kind.”
“Get off this frequency.”
“Please. I need help. I have information that needs to get to Earth.”
“Sanjay, I got someone on the frequency who won’t get off.”
A different voice-deeper, commanding, with an accent Victor didn’t recognize. “I don’t know who you are, mate, but this is a restricted frequency. Now get the hell off before I have you tossed.”
“Please. I need to speak to someone in charge. All of Earth is in danger.” The words sounded trite, even to him.
“You’re the one in danger, mate. Marcus, triangulate that signal and find this prankster. I want this ash trash off my frequency.”
Victor stayed on the frequency, but didn’t say more. Let them triangulate it. Let them find him.
An hour later a police rover arrived. A single police officer in a suit and helmet got out with a light and began scanning the interior of the warehouse with bored disinterest.
Victor banged on the side of the ship with a tool to get the man’s attention, but the man couldn’t hear him. Victor lowered himself to the back of the ship, which was now the bottom. He turned on his cutting tool and began slicing through the ship’s wall, showering the inside of the ship with small burning metal embers. He pressed harder, being careful not to damage his suit. The cutter broke through. Hot embers rained down from the ship into the warehouse. The officer saw him.
It was another hour before someone who could operate the machinery arrived to lower the ship from the rack. When the men lifted him out of the quickship and set him on the ground, Victor’s legs gave out completely. He buckled and crumpled to the ground. He tried pushing himself up with his arms but couldn’t. He lay there not moving while the officer attached an audio cable to his suit.
“I need to see some identification,” said the officer.
“I don’t have any. I’m a free miner.”
“Space born, eh? Let me guess, you don’t have any docking authorization, either.”
“I came here from the Kuiper Belt.”
The officer looked amused. “On a quickship? Sure you did.”
“You don’t believe me? Check the flight computer.”
The officer ignored this, typing notes onto his pad. “So no permits, no papers, no entry codes, nothing.”
“I need to speak with someone in charge.”
“You need to speak with a lawyer, space born.”
They carried him out to the rover and lifted him into the cargo trunk. Victor felt completely helpless-and to think this was only one-sixth of Earth gravity.
The officer drove him to a medical facility, where nurses put him on a stretcher and gave him IV fluids and ten different vaccinations. When they finished, an officer in a different colored uniform entered and wire-strapped Victor’s wrists to the stretcher. It wasn’t until the man started reciting a litany of legal rights that Victor realized he had been arrested.
CHAPTER 21
Imala
Imala Bootstamp wasn’t trying to get anyone fired at the Lunar Trade Department, but it sure felt good when she did. The culprit was one of the big uppity-ups, a senior auditor on the fifth floor who had been with the LTD for over thirty years. Imala, a mere junior assistant auditor with the agency, was so far down the totem pole that it took her a month to get anyone with authority to actually look at what she had found.
She had tried going to her immediate boss, a perverted idiot named Pendergrass, whose eyes dropped to her chest whenever she was forced to bring anything to his attention. Pendergrass had only told her, “Get off the warpath, Imala. Put down your little tomahawk and focus on your job. Stop following tracks you shouldn’t be following.”
Oh Pendergrass. You’re so, so clever. How witty of you to make reference to my Apache heritage.
She had thought the world had outgrown racial insults-she certainly had never heard any growing up in Arizona. But then she had never known anyone like Pendergrass, either, who called her cubicle her “wigwam” and who would always make a circle with his mouth and tap it with his fingers whenever she passed him in the break room. She could have gone to HR and filed a complaint a long time ago, but the HR bimbo assigned to their floor was actually sleeping with Pendergrass-a fact Imala found both repulsive and sadly pathetic. Besides, Imala didn’t want anyone fighting her battles for her. When she felt the need to “go on the warpath,” she’d be swinging her own tomahawk, thank you very much.
She couldn’t go to Pendergrass’s boss either. He was a pushover yes-man whose head was so far up his boss’s ass that he wore a kidney for a cap. All she’d get from him was a nice condescending lecture on the importance of following the chain of command. Then Kidney Cap would go to Pendergrass and give him an earful for not keeping his Apache on a short leash. And if that happened, Imala would have hell to pay with Pendergrass.
So she did the slightly unethical yet wholly necessary next best thing: She lied her way into the director’s office.
“Do you have an appointment to see Director Gardona?” asked the secretary, not looking up from her terminal.
“Yes,” said Imala. “Karen O’Hara, Space Finance magazine. Here for the feature interview.”
Imala felt ridiculous with her hair in a bun and dressed in such a fashionable jacket and slacks-which she had rented for the occasion-but she knew she needed to look the part. She wasn’t concerned about the secretary recognizing her. The agency employed hundreds of people, and all the grunts on the second floor where Imala worked never hobnobbed with anyone up here on the fifth. They didn’t even use the same entrances. It was like two neighboring countries whose borders were never crossed.
Imala had tried a week ago to set an appointment with the director as herself, but as soon as the secretary had learned that she was a junior assistant auditor, the secretary referred her to her superiors and hung up on her. Nor could Imala get an e-mail or a call through. All of the director’s messages were screened, and every attempt to contact him had been blocked. It was ridiculous. Who did the man think he was? This was the Lunar Trade Department, not the damn White House.
So here she was, doing the stupidest thing she had ever done in her life, all to get an audience with someone who might take her seriously.
“This way please,” said the secretary, leading Imala through two doors that required holoprint authorization. The secretary waved her hand through the boxy holo by the door, and the locks clicked open.
All the security made Imala nervous, and she was beginning to wonder if this was a good idea. What if the director didn’t think her information important enough to overlook her unorthodox way of getting his attention? Or what if she was wrong about the data? No, she was sure about that. The last door opened, and the secretary ushered her inside. Imala stepped through, and the secretary disappeared the way she had come.
Director Gardona was standing at his workstation moving his stylus through his holospace, zipping through documents so fast, Imala couldn’t imagine how he could possibly be reading anything. She put him in his early sixties, white haired, fit, handsome. The suit he was wearing was probably worth more than three months of Imala’s salary.
“Come in, Ms. Bootstamp,” he said. “I’m most interested to meet you.”
So he knew who she was. Imala wasn’t yet sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
He pocketed his stylus and faced her, smiling. “But tell me first, is Karen O’Hara a real journalist for Space Finance or did you pull that name from a hat?”
“Real, sir. In case you checked her on the nets.”
“As if I have time for such things,” he waved her to a cocoon chair, which resembled an empty sphere with the front quarter sliced off. They were great for minimal gravity, and Imala climbed inside. Gardona took the chair opposite her.
“Why did you agree to meet me, sir, if you knew who I was?”
