Claire Takes On The Galaxy

Claire - Chapter Twelve

Shortly after James had gone, Maddie looked in his office to see whether he wanted to watch a show with her. James had been busy and pre-occupied of late, but he would occasionally still take an hour or so to keep her company. On weekends Claire, of whom Maddie thoroughly approved, might do so but it was a weekday. James wasn’t in his study, but she could see his characteristically spidery handwriting on a note pad. She knew poking around James’s study was one of the few ways to get a serious reprimand from her foster dad, but times had been uncertain. James had been whispering and holding meetings, and keeping stuff from her. She crept up to the desk and looked. As she expected she couldn’t read much of his handwriting, but one phrase at the top of one page was just legible. “Merc agent?”

Maddie gasped. She might have been just eight, but she knew who the Mercs were and knew the emergency procedures she was supposed to follow if the Mercs came there. She also knew what agent meant – spy. In a flash, she knew why James had been pre-occupied. He had been hunting for a Merc spy in Devil’s Pit. She dashed to her room and sat on the bed shaking. For all her bravado, Maddie was still very young and had been orphaned twice. If the Mercs landed it was possible that she would be separated from James and orphaned again.

If James was going to be absent for any length of time he arranged for her to go to one of the few families in Devil’s Pit, or sometimes May, but the fix-it request had been urgent, the vats were a few minutes away and his phone was on. The slightly earlier version of Maddie, full of bravado, would have responded to all this concern that she should not be left alone by pointing out she often went off and left James without supervision for long periods, and he was far more likely to get into trouble than she was.

Bravado gone, and with no one else there, she rang Claire. The marine had never experienced this breathless, troubled Maddie before.

“Say again?” she said, stepping into her own room.

“James has been hunting a Merc agent in Devil’s Pit.”

“What? How do you know this?”

Maddie explained how she had seen the note in James’ study.

“James doesn’t like you poking in there. He doesn’t even like me in there.”

“A Merc agent in Devil’s Pit. It must mean they’re going to land and fight.”

“Calm down, calm down,” she said. “He’s not there?”

“He just sent me a note. He’s at the vats, back in a few minutes, he says.”

“Okay, well I’ll have to call him.”

“Don’t call him. I’ll get into trouble for being in his study.”

“This is James we’re talking about,” said Claire. “He’s not going to do much. Maybe take your balcony away from you.”

“I suppose, but I like my balcony, even if I don’t use it much.”

“This is too important not to call. I should come around but I’m on stand-to very soon.” It was the company headquarters unit’s turn to be on stand-to. “I’ll call and then call you back.”

“She did what?” said James when Maddie’s discovery was explained to her. “No more Romeo and Juliet for her. She’s only going to be allowed to watch films about heroics at pony clubs and cartoons about mermaid princesses.”

“Don’t be too hard on her. She’s anxious.” Clare could hardly believe that she was playing the mum role. “She’s been orphaned twice, for star’s sake. She doesn’t want to be orphaned again.”

“She’ll find out about the harsh side of parenting if I catch her in my study. I should have pushed that stuff out of sight before I left, but I forgot.”

“Yes you forgot, and Maddie couldn’t help but look – are you hunting for a Merc spy?”

“Claire, you really don’t want to know. You’re a private – you’re a highly skilled as well as an attractive private…”

“Ha!” thought Claire. “This is where the charming rogue kicks me in the teeth.”

“..but a private none the less. Privates do not hunt for Merc agents.”

“Do exiled bank robbers hunt for Merc agents?”

“Well, no, but they don’t have to report stuff to a military hierarchy. When this is all over and investigating officers come around to Private Claire Williams, asking how much that private knew about goings on – it is important said private be able to deny that she knew anything at all. If said private is found to know stuff without telling the next person in chain of command she’ll be in a heap of trouble. The story is by chance you heard that I was hunting for a Merc agent and I completely denied it. Those were notes for possible scenarios I was writing out for myself.”

“Were those notes for scenarios?”

“Yes.”

“Are you hunting for a Merc agent.”

“No.”

“I don’t think I believe you.”

“You don’t have to believe me, you just have to be able to say that you didn’t know anything about this.”

“That’s not a denial.”

“Forget about Merc agents and anything else from Maddie’s rich imagination. If you start telling me what she told you then I’ll have to blame Maddie, which might hurt her. Do you want that to happen?”

“No of course not, and that would be horrible of you James Truslove.”

“When you say my name like that you remind me of my mother. If you want to keep Maddie out of this then shut up about the whole thing. Seriously, shut up. A rumour will start, despite my denials. I’ll have a word with Maddie. Shakespearian tragedies are not suitable for young girls, now I think about it.”

“You’re being mean about this.”

“I’m not being mean,” said James. “I’m protecting people. You asked me about this agent hunt thing. I denied everything, and you decided it wasn’t worth telling any of your superiors. That’s the line to take when they ask you. Now go on your token stand-to and don’t worry about it.”

“Token stand-to!” exclaimed Claire, anger rising. She remembered finding Brad in the closet and how he must have dismissed her as someone to fool, much as James was dismissing her and trying to fool her now. “Is that what you think of me, James Truslove?”

“No, it’s not that..

“It is exactly that. You don’t think I can be trusted, is that it?”

“No of course not, but this is the stuff a private has to report to officers and we still don’t know which officers to trust on this”

Claire was past being reasonable.

“You don’t trust me?”

“It’s the officers I don’t trust. Remember, it was just scenarios.”

“You think I’m someone to dismiss with that lie?”

“Of course not. I never thought that.”

“You did too, and you know what, James Truslove, you can forget everything about us.” She hung up and flung the phone on her bed.

James, for his part, hung up with a sigh. Maybe it had been too good to last? Maybe he should call straight back and beg forgiveness? Then he thought the main problem of him not talking about his spy hunting work remained. If he called back now he would be more or less obliged to tell Claire about the investigation to date, and his list of suspects. Not good! Maybe he would have more success if he caught the spy and then begged forgiveness? Neglecting Claire for any length of time was not a good idea, he thought. In his experience, good looking girls who were neglected easily found consolation with other men. But there was not much else he could do. In the meantime, he hoped to heaven that Claire had the sense to shut up about the cause of the argument. Just as he came to that regretful conclusion, an alert went off. Brew had set the colony security systems to react if one of the security feeds suddenly went black – just as it had in the officer’s corridor when the agent had masked the camera. The offending screen appeared on the main monitor in front of James. A side entrance to the vat complex. His spy friend had come calling.

Claire was alone with her thoughts, sitting on her bed, for only a few moments before Lou, Adria and Taylor knocked gently on her bedroom door and peeked inside.

“Are you alright?” asked Lou.

“I’ve been better,” said Claire.

“Quite an argument you two had,” commented Adria. “Are we allowed to know what the argument was about?”

“We heard stuff about trust – we couldn’t help but hear,” said Lou.

Claire was about to tell them then thought better of it, and said “it’s complicated”.

“Was it about him seeing another woman?” asked Taylor.

“No, nothing like that.”

“Was it about money?” asked Adria.

“No, we’ve never talked about money.”

“Then it can’t be too bad,” said Adria. “He’ll call to beg forgiveness, and you can allow him to make it up to you. Think what you want.”

“There isn’t anything in Devil’s Pit I want – besides maybe James,” said Claire.

“Girl has a point,” said Lou.

“James will beg forgiveness and he’ll have to think of something,” said Adria.

“It’s romantic,” exclaimed Taylor. “You two can make up after a time apart, and be together.”

Claire did not say anything but found herself thinking that she hoped so.

The vat complex was small compared to the enormous food factories on earth in which maintenance workers got to different areas in electric vehicles like golf buggies, but the Devil’s Pit installation was still huge in its own right. It was the equivalent of two football stadiums in length and one in width, with one basement level and two levels above ground. But unlike its counterparts on Earth the complex had no internal security cameras or sensors. Even the security camera on the side entrance had been a formal requirement of the Space Administration, otherwise it might not have been there. Who would bother to enter the vat complex on Devil’s Pit? The only other means of detecting an intruder were the repair droids now working on one of the vat lines on the other side of the building and were not suitable at all for security work. That left James and a thin metal rod he picked up from a workshop in the next space along from the screens he had been using. The only weapon he had to hand. He also rang Brew.

“Hey man, price of lift crystals is going through the roof,” said Brew, “see what happens when you don’t sell forward.” James and Bew had discussed the pros and cons of selling their next batch of crystals at forward rates, a few weeks previously. Now they had a batch of crystals on a freighter one week out from Earth which would go straight onto the spot - the day to day - market. James would get 20 per cent of the profits.

“Never mind the crystals, I’ve got problems. I think the agent we’ve been hunting has come calling. Your alarm’s gone off. The north entrance security cam has gone dark.”

“Ohhh - I’ll come a’ running, but it’ll take maybe 30 minutes or so. What’s he doing there anyway?”

“No idea, but I know the place far better than he does, and I’m up for some stalking.”

“Dangerous man, dangerous. This guy won’t wanna be stalked. Wait for me. Maybe I can stake out the entrance and we can get eyes on him. That’s all we need, a positive ID.”

“I’m not going to take the man on, I just want to get a handle on him. He’s cost me days of work and I want to know who he is.”

“Still too dangerous, man. Wait for me.”

“I’ll be careful. I’ll keep my mobile on and you can track that. Just come.”

James hung up, turned out the lights in the admin section and moved, as quietly as he could, out onto the main inspection walkway.

Dimly-lit and vast, James had long decided that the vat building had a distinct steam-punk vibe. There were lots of gantries, pipes leading in all directions, and a succession of huge, bulbous machines that looked something like an artist’s idea of an alien steam engine but were, in fact, the vats. Having sweated blood over getting the vat production lines to produce usable materials, James knew the building’s layout. The agent, he supposed, would stick to the floor he came in on – although he still had no idea what the man was doing there. James went down one level and walked quietly, following the central power cable ducts.

At about two hundred paces he thought he heard a noise. He stopped and listened. There! A faint “tink” of metal scraping on metal. But it was below him. A few paces away was a stairwell. James eased down it to a landing. A second set of steep stairs led off the landing, in the opposite direction, to the floor of the basement. There, in the dim light, he could see a figure – a shadow, doing something on one of the shelves housing the plant’s artificial intelligence control system.

James could only see an outline of the figure between two massive shelves of computer hardware. Nothing about the outline was recognisable. Perhaps if the intruder turned his head? James coughed. The man spun to face him but was wearing a ski mask – a point which James had only a second to register as the intruder also produced a pistol. The bank robber dropped flat just as the man fired. The flat crack of the bullet echoed around the building and the bullet pinged off the stair rails about where James’s chest would have been. The criminal grabbed the rails on the second set of fibro-steel stairs, and went down, fast, without lifting his head. A second bullet clipped one of the steps as he ran. The agent was way too good a shot for comfort. At the bottom, James zig-zagged into the main conduit area. He stopped, his back to one of the building’s main supports, panting. Metal rod in one hand he peeped out. For a few seconds he saw nothing then, in the dim light off to his right, something shifted. A shadow merged with another shadow. The intruder was circling around. What to do? James let his rod knock against the concrete of the support, as if by accident, then walked off quietly in the opposite direction, hiding behind a series of vats – part of the colony’s meat production lines.

After a few minutes, a shadow moved up to about where James had tapped the concrete. His opponent was clever, James decided, and an excellent shot, but he had still fallen for an old trick. He could see the shadow, realising its prey had vanished, look around in alarm then back away, out of sight.

James circled around to the left, keeping well hidden. He caught another glimpse of the intruder in the distance, checking behind a vat line, moving carefully. Let him look, James thought, the place was a maze. The criminal found a vantage point behind a network of pipes which had a good view of the stairs he had run down. Unless the intruder wanted to take a lengthy detour, he would have to take the same stairs to get back to the side entrance, which was also the closest entrance to the Marine base. James waited half an hour, one eye on the stairs, but also occasionally glimpsing a dark figure in the distance. Brew must be close, but James did not dare take out his phone. In that dim light, the glow would give him away. Silence. James didn’t see his opponent for a time. Perhaps the agent had already gone, or perhaps he was far to his left circling around behind the machinery to get him.

There! James had been looking to his right when a movement caught his eye. The intruder with ski mask still on and standard marine jacket hood pulled over his head and laced tight for good measure, made a dash for the stairs. He was hunched over, as if injured, and running in a weird way, stretching out far each time. James puzzled for a moment over his quarry’s behaviour then realised that the intruder must suspect that James was somewhere watching the stairs, and did not want his gait recognised. The way someone walked was distinctive; easy to pick out at a distance. This guy was good, James thought.

He waited a few moments then also ran lightly up the stairs, bar in hand, and was almost at the top when it occurred to James that his new friend would expect him to follow. He backed down again and had reached the landing when he sensed, rather than saw, the intruder at the top of stairs. He flung himself over the railing, just as the intruder’s pistol cracked again, the bullet plugging a neat hole in the landing about where he had been. James dropped three metres to the floor, landing heavily but remembering to roll and come up running. He zig-zagged into another line of vats and sprinted straight for another hundred metres, before stopping to look back. The intruder was on the landing, looking this way and that for his quarry. James took out his phone, dialled Brew, moved out into full view of the agent and waved. The intruder saw him and raised his pistol, but James ducked out of sight and walked away, fast.

“Please tell me you’re close,” said James, not bothering to keep his voice down.

“In the trusty transporter just outside the building. Mystery man hasn’t got you?”

“He’s still inside, close to the side entrance. Turn on your mining lights to cover the entrance – light the place up – but keep your distance, this guy is a wicked shot with a pistol.”

James did not see the intruder leave but he later studied the video file. The lights on Brew’s craft were designed for mining work in dark tunnels but, heeding James’ warning he was more than two hundred metres away when the intruder ran for it. They could see the figure running hard, before turning to fire at the craft. Never having been shot at before Brew instinctively swung his craft away. By the time the miner had swung the craft back again, the intruder had vanished.

The Merc agent had got away.