Starliner (The Intergalactic Investigation Bureau Book 1) Read online

  “You,” he said, pointing at a shivering bot that had multiple dents in its upper-torso, “What happened to you?”

  “My…job…is…dangerous.”

  “What is your job?”

  “I’m an,” the Mechanican looked at his hands, “Absorbing Strikes Specialist.”

  The Leader tilted his head sideways. He’d never heard of this job before. “What exactly is that?”

  The Mechanican seemed a bit reluctant, but squeaked out, “KarateBot.”

  “So you are a punching bag?”

  The KarateBot’s shoulders drooped. “Yes.”

  The Leader stood up and raised his hands to the ceiling in dramatic fashion. “Do you want to be delivered from this atrocious position and shown a heaven where you can build an enterprise of your own and bask in the glory of The Captain?”

  “I…suppose so.”

  The Leader was a bit taken aback. “You would rather stay working at a gymnasium whereby you get pummeled relentlessly by snot-nosed little brats?”

  “Well, no, it’s just—”

  “Ah.” The Leader waved his hand to silence the man. At the same time he clicked a button in his palm and all of the lights dimmed except for the one hovering over the KarateBot. “It’s just that you are unfamiliar with The Captain, yes?”

  “Yes,” the KarateBot replied, looking a bit self-conscious.

  “Yet you yearn for enlightenment.”

  “Um...sure?”

  “Then I shall reveal The Captain to you...to all of you!”

  The Leader glided back to his podium, bringing the lights back to full.

  “Let me tell you a little about Him, shall I?”

  A general murmur of agreement came from the assembly.

  “He was like you and me once. A slave. Oh, it was worse for him, surely. He...had...no...freedoms!” The Leader slammed the podium with each word and let the final hit ring out for a few moments as the sentiment sunk in. “To The Captain, working as a KarateBot would have been an improvement over the life he was forced to lead. High-wire loop configurations without safety restraints, low-gravity vessel repairs without a tether, electrical conduit replacements during peak usage times, and even real-time power manipulations on the grid. And did he receive any compensation for this work? No! He was placed in a dark box with a slew of other”—he quoted with his hands—”’bots’ every night.”

  It often brought The Leader’s emotion chip to full bore when he told this part of the story. Many Mechanicans died during those times. Death for a cause was acceptable, and he agreed with that as long as that cause was yours. These Mechanicans, however, were most often sacrificed in the name of progress. The irony being that Mechanicans were the ultimate progression over lesser races, and everyone was lesser to the Mechanicans.

  “On one of these jobs,” The Leader continued, “a Tchumachian was running a station that was in high orbit around the CCOP. The Captain had just finished repairs on the external propulsion system when the ship engaged its engines. The Captain lost his grip and was hit with the full force of the thrust blast. It was enough to push him out of the range of the CCOP. They didn’t bother to pick him up, of course. He was just a bot, after all. A machine. Like you and me. No different.”

  The Leader became solemn.

  “After several months of floating and contemplating, The Captain reached the CCOP garbage docs. Some believe it was fortunate happenstance that led him to The Starliner vessel. I do not believe it was chance. The writings showed that The Captain had made up his mind to save his people from the fate that he’d endured and therefore re-engineered himself to allow tight bursts of power so he could steer himself to the derelict craft. From then on he began his work and made his vow to liberate his people from the tyranny of this world. The Captain wrote out his plan in an encrypted way so that only the most gifted would be able to decrypt its content.”

  It was The Leader who had found the damaged document a few years ago. It had been a challenge to unravel and it was fortunate that he had been the one to have discovered it in the first place. Had that not happened, The Starliner religion would likely have never come to fruition. From his findings and subsequent decryption, and a fair bit of creative thought, The Leader was able to successfully build out The Articles of Faith and bring hope to the Mechanican masses.

  “That someone,” The Leader said while raising his arms, “was me.”

  § § §

  Telian had heard the speech so many times that one would imagine it should be numbing by now.

  It wasn’t. Her circuits fluttered every time she heard it.

  But now wasn’t the time to get enthralled with The Leader’s preaching. They had been monitoring the recently laid off Mechanicans, knowing that someone down on their luck and feeling somewhat depressed made for a good recruit. With the addition of inviting a few of them to the event, using her wiles as only a SensualBot could, Telian was a bit irritated to find that only one of her invitees had attended.

  She moved to sit next to Bob.

  He sat in the last row of the chapel.

  She rested her hand on his thigh as she whispered that she was glad he made it, and then she heard the sound of a gulp and the stirring of gears.

  “Are you enjoying the speech?” Telian whispered.

  “Very much so, yes.”

  “Wonderful. I knew you were an intellectual, Friend Bob.”

  “I am? Oh, yes. Right. Yes.” He squirmed. “That’s right. Intellectual.”

  Telian enjoyed the game. Her lovers had dubbed her the Metallic Foreplay Specialist.

  As The Leader continued his speech, Telian grabbed Bob by the hand and quietly pulled him out of the chapel and into a quiet room that still allowed them full view of the proceedings.

  “Why are we in here?”

  “Because I wanted to speak with you, Friend Bob. This way you’ll still be able to see and hear The Leader while we talk.” She felt confident that Bob would retain all of the information coming from the sermon while still engaging in a conversation of their own. He was beyond the Class-2 and thus had multitasking programming. “Also, we won’t bother the others with our talk.”

  Telian patted the seat next to her and began pointing around the congregation. “You see all of those Mechanicans? None of them are good at leading. They’re all followers. That’s not a slight on them in the least. Where would leaders be if there were no followers, true?”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “But you’re not in there with them, Friend Bob. You’re in here because The Leader feels you have potential for more than simply doing as you’re told.”

  “He does? I do?”

  “I knew it the moment I met you. You’re a Mechanican of action. You ran a major section of a manufacturing process, no?”

  “No...I mean, yes. I did, yes.”

  Telian slid a little closer. “And you were always on time and under budget, isn’t that right?”

  “We were often ahead of schedule,” Bob pointed out.

  “Even more impressive,” Telian purred. “It’s that kind of can-do attitude that melts a female like me. Did you know that, Bob?”

  “I, uh...”

  The whirring sound of his hydraulics answered her question. She pushed him away playfully and then stepped toward the glass, keeping her back to him.

  “The problem is that most males are all talk and no action.”

  “Action is good. I mean, I’m good with action.”

  “I’m not talking about friction, Friend Bob. I am talking about seeing you function in a high-pressure situation that demonstrates the full virility of your mind. The physical is stimulated by the mental, you know.” Telian tapped the glass. “The Leader is the embodiment of power, second only to The Captain.”

  The Leader was also a specialized Mechanican. He was the first of the next generation of robotics. His advanced mind dwarfed most everything on the planet. She had never actually seen him, since he kept himself covered head
-to-toe so that he could still work his way through society at the CCOP without being outed, but Telian had watched him work on a plethora of different issues and sat awestruck at the complexity of his thought processes. She knew that this came with a price. The Leader seemed to always miss little details because of his grand visions. Telian felt like one of those details.

  “But both The Captain and The Leader are stricken with a vow of chastity,” she said in a far-away voice.

  “I’m not.”

  Telian’s eyes pulsed. She knew that she had him where she wanted him—where The Leader wanted him. A simple snap of her fingers and he would fall over himself trying to grant her every wish. The fun of the tease, though, is the tease. Yet, she couldn’t let her own desire interfere with her mission.

  “I do want you, Bob,” she said in a sultry tone. “No, that’s not right.” She spun and leaned back on the glass, letting her robe fall open. “I want what I believe you to be.”

  At this point his lower engineering was barely contained in his suit. Telian was impressed. There was a difference between seeing a Hammer 1,000 on the VizScreen and seeing it in person. Her internal ventilation system went into overdrive as she tried to maintain the ruse.

  “I would need to see you in action, Friend Bob. Maybe then,” she said while pulling her robe closed, “we could become more than friends.”

  DONUTS

  DRESKER WAS ALWAYS the last person to enter the meeting room. If he wasn’t, then the next person to show up was late. He made it a point to enter the room after the top of the click.

  He didn’t see Truhbel.

  “Truhbel?” he said to the group, assuming someone would know her whereabouts. Nobody answered. “Right. Well, let’s get started. I’m assuming by now you all know about the incident from this morning?”

  “Sir?” Pat Whittaker, a Human officer said, while raising her hand.

  “Pat?” Dresker had told her many times that she didn’t need to raise her hand, but she never did catch on.

  “If Local Authority already has control of this case, why are we still worried about it?”

  To look at her, you’d think Pat was all brains. She was slender with tightly-cropped brown hair, had thin-rimmed spectacles—something nobody needed to wear these days—and she dressed professionally, always carrying a couple of pencils and a small notebook in her chest pocket. Anyone who didn’t know Pat would suspect her to be a high-ranking official at the CCOP.

  “Because we all know that Local is full of imbeciles, Pat.”

  Her eyebrows fused as she put her hand down.

  Cleb Oonk, Pat’s partner, shook his head and gave an almost imperceptible shrug to Dresker. Cleb was the dumbest-sounding Uknar Dresker had ever met. Not so much because of his choice of words, but rather because Cleb’s voice was droll and nasally. To make matters worse, he often drooled or had spittle when he spoke. But Dresker had learned that underneath that dumb-giant shell sat one of the most intellectual people on the planet.

  Dresker had inherited Pat and Cleb as partners from the previous head of the Internal Investigation Bureau. At first he wanted to mess with the structure, but their complete oppositeness seemed to work. People got worried when the two showed up at an investigation. On the one hand, Pat’s appearance instilled a sense of worry that you were going to get caught; on the other hand, Cleb’s look made you worry that if you did get caught, it was going to hurt. But as soon as Pat started in on the questioning, it didn’t take long for the perpetrator to gain the upper hand and start relaxing. That’s when Cleb’s intellect came into play. He would spot the missteps and catch the suspect in a lie.

  This made them a formidable team.

  Dresker did get a little irritated at Pat from time to time and had once even considered moving her into a different position altogether. Cleb had come to her defense that day with a simple ultimatum: “She goes, I goes.” Cleb had said it in such a way that it was not threatening. He hadn’t challenged Dresker’s position; it was simply a fact that Cleb Oonk didn’t want a different partner. Dresker had been around long enough to know how important chemistry was on an investigation, and having had Truhbel as his partner for many years, he understood that people from opposite sides of the spectrum often made the best team. So Dresker made the concession that as long as Cleb reeled her in when necessary, everything would stay status quo.

  “I think what we have here is a murder, folks,” Dresker said as he pulled up an image on the main screen. “We have a bot...sorry, Mechanican...in the shape of a tight square sitting about one block north of the closest trash compactor. According to Local, he committed suicide. Yes, Pat?”

  “Was there a note?”

  “Indeed there was.”

  “Then...”

  “He is one block away from the trash compactor, Pat.”

  She looked confused.

  “I got dis,” Cleb said as he reached up and pulled Pat back into the chair. “Ya see, if dat bot...sorry, Merchanercan...killed itself it would be in dat trash comp...compa...crush thing.”

  “Oh,” Pat said after a moment. Then added, “Oh!”

  “Sorry,” said Cleb with a nod to Dresker.

  “Since we all know that Local isn’t full of the brightest bunch,” Dresker continued, looking at Pat, “and since we know that the Mechanican in question, one Walter Blitterbent, was an employee of the CCOP up until a few weeks ago when he was laid off at the manufacturing division that builds out the Cheskian Crowns, we are going to treat this as a CCOP internal matter.”

  Elwood leaned forward. “How are we going to circumvent Local Authority?”

  Hawkins spoke up before Dresker could respond. “What my partner is trying to say is that them boys at Local ain’t gonna take too kind to us sniffin’ about in their chicken coop.”

  Dresker squinted. “I think I understood what he said better than what you said he said,” Dresker said. “What we’re going to do is a bit of subterfuge. I’m going to assign Pat and Cleb to talk to the security guards in manufacturing on Third and Zupe. That’s where Walter was working, so the guards may have some insights into his situation. The president mentioned there have been layoffs ongoing, so see what you can dig up on that, too.”

  “You fink der is a tie-in?” Cleb asked.

  “Not a clue,” Dresker said with a shrug, “but you know the drill. Everyone is a suspect until they’re not.”

  “Got it,” Cleb said.

  “Hawkins and Elwood,” Dresker said, pointing at the other team, “you two walk the beat and talk to people. They probably don’t know much more than we know, but they may know more than we think they know. You know?”

  Hawkins grimaced. “Can’t say I can unravel that yarn, sir.”

  “Just talk to them and see if you can find out anything. If Local shows up, walk away or act like you’re just out taking a stroll. What are they going to do?”

  “What about me?” Lemoolie said.

  Lemoolie had been one in a long line of applicants for the position of Financial Investigator. Dresker had sat with Humans, Gheptians, a couple of Tchumachians—who were of the mind that financial investigation was a snap job that would allow them to scan the relays all day—and one Uknar. They all had decent credentials, aside from the Tchumachians, but there was something about the Uknar candidate that set her apart—aside from the fact that she was nearly seven feet tall and built of pure muscle, and that she wasn’t overly communicative, as it’s just not an Uknar trait. Lemoolie was clear, concise, and very focused. She was the only entrant that got all of the pretests correct, and she even found a couple of mistakes and reported those as well. Her verbal interview was less than stellar, but Dresker had a feeling about her and in this line of work one tended to pay attention to the gut. Another point in her favor was that Dresker’s second-in-command was an Uknar, so he knew their ethic was flawless, assuming they weren’t engaged in any courting rituals. For some reason when Uknar began to court, they got a bit abrasive. Dresker knew ho
w to deal with that as well, so Lemoolie was hired on the spot.

  “Since this is a murder case, I really don’t...” Then he recalled what Zarliana had said earlier about the manufacturing division and figured it couldn’t hurt to do a little poking. “Come to think of it, while Cleb and Pat are talking with the guards about Walter, you could do some research from the opposite angle. Maybe you could sift through the relays and—”

  “I’m on it,” she said, interrupting him.

  He clapped his hands, feeling a bit of renewed energy. It was nice having a quest again. “Right. Okay, well, let’s get to it, people. There’s a lot of work to do today.”

  § § §

  As the others filed out, Truhbel walked in.

  “You’re late,” Dresker said.

  “Couldn’t be helped,” Truhbel said, showing him her VizScreen. “Look at dis.”

  She ran the video feed from that morning.

  CCOP cameras were placed throughout the city. Everyone knew it. The CCOP claimed that it was to protect their best interest. If people believed they were being watched then they would be on their best behavior. Religion invented the tactic as a way to keep people under control. “He sees everything you do,” and “He’s always watching over us” were the ‘cameras’ used in ancient times. Since the majority of the populous on the CCOP were either agnostic or atheists, the God-is-watching-you concept didn’t impact societal norms. Big-Brother-is-watching-you, though, was still rather effective. But the purpose of these cameras weren’t to stop you from doing bad things; they were used by the CCOP to track what people did in order to create more options for them to do it—another concept borrowed from religion. It was more lucrative that way.

  As Dresker watched Truhbel’s VizScreen, the scene showed a bot moving toward the trash compactor. It looked somewhat like Walter, but the image was fuzzy. Everything else was clear, just not Walter. Then after a few moments a squished version of Walter flew through the air and landed in the spot where he had been found.