Lawless Sign Part Five (Fiction)

Chapter Eight: Are You In The Position To Know?

There were three men in the office of Miles Nasus. Nasus had another man on his speaker phone. The two men actually with Nasus were making it a point not to talk. The phone call had come into Nasus over the internet. Supposedly the call was somehow encrypted.  

The party on the other end at least had that part right. Nasus said “Everything else you have told me is entirely wrong. You’ve blown so many protocols, I shouldn’t even be talking to you. Now I have to go through books I’ve never cracked.”

“I’m sorry about that,” the voice said. The chatter of a dispatcher’s radio could be heard in the background on the voice’s end. “We’ve never had this sort of problem before. They must not have updated the codes here. I don’t know what to say.”

“You better think of something. It’s been two hours. This is on the radio, on the news. I shouldn’t be the last person you call. I don’t think I even have you as a contact person. Nick, isn’t it?”

“Nick Kazios, yes.”

“Nick, I have you as a non-officer employee. One without a security clearance. There’s only one person on your end who is authorized to speak here.”

“Um… Royce Cole?” was Nick’s uncertain answer.

“I can’t say. Let’s put this hypothetically—“

“—That’s gotta be wrong. Royce Cole is 97 years old.”

One of the other men in the room with Nasus shook his head no.

Nasus asked, incredulously “Royce Cole the third is 97 years old? I have Royce Cole the third as the CEO. Royce Cole the second is the owner.”

“Royce Cole the third is 97 years old,” Nick explained.

“Is there a Royce Cole the fourth?”

Nick said “There’s a Leon Bernstein. That’s who told me to contact you.”

“I have a Leo Bernstein, your corporation counsel. He does have clearance. That’s not something he can delegate. He’s going to get a nastygram from DOD. You tell him that.”

“I will.”

“He’s the one who needs to be calling me. Not you.”

“He’s indisposed. It’s an emergency.”

“Is he at the scene?”

“No. Personal emergency. He’s indisposed.”

“He doesn’t own a cell phone?—Who do you have at the scene?”

Nick answered “Greg. Greg Armstrong.”

Miles Nasus and the man who had shaken his head shot glances in the direction of Greg Armstrong, the third man in the room. Greg shrugged his shoulders and remained silent, as he had been instructed.

“Who? I don’t have that person,” Nasus said.

“He works for Hap,” Nick explained. In the background was the sound of a truck passing by.

“Hap, I have. But he doesn’t have clearance. I only have him as the contact for the auction house… or aircraft hangar.”

“Yeah, it’s the same place.”

“As AUAQ Green Glass?”

“No. The aircraft hangar and the auction are the same place.”

“You can’t do that. You can’t mix clearances and contacts like that. And you can’t divert victims from AUAQ to your front hospital. It’s a violation. That ‘hospital’ doesn’t even have an admitting, much less an ER. You need to send those people someplace else.”

“But they’re dead.”

“That’s especially a big problem. I am going to ask you this once: Did the incident have a material impact on any of your covert functions?”

“I’m going to say yes.”

“I need you to send me the scope of work and your contracting contact. Hopefully this doesn’t shut you down totally. But they’re going to go after you with a fine tooth comb after this. I need your full employee roster, updated and in here. And I need new phase one and phase two environments on all your facilities. That’s AUAQ, the hospital, the pharmacies, that medical building in Northlake, the residences and the commercial in Stone Park, the office in Keeneyville—is there any place I don’t have?”

“Royce Cole Oil. That’s where I am calling from.”

“The tanker farm, I have. That’s current. You should be complimented on having the most environmentally friendly oil tanker farm on Earth.”

“Cooking oil. We’re refining cooking oil.”

“Anything else? The Roymarillo Building?”

“We’re converting trucks to run on cooking oil.—The Roymarillo Building isn’t ours.”

“Did you sell it?”

“I don’t know. I know we don’t have anything to do with it.”

“Anything else? Are you in the position to know?”

“That’s it. And I am the facilities guy.”

Nasus had been fishing. He wanted to see if Nick confessed to owning a factory on Chicago Avenue, somewhere in the vicinity of Avers. Greg Armstrong had confirmed that it existed, but had no other details.  

“You’re lucky I’m a few steps ahead of you on this. Because I would know nothing if I relied on information from you,” Nasus said. “You’ve caused me a lot of hassle. Now I’ve got some of this covered for you, so remember who your friends are. I am going to send you someone you know. You need to do exactly what I tell him or I am going to pull the plug. This is the only person I want to deal with from you. That’s still no guarantee, but at least you will be clear on my end. Got that?”

“You want Leon to call you?”

“No. I don’t want to hear from you again. I only want to deal with the person I’m sending you. I’m sure he knows what I want. If things go the way they should, you go back to your cost plus collections and I go back to doing the crosswords. But it has to go my way.”

“”Ok. I understand,” Nick said and then hung up.

Nasus turned to Greg Armstrong and asked “Was that Nick Kazios?”

“Yeah. First time he’s sounded like he’s not underwater, but that was him,” Greg answered.

The other man remained silent for as long as Greg was in the room.

Nasus asked “When was the last time you saw Leon Bernstein?”

“This morning. He picked up payroll.”

“Was he having a personal emergency then?”

“He doesn’t talk to me much. He could have been.”

“He’s five foot two and three hundred pounds. So the coronary is scheduled for any second now?”

“Leon’s not real healthy looking.”

“And Hap is your step-father. That makes three convicts your mother has married, so far. She’s a real winner.”

“Would you please keep my mom out of it?”

“Elvis likes you, I don’t. Elvis sees into your soul and thinks there is something redeemable there. Me, I look for leverage. With you, it’s mom. So mom it is.”

“Colonel, I’m going to do whatever you ask me to.”

“That’s not the question, Greg. And I don’t want your best effort. I want you to not screw up. Do you have that in you?”

“I understand.”

“Elvis is everywhere, Greg. Elvis is going to know if you screw up. You screw up, you’re out of friends. And then prison is the least of your worries.”

“I understand.”

“I need you to tell Nick or Leon--whichever you run into first--that I am going to make sure that no one is going to scrutinize where the victims got shipped off to.  In return, I need their help in bringing all the facility inspections up to date. I’m having to scramble to find site inspectors with the right profile and clearance. When I find them, that means that these inspections have to be done boom, boom, boom. I’m not going to backdate them for you. The inquiry is likely to go just as far as asking if they exist. So let’s make them exist. That means I need access to you at any time. That means that if I get an inspector at any time, they need to have access to any facility at any time. That’s what you tell Leon or Nick. Don’t sell it, just say it. Whatever they tell you, you come back and tell me. In person. You and only you. No emails. No phone calls.”

“I understand,” Greg said, standing. He pulled a tag off his shirt. The shirt and pants were close matches to what he was wearing when I left him in a tree a few hours previous to this. “And mom?”

“Don’t say anything to her. Don’t try to set anything up. Once I’ve made her disappear, there will be a back story. By the time Hap guesses at anything, you’re gone, too.”

“But mom’s safe first?”

“No matter what happens to you. Yes,” Nasus said, taking long strides towards the office’s door. “You remember where the rental car place is?”

Greg took the hint and followed Nasus, saying “Yeah.”

“Once you get to your car, just leave the rental on the street. When you have a chance, call the rental place and have them pick their car up. That’s it. You don’t have to pay for it. You don’t have to tell them your name.”

Nasus opened the door and let Greg walk past. Greg half stumbled by the receptionist and went out the thick wooden door to the hallway.

“Mary, any time that guy comes in, you just buzz him through,” Nasus said to the receptionist.

“Yes, Miles.”

“Thank you,” Nasus said, shutting himself back into the office. He turned his attention to his remaining visitor, who had come to sit behind the desk. The grey haired man in the brown summer weight two piece suit was tapping away at the keyboard. He was squat and overly neat, with a pencil thin mustache, a tan, and brown horn-rimmed bifocals.

Nasus took the seat in front of the desk, which Greg had vacated. He said “I swear that’s the first time that secure speaker phone internet thing ever worked.”

“They’re taking the system out of service next month. Ten million dollars. Flush,” the man said. “Good catch on the site inspections. That’s a pretext for snooping I would have never thought of.”

“I don’t know if they’re in date or not. I don’t know where they are,” Nasus said. “I don’t even know if their contract requires it.”

“Tellingly, neither do they,” the other man said and then held a finger up.

Two buzzes came from the speaker phone, followed by a chipper female voice saying “National Propulsion Laboratory, Myron Feldman’s office.”

The man said “Hello.”

“Hi, Myron,”  

Myron Feldman said “Tell Doctor Vogel the eagle has landed.”

“Will do,” the woman said, after which the speaker again buzzed twice.

“That’s the way the system is supposed to work,” Feldman explained. “Now we’re getting satellite phones.”

“That more secure?”

“It probably has more to do with the satellite phone company going out of business. Next thing you know our bonuses will be paid in Susan B. Anthony dollars.”

“Or two dollar bills,” Nasus said. “How was the flight from Pasadena?”

“Except for the ‘no notice’ and ‘landing in Chicago in October’ parts, fine, Colonel.”

“Retired. It’s just Miles,” Nasus said. “Are you the lab’s designated Secret Squirrel?”

“I’m the least idealistic person they employ.”

“You guys taking lead with this, the tip of the spear?”

“I can’t say.”

“Am I helping you or are you helping me?”

“Both.”

“How far did you get with the briefing?”

Myron said “I didn’t fly commercial. But I have to confess I was absorbed by the ‘brain box’ report from Argonne.”

“Convincing?”

“Very much so. We got it to work.”

“Really? Elvis said he broke it.”

“Elvis isn’t very technical.”

“He makes it a point of saying that,” Nasus said. “So you’re probably not all that up to speed on the rest of the situation.--Except for the part where you know how old Royce Cole is?”

“My error. Miles, can we pretend that didn’t happen?”

“I’m all about professional courtesy,” Nasus said. “I think we’ve covered the facilities, mostly. I’m not sure if they’re being entirely forthcoming. Or maybe these people don’t know the whole scope of Cole’s operations. The Roymarillo Building and the bank on Lake Street are being claimed by both Cole and Nedor Services. I am assuming that Royce Cole and Nedor Services are separate entities.”

“They couldn’t be more separate. Have you contacted Nedor Services?”

“I have an iron in the fire,” Nasus said. “Greg, who we just met, is a two time loser, employed as the plant manager for Royce Cole’s AUAQ, which is largely a trucking firm. Green Glass is its glass recycling arm. He got the job through his step-father Hap, a convicted murderer. Hap is a partner in an auction business with Leon Bernstein. Bernstein has a family law practice in Keeneyville. Mostly divorce. Does some estate work. Per Greg, Royce Cole is a brain dead resident of Indian Head Park Asylum--on paper,  a sixteen bed hospital specializing in the long term care of brain injury patients, but listed with us as a covert veterinary hospital. I am assuming that’s a euphemism for an animal testing lab.”

“Cole built the Asylum about forty years ago. It’s supposed to be his headquarters. He’s primarily in materials research.”

Nasus asked “Is that a euphemism for something?”

“Professional courtesy. Trying to keep you from running down a rabbit hole. The Asylum could be his offices or his lab. He could have been doing anything in there. Again, this is between you and I. Refining used cooking oil for use in diesel engines is typical of Cole’s  civilian activities.”

Nasus explained “The place was gut rehabbed about five years ago. A lot of medical equipment was sent there. Whether it got there, I don’t know.”

Myron said “News to me.”

“What Greg says is that Leon found out that Cole was incapacitated somehow. Somehow he got power of attorney over Cole’s affairs. Leon Bernstein and Hap have been looting the business, focusing on finding accounts and loose funds, so far to the tune of about five million dollars. Leon is attempting to sell some of Cole’s unexpired patents, the one’s he can understand. Hap has been selling equipment from the petroleum business and some sort of trove of antiques. Assuming what Greg says is the whole story—and it’s no stretch to say it’s not—Leon and Hap have not figured out a way to just run with all of the operation’s funds. All of the accounts they’ve pilfered magically fill back up. So why fight it?”

“Ridiculous,” Myron said.

“Sort of a pedestrian bust out, if this wasn’t a defense contractor. Is this typical of his operations?”  (A ‘bust out’ as I found out later, is a scheme where criminals convert the credit facility of an established business, liquidating merchandise or squiring off funds for their own purposes.)

“I don’t know all of Cole’s operations in great detail, but I would say no. Cole is more muscular than he is clever. Much more prone to applying science than skullduggery.  And he doesn’t have a profit motive. His covert operations are done at his own expense. ”

“He’s not much of a defense contractor, then.”

“They had to classify him as something. He’s very valuable. He was very valuable. He hasn’t been seen in five years,” Myron said.

“Didn’t leave a note? Just walked off the reservation? Did we forget to shut him down?”

“Not forgetfulness. More like institutional wishful thinking,” Myron said, his hands again typing at the keyboard.

The desk’s four back screens were filled with new images. On the far left was what seemed to be an autopsy photo, showing an olive colored male torso covered in deep wounds and blisters. The middle screen showed a picture of a dozen soldiers in a context-free jumble of action poses. The men had green skin and were standing inside an irregular oval pool of green liquid. On the far right screen was a detail shot of one of the soldier’s boots. The boot was burnt, bones showed through the soldier’s green ankle. Around the boot were an arrangement of plastic army men, all in the same poses the soldiers had struck.

“Cole’s last known ‘antic’ was to sneak up on this group of Nedor Services security men and encase them all in green plastic. It’s academic whether these men were compelled to take these positions before or after their deaths,” Myron explained. “He doesn’t just turn desks into Jell-O. Cole’s a vile critter when he’s crossed.”

“You’re saying Cole had some justification with this? That doesn’t really jive with what Elvis found.”

“I was going to call him Flash Rodgers. Elvis, really?”

“You can name the next alien.”

“Wipe it out of your mind that Cole was justified in doing what he did to these men. I’m sure Nedor Services started it, but it’s no excuse. Cole has done this many times. He’s strangled people with their own entrails. There’s a pattern to it. He’s not so much akin to a serial killer as he is emulating the behavior of an 1890s era member of the Black Hand society. When he kills someone, it’s because they’ve bothered him—they’ve interfered with his operations after having been warned not to; they have unfairly won resources away from him; or they have used slander to deny him approval—and he wants to send a message to other people who are also bothering him.  One hundred percent of the people Cole is thought to have killed were either other contractors or his own handlers.--People like us.--It’s always an attempt to force an organizational change in behavior. No one has seen Cole for five years, but wiping out an entire planet full of people would be a departure. There’s not much of a message to wiping out a planet of innocent people, unless his being able to do so is the message. That’s not the sort of thing Cole works on and it’s against his stated ambition. And he’s delivered no ultimatum. Unless it’s inadvertently, indirectly through Elvis.”

Nasus asked “Who does Cole need approval from?”

“Us. U.S. Unlce Sam,” Myron answered. “He’s very patriotic. Cole has some unreconstructed views on how US defense policy should be conducted. Other than a favoring for Christians and plutocrats, he has no politics—or hasn’t expressed any. He’s always on our side, although he’s been a relic for a generation. Allegedly the creature is motivated by a fear of waking up one morning and finding nothing left on Earth but rocks to talk to. Supposedly around about the time Genghis Khan killed Cole’s girlfriend, Cole became convinced that humanity is on a track to wipe itself out. To prevent this from happening, Cole has sought to back some sort of global just organizing force—a global police state or a global nanny state—whatever. So he’s picked a winner. We’re it. He’s offered up all sorts of assistance. At least in the past he has been willing to take ‘no’ for an answer. He only goes ahead with his applied research after he’s received an orderly commissioning.”

“Is it possible someone might have approved killing everyone on another planet?”

“Historically Cole doesn’t initiate policies. He doesn’t even suggest objectives. It’s all providing tactics and tools designed to meet previously established ends. I can’t imagine that the government has a policy to kill a planet full of people anywhere. Did Elvis say where this planet was?’

“Not at all. Elvis said Earth is not in one of the nine galaxies he has maps for. Elvis knew where Tiamore was. He day-tripped there. My guess is that Tiamore closer to where Elvis came from than to us.”

“Galaxies, he said. Cole is not a space guy. It’s not anything he’s shown. And he’s shown a lot. Skipping off the planet would be a new trick, one that doesn’t seem to build off of any of his previous work.”

“Elvis is concerned that he can’t provide us any evidence of what happened on Tiamore. And he hasn’t ruled out that his appearing here might just be coincidence.”

“Tell Elvis to rule coincidence out,” Myron said. “Sadly, devising a method to involuntarily change peoples’ minds was one of the objectives handed to Cole. And the tube weapon he described rings a bell, as does the character of some of the people hanging around this operation. Poor Nedor Services hired clean marines and special forces veterans. All of Cole’s henchmen graduated from crime school. Greg and Hap fit the profile. Even Cole’s professional help was a little dodgy.”

“From what I can tell, Bernstein seems clean,” Nasus said. “Up until about two years ago, he was a partner in a Michigan Avenue firm. If there’s a reason behind Bernstein’s departure, they’ve kept it quiet.”

“That field isn’t what it used to be. He may have simply been bad for their image. Do you want a 300 pound attorney?”

“The guy we were just talking to, Nick Kazios, is a pharmacist and a CPA. He owns a pharmaceutical wholesale business in Kankakee. I haven’t figured out what he’s doing working at Royce Cole Oil.”

“Look for a divorce filing. Always the entrepreneur’s Achilles heel. That would be my guess. Obviously, there’s quite a bit we don’t know.”

“Hypothetically, what would happen if Elvis decides to clean house on these guys?”

“Would that make him happy?”

“We’re not out to protect Cole?”

“Cole wasn’t authorized to do any of this. If he has any continuing covert operations, it’s news to us. That makes him a renegade. We’re not going to tolerate that and we’re certainly not going to protect him. Elvis is the one who reached out to us. He’s who we are out to protect—and reel in.  And no formaldehyde for our boy,” Myron said. “If it will cement for us a good relationship on a going forward basis, we are willing to absorb the costs to the scum of our society. My only regret is that we do not have more career criminals to sacrifice in such a noble cause.”

“I see.”

“When do I get to meet Elvis?” 

Chapter Nine: Context Wrapper

I could tell you that the stars are living organisms and that the universe is held together by a web of their communications with each other. I could tell you that everything, regardless of state or status, has a consciousness: from the rocks, to the trees to dark matter milling in space. In fact, everything not only has an engaged experience, but everything has at least three levels of such.

That’s nice. That’s nifty. It’s not very actionable. And I haven’t given you any context.

I have made mention of how rare running into evidence of the Voliant Wave is. It’s like finding a dinosaur alive and eating your living room. I don’t run into people like Sulfur that much, either. It’s only lately that I’ve been running into beings with the credibility of the Tooth Fairy on a regular basis.  I have run into Sulfur’s weapon of choice several times and there’s nothing incredible about it. As for the weapon he used to wipe out the people of Tiamore, it’s very similar to his mind zap device. The difference between the two is like the difference between a cigarette lighter and a flame thrower: same concept, different magnitude, different use. Walking thoughts, which I only lately made mention of, are not all that unusual. Where there is wood, there is a possibility of termites. They’re not always harmful and they do have a natural purpose.

All of that is nifty, too. Moreover, it’s actionable. With the right context, learned at the right time, such facts may become tools.

At about the time that Greg Armstrong was driving back to AUAQ in a rented car, the top vertical beams on the ninth floor of the Raymarillo Building began radiating a solar system wide astroglance sweep. It was also bleating out a hailing frequency.

I have only given you enough to make about half of that understandable. Without doing my best Paul Harvey, this leads me to believe that Royce Cole is a space guy. (Myron  is wrong.) To be brief, astroglance units are as common to me as nuclear reactors are to you. They are restricted and exist inside specific structures. They do not retrofit. In order for the astroglance to work, Royce Cole would have to build the structure around it. The Roymarillo Building went up in 1929.

These stunning facts could mean several things. If you get an assumption wrong, as it turns out I did, you can jump to all sorts of hasty conclusions.

I could tell you that you are not the person you were seven years ago. That is a fact. Every single molecule in your body renews within seven years. There never is a part of you that is ever more than seven years old. So anything that happened to you more than seven years ago, didn’t really happen to you—you, as in an object comprised of the molecules which currently constitute you. To you, this is a goofy and trivial bit of physics. Imagine this fact infused with all sorts of profound religious significance. This has been my context for the past twelve years.

Whether or not this actually is a fact is irrelevant. It is stated as such in my religion.

When I was a boy I happened to make the acquaintance of Comrade Voris, a politician of some note. Once he was firmly out of politics, someone commissioned him to write his memoirs. He spent my entire childhood doing this. By the time I was seventeen, he had completed 7000 pages of this manuscript—and had yet to get to the part where he left his boyhood village.  It seemed that every moment of his childhood was layered in building epiphany. Except for hearing about his childhood, my childhood was nowhere near as intense. I had four siblings. Two of my aunts lived with us. They had eleven children, all about my age. Nothing individually profound ever happened to me. Very little individually happened to me, period.

To use Earth geography as an analogy, we lived in Benelux: a loose confederation of planets, surrounded by larger and more formidable confederations to which we were allied.  Benelux was part of a NATO type organization. And there was a UN type entity which helped give some semblance of rule of law to our nine galaxy cluster of space faring states.

That said, there are people on my home planet who live in mud huts, who are illiterate and basically subsistence level poor. So our level of advancement, whatever that might be, isn’t perfect or even. The only difference between me and the people who wound up in mud huts is that I was born in the right city.

Peculiar to my home planet, we did not live in large countries like you do on Earth. My hometown was a city-state of two hundred and fifty thousand people, called Arsenal. There were about four hundred city-states on my planet. About a third of them were affiliated with the space state. Being a member of the Benelux requires a certain degree of infrastructure and commitment.

Arsenal was atypical of the city-states. All of our industry was related to the space state and to NATO and the UN. As the name implies, we manufactured weapons for use in space. Specifically, we handled and conditioned volatile substances for deployment in weapons systems. The Charliq and Outlaw Matter I carry were made in my hometown. Industrial accidents, some rather devastating, were common. Under normal circumstances Arsenal resembled Gary Indiana as if it were decorated to be part of the Tiki Village in Disneyland.

Most Benelux planets and countries were a little more like Earth. Most planets and most countries on those planets had some access to space. For those political units with access, one in five jobs has something to do with outer space. About a third of those people are directly employed in a space industry. Of the people directly employed in a space-related industry, one in ten physically works in outer space. To boil it down, for those people whose countries have industrial and common access to space, about one out of every hundred people is a spaceman. That’s somewhere within the mean for our nine galaxy glob of space.

It wasn’t typical of Arsenal, where spaceman wasn’t a common trade at all. I never met a spaceman growing up. The ground to port facility was in a far city-state. The space port itself was orbital. Being a spaceman is not something we in Arsenal did.

When I turned sixteen, I discontinued my formal education. Things were set up such that I could have made a living hunting, providing wild game to butcher shops. It would not have been a good living, but Arsenal is a cheap place to live. That was my career path up until the day my brother brought me to the Shadow Fleet recruitment office. He was the one who wanted to sign up. I was just doing what he was doing. They took me. Sixteen years later, I was appointed the chief operations officer of the fleet.

The Shadow Fleet is a combination of your Coast Guard and FBI. It’s not an expeditionary force. It’s not really part of the military of Benelux (which did not have a sector military) nor is it part of NATO or the UN. There are people inside of Benelux space who do not affiliate with the space state. Some of these people pick on our mostly robotic shipping or smuggle contraband or are engaged in some sort of scum bag activity. Stomping on them is what the Shadow Fleet does.

The Shadow Fleet maintains four bases in Benelux space. Our operational wing—what I was in charge of—has twelve ships. These ships are not like Honey. Honey is my runabout, a cross between a jet fighter and a tank. Our main ships are forty-five thousand ton vessels fashioned out of a diamond-like substance. They have crews of five people each. So to put it in perspective, I was the highest ranking of sixty space officers. With support staff and base crew, there are about one thousand people in the service altogether. I was the tenth highest ranking person in the service. I led group operations from my flagship, Cruiser Fluffy.

Our enemies are not aliens. They are people like me. People who live in Benelux are similar to people who live in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We are all different breeds of the same species. Let’s say we are all dogs. My people are miniature poodles. The vast majority of the people the Shadow Fleet bumps heads with are Chihuahuas. To put it in another light, these are also the vast majority of the peoples within the Benelux whose countries don’t affiliate with the space state. Some of them are renegade-state sponsored, others work for private parties.  It’s a small dog on small dog slappy fight and it’s not entirely apolitical and it could be said to be racist.

That’s as politically correct as I intend to get. These people are the mafia. They’re slavers, drug dealers, organ harvesters. The nicer ones hijack drone freighters. You can consider the source, but it was a pleasure to spend twenty-four years squashing them. I can think of no higher calling or better use for my time and talents.

The scum bags operating in Benelux space were sponsored  by one or more of sixteen organized groups. Just as interacting legitimately with the space state is a group effort, so is stealing from it. No one gets into space on their own. I could generally figure out who a pirate was affiliated with by the equipment that they were using. There was only one clan, the Rezvulgas, who used equipment so different that I couldn’t trace who they were aligned with.

The Rezvulga clan were a curious, small band of pirates who operated under the cover of running a National Enquirer-like news service. I never had too much direct contact with them. From what was known, they seemed in the business of smuggling antiquities.

There were rumors that the clan was a cult of sorts and that its leader, the ever mysterious--and, in all probability mythical--Countess Rezvulga had a thing for the occult. Any disaster, any unexplained event, any reported anomaly brought the Rezvulgas swarming. Their ‘reporters’ often arrived before the authorities. Following the reporters were teams of experts, who plied the situation with very high end, but absolutely conventional apparatus. Due to their willingness to share their finding,  these experts had a good reputation with most local officials. Nothing helps settle things down better than a plausible explanation. It’s even better, from a certain perspective, if an explanation is delivered in a timely fashion and without any effort being exerted on the authority’s part. Providing such was the Rezvulga’s passport into many a situation.

The Rezvulgas had never been caught in a lie. They were as apolitical of a news service as you could ask for. Moreover, if they reached a conclusion, they shared it—in exchange for an exclusive on breaking the story. The entire idea that there was something else to them or that they even were pirates was a closely held conspiracy theory. One that I didn’t entirely buy into.

Supposedly they had all sorts of arcane and pseudo scientific gear stowed on their galleons. Having toured one of their galleons, all I can tell you is that they had some pack rat tendencies. They had all sorts of stuff crammed disassembled into hidden holds that our science boys could not make heads or tails of. And that makes science boys twitchy. And that makes the aristocrats who ran the Shadow Fleet start to erupt with fantastic slanders.

Our boys concluded that the Rezvulgas were up to something. They may have been spies. They probably shared information with other pirate groups. (The Rezvulgas made no secret of the fact that they were often tipped off by pirates.) Certainly their tendency for showing up around unexplained events a tad too quickly was annoying. But they could have been, mostly, what they said they were, a news service, and just dabbled in something else on the side.

During my career I considered the Rezvulgas a very minor concern. They were universally unarmed. Their ships were high end commercial jobs, nice but slow. Generally they would allow a boarding without much fuss if requested. If they were pirates, it was a low volume business. It seemed to me that they traded in junk. Old junk, but junk nonetheless. If it wasn’t slavery or munitions, it wasn’t a priority with me, no matter how mysterious.

The Shadow Fleet’s commanders had cobbled together  intel leading them to conclude that the other pirates considered the Rezvulgas to be their aristocracy. I don’t know what drove it, but our defenestrated, impoverished aristocrats were damn sure that the Rezvulgas were in charge of all piracy, everywhere. I chalk it up to envy. Here the Rezvulgas were running some sort of going concern, while all our aristocrats could do was clutter up the civil service ranks. I can’t tell you how many times I went to sleep in the middle of Supplemental Rezvulga Briefings or used print outs of such to mop up spills.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have paid more attention. But during a twenty-four year career, I didn’t cross paths with the Rezvulgas all that much.

As for my career, my intention was to retire from the service at the age-out of space point of sixty years. I didn’t make it. Twenty-four years into it, I lost all desire to perform my duties. It was sudden. The reason was obvious. I was placed in the care of an order of monks. Either I would eventually resume my career or I would rejoin civilian society. I did neither.

The doctrine of seven year renewal reads something along the lines of Mathew 5:4 “Blessed are they who mourn: For they shall be comforted.” Or it’s a permutation of “Time heals all wounds.” My monks placed a burden on the part of the mourner. I have seven years to get over it and I must show daily progress towards that goal.

By their take on the doctrine of seven year renewal, my arm should have grown back.

Screw them. I was buying none of it. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes your life goes off a cliff and that’s where it stays. A comet hit paradise and you spend the rest of your life sucking sap out of cinders. I had the right to sing the blues and I was going to sing them.

Windy would tell you that this is a one-dimensional characterization of the period. It’s accurate for the next three years of my life. After three years, I was as vested in being a monk as the monks were. I may not have been cured, but I was as much of a monk as a monk could be. We parted and I started wandering the universe aimlessly in Honey.

Allow me to denude that of romantic connotation. Honey has the interior space of a Honda Civic. Even in urbanized space, I’m not going far. At length, I matriculated from the Benelux to the Ukraine. Once there, I move from space port to space port. It’s the equivalent of living in airports.

Space ports have a special economy. Anyone who shows in a space ship is considered to be contributing value. You’re free to suck up cot space and food for as long as you like.

As I was petty mooching my wave across the Ukraine, I kept running into this one high end caravel. It’s what we would call a sub-capital merchant ship. This one was about the size of a Nimitz Class aircraft carrier. It had all the new gear. It had systems we would have drooled over in the Shadow Fleet. Every time I saw the thing, something new was being installed in it.

At this point Toovy will tell you that she willed me into existence. The universe provided me for her.

It’s her ship. She’s a twenty-something year old Chihuahua self-made trader. The trading part, she’s aces at. The ship is essentially bling. It’s advertising. It’s a deterrent. I start helping her make all of the wonderful systems she’s bought for the ship actually function together.

Again, I’m not all that technical. The people who sold Toovy all of these systems didn’t care how they worked together at all. Toovy just wanted the latest things. Compared to these people I’m a handyman.

I don’t know how I suddenly became perfect and wonderful. In Toovy’s eyes I am.

Beyond the ship minding, I am exactly what she has been seeking. I’m older than dirt. I have glowing eyes. I have one arm. And I’m wearing the uniform of a high ranking anti-piracy officer. If you are a trader girl, I’m the type of guy whose lap you want to be sitting in when negotiating across the table from pirates.

In this next phase of my life I’m Gabby Hayes. I’m Poncho, Tonto, Robin and Kato. I’m not the best mate, because I cannot biologically keep up with a woman this much younger than me. However, that issue is more my problem than it was hers. My lust for life did return. I’ve given enough explanation.

The Rezvulgas were very active in the Ukraine. They were much more overt and acted much more the part of pirate royalty. Unfortunately, they were Toovy’s main competition.  But we were doing alright for about four years.

At one point an issue escalated and the Rezvulgas went out for Toovy’s blood. We booked for Argentina. There were Rezvulgas in Argentina. It got hot there in short order. So we fled for Australia.

My Earth analogy runs out of room here. The Combine makes a poor Australia. As opposed to being adjacent to the polar ice caps or something known, it’s sort of to the left of another cluster of five galaxies which are not affiliated with our cluster and is distended ass out in the middle of nowhere. The Combine is one of our cluster’s borders, but it doesn’t have any internal or external neighbors. Vecky Tomlinson once insisted that I was describing Florida, but that’s doing a disservice to Alabama and Georgia. Space states are more like spider webs or molecules than they are globs on paper. The Combine is an lopsided ball of webs far out on the end of some long strings.

Politically, they’re something else. These are the people I told off when I left Tiamore for Earth. (Another inexact analogy: The mafia hot on our heels, we defected to North Korea.) In return for our safety, the powers that be stripped Toovy’s ship of everything interesting, confiscated all of our material wealth and assigned us jobs as snake catchers in the Florida Keys. That’s putting it short.

To put it exactly, Toovy is operating her ship as a tramp ferry between the various systems in the Keys and I am employed exploring a fifty light year band of space called “The Garden” for Elmaty, another monk in my order.

That did not take my entire childhood to explain. You now have all of the essentials. And this brings us up to about a week ago.

I was returning home after a two day survey of a planet my boss Elmaty suspected might be have traces of a specific useful mineral on it. The mineral we are seeking is what astroglances are made from and would explain some oddball readings he had picked up.  

I had just received an in-bound communications asking “Were you able to survey the near space of Rega?”

I was at a loss. “I left Rega eight hours ago. There’s nothing on Rega. Unless you like sleet. It took me five hours to dig out. What’s supposed to be in the near space of Rega?”

“The drone freighter,” it said.

“I saw the alert for the drone freighter when I woke up. I thought you were having Toovy look for that.”

“It was an all points alert,” it said. There are only two ships active in this portion of space: my ship  and Toovy’s vessel. For this reason, I didn’t understand why this thing was issuing an ‘all points’ alert. It’s either me, her or both. There is no ‘all points’ option.

“What’s with that, by the way? Toovy’s saying there’s an Assembler Box on the thing. You know, if this is in Combine space, it probably belongs to the Neglectful Inheritors or the Crime Lords. Do you really want to get in the middle of that action?”

The brain box stayed on point with “So you did not see the drone freighter?”

“No. Toovy told me she was hot on it. I didn’t want to occlude her award. If there is one.”

“She miss-communicated.”

“Don’t blame her.  If there was an intention missed, it is on my end. I was asleep. I dug out of ten feet of sleet and bugged out of there. What class of drone are we talking about?”

“We do not know. It was hoped that we could rely upon your experience.”

Obviously, they can’t count on my expertise in looking for something if I slept through the area I was supposed to be searching. Just to give you a hint as to how high up in the order of things I am: my balls are being busted by my boss’s answering machine.

All I could say was “I do have the mineral survey of Rega. It’s not astroglance material. It’s something else. Is Elmaty still getting astroglance signals?”

“I have no information. You did not see the drone. Do you detect evidence of it now?”

I checked. “I got fuzz. Too far off. Would you like me to turn around?”

“How far along are you with Planet Seven?”

“Data is compiled. Elmaty was right. We made contact with the civilization there. It wasn’t Planet Seven, though. Same system, but the next furthest out from the star. I took it on my own to extend the search. I hope that isn’t an infraction.”

“You found a new civilization. That is outstanding.”

I didn’t correct the brain box, but calling the Planet of the Incessant Percussionists a new civilization was a stretch. Instead I said “Remember who your friends are.”

“Always, Captain Meteor,” it said in an even inflection that displayed an utter lack of  soul. “A new civilization must be brought to Elmaty’s immediate attention. Return to Half Marble immediately.”

Half Marble has its name because half of its surface is marble; a brittle brown and grey variety. It has a nice, very foggy, oxygen-rich atmosphere and ample water. End of story.

No life naturally exists on Half Marble. Its planet wide ocean is continually interrupted by partially submerged, shear sided mountain ranges. Roughly 7/10ths the size of Earth, it is a moon in rotation around a red gas giant. The system’s smallish yellow sun, called Moris after the discoverer, is about 16/17ths the distance from the red giant that Earth is to its own sun. Half Marble has no soil, little flat land and no volcanic activity.

Its address reads: Half Marble, last inhabited planet at the edge of nine galaxies, ass end of the universe. The planet is situated at the intersection of two trade routes. It serves as the trade route’s roundabout. From here, you can only head back into the Combine.

It is gas, food and lodging, in Earth terms. Also, there is a high end resort. During the three months that Half Marble is facing the sun, the fog burns off. Revealed then are the purplish deep waters nearly twenty-five thousand feet from the tops of the mountains. The mountains themselves are unusually needle like. About two hundred years ago some enterprising person flattened two mountain tops and stuck clusters of prefab domes upon them.

It’s not that ugly. The domes match the mottled hues of the mountains themselves. From outside, it makes the two mountains look contoured as opposed to pointed. These two peaks are a mile or so across from each other. One mountain has flumes dug into its side to accommodate roller toboggan runs. The other resort hosts weddings, meetings, hand bell festivals and yodeling tournaments. As for the structures, think Four Seasons or Ritz Carlton, only as cities.

During the season Half Marble continually hosts about two hundred thousand visitors. The other six months of the year Half Marble’s population drops to twelve hundred. These people live in the resorts. There are no structures external to the resorts. Other than the two mountaintop compounds, Half Marble is uninhabited. I live in Incline City, the roller toboggan resort, which I consider the more desirable. Of the twelve hundred people who live on Half Marble full-time, a little over  four hundred of them are my species. All of them live in Incline City, also.

I am one of three people on this planet whose living is not directly tied to the resorts. Toovy and Elmaty are the other two. As for what your general citizen does during the off season, although we do have passels of drug users and other lazy bones, most people have a side gig or a very active social life. I’ve been told it’s a nice place to raise a family. Although it’s arguably the frontier, it’s not the Wild West. It’s more like an under-inhabited shopping mall. In the off season you are likely to find small groups in isolated lit up spaces discussing philosophy over tea. I may be the only armed person on the planet.

Even during the height of the season, which I try to avoid, it’s hardly a wild place. We’re talking hand bell enthusiasts and tobaganers here. These are family resorts.

I did not spot Toovy’s caravel on the way in, which concerned me. Her vessel is not designed to land. Normally it is in geosynchronous orbit above Incline.

The signal received from Mister Rongo’s Cargo Port, I started to descend through the atmosphere. In a moment I spotted the oculus of its dome rotating towards us. The iris opened and we were in. A bumpy, halting freight elevator ride followed. Mister Bongo’s does not handle the passenger or tourist trade. Only drones. And me.

My slip is huge: a hexagon thirty feet on a side. Toovy and I live here. We are the only living things making their homes at Mister Rongo’s. Most of my kind live in plush apartments. I like this. The thirty foot ceiling and the indented puke green window-less walls took some getting used to, but it suits me fine. Toovy hates it.

Honey dropped through the ceiling and we levitated down. The walls started to glow green. I popped Honey’s canopy and stepped out. Off to the hovel.

The hovel is a ten by ten metal shack. This is my office. It’s where my phone and files are, where my mail is delivered, where I store my ready to eats. There is an identical shack next to it which serves as my water closet, kitchen and laundry.

“Windy?” a baritone from the walls asked, before I am two steps away from Honey. It is the Assembler Brain Box that runs Mister Rongo’s. It never wanted to talk to me. This thing spent its day interacting with drones. Windy is its pal.

Bringing in Windy wouldn’t be a bad idea at this point, so I told it “Raise the power.”

“On. Go, go,” it says.

I closed my senses and I was at the long, carved table of my ancestors. I claimed my right as a warrior. My hands extended. Windy’s old, frail talons filled them. I yanked her through.

Once aware again, I was immersed in a swirling breeze.

“Windy! Windy! Windy!”

“Hello, Mister Rongo,” she said. I have never been sure if the Assembler goes by Mister Rongo or not. Mister Rongo being long gone, someone should.

I continued to the hovel, leaving the two disembodied voices to yap at each other.

“Windy! There’s a princess, right here in Incline City!”

“A princess? Really!”

“She has a big headdress and everything!”

“Does she have a yacht?”

“No. She flew commercial. But she is a princess.”

Windy directed this at me: “I am thinking Planet of the Loud Drummers.”

“Isn’t that a bit dismissive of their culture?” I asked.

“Were we on the same planet, special one?”

“They had language, and religions, and sewers—“

“—And dwellings made out of their own discarded shells and, apparently, dead bodies.—“

“—I wouldn’t call the drumming loud. It was more pervasive than that.—“

“—Incessant! By the god and gods, thankfully I don’t have real ears.—“

“—It wasn’t really just drums, though. They had gongs and cymbals and pottery and, how can we forget, large hollow rocks—“

“Incessant Percussionists!”

“Sounds good, Windy.” Saved me some time on revision.

“What sort of princess, love?”

“One of you. One of Captain Meteor.”

“A Warbird princess?”

“Yes! Are you going to go see the princess?”

“I don’t think I would be invited to the reception, if she’s having one. The dashing and resourceful Captain Meteor might be, though.”

“Captain Meteor is a republican. I don’t have any time for royalists,” I said, settling into my desk within the hovel. “I’ll bet her father is fully vested in the Red Comet fleet.”

Mister Rongo chimed “Her uncle is fully vested in the Red Comet fleet!”

“That would make her a Duchess, or a Baroness or a Countess, not a princess,” I mumbled.

“That would make her a non hand bell player or a non yodeler, which is pretty exciting for Incline City,” Windy said. “Is she having a reception?”

“They are reserving the sensor proof area for something,” Rongo said. “I think so. I am trying to find out.”

There was a formal parchment envelope on the middle of my desk. It was addressed to me in frilly writing and stunk of a thousand flowers. Just to keep tally of my errors: I didn’t open it. I never opened it.

Other than the sudden drop in of royalty, this was a fairly ordinary situation. Although this princess was royalty, she wasn’t my royalty. I am from Belgium. She, like the majority of my species on this planet, is from Luxemburg. (Perhaps my being from Panama and the rest being from Mexico would be a better analogy. We are the same folks with different political divisions, none of which should matter here at the ass end of the universe, but it does.) Moreover, this Red Comet fleet was suspected, exclusively by me, of being a pirate front. I had no desire to meet the relation of someone I had spent an entire career temporarily incoviencing. 

Windy said “Not that Captain Meteor would go to any reception, because he’s no fun, because he has nothing to wear, but he might want to think of Toovy; the poor, unfinished thing who has had so little exposure to the better parts of our culture. Might take her, if he was a good guy.”

I asked “Mister Rongo, where is Toovy?”

Rongo said “Not that you are going to hear it from me, but she went to Sistus. In fact, she just left Sistus five minutes ago. Listed cargo is passengers. Fifty. Male Warbirds and equipment. Overage of equipment. Full load. Has requested the sensor proof dock at Hand Bell City port. Is currently running five minutes, fifteen seconds behind due to a navigational correction.”

I asked “Is she wiping her ass ok?”

“Speaking of hygiene--scruff, Captain Meteor, scruff,” Windy said. “You’re an anti-privateer, not a privateer.”

“Retired. Monk,” I said.

“Whatever. Even the monks were very meticulous with their scruffs. Although they did smell. Wow. It’s been eight years and I still recall the stench. If we discovered them, it would have been the Planet of the Monks Stinking Most High to Heaven.”

“I am contacting Tyrel now. If he’s awake.”

Windy asked “Mud bath, too?”

“Full treatment. I will be gone for a while.”

***

Part Six of our flash-back prone adventure story will post Monday night. In case you are wondering, this is not an 'in process' novel. It is complete and all parts of it will be posted in the coming days.