Rumble

"Quit getting blood on me already."

"Sorry. Hold there."

There was a soft squelching when Keeper of the Peace Wu applied pressure to where Jim had indicated with a rubber gloved finger.

“Hmmm.”

“What?”

“This guy was a heavy Dyastonal user. Check out the scarring on the…”

“Don’t autopsy him, just get it out,” Wu said testily.

More squelching sounds as Jim pushed his hands deeper into the still warm corpse. A month ago Wu would have found this fascinating, seeing the bloody, vital components of the human body up close. He could have been a surgeon, his mother would remind him when they spoke and for a while, as an eighteen-year-old just out of school, he had entertained the notion but it seemed like a lot of hard work. He didn’t really want a career, only money and in the end he just sort of fell into being a Keeper. Besides, he had been opening up bodies for weeks now and already his interest in the subject had diminished. He had soon discovered that people are all the same on the inside.

Despite the fact that the Chandrasekhar Spaceport was one of the busiest in the city and hundreds of people were walking past the two Keepers with the dead body each minute, they were attracting very little attention. Every now and then one of the closer pedestrians would glance a little longer but would not slacken their pace. Wu would try to put on his most disapproving expression while glaring at the more nosy citizens though he was sure this was unlikely to be the cause of their apparent disinterest. He imagined he looked more comical then authoritative, sitting on his haunches, looking all stern with his finger in a dead guy.

No, they probably weren’t curious because they were as bored of it as Wu was. The news had done the story to death, as was their tendency with anything that would scare people, but when people realised that they weren’t likely to be affected they grew tired of hearing about those who were. Alternatively, it could be because Keepers had a reputation for not treating gawking onlookers too kindly. Or maybe it was just because they were out of the way, off to the side, next to the wall and everyone was too busy or preoccupied to notice. It was a Spaceport, after all, and they could be very stressful places.

“Got it.”

“Finally. Bag it.”

Wu held open a plastic ziplock (two hundred years since its invention it was still the best thing for this sort of job) and Jim dropped the small black cylinder into it. The sides of the bag were smeared with dark red semi-congealed blood as the object slid between them. After rubbing off his spray-on pseudo-rubber gloves with a dissolving agent Wu ran the bag by the scanner in the Removal Kit which logged the serial code and checked it against a list of eight million. Wu tucked the ziplock safely away inside his vest and scraped his hand across the stubble on the top of his head as he watched the confirmation of the removal pop up on the little screen in the kit.

Microtech Industries TRACHEAL IMPLANT model nanoGuard071vb
REGISTRATION CODE: 905-gh-65-vvfb-4765-ld
CONFIRMED AS: Batch 2237-New Sharjah, Lakshmi 0519 - 006

DAMAGE: nil

REMOVAL 100% successful

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

100% REMOVAL FEE (500k Credits)

50% fee (250k Credits) has been transferred to accounts of:

Keeper of the Peace James Takagawa-Sanchez (Med)
Keeper of the Peace Li Sheng Wu

Remaining 50% (250k Credits) will be transferred upon receipt of item: 905-gh-65-vvfb-4765-ld

WELL DONE, KEEPERS!!!

There was a little manga animation of a Japanese schoolgirl cheering and jumping up and down in the corner of the screen but Wu had seen her so many times that it didn’t amuse him anymore. He closed this window, opened the New Report interface and gave his responses to the standard questions. This report would be uploaded to the Toe Tag, a nickname for the computers built into body bags. Jim packed his removal tools into the kit, which was little more than first aid box with a computer in it and helped his partner maneuver the corpse into a bag. With the press of a thumb and the subsequent verification of the print, the bag’s cooling unit started up and the Toe Tag started to broadcast a signal that would inform the patrolling Body Retrieval Team of it’s location.

As the two Keepers of the Peace stepped onto a moving walkway that would take them back to their car, Wu reflected on the turn of events that had led him to such a prosperous month. He had made 6.6 million Credits from fifteen removals (ten clean sweeps, five had involved some damage to the implants), over a full years pay in twenty-six days all thanks to a single component failure. It was a freak occurrence, one that the manufacturers of the Quantum Pico-Processor claimed to have a one in seventeen trillion chance of ever happening. But it happened nonetheless and because it did a ship’s navigation computer triggered a drop back into Real Space a day earlier than scheduled. The ship was the Cerbro-St. Mark and the result was a stranding four parsecs short of her destination.

Being a ship in the gigaton haulage bracket, the St. Mark could only feasibly carry enough fuel to shift her out of and back into Real Space once but events such as the processor failure were so improbable that this was seldom a problem. By pure luck, she dropped right into the gravity well of a huge gas giant in an uninhabited system and from a stable orbit an automated distress call was broadcast over the Cerbro Shipping Company’s secure band. Someone within the company’s ranks saw a chance to make an absolute fortune and having had secretive dealings with them in the past, had no trouble contacting a successful crime syndicate to inform them of this rare opportunity. Eleven million nanoGuard tracheal implants would certainly make a pretty sum on the Infected Worlds.

There was a Marine Guard posted on the ship for the sole purpose of protecting this valuable cargo but there were more soldiers in the pirates’ incursionary team and they were just as well, if not better, trained. It was a brief and clean attack and within a few hours thirty-five million GigaCredits (GC) worth of stolen bio-med supplies were loaded onto the various ships in the looters’ flotilla. The implants were already being sold on the Infected Worlds by the time a rescue barge rendezvoused with the now ghost ship St. Mark.

The selection process for choosing Keepers to track down the black market implants was much the same as that for the allocation of the implants themselves. Lottery. Just like the implants, there were more people wanting the job than there were positions available. The difference was that the job was in high demand because of the great pay whereas the implants were in demand because they were the only defense against the Anubis nano virus. Obviously, the chances of any particular Keeper being selected were weighted accordingly due to performance related factors and those being secretly investigated by the Anti Corruption Committee or with direct relations to anyone infected were taken out of the running altogether but for the most part the process was random. The implant allocation, however, was not and that was where the problem lay.

The Anubis nano-virus was gene specific meaning that it only targeted individuals possessing a particular gene. The downside to this (from the virus’s point of view) was that by knowing the target chromosome was easy to identify those who would suffer the virus by searching through the massive Federal Genome Database. However, the cost of the tracheal implants was astronomical and the production of them was a slow process so the Infected Worlds’ respective governments could only afford to buy a small number of them at a time. A lottery system seemed the only fair way of distributing the implants and it also seemed only fair when the hard working government officials or their family members or their close friends were ‘randomly’ selected to receive the life-saving little nanobot killers. This obviously angered the majority of the infected public that had failed to be drawn not to mention the millions who had been immediately disqualified from the lottery for having a criminal record. So when the black-market implants became available for a reasonable price there were only a few citizens who still had enough faith in (or fear of) the government not to participate in the illegal dealings.

And that was where Wu came in. It was a pretty cushy job and no Keeper ever objected to making a little extra cash, needless to say he and the other lucky individuals were very much envied. But those who were jealous of the pay were not jealous of the three GC worth of responsibility that a Keeper would take on from the time of a removal to the time of delivery. The time when their insurance premiums would skyrocket to a point where the Keeper of the Peace Administration refused to cover them. It was during this time on many previous occasions that Wu and Jim had had to ‘neutralize’ several members of various organized crime syndicates intent on making some serious profit and mourners of Wu and Jim’s respective families. It had come to a stage where Wu could smell a rumble coming and the implant would burn inside his vest, next to his heart. Right now the air was thick with the scent of a looming confrontation.

The two Keepers stepped off the walkway and headed for the Authorized Access Only door which was an exit used by law enforcement officers and SpacePort Officials. Through the door was a corridor that led to parking garage for security and government vehicles and as they walked down it Wu was beginning to get very nervous indeed.

“Jim, I think something’s going to happen.”

“Ah,” said Jim, “your sixth sense again, huh.”

Wu didn’t appreciate the patronizing tone of Jim’s remark and fixed him with a steely glare.

“I’m normally right, aren’t I?”

Jim thought for a moment, sighed and then drew his gun from the holster on his thigh.

“You’re sometimes right.”

They were standing at the door that would open into the garage when the coin was flipped (it wasn’t currency but superstitious Keepers hung on to coins to aid decision making such as this).

Heads. Jim goes in first.

“The gods say it’s your day to die,” said Wu with a rare grin and Jim punched him on the shoulder.

After flicking off the safety and taking a deep breath Jim pushed the door open and hurriedly stepped inside the garage.

As soon as the door clicked shut Wu turned and walked back the way he came. The only time he paused was not to think about what was probably happening to his partner right now but to key open the door that would take him back into spaceport. He stepped onto a moving walkway adjacent and running in the opposite direction to the one he had ridden only a few minutes ago and after a short journey stepped off. He had arrived at the body of one dead lowlife safely frozen in his plastic coffin. His hand felt after sliding around underneath the body bag for a couple of seconds the Boarding Card that it was agreed would be left there. He slipped it into his pocket as he stepped on to yet another moving walkway, this time getting off at a section filled with heavy duty reinforced lockers. The Airport Security Guard posted there nodded to him as if they were part of a secret brotherhood. Wu nodded back, at the same time wondering how it was that Airport Security Guards and Shopping Mall Security Guards didn’t realise how much of a joke they were to Keepers.

It took less than ten seconds to open locker A3 – 637, retrieve and cuff to himself the stainless steel briefcase stored within, shut the locker door and leave the storage area, weaving between dawdling businessmen and gaudily dressed tourists. On his way out of the area he touched his forehead with a semi-closed fist in a casual salute at the Security Guard who did his best to nod solemnly. After Wu had gone, the guard broke into a large grin.

He placed his thumb on the specified print-reading section of the Boarding Card as he ran it past the various automatic checking attendants on his way to the Private Gate, each time being well out of earshot by the time the machines had completed wishing him a safe and enjoyable flight. He had soon left the crush of sweaty, stupid, citizen bodies in the Main Gates thoroughfare and was taking in the plush surrounds of the Private Departure Lounge. He spotted Wasim within a few moments and walked swiftly over to him. Without a word he was gestured to Gate P302 and after a long walk down the umbilical corridor he found himself in the passenger gallery of an expensive private launch.

The awe was thumped out of with a hearty shove in the back from Wasim.

“Sit down,” he said, “we’ve nearly lost our pit time thanks to you.”

Wu shrugged indifferently.

“It’s a big spaceport.”

Wasim grunted. Two more men appeared from the cockpit that Wu recognized as Inzamam and Yousuf.

“Took your time, didn’t you, Wu,” said Yousuf.

Wu just shrugged again.

“Well, Freelancer, let’s see the chips,” Yousuf said as he stepped closer.

Wu fixed him with an icy stare down the sight of his service gun, which had practically materialised in his hand.

“That’s not the deal, is it.”

The three mobsters were frozen staring at each other nervously knowing they couldn’t draw faster than Wu could obviously shoot them. Besides, they needed Wu alive to open the case without it exploding. All three jumped a little when the launch lurched forward. A collective sigh escaped them when they realised it was just the tug towing the ship into the null-grav pit.

“Alright, Keeper Wu, we’re all friends here,” Inzamam was trying to sound light hearted rather than panicked but he wasn’t doing it with a great deal of success.

“We’re business partners…no, I’m a business partner of your employer. We are nothing. You’d better sit down before you vomit.”

There was a whine increasing in volume indicating that whatever it was that made the pits work was powering up. When they kicked on and gravity was nullified, it was a nauseating experience.

As the launch ascended up the null-grav column toward Wasim, Yousuf and Inzamam’s employer’s ship and the sky outside the windows gradually turned from sunset pink to the star-flecked pitch of space, Wu couldn’t shake the feeling burning deep in his gut. The feeling that maybe he had made a big mistake.

And that there was still a rumble coming.



Word count: 2513