Starliner (The Intergalactic Investigation Bureau Book 1) Read online

  Gheptians were, by and large, organized, efficient people. They detested disorder even more than Dresker did. As with any stereotype there were exceptions, but it was more of an anomaly to find a muddled Gheptian. Order was a way of life.

  Their society classified the expertise of order. Bintoo was ranked Soheigh, which was third from the highest ranking one could achieve. He needed to make it one more standard year without mistakes to attain Reelheigh. That would put him within reach of the final rung of Caintgoehneeheigher. Very few Gheptians secured this echelon status. Bintoo had once mentioned that the list hadn’t cleared a hundred names and the titles had been in place for thousands of years.

  Bintoo’s quest kept Dresker’s department free of clutter.

  The biggest challenge was keeping all the other workers from messing with Bintoo’s progress.

  As usual, Bintoo had a cup of Carbenian’s Best waiting on Dresker’s desk. It was an odd concoction of teas and roots that most Humans found disgusting. Dresker had grown addicted to it over the two years he worked as a deputy in the Carbenian spice mines. He took a sip and felt life pulse into his veins.

  He tapped the desk twice and it lit up, displaying the connection portal to the CCOP Relay System, GalactiNet.

  After authenticating, he checked his groups and messages.

  There was another message from a “chancellor” of the planet Niberia stating that a wealthy uncle of some unknown ambassador had passed away and bequeathed a few billion credits to various heirs. It seemed that in order to get these credits, Dresker had to give them his banking information so they could deposit half of it in his account. He grunted, wondering how people could be so stupid to fall for this con, and he made a mental note, that would find its way into his mental trashcan, to set up a taskforce to bust a few of these scammers and get them out of the CCOP’s hair.

  He scrolled through the rest of the posts and found nothing of interest, so he dropped out to the main CCOP page.

  There was a list of standard intellectual properties and advertisements lying next to hundreds of resources for consumers to peruse, utilize, and purchase. Dresker rarely stopped on this page, but today something caught his eye.

  Tchumachian officials reported that the Reknep, a Hethzuk Class vessel, had gone offline after fifty years.

  Everyone knew about the Reknep. It was one of the more famous abduction ships, having been credited with hundreds of inductions into the CCOP over as many years. Its mission was to visit planets throughout the universe, study the locale and societal norms, looking for intelligent life. Abductions, or as the ship-runners called them, “pick ups,” were handled with stealth. Various tests were done on the subjects, a memory wipe was put in place, and then the dweller got sent back to the surface none the wiser. That was the plan, anyway. Most of the reports showed that the “guest” ended up in the center of a field in the middle of the night with the look of having a very uncomfortable sensation in their seating parts. If the tests and research proved the world was sufficiently evolved, they would be invited into the CCOP; if not, they were monitored and guided until such time that they made a good fit. Tchumachians were the primary race that ran these excursions because their slender gray bodies allowed them to slip into difficult places and their big, almond-shaped eyes gave them the ability to see in even the darkest situations. But the primary reason that they overwhelmingly enlisted was because it gave them the ability to probe thousands of new lifeforms. Tchumachians were known for probing things. One look at the lengthy fingers on a Tchumachian could make even the toughest, meanest, most ruthless villain clench his cheeks with worry.

  Dresker looked at the time, which was now 08:11UT.

  It had taken Dresker a little time to get used to the CCOP’s time system.

  As it had been explained to him during orientation, Universal Time (UT) came about in order to keep all species on a similar clock. Since the CCOP was its own world, engineers had designed it to be self-sustaining. It had a central gravitational Hub that the entirety of the complex rotated around. One revolution took twenty-four full clicks of the gears, with sixty miniclicks between each full click, and sixty microclicks to make up a miniclick. A click, as described by the Engineering Research Division was defined as slipping from one gear joint to the next during rotation. This meant that the day started at 00:00UT and ended at 23:99UT.

  Dresker’s home world of Nekler ran on seconds, minutes, and hours, and there were thirty hours in a given day. This made the CCOP’s day and night cycle more manageable than many worlds that he’d worked on.

  It still took Dresker some getting used to, though, especially the verbal usage. Since there were many different time-systems on member planets of the CCOP, it was agreed that the full UT time would be stated in all of its uses. He could still hear the robotic voice saying, “It is not acceptable to say ‘nine twenty-three.’ One must use the fully-qualified Universal Time wording of ‘zero-nine-two-three-U-T’.” It was okay to write it out as “09:23UT”, but when speaking, each number and the added “UT” had to be said.

  The Reknap’s final transmission came from System 111-B two days ago at 01:49UT. It had been a distress signal that, sources say, pointed toward foul play. But there had been no official comment as to the details of the message.

  He rolled over the rest of the text before pulling up the specs on System 111-B. Nothing fancy that he could see. Nine planets with a small sun. According to channel intelligence, the third planet from the sun was the target for the investigation.

  This was the kind of mystery that Dresker would find enticing. It was out of his jurisdiction, though, so all he could do was follow the story, but he snapped it to his favorites list and scrolled through the rest of the feeds.

  There was nothing going on. There hadn’t been anything to put a jolt in his boots in weeks. He’d gotten his team running so that all he had to do was answer a few questions, get status updates, and attend management meetings regarding topics that put him to sleep.

  He missed the daily grind of sleuthing. Somewhere along the line, walking the beat got replaced with the fifty-thousand-foot-view, the at-the-end-of-the-day, and the dreaded paradigm-shift. Business just wasn’t in his blood and business-types seemed to exist for no other purpose than to annoy him.

  He felt empty.

  The pulse of the CCOP no longer reverberated in him. Now there was just the dull hum of executive life.

  “Funeral?”

  “Good morning, Truhbel,” Dresker said, looking up at his first-officer as she entered his office. He ignored her snide remark. She said it every time Dresker showed up to work in his dress whites. “Meeting day again. You know how it goes.”

  Truhbel was an Uknar like his Financial Investigator, Lemoolie.

  There were three Uknar on his team, along with a multitude of other races.

  Dresker believed in diversity. It was paramount in his line of work because every race seemed to have their own list of idiosyncrasies and they all had a litany of shady activities. The cultural differences made it challenging for other races to keep up with each other, so he employed widely. Mechanicans were the only group absent from the team. There was one bot who had applied yearly for a position, but he had never gotten past the various tests required for employment. Other than that, bots just didn’t seem to have any interest in working for his group, which was fine with Dresker.

  “Anyfing on da rap sheets?”

  “Still pretty dry,” Dresker said as Truhbel thumped all three hundred pounds down into the chair by the door. “Things have been running a bit too smoothly lately.”

  “Yep,” Truhbel said with a sigh, smoothing the lines on her less audacious security outfit.

  “It’s not like I want mayhem and chaos, but a little mystery now and then would be nice.”

  “I’m wif ya der.” Truhbel crossed her legs. “Ain’t today yer divorce anniversary?”

  He grimaced and took a pull from his mug.

  Truhbel didn�
�t mean to be tactless, she just didn’t understand the frailty of the Human mind. Not that she was dumb. On the contrary, the Uknar people were quite intelligent, even if they didn’t sound it. The problem was that they saw no point in putting effort into understanding the complexities of non-Uknar psychology. On top of that, Dresker was Human. Humans weren’t allowed to be insensitive toward other species, but other species didn’t seem to have to follow that rule. Diversity was beneficial for those defined as diverse and Humans were not fitted into that classification.

  “Yes,” Dresker said after a moment. “Ten years.”

  “Congrats.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  Truhbel grunted and then sprang to her feet. There was something about seeing a mountain of a person move that fast that was just unsettling.

  “Der has to be somefing to do besides papers.”

  “I hate to say it, Truhbel, but I think we’ve done too good of a job securing this floating monstrosity.”

  “Yeah.”

  “This happens to us wherever we go,” Dresker said.

  “Halstice wasn’t dis bad,” Truhbel replied as she paced. “At least der we was able to keep cracking heads.”

  “That’s fine,” Dresker responded, “for someone who likes cracking heads.”

  “I do.”

  “I know, and you could have stayed—”

  “You know better den dat.”

  Dresker grinned and shrugged.

  He and Truhbel had risen through the ranks together. The argument was that he was the brains and she was the brawn. The truth was that she was both and he was just good at figuring out puzzles. But she never wanted to be the boss, as it were. She felt that it would take away her ability to be the muscle, and she so liked the physical side of the job. So they stuck together.

  The CCOP was the seventh location where they’d served side-by-side. When they got bored of a place, they talked and usually left, unless something reared its ugly head in such a way as to keep them happy.

  As Dresker had explained during his first resignation, “Soft crime is like soft porn. It gets you just interested enough to be frustrated that you can’t see more.”

  Truhbel had agreed with Dresker’s thoughts and she followed him to the space dock and asked where they were going next. They’d been an investigative team ever since.

  Either way, Truhbel was right. Even cracking heads at this point was better than sitting in endless business meetings.

  “When we took over from the last guy that ran this place,” Dresker said, daydreaming, “I thought there’d be no end to cases for us to solve.”

  “I miss dem days.”

  “Maybe it’s time for a new adventure,” Dresker said while running his finger along the lip of his mug. “There has to be a planet out there somewhere that needs cleaning up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s what we do, after all.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re too driven by our need to solve mysteries, to create order out of anarchy, to…”

  “Crack heads open.”

  “…um, yeah, sure.” Diversity mandated that he support his first officer. “There is just nothing going on.”

  “Nuffing.”

  They both exhaled.

  “Sir!” Bintoo burst into the room. “There has been a incident!”

  FILLER UP

  THE BATTERY WAS somewhat hidden away, tucked around the corner of a cross-section on the east side. It was one of those establishments that held onto patrons...once they found the place. Electric lanterns flickered in the rippled-glass windows and there were a few handcrafted wooden tables placed strategically in the outer room, giving it that old tavern feel.

  Most people sat at the bar, though, since the food at The Battery made one reconsider the importance of eating.

  The main point for most patrons was to get drunk while they spilled their guts to one of the few remaining true bartenders in the known universe.

  Clenk had been tending bar at The Battery since the day it opened. He had seen everything and experienced even more. He was one of the older models, and he found pride in that.

  Clenk was a robot. Being called a Mechanican was foreign to him. It just didn’t fit. The young ones said he was stupid for sticking with the old ways. They told him how he would be left behind. He knew better. Clenk had seen other races, species, creeds, cultures, and things that defied description as they struggled for their “fair share” in the world. It never went well until they got their equality, and even then it took years to settle. People had to forget…on all sides. Until they did, there was violence, arguments, self-sacrifice, and, worst of all, endless meetings.

  “Two Charges, please,” a new patron, a Mechanican, mumbled.

  Clenk dropped off the Charges and gave the newcomer a nod.

  “Beep?” Clenk didn’t go in for the speech synthesis hardware upgrade. He preferred simplicity.

  “Lost my job,” the Mechanican said as he stuck his finger in the Charge.

  “Boop.”

  “Yeah. I’d been there thirty years.” He pulled his finger from the cup. “My division was always one of the top producers. We had low order faults, and we always delivered on-time and under budget. I’m not sure what more you could ask for.”

  Clenk tapped on his name tag.

  “Oh, Clenk? Bob. My name is Bob. Bob Jones.”

  “Beep bip boop.”

  “You too,” Bob said, putting his finger back in the juice. “What’s worse is this comes on the heels of finding my wife cheating on me.”

  Clenk had heard this story so many times. It always rolled out the same way, except over the last twenty or so years it was the men telling the story. Keeping up with the times was a constant complexity.

  “I spent my savings on new hydraulics...the Hammer 1,000,” he added, lifting his drink, and then scoffed. “Damn woman. I can’t believe I went through saving and everything for that…that…”

  “Beep?”

  “Yeah,” Bob said. “Exactly the right word. Describes her perfectly.”

  Clenk dropped a fresh Charge on the counter.

  “Beep boop,” he said.

  Charges were cheap to make. Giving a free one away now and again never hurt the bottom line. It was good for business.

  “Thanks, Clenk,” Bob said as another Mechanican pulled up a chair.

  It was a SensualBot, Clenk noted. She was wearing a robe with varied jewels outlining thin seams that ended in a V beneath her neck. Had Clenk been fifty years younger, he would have found her rather enticing.

  “Lite Charge, please,” she said.

  Clenk grabbed a Charge and pulled out the Scrubbers, the shifty nanites that ran through a Mechanican’s circuitry and modified programming to the point where a “drinker” would feel somewhat disoriented. The effect was akin to a Human’s response to alcohol or an Uknar’s response to pasta. (Pasta shops in the Uknar district made a killing on the weekends.) Without the Scrubbers, a Charge simply gave a bit of an electrical burst, much like a caffeinated soda, which is why they referred to it as a “Lite Charge.” The only other difference was that it was clear, whereas a standard Charge was more of an amber color.

  “I couldn’t help but overhear your story,” the SensualBot said to Bob.

  Clenk shuddered. Poor bastard, he thought, wondering if she had also overheard the “Hammer 1,000” reference. Granted, she was a SensualBot so looks didn’t play a heavy part in her selection of potential suitors, but knowing that Bob was a Mechanican that packed a lot of punch gave him a shine few class-4s had: money.

  Clenk turned his attention to clearing off a couple of tables that had just emptied and checked on a few others before returning to the bar. On his way back he noticed that the SensualBot’s robe had the symbol of a ship on the top-right shoulder section. That marked her as part of the new religiosity.

  This couldn’t end well for poor Bob.

  “…which is why,” the SensualBot was sayi
ng as Clenk finished placing the dirty mugs on the cleaning conveyor, “you need to have a solid support structure in your life right now, Bob.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never believed in any of that stuff.”

  “And look where your life is now.”

  Clenk winced, but Bob was nodding. Damn. You had to give it to the religious types; they were some of the best salespeople in the business.

  Bob had that faraway look, signaling that contemplation was in effect. Clenk built up an Anti-Charge drink and pressed it in front Bob. He was hoping that Bob would just stick his finger in it and clear his head.

  “I believe that may be mine,” the Mechanican-of-the-night said, pulling the drink toward herself and wagging a finger at Clenk. “I think my friend Bob was having Charges as his drink, right Bob?” She dipped her finger in. “Oooh, an Anti-Charge. Now that would have caused Bob to undo all the drink he’s paid for. Are you trying to swindle your customers, sir?”

  “Beep.”

  “That’s good. Obviously just a misunderstanding. No harm done, I’m sure. However, I do believe that Bob is low on Charges. Maybe make him a double, for free of course, so that he’s not upset about the mistake.”

  “Boopbip?”

  “Yes, a double,” she replied and then rubbed Bob’s arm. “It’s okay, Bob. I’m sure it was just a simple mistake.”

  “Huh? Yeah, right. Simple mistake. Transistor!”

  Clenk grunted at the first jumbling of speech. Mechanicans didn’t slur their words when they got charged, they blurted out the digital equivalent of swearing. Fortunately those words consisted of electronic terms that the average race would find non-offensive, but having a conversation with a full-on drunk bot was odd at best.

  Clenk placed a double in front of Bob, who just eyed it for a moment until the SensualBot seductively moved his hand into the concoction. Clenk thought certain he’d heard a bit of a moan, but wasn’t sure if it came from Bob, the SensualBot, or both.

  The lady stood up and straightened her robe. “I think you know the right thing to do, Bob.” She moved behind him and pressed her ample chest on his back, whispering in his ear, “The Starliner would do well with someone of your…stature.”