Starliner (The Intergalactic Investigation Bureau Book 1) Read online

  “Explains how he got from der to der,” Truhbel said.

  “It could, yes,” Dresker said as the smell of freshly baked donuts flowed through the room, causing his stomach to growl. “There are two problems with that theory—”

  “Da image is fuzzed and trash smooshers don’t spit out trash.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Somebody messed wif da feed.”

  Dresker breathed in again. “Yes, that’s... Do you smell donuts?”

  “Yep.”

  “I must be hungry.”

  Dresker often missed meals. He would often go an entire day without so much as a cracker.

  To say he loved the job would be an overstatement. It was more that he loathed everything else. The rest of the world was a place he investigated, a place where bad people did bad things and, sometimes, good people did bad things, and, more rarely, a place where bad people did good things, which was probably the most frustrating one of all because Dresker liked everything to be nice and orderly.

  “Who has the capability to alter the feed like that?”

  “Lots of people,” said Truhbel. “Dem engineer types could do it. Most of dem bots could do it. Heck, even I could do it if I had to.”

  “True,” Dresker said. “Let’s talk about it over some food.”

  “Sounds good. What you want?”

  “Donuts.”

  RULES AND UNIONS

  THE LEADER SAT at his desk and opened a video channel to watch Local Authority as they investigated the area where Walter had passed.

  He still couldn’t believe that Anne had dropped the body a full block away from the dumpster.

  Had he not double-checked the area before doing his daily inductions and before anyone from Local had arrived, he wouldn’t have known to edit the feeds, and Local would have sorted things out pretty quickly, by their standards anyway.

  But he had done the edits fast—too fast for his own liking—so he reviewed his earlier work.

  The altered video showed Walter climbing into the trash compactor, the red light going on for about thirty microclicks, and then the trash compactor spitting Walter out and down the street.

  Anyone with a shred of capability would catch that the image of Walter was off. Further, it wouldn’t take a genius to come to the conclusion that trash compactors don’t spit. But The Leader was confident that Local Authority had neither capability or genius. He was certain that all his accesses were sufficiently masked and that the video was at least passable.

  Just in case, he checked the logs and found that someone from the Internal Investigation Bureau had picked up the feed. That was worrisome. They weren’t as gullible as Local and they had a tendency to follow up on things deemed suspicious.

  The Leader’s hired CrushBot had made things untidy.

  He shut down the connection and forced himself calm before putting in a call to Anne.

  “You have reached Anne,” Anne’s male-timbered voice said as her glowing eyes filled the screen. “Anne is available to speak right now, so please start talking as soon as Anne stops.”

  “Hello, Anne,” The Leader said. “You do know that the greeting you just used is if you’re not around and you want the person to leave you iMail?”

  “iMail?”

  Not everyone had top-level technology these days. A common CrushBot in possession of an iPane was unlikely. “Ah, yes, I forgot that you have a VizScreen. I meant to say a VizMail message.”

  “VizMail?”

  “Never mind. There is something I need to discuss with you.”

  “You have another job for Anne?”

  “Not yet, no. I have a question regarding the last job you did for me.” The Leader didn’t wait for her response. “Anne, was I not clear that the remains of the dear departed Walter were to be placed in the trash compactor before you left the scene?”

  “That is what you told Anne, yes.”

  The Leader looked at her for a few moments but she didn’t catch on.

  “Is there a particular reason that you left him at your feet instead? Which, I must point out, was a full block away from the trash compactor.”

  “It was time for Anne’s morning break,” Anne replied.

  “Your break?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you know that you can’t just leave a job in the middle of it, Anne.”

  “Anne had to,” she said. “Anne did not want to let you down.”

  The Leader was about to give her a full verbal throttling, but stopped. “How would you have let me down?”

  “By not following union rules.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If Anne doesn’t follow union rules then Anne will be let go from the union. If Anne doesn’t work for union then Anne won’t be happy. If Anne isn’t happy then Anne will have to get anti-depression software installed, and that software has a disclaimer that it can bring on suicidal thoughts. If Anne commits suicide, Anne can’t do jobs for you.”

  Even as the most intelligent Mechanican in all of creation, The Leader had trouble with that piece of twisted logic. What was with all these remedies that were developed in such a way that they often caused more problems than they solved? It was idiocy! Although, he did quite enjoy the pill prescribed to help Gheptians be less anal-retentive. It worked wonders on calming the Gheptian mind, allowing them to have a bit of chaos as an acceptable outlook, but it also caused, in rare instances, the complete loss of bowel control. The spokesperson’s response during the press conference was, “Well, it does clearly state on the packaging that it will make you less anal retentive.” That commercial always engaged The Leader’s humor chip.

  “Anne,” The Leader said in a soothing voice, “you know that I am a complete supporter of the union to which you belong.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you must realize that by leaving Walter on the street like you did, the entire purpose of your employ to The Starliner was rendered void. It goes against union rule two-seven-nine.”

  Anne’s eyes dimmed for a few miniclicks.

  “True,” she said in measured fashion. “However, subsection three of rule two-seven-nine clearly states that two-seven-nine may be overridden, at the working Mechanican’s discretion, if either rule one of the Mechanican Junction or rule one-eight-six from the union code are engaged.”

  The Leader was intimately familiar with rule number one, so he did a seek in the union code until he hit rule one-eight-six. A Mechanican’s break is paramount in retaining his sanity and personal well-being.

  “I see,” said The Leader. “You’re telling me that while you elect to ignore rule one in order to take on our normal requests, the union codes you aim to comply with?”

  “Anne doesn’t ignore rule one. You never force Anne to do these jobs. Anne chooses to do these jobs.”

  Again, she was correct. The rule didn’t preclude a Mechanican from acting in a destructive manner, if they so chose. Before the Mech Freedom Act, robots, as they were exclusively referred to then, had a set of laws that they had to follow, including one that forbade them from acting destructively toward any living creature or any fellow robot. Since the legislation was enacted, they had the freedom of choice just like any other race.

  “Anne,” he said, exasperated, “you just left him there.”

  “Well, Anne did come back after the break but by then there were a number of Local Authority types walking the scene. If you look up rule one-three-two you’ll see that Anne is not required to put herself into any situation where—”

  “Thank you for your time, Anne,” The Leader said, interrupting her. “I’ll be in touch if we need further assistance.”

  He cut the connection and drummed his fingers.

  There had to be a better way than dealing with unions.

  No matter. What was done, as they say, was done.

  Walter Blitterbent was a wrinkle in the plan, but he may just have been the diversion needed to put the rest of The Starliner’s plans together
.

  After all, The Captain would be pleased if everything at the CCOP was in a state of chaos when he arrived.

  The Leader revisited his iPane and put out a call to his second in command. She answered on the first ring.

  “Leader,” Telian said in her standard flutter.

  The Leader found her SensualBot programming annoying. It didn’t affect him in any sexual way, since he didn’t have any sensuality software, but it grated on his nerves knowing that she tried to rattle him. If there was another year or more before The Starliner’s arrival, maybe he would have requested Telian to have her systems altered slightly to remove the lustiness. He could demand it, of course, but it was somewhat against The Starliner’s dogma to force any member to change their programming. The Leader, though, being the sole author of the Articles of Faith, felt he was at liberty to rise above the tenets contained therein. Regardless, he had to admit that her wiles were useful from time to time.

  “You have our new friend prepared, I assume? I saw you talking to him in the private room during orientation.”

  “Let’s just say that the combination of your speech and my...special talents...Friend Bob should be ready to do whatever we ask of him.”

  “Excellent.” He rubbed his gloved hands together. “I believe it is time to begin phase one of our plan.”

  “As you wish.”

  “You are confident you understand the plan?”

  “Absolutely, Leader.”

  “Good. May The Captain be with you.”

  “And you.”

  The Leader stepped to the window and looked over all the masses of Mechanicans as they went about their daily rituals. Some were saying their mantras while others were engaged in communications with yet-to-be-converted Mechanicans outside of The Starliner. Things were progressing at a pace that any other race would find impossible.

  “Two days,” he said aloud. “Two days.”

  FISCAL PRUDENCE

  IT WAS A nice day for a walk and Itrep Park was about the prettiest place to stroll around on the CCOP. Artificial trees lined the sidewalks, some swaying while others twisted around their roots. The foliage was designed to mimic various worlds so that anyone could meander through the park and get a little of that home feeling.

  “Nice day,” Elwood said.

  “It always is,” Hawkins replied.

  One of the many benefits of living on the CCOP was that the weather was predictable.

  Elwood had a friend in the meteorology department who had said that job was cushy. Get up, press a button to see the status of everything, grab something to eat, come back, send an “another perfect day” report to the newsroom, and so on. No rain. No snow. No suns, either, except for the distant ones that mostly kept to themselves. But the light and temperature were held to a degree that was pleasing to most people. The few that preferred more warmth or chill either stayed in their own subsections or they wore Roonko Temp-O-Matic suits for thermal regulation.

  Hawkins tipped his hat to folks as they walked along.

  Everyone seemed to smile at Hawkins for some reason. Whenever Elwood attempted tipping his hat, people would look themselves over to see if a button was undone.

  They sidled up to a couple of fellows that were playing a game of Fiscal Prudence, or, since most people believed that the game was based on the CCOP’s corporate inner workings of maintaining galactic control and maximizing profit, as it was more commonly called, Greed.

  “Afternoon, gentlemen,” Hawkins said in a thick southern drawl.

  Elwood only knew about the southern drawl because Hawkins had tried teaching it to him. It was pointless. It had taken Elwood months to say “yep” instead of “yes,” and he still felt a pang of guilt each time he succeeded in doing it.

  “We’re playing a game here,” one of the men said with a grunt.

  Hawkins put his hands up in surrender. “My apologies...didn’t mean to interrupt.” Then Hawkins leaned to the side and pointed at the fellow. “Say, ain’t you Greth Pardins?”

  “Depends on who’s asking.”

  Hawkins chuckled. “Now, son, don’t you worry your head on me being nefarious. We ain’t with Local. We’re with the CCOP internal team.”

  “Then you got no jurisdiction here.”

  “Exactly right, Mr. Pardins! Which is why you and your friend here...Mr. Droot, I believe?...you got nothing to worry on.”

  The men looked back and forth at each other for a moment. Pardins rolled his eyes. Droot shrugged.

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, Mr. Pardins,” Hawkins pulled up a chair, “we had one of our bots end up a bit smaller than he started out this morning and we’re not getting any help from the Authority boys.”

  “Heh,” Droot said. “Authority couldn’t solve tails on a two-tailed coin.”

  Hawkins laughed. “Ain’t that the berries!” He pulled off his hat and set it on his knee. “So we come down where we know the brains is.”

  “Don’t try any of that psychology with us, Mr....”

  “Hawkins.”

  “Yeah, well, we ain’t dumb.”

  “Which is precisely why me and my boy, Elwood, here sought you out.”

  Droot looked over Elwood, muttering a growl under his breath as his middle manager piece landed on the “You’ve been laid off” square.

  “That’s your boy?” Droot said. “I don’t see the relation. Looks Gheptian to me.”

  “Figure of speech, Mr. Droot.”

  Droot’s middle manager piece slumped its shoulders and walked off the board, ripping off his tie and throwing it down in disgust.

  Elwood found the game fascinating. He kept up on the current trends and played in tournaments now and again, as time permitted. He had started playing when he was much younger, at a time when Greed was still played with plastic pieces. It was still fun then, but when the newer kits came out everything changed.

  The change came when one of the new planet research ships located a race of tiny beings that were determined to be just under the benchmark of what could be considered sentient. During the abductions, though, a couple of engineers got the idea to use them as pieces in a makeshift version of Greed. The commander of the vessel watched in silence as he formed a business plan. He brought the two techs in on the project and within a couple of weeks the updated game was released. The little creatures called themselves “Fucherarians” but the commander was concerned with the nickname they’d be coined with, so he marked them down in the history books as “Pawns” instead, which was more fitting for his new take on Greed anyway. The updated game was an instant smash, gaining the number one slot and holding on to it for a solid six months. It soon fell to number two on the charts, following a gruesome version of Hangman that also featured Pawns.

  The most interesting part was that the Pawns typically trumped the intellect of the CCOP management team that they were supposed to be representing. Researchers insisted that a new study probing CCOP management should be conducted in order to set a better baseline for the sentience test. Society as a whole supported the idea, but management thought it better to keep their trousers on and continue the ruse that they were, indeed, sentient enough to run the conglomerate. Tchumachians found this idea disappointing. Of course, with Droot’s recently laid off middle manager Pawn having had presented his concept for the new company slogan, “At the Conglomerated Conglomeration of Planets, our mission is your business,” one could argue that a Pawn’s level of acumen was on par with the CCOP’s marketing department, at the very least.

  Elwood looked at Droot and then at the board. He saw a union chief that was in a position to force a strike, and that would enable Droot to force contract negotiations. With an almost imperceptible tilt of his head, Droot rescanned the board, grinned, and took the jump.

  “Anyhoo,” Hawkins said, “we was hopin’ you fellas had seen or heard somethin’ that may give us a clue in as to what actually happened.”

  “Couldn’t just look at the scene yo
urselves?”

  “Could do. Could do. But as dense as them boys are at Local, they’s also pretty slick when it comes to takin’ all the evidence away. Heck, that’s why most of the criminals they catch end up walkin’.”

  “True,” Droot said. “If you want to get away with something, make sure you have a Local cop tag along.”

  “Hah! Ain’t heard that one before. That’s finer than frog’s hair, that.”

  Usually everyone laughed when Hawkins said something in jest, and then they tried to figure out what they were laughing at. These two didn’t laugh at all. They were too engaged in keeping their Pawns from striking.

  “I don’t suppose you boys seen anything odd about?”

  “We spend all day, every day, in the park. We see odd things all the time.”

  “Anything that may be downwind of what happened this mornin’?”

  Pardins made a move to offer his sewage workers a raise, but Droot was quick to counter with a demand for free health care.

  Elwood saw multiple moves that could tip either man’s balance of power. He had a tendency to look many moves ahead in these types of games. The trick was to attack as much as possible. This would put your adversary on the defensive so much that they would work themselves into a corner. Now and then a formidable foe would arise that would use Elwood’s attack strategy against him and leave Elwood’s board decimated, but there weren’t many who could manage that.

  “Only thing I saw that was odder than usual was a roving CrushBot.”

  “Yeah,” Droot agreed. “I saw it too. Came up along the walls, tight in. Looked like it was trying to be stealthy.”

  “Imagine that,” Hawkins said.

  “Big red one, it was. Not one of those mini ones you see now and then roaming around. Entered between the buildings down around Carner.”

  “The Carner building?” Elwood said.

  “Thought that’s what I said,” Pardins said and moved a piece. “I’d say it was one of those types you see on the news working in the deep pits. Not the huge ones, but the medium-sized types.”