airlock in the outer hall and sealed it. The team popped the last of the bolts and Croix’s buoyant cabin was released from the outer hull container. The lights in Croix’s cabin turned red and the air inside lifted it away from the rest of the ring.

“Thar she blows,” said Brendermeyer over the team’s inter-suit com as the silvery sphere of the inner cabin rocketed away from the rusty outer hull and went tumbling end over end surface-ward.

Croix was tossed and shaken like a shoe in a clothes dryer. He’d be too battered and bloody to remember his own name, much less trigger the twelve pounds of HE detonite the Peacekeepers found in the shambles of his cabin when it bobbed to the surface approximately five seconds after the team had launched it.

Considine flicked the purple stub of a cigarette off the bobbing submersible and watched the cyanotine ash mingle with its distant relatives already drifting in the hot air. The medics carried Croix below. In about two hours he’d have words with the skinny grit-breather, when he’d been released from the decompression chamber.

For now there was Arden Pacoy to talk to.