Plague Planet (The Wandering Engineer) (33 page)

When the door shut behind him and his shadow was gone from the
glass both humans let out a sigh of relief mingled with frustration. “That is
not a nice man,” the sheriff said, fingertips touching in front of his chest.

“No truer words have ever been spoken,” Hodges replied hoarsely,
rolling his eyes as he felt a wave of relief that the killer was gone. Slowly
he sat in a chair. He wiped at his face again.

“Here, let me get that little fat buddy,” the sheriff said, wiping
at Hodges's face with his own handkerchief.

“Get, get!” the commissioner said, waving his hands about in
exasperation.

“Oh, oh, I'm gone, I'm gone,” the sheriff said, moving out quick.
Hodges seemed to deflate as the door slammed and then he rubbed his brow. He
didn't know what he was going to do now.

...*...*...*...*...

Irons tried to make an appointment to meet with Helen as well as
other members of the various industrial and utility boards. The news made it
difficult. Sprite was handling the details with the microcomputers and solar
panels. They'd gone with the company in Gotham over the one in Metropolis. The
one in Metropolis had too many shady deals tied to it. The bald C.E.O. just
rubbed him the wrong way on so many levels.

Unfortunately Helen and most of the other people he wanted to see
where avoiding him. Which was incredibly annoying, he wasn't going to play the
wait game forever after all, he had no intention of cooling his heels and
waiting for the story to end before he got their attention.

He sighed. Such a pity, he thought. Even with the retractions the
EDP had printed it still wasn't getting through to the population or the
politicians it seemed. Some of the other papers were still running the original
story. The hysteria involved, tied to his good deeds... his comments about how
people liked to tear their heroes down and prove they too are mortal rang
through his head again.

“Fine, if she won't see me, if any of them won't, that's fine,”
the admiral said. “I'm not going to barge in to their office, knock down their
door and
insist
they listen to me. So, what else can we do?” he asked.

“I'm... looking into it,” Sprite said, sounding distracted.

“Something up?” Irons asked.

“Signal from Phoenix. A ship just entered the system,” Sprite
said, voice taught. “Single contact,” she said as the admiral sat up
straighter.

“This system does get a lot of traffic,” Irons said.

“It's a cross roads,” Sprite agreed. “According to Phoenix the
ship is inbound from the B448c jump point.”

“Okay.”

“Eta... seventy hours to orbit.”

“Seventy? Sounds like a fast ship,” the admiral replied. Most
ships took days or even weeks to cross a system. Someone had taken good care of
this old girl.”

“Yes, should we consider offering our services to the ship? We
could trade for goods and raw materials in exchange for repairs and parts,”
Sprite said hopefully. “Which would further your agenda of getting the word
out.”

“And give you a peek at their data net?” he teased with a slight
smile. “It's possible. That is if they are willing and if we don't get tied up
with other projects.”

“True,” Sprite replied with a sigh. “You've just received a reply
from the waste management board. Someone named Snorphlax has agreed to meet
you.”

“Snorphlax?” Irons asked.

“Gashg.”

“Lovely. That's something that bothered me, we didn't see many in
and around Hazard. And there are swamps in that area, plus that lake...”

“Hazard was named for the lake admiral. The lake itself is a
hazard. It's a swamp lake, the natural decaying biomass at the bottom
occasionally lets loose lethal methane bubbles.”

“So you're saying Hazard has gas? I thought it was just the
cuisine,” Irons replied, one hand covering his belly.

“Cute,” Sprite replied. “Apparently Hodges's ancestor came up with
a way of tapping the methane for natural gas refining about sixty years ago.
Crude, but it worked. It's been mainly used for heating and natural gas use for
most of the sixty years, though lately Hodges has taken an interest in to
diversifying the market a bit.”

“Interesting. You've got to admit, the man has an eye for
business,” Irons replied. “Okay, the Gashg, where and when?”

“New Chicago today if possible, he mentioned problems with sewage.
Fumes are making people sick and the contamination is ruining the natural
resources in the area. And I see there's an article about a small river that
has its own fire department because it catches fire every month or so...”

The admiral grimaced, he could see where this was going.
Fortunately, he unlike ninety nine point ninety nine percent of the population
could shut his olfactory sense off if needed. He didn't like the idea of
getting anything on a uniform though, he'd have to burn it afterward. “Lovely. Okay,
time for more frequent flier miles I suppose...” the admiral said, quickly
packing his few belongings in his duffel and then exiting the room. If he was
going to make it to the appointment he had to check out of the hotel he was in
and get into the air.

It didn't take long for Jerry to pick the pieces of the trail of
the stranger. It was a lot like tracking the mythological Sheriff Banniere. One
thing immediately tallied up, though the witness's descriptions varied, all
told of the man's outlander outfit. That told him right then and there it was
the admiral. Of course he lacked proof, no one had bothered to get an image of
this stranger.

Still, he had enough to go on so he started feeding Perry the
various stories. There were dozens, so they broke them up over the next couple
of days.

...*...*...*...*...

Irons picked up his copy of the paper and nodded. The headlines
were boring, more about the rising temperatures and housing problems in the
cities. He flipped through until he found Jerry Richard's byline.

Jerry was apparently still running stories about a stranger doing
strange things around the planet over the next two days. The admiral snorted
softly when Sprite pointed them out. Most were buried on page three or four,
others in the human interest or oddities stories. On the third day just as the
freighter reached orbit Richards drew the conclusion that Irons was the one
responsible for it all.

“See? I didn't have to draw attention to anything, neither did you
Commander. They did it for themselves,” the admiral pointed out.

“True,” Sprite replied amused. “But if you read on Richards asks
why you are doing such things.”

“True,” The admiral replied with a snort. He smiled slightly and
nodded in passing to a family. They didn't turn away as if he was a leper, but
he didn't get a polite nod in return either. Some progress, however small was
welcome. The old adage, one step forward, two steps back rang through his head.
“Let them. I'm curious how many will examine their own conscience and how it will
change them.”

“We may never know that Admiral. You won't be here for long,”
Sprite replied. “Or hopefully for not much longer, the fuel is still delayed. I
strongly suggest you write it off and go to another space port admiral.”

“True, but we can read about it,” the admiral said, folding the
paper under his arm and patting it slightly. “And no, we'll give it a few more
days. If nothing happens and they stand up the new ship then we'll figure
something else out.”

...*...*...*...*...

His stories were immediately overshadowed by another, the incoming
freighter had reported that it had found a derelict in the B448c system with
survivors in stasis pods. The small freighter the Prinz Zir traded the sleepers
for fuel and port rights. That pre-empted his story pushing it back to the
human interest column.

When the admiral heard about the sleepers from Sprite he was
instantly interested. Sprite didn't have a lot of data on them, what she had
picked up was that they were civilians. That had been a bit of a letdown, but
understandable. There were a lot more civilians floating around in pods than
there were military personnel.

It was odd though, he could understand his own circumstances, and
to some degree the Warners, Nohar's, and Horatio Logan's. Each of them had been
left to drift in the outer edges or even the outside of a star system. Fleet
took care of its own, a Search and Rescue ship would usually comb a system at
least once before moving on to other areas. With civilians... especially if it
had been from a liner the effort would have been exponentially higher, if only
to avoid the massive black eye not responding would cause.

Still, in the universe anything was apparently possible. They
could be sleepers from his time, or even after. Perhaps even from long before
the Xeno war! In fact most likely after, the ship could have ran out of fuel or
been damaged in... he sighed. The variables were endless really.

However one thing bothered him, and it didn't take long for Sprite
to make her own feelings about the subject known. The two of them were jointly
angry about the trade. “Slavery! That's what it is!” Sprite snarled. AI had a
particular sensitive spot for that. As did Neos. Both had a history that went
right along with Terran black people. In the case of AI's and Neo's thought it
was magnified, both had come after the age of slavery and had struggled for
freedom and equality over the centuries of 'enlightened' times.

“It's what the captain of the Io had planned for me Sprite,” Irons
replied, for once playing devil's advocate. “They factor in the cost of finding
and transporting the pods.”

“It's still not right. So much for the milk of human kindness,”
Sprite responded bitterly.

“Yeah, they don't do a lot of search and rescue either. If the
lost person is a child or someone important...” he shrugged.

“Yeah, if there's a
reward
,” Sprite said snidely. Irons
winced.

“Did you notice the line about how they negotiated for fuel? And
that they got priority?” Sprite asked. “So much for their problems with
supply!”

“True,” the admiral murmured with a nod. He hadn't missed that
either. It annoyed him too.

“Apparently first come first serve doesn't apply here,” Sprite
growled. “Even after everything you've done. I wonder if they are doing it to
get you to keep doing what you are doing?” He grunted but didn't respond to
that prodding.

Sprite watched the video feed of the shuttle landing. She was
amused, the pilot was good for an organic, better than some she had heard
about. He'd dropped the shuttle a little low, but corrected and landed neatly.
The landing added an extra sense of drama to a normally routine matter from her
time. Here it was something else.

The boarding ramp dropped and the hatch opened. Apparently they
didn't want to taxi the shuttle to the waiting customs station for processing.
A person, human in a battered patched civilian flight suit emerged from the
shuttle and looked around. He spotted the circus of cameras and people and
hesitantly waved to them.

Another crew member brusquely passed the first and then said
something that the far away microphones didn't pick up. The effect though was
obvious, the other crew member stopped waiving and went to work. They went to
the cargo hatch and started undogging it.

“Not even checking to see if they will get the fuel?” Sprite
asked. “Remarkably trusting of them,” she said to Irons.

“Maybe,” Irons replied. He was more interested in the shuttle. It
wasn't military grade, it had to be a civilian knock off of a Highland class
naval shuttle. It had two umbilical ports on either ventral side, one small one
larger. The one the crew had exited from was the smaller port hatch. From the
look of the shuttle it was in remarkably good condition. Whoever owned it, knew
how to take care of her. That was rare in these times.

“Anything from the ship?” Irons asked.

“No. No communications to Phoenix at all, which is strange.”

“Not very talkative with the competition?” the admiral asked,
raising an eyebrow. Phoenix would have informed him if they had. It was odd,
spacers usually talked to each other in the infrequent times they crossed each
other's paths.

“Everyone likes to talk, even if it's only to size the competition
up and see what tidbits they could get out of them. Maybe see where they are
going next. It is odd.”

“Arrogant. Smug?” Irons asked.

“Quite so,” she replied.

“Well, they're civilians, they have some right to privacy. Let me
know if that changes,” he said as the cargo hatch opened and a hover pallet
dropped out. He thought it had been sloppy securing of such precious cargo but
two other workman were there pushing it out. Straps dangled from the side of
the cargo pod. The pods were covered in a tight fitting tarp, the
disappointment from some of the crowd was obvious from their groans.

He snorted. “So much for that. Keep an eye on the feed. Any ideas
on how to get in on this?”

“One, the medics.”

“Explain.”