In The Mix

by Edward M. Erdelac - 

The cafeteria was tastefully decorated with shifting holographic motivational images, the contoured chairs and tables kept clean by a floating automaid which rested in the corner and whirred gently over whenever an employee rose and exited, dispensing with trays and disposable dishes, storing discarded food and drink to be reprocessed later.

A shining service machine dispensed the daily meal from behind a semicircular counter which displayed images of the various dishes. It took orders and then turned and retrieved them almost instantly from a space in the wall behind which the massive unseen autochef dwelled, whipping up meals at speed.

Orin Bantry had just left the line and sat down with a plate of Eclectian bug fry when Considine stepped in.

Bantry was wearing the same clothes he’d worn earlier in the day. The same damned company cap.

Considine stepped aside to let a pretty woman in a stylish suit leave, then set himself squarely in the doorway, took the stingshot pistol from beneath his coat, and announced in a loud voice that caused every diner to look over;

“Inspector Considine, Zirconian Peacekeeper. Orin Bantry. A word.”

Bantry swallowed a mouthful of bug fry and dabbed at his rusty beard with a napkin before rising slowly to his feet.

He pushed the chair back, and then bolted for the line.

Where the hell did he think he was going?

But then Considine saw.

Bantry shoved aside his coworkers, hopped over the counter past the droning server, and dove head first for the square leading to the kitchen.

Considine collided with the confounded automaid, recovered, and reached the counter just as Bantry’s shoes disappeared through the hole in the wall.

He took aim with his stingshot, eliciting screams and calls for security from the ducking cafeteria patrons, but had no shot.

He limped around the counter, stared dubiously at the hole and cursing, thrust his weapon through first, and wedged his head and shoulder after. He didn’t want Bantry waiting on the other side to crown him with a pan or something.

But Bantry was leaping over the whirring limbs of the massive autochef, a gleaming, towering apparatus that filled the cavernous room, catering to six floors’ worth of cafeterias and eateries at the peak of the lunch hour. Part convection oven, part immense freezer, it was an autonomous food factory, programmed to prepare and deliver foodstuffs at a dizzying rate via an incomprehensible array of specialized appendages, each capped with beaters, pans, blenders, rolling pins, and flashing cutlery. The faroff animal squeal meant that somewhere within the thing an automated slaughterhouse was also in full swing, disassembling livestock into fresh meat, likely for the executives on the top levels. A great pool of sizzling grease popped and spattered him as six hands plunged baskets of some unidentifiable food into its depths.

His hand seared, he ducked away.

Considine aimed his stingshot across the blur of busy machinery and yelled for Bantry to stop, but he could scarcely be heard above the din.

He saw no cut off switch, but spied a service ladder leading up to a safe catwalk and quickly scaled it.

Bantry lost time trying to pace his run through massive prep area, ducking under a huge, buzzing eggbeater that suddenly emerged from a cloud of flour, and Considine managed to get ahead of him, running overhead.

He reached the far end of the chamber and slid down the ladder, cutting off Bantry’s escape route, but nearly crashed to the floor on his wounded leg. He suddenly wished he’d taken all the suppressants he had been prescribed.

“That’s far enough, Bantry!”

Bantry hesitated, then raised his hands slowly. He had a desperate look though, dilated irises, sweaty sheen. It all made Considine wary.

“Recognize me?” Considine said. “You tried to blow me up this morning and failed. But you did manage to kill one of my enforcers. A good man. You’re going to pay for it, Bantry. But first things first.  I want to know about the explosives you stole for Almer Croix. What were they for?”

“To free them.”

“Free who?”

“The prisoners. The prisoners in the darkness.”

Croix had said something about being imprisoned in the darkness, in his delirium. Something else. Something about wardens.

“You wanted to kill the wardens?”

Bantry’s eyes widened.

“Yes! Then you know. God can’t be free until the angels are dead.”

“The angels. The angels are the wardens?”

Bantry’s expression fell.

“You don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t know at all!”

He spun on his heel and ran straight at the autochef.

“Bantry!” Considine yelled, lunging for him.

He came away with the man’s hat in his fist.

And Bantry was gone. Plucked suddenly from the prep area floor, the man was passed swiftly from arm to arm and deposited at last in some glowing compartment in one of the upper segments.

Considine heard the buzz of automatic chainsaws and a brief shriek.

Then there was a bleating klaxon, and the room lighting turned scarlet. The colossal culinary automaton slowed and stopped.

The exit door behind him opened, and two heavily armored men with MorgenStar Security emblazoned on their breastplates leveled expensive looking hyperuzis at him.

He raised the hand with the pitiful stingshot over his head and flipped open his ID badge with the other.

“We know who you are, Inspector Considine,” said one of the security men. “Mr. Morgenstar would like a word with you before we remand you to the custody of the Peace Council.”

The Direct Route

Six Fathoms Down, Part 14, by Edward M. Erdelac - 

It seemed to take forever for Gorsh to finish laying out his plans for Considine’s investigation.

It took only a few moments to give the two Avenir Enforcers he was assigned as assistance the slip.

He left them scratching their heads and peering up and down a crowded passageway while he slipped into a gyrovater and instructed it to take him straightaway to Morgenstar Munitions.

“Access to Morgenstar Munitions is granted by appointment only,” the cultured voice of the gyrovater informed him gravely.

He did not slip his ID badge into the access port. Instead he used the one he’d taken off one of Gorsh’s Enforcers.

“Investigative priority,” he told the computer.

“Complying,” the computer responded as the gyrovater thrummed to life beneath his feet and began to whisk him through the various levels of Avenir.

No need for him to leave a digital trail or announce his intentions. Besides, there was probably a lock on his own credentials.

It was only a matter of time before the Avenir Enforcer’s loss of badge would be detected. He left it sitting in the slot, knowing he probably couldn’t use it on the way back anyway.

He exited the gyrovater when the doors spiraled open and found himself in a high-ceilinged, pristine white lobby with smooth silver lines and a plush blue carpet.

He approached the multi-armed service machine at the front desk.

Before the robot had done more than glance up, he had pulled his Enforcer-issue handheld directional EMP flasher. It was intended for deactivating runaway vehicles or circumventing pesky electronic locks, but it knocked out the bot’s central processor with a flick.

“No thanks, I’ll help myself,” he muttered, sliding around the console past the inert robot and calling up the company directory.

Orin Bantry’s name was listed, and if he was wearing his ID badge, he was currently in the southwest cafeteria. A swift glance at the schematics and he had the route memorized.

He’d always been good with maps.

Runaround

By Edward M. Erdelac

Considine stared at himself in the mirror. Puffy, sutured flesh peered out from beneath the stark bandage over his left eye, where a shard of Brendermeyer’s femur had torn a gash. His blue eyes looked sunken in their bruised sockets, and the second degree burns on his neck and chin were an angry red.

Not as angry as he felt, though. In this case, what was inside him was much worse than how he looked.

He was on a hefty dose of pain suppressants, but not so heavy as the clinicians had prescribed. He needed a clear head.

He had nearly shared Brendermeyer’s unfortunate end. Luckily Jelly hadn’t skimped on the cabin safety measures when he’d last refit the craft.

“You alright in there, Stanlon?”

Gorsh. To have to deal with him now. He gritted his teeth. Gorsh would expect questions, and he had them, but he was loathe to waste time listening to Gorsh’s non-answers.

But he had to keep up appearances.

He opened the door to Gorsh’s private restroom and stepped out into his posh office, with its Peace Council sigil on the wall and its massive viewport gazing out at the planet below.

Plush rug, chrome desk, tasteful art. Yes, Gorsh, you’ve done well for yourself.

“Have a seat,” Gorsh said, motioning to a comfortable chair in front of his desk.  “I’ll get you a drink.”

“Not with the pain suppressants, no thanks,” Considine said, limping over to the chair and easing slowly and agonizingly down into it. The fabric was like a scouring pad on his tender leg, even through his trousers.

“You sure you’re alright?”

“Don’t sound so disappointed, Gorsh.”

“Don’t be stupid. You nearly checked out. We were partners once. I’m concerned.”

He poured himself a drink of greenish fluid and downed it in a gulp.

Considine leered.

“What’s so funny?” said Gorsh.

“You. Still at the libations after all these years. Yet you’ve got a seat on the Council, and my sobriety, where did that get me?”

Gorsh smiled slightly.

“Never too late to start thinking about your career,” he said, offering the bottle once more.

“I’d rather smoke,” he said, pulling his singed pack of kelpweed cigarettes out of his pocket.

“Oh God, don’t tell me you’ve taken up smoking that seaweed garbage.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” Considine admitted, knocking one loose and pushing it into his lips. “Light?”

“I don’t want my office smelling like a fish market,” Gorsh said, settling in his chair.

“All heart, like always,” Considine said, replacing the cigarette and sighing.

“You’ll want to know, we have a lead on the bomber,” Gorsh said.

“I don’t want to hear about your leads. I want to know why he isn’t in custody, when he did the deed in front of you and two of your crack full-time Enforcers.”

“The bay was on fire, Stanlon,” Gorsh said, opening his hands. “My first concern was to get you clear of the wreckage.”

“Convenient,” Considine muttered. “Alright, what’s your lead?”

“We had an incident that caused some anti-Enforcer backlash a little while ago. There’s a sort of fringe dissident group operating on Avenir now. The Pigkillers….”

Considine’s mind wandered. Pigkillers. Terrorists. Just as he’d suspected, Gorsh’s lead was a damned smokescreen. He already knew the identity of the bomber, just as Considine did.

It was Orin Bantry, Morgenstar Munition’s star employee and Aloysius Morgenstar’s personal go to it guy by way of detonite.  Considine had smelled the stuff when they’d confiscated it from Croix in Zirconia, and he’d smelled it again when it blew Brendermeyer to pieces.

Somebody should have told Orin to stop wearing that stupid company cap.

Match

by Edward M. Erdelac -

Considine opened the door to the interrogation room and stepped in.

“Alright Ms. Pacoy, I understand you’ve got a match.”

She was sitting at the table where he’d left her, a pixviewer in hands. She turned it to him, screen glowing in the dim room.

“That’s him. That’s the one that loaded the cargo on Avenir.”

Considine took the pixviewer and regarded the face and file in front of him.

“Alright, you can go, Ms. Pacoy. Let’s keep a closer eye on our cargo bay, shall we?”

“Yes, sir.”

Jelly stepped aside to let her leave the room.

“Orin Bantry,” Considine read, skimming the details of the man’s personnel file. He was rusty-bearded, balding on top, green eyes.

“Should I call it in, Inspector?” Jelly asked.

“No Jelly,” Considine said. “I think I’ll handle this one personally. You can go back to the garage.”

“Alright,” Jelly said.

Orin Bantry, thirty-four years old. He’d been with Morgenstar Munitions for seventeen years, was a Cover by birth, his father a miner on Sheba, mother a teacher on the space station, one of the glorified tutors who passed a rudimentary education on to the kids of the Sheba miners. They had to know how to read their oxygen regulators, didn’t they? How to seal a pressure suit and operate a drill.

Humble background, yes. He’d made the jump to Avenir as part of Morgenstar’s outreach program, basically a quota filling, much publicized hiring process the company ran every year to keep the Sheban miners from thinking they were a slave class. One lucky soul in a million got a cush job, got to live on Avenir.

Bantry’s job hadn’t been exactly cush, as the program put most Shebans and Covers into the freight depot, packing detonite and hauling crates. He’d apparently been one of the few to display genuine career aptitude. He wasn’t just a leg-upper. Worked his way up from freight to R&D, concocting the zero-G explosive devices his family used to safely blow holes in Sheba without scattering the miners into infinity.

But after eight years of being a hands on worker, he’d been promoted only a few months ago to administrative assistant to Aloysius Morgenstar himself, latest in a long line of corporate heads who could trace their lineage back to the founding of the company.

And now he was smuggling detonite to a whacko ex-grit breather on Zirconia.

But why? And why the confluence of two one-in-a-million individuals? A topsy bug hunter who made the jump to kelp farming and a brilliant chemist who’d been dug out of Sheba….two caste jumpers.

Something in his jaw pained him. That little man, that homunculus he used to joke about. The one that kicked him in the tooth when something wasn’t right.

He made his way back to his office and keyed in Gorsh again.

“Stanlon!” Gorsh in his clean suit, in his nice Peace Council office. “We’ll have the extradition crew ready in about ten minutes, so have Croix ready in about thirty?”

“I’m afraid there’s going to be a delay,” Considine said. “ZMB has quarantined the suspect for the time being. Seems he’s riddled with all sorts of viruses.”

“What! I’ve already put the extradition in motion.”

“I know, but you know how ZMB is. They’re adamant about scanning him.”

“Scanning him?” Gorsh repeated, a little nervously it seemed. “Under no circumstances!”

“Sir?”

“That is, I won’t have the delay. The wheels are already in motion.”

“Well I’m sorry, but we’ve no jurisdiction over the Medical Bureau, as you know. The doctor told me there’s a danger of contamination, and you know how touchy the sea monkeys are down here about germs. Nothing short of a squad of Enforcers is going to get him released early.”

“Damn!” said Gorsh. Something certainly wasn’t going his way.

“May I make a suggestion? How would it be if I maintained a close watch on the whole thing personally, and brought Croix up myself as soon as he’s released?” said Considine.

Gorsh was chewing his lips. What was the matter with him? Why did he want Croix so badly?

“Very well, Stanlon,” said Gorsh, straightening his tunic. “But I want you to keep a very close eye. And I want the results of the scan transmitted to my office as soon as….no, wait. I want you to bring me the results. And impress upon the ZMB the need for candor. We’re building a case, here after all, and anything, any narcotics in his system, for instance, any abnormalities at all, could be admissible as evidence.”

“You want the results kept secret?”

“Dammit, Stanlon….yes.”

“Alright….sir. I’ll advice discretion.”

“Do more than advise it.”

“Gorsh, do you expect some abnormality to show up in the scan?”

“I don’t know of course. Don’t be ridiculous. Look, we’ve had some botched sentences up here lately. Lot of angry relatives, influential people petitioning the Peace Council. I just want this to go very smoothly.”

“I see. Alright.”

“Alright. Stay on top of it, and call me as soon as he’s released, or if there are any complications.”

“I’ll do that.”

Gorsh winked out again.

Well something was surely going on here. He’d felt it prudent not to mention the doctor’s diagnosis that Croix was dying from his ailments.

Croix. What was it about the man that agitated Gorsh? Well, Considine’s purpose in delivering the man personally was two-fold. He could continue this investigation better on Avenir.

Now all Croix had to do was survive long enough to make the trip.