Power Play

16

‘Sean?' Simon Furey came charging into the governor's mansion. 'I got someone here from…' and Furey frowned down at the plasfilm sheets trying to curl around his gloved hand from the static in the cold air that he brought in with him, '… Nabatira Structural Cubes?’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘I have!' Furey said, impressed.

Sean reached for the film and they both had trouble unwinding it to the point where the consignment note and the invoice could be separated and read. 'I don't know a thing about this,' he added, shaking his head, especially over the fat letters of the 'NO CHARGE' stamped on the invoice.

Furey jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the junked cabin room. 'They'd be damned good things to have, y'know.’

Sean looked about him, snorting at the confusion of tiers of boxes on every available space, boxes into which Una and her helpers filed the stuff that every shuttle brought down to dump in his already stuffed premises.

Adak came in just then, waving more plasfilm. 'The most humungous slabs just arrived, Sean. They gotta be unloaded and put up and, I dunno,’

Adak's eyes were wide in his round face. 'What are they?’

‘Climatically resistant and atmospherically adjustable additional autonomous units, complete with all facilities, can be erected instantly and with little or no site preparation,' said the rangy redheaded individual who had followed Adak in. 'But I gotta tell ya, man, we gotta fix and run or we miss the next delivery and that's not company policy. We only got three days to site these things and you're lucky to get delivery so quickly, considering how far in advance clients usually gotta book Nabatira Cubes. So where do we put 'em?’

‘Them?’

The redhead flicked fingers at the film in Sean's suddenly limp fingers.

‘Four of 'em,' and the redhead held up four gloved fingers. That seemed to be his only concession to Petaybean weather although the outfit he wore was probably one of the lightweight thermal beauties which Minkus had brought with him from Herod's. Now the Nabatiran emissary looked about him. 'This the governor's mansion?' he asked incredulously, assessing the clutter in a single not quite contemptuous glance. 'How big are these cubes?’

The redhead snorted. 'Hell, man, you could put six of this bitty place in one and still get a rattle.’

‘Then I want one right beside this,' Sean said, suddenly decisive. 'Adak, get some axes and…’

The redhead held up a restraining hand. 'No sweat, mate. Oscar O'Neill, the Great O. O., will take care of that detail. Like we claim, little or no site preparation is needed.’

‘What wouldja do with them trees, then?' Adak demanded, his head protruding from his parka like a turtle's.

‘You need the wood? We keep the wood,' the Great O. O. said amiably.

‘That's one down, Governor Shongili…" and Oscar O'Neill paused to receive Sean's disposition of the others.

‘Make a much better school than the longhouse does…' Simon Furey suggested appealingly.

‘Done!’

‘School's to be near by?' O. O. asked.

‘Just up the road,' Simon replied eagerly, pointing in the right direction.

‘Road?' O. O. asked condescendingly.

‘Road,' Sean said firmly and wondered what to do with the others. Sometimes gifts can be more embarrassing than helpful - especially 'free' ones.

‘Kin I make a suggestion, mate?' O. O. said and when Sean nodded, 'Well, I spent a good deal of good daylight e-rection time trying to find you. Wouldn't have found you at all if not for Cap'n Greene and his flyin' machine. He came along just as I was about to mark this lot "Return to sender". Why not install one cube at that so-called SpaceBase of yours to direct incoming traffic and take…' he looked around him again,' some of the paperwork outa here.’

Sean couldn't have agreed more though the 'No charge' aspect of this largesse could not be explained by O. O. All he knew 'was what was on the dockets, man', and 'no charge' meant just that, and who were they to argue with Head Office? By the time the necessary decisions were made, Sean had a new office block adjacent to the marital cabin; awed Kilcoole had a new school; Petaybee Admin had its own - if empty - premises on the edge of the SpaceBase, and Lonciana was going to find herself to be the recipient of the fourth Nabatira Structural Cube. If she was having half the trouble Sean was in the management of the Southern Continent, she needed the space to do it in too.

As abruptly as O. O. and his men had appeared, they left.

‘He was as good as his word, wasn't he?' Una said, standing in the newfallen snow in front of the cube while the governor's'staff' took stock of their new premises. 'It's just forty-eight hours since they arrived.’

‘So it is,' Sean said, totally bemused by the speed with which this had all been accomplished. O. O. and his men hadn't even paused when snow whipped around so that at one point it had been very hard to see despite the banks of heavy-duty lights that had been put up so they could work through the night.

The building had also been sunk into the ground, neatly placed behind a screen of Kilcoole's conifers so that it didn't even seem to be an intruder. A unanimous decision had voted for an outer coating of a bark-like paint so that it resembled - at least in colour - the other cabins along the road. Of course, the upper level did tower above the neighbouring buildings but there were trees behind it that were taller still. It was empty, of course, for no-one had had time to transfer anything.

‘What a difference a few days make!' Sean said.

Cautiously approaching the new building, Marduk let out a little snarl. He was pacing along the front of it, sniffing here and there and usually sneezing at the chemical smells clinging to the newly erected building, pawing at the one or two mounds of disturbed dirt left over.

Well, no good standing around out here, is there? he said and took the three entrance steps in one.

Gal-3

‘I tell you, Louchard's real ship only just left,' Charas vehemently insisted to Commander Nal an Hon. Once more dressed in the gear of a station brat, there was nothing of the child in her manner as she leaned across the desk, hands gripping the edge, her white knuckles demonstrating the intensity of her belief in what she said. 'That's why you never found the kidnapped victims in any of the ships that had disembarked.’

‘Your instrumentation could be faulty, Charas,' the Commander said patiently although he knew that the diminutive operator was the best surveillance officer money, and loyalty, could buy. In this case, the loyalty was the prominent factor since Marmion Algemeine seemed to instil that virtue in anyone who worked for her. He could have used a bit of that himself, though he tried to be as tolerant and fair-minded as he could, dealing with all sorts of psychologies and temperaments as Commander of Gal-3.

‘Faulty my aunt's left toenail!' She swung away from the desk and began pacing. 'My instruments registered the original mayday from both Madame Algemeine and the Colonel. I followed them to Cargo Bay 30…’

‘And followed the shuttle…’

‘So I did, but the shuttle seemed the obvious escape vehicle… and we were going so fast… My implant returns only life-sign readings past a certain distance…" Charas shook her head: they all had been sure the shuttle had the victims. 'But the signal from the implant suggests that Madame Algemeine is still on Gal-3. I got the strongest response in the Cargo Bay: only there's some sort of a scrambler system that diffuses so one can't accurately locate the source.' She held up a hand when the Commander started to interrupt her, 'Until just this past half hour. Operations say that only five ships have requested clearance in the past hour… hours, that is,' and her smile was grim,' since it's taken me longer to reach you with this information. Freighters, all of them, incapable of moving at any great speed.’

‘Look, I want Madame Algemeine back as much as you do, but I've only so many forces to handle search and recover operations…’

‘Madame Algemeine will, of course, reimburse your costs. What are you waiting for, Commander?’

‘Nothing,' he said, abruptly, recognizing that he had been tardy in assimilating her information. Depressing the alert pad, he issued instructions, detailing the descriptions and numeric IDs of the five ships to be stopped and boarded.

‘Ingenious, you must admit,' Charas said, relaxing now she had got him to act,' remaining on Gal-Three while the first of the search and boards were being initiated. But then we know that Louchard uses state-of-the-art technology. This abduction was very carefully planned.’

She sighed, rubbing her face, for she'd been working with only catnaps to refresh her ever since she'd received the first mayday: prowling about the immense cargo bay, checking every single ship in the facility, time and time again, trying to locate exactly which of the hundred or so ships hid the victims. But her locator, despite being state-of-the-art, displayed so many 'echoes' even when placed against a hull, that she had been unable to pinpoint the target ship. Fortunately, her disguise had saved her from retaliation by some of the ships' personnel: aliens in particular were apt to take offence if you were seen hanging about their vessels for no apparent purpose.

At the outset of this incident, she'd seen the women in the company of Macci Klausevitch so she hadn't been as close on Yana's heels as she normally would. For that she blamed herself. Getting slack in her middle years: have to quit this kind of work if she was going to be less than top efficient all the time.

So the pair waited. Commander an Hon courteously supplied her with a meal and then a shower in his private facilities while fresh clothing was procured for her. She was adrenalin-poor at this point, having pushed herself for days in her vigil. She had almost nodded off when the first reports came in. The slowest of the five vessels had been apprehended and it was, as it was supposed to be, a drone grain carrier and all its components checked out as they should. The second was carrying only two holds of cargo, to the captain's disgust, and he was in no fit mood to be stopped on such a spurious charge. The third was also innocent and the fourth, but of the fifth all they found were large fragments of the hull.

‘Wasn't blown apart, wasn't hit by any spaceflot, wasn't burned or melted or anything, Commander. Just like the hull had been a weevy-fruit, split open down the axis.’

An Hon and Charas exchanged despairing looks.

‘Damn that Louchard!’

Charas felt as near to tears as she had the day her mother died when she'd been eight years old.

‘Any residuals to track?’

‘We're searching, sir, but they could have just used the drift to take 'em the way they wanted to go and, begging your pardon, it could take weeks to do a search pattern and we'd still not be sure we got the right trail.’

‘Return to base, Captain, and thank you.' Grimly, Commander an Hon looked at Charas. 'You still have a life signal from Madame Algemeine, don't you?’

Charas touched the point on her mastoid bone and inclined her head positively. Madame Algemeine was the only client for whom she would permit such an invasion of her personal privacy but she 'owed' her for her life and sanity so Charas was willing to do anything to protect this client.

‘We can check with Sally Point-Jefferson, too,' she said.

When a death occurred, those carrying the implant tuned to that person experienced an unforgettable blast.

The tall lean Commander waved aside that suggestion with a twitch of his lips. 'If she got the blast, so would you!’

‘Now what? The kidnappers didn't leave a final warning of any kind, did they?’

‘Nothing past the last one M'sser Klausevitch passed on to us.’

‘Klausevitch,' Charas murmured and locked eyes with the Commander. 'Odd man to be chosen as messenger. And Madame herself cancelled Millard and Sally as bodyguards?’

‘Hmmm.' An Hon shrugged for the whimsies of the rich. He'd've had an operative with Yana in the head, her tub, under her bed but who would have thought a kidnapping of someone of Madame Algemeine's status would occur in this day and age after the Amber Unicorn fiasco! True, there were occasional incidents involving lesser lights like merchants, captains, executives and enough freaks eking out a marginal living on any big station like this to account for GBA and 'accidents' as well as extortionist intimidation but nothing on the scale of this felony. 'Madame Algemeine had some critical meeting or other that they had to prepare for and doubtless she felt that she was well-enough known - with the Klausevitch along - to inhibit any confrontation.’

‘And who let the two kids loose?’

‘That has already been dealt with,' the Commander said in a hard voice for the unseen eye supposed to follow the young folk had somehow missed their departure from the Algemeine apartments. His licence had been revoked and he was currently looking for any work he could get.

‘That Klausevitch fellow,' Charas said, returning to one aspect of this whole affair that nagged her like a damaged nerve. 'What else have you discovered about him?’

‘I got a repeat of the original clearance. He certainly wouldn't have been hired by Rothschild's if there was anything suspicious about him. But I've asked again for a comprehensive.’

‘He was sure green-e-o at the Algemeines' first thing that morning. And I heard he doesn't usually rise until midday.’

‘That is true.’

‘Or is he just hot for pregnant women?' Charas asked with feminine cynicism.

‘There was that case…' an Hon paused, rubbing his chin speculatively, '… where a salesman with an impeccable record was convicted of grand larceny following an investigation of his accounts. He admitted falling under the spell of this Louchard personage. It is a possibility,' an Hon admitted. 'As the Great Sleuth remarked, "When you discount the improbable and only the impossible remains, that will be the answer."’

‘You've got surveillance on him?’

‘You may be sure of that, and on anyone else even remotely involved in this affair, up to and including our society hostess, Pleasaunce Ferrari-Emool.’

‘Yeah, her!’

‘She's been known to associate with some unlikely characters.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Get some sleep, Charas. You're not good to anyone in your present state, though you cleaned up better than I thought you would.’

Charas managed a grin. 'Any place here I can catch a few winks?' she said, rising. 'Don't want to be far away if you need me. And I'm not all that sure I could make it to my digs.’

When Madame Algemeine had imported Charas as her Gal-Three unseen eye, she had naturally introduced the woman to Commander an Hon. She had 'assisted' him from time to time when her principal client was absent from the station so he had a high degree of respect for her capabilities, the present situation notwithstanding. He himself showed her to one of the cabins reserved for unexpected visitors of the desirable kind. She lay on her side, positioned her legs comfortably and immediately her breathing went into a deep sleep pattern. He activated the comlink and left.

He should be getting some gen back on Klausevitch and he couldn't imagine why it took so long to be linked in to Gal-Three. Because of the prestige of their special residents, Gal-Three had priority clearance up to top secret levels. Surely Klausevitch was not above that category.