Snippet – 3rd Chapter of “A Different Perspective”

Chapter 3

April had a lot of issues to settle with Heather and Jeff. She told Gunny she wanted her privacy this morning for breakfast. He just lifted an eyebrow and didn’t object. He probably thought it was some sort of lovers spat or something, she thought in a foul mood.

Not least of what she wanted to hash out was that Heather had accepted her real estate customers suggestion and declared herself sovereign when the administrator of Armstrong had pursued them to their new homes and tried to arrest them. It had been a brilliant expedient to confer authority on her to act for them quickly. However April was still disapproving that she’d not dissolved the arrangement after fighting their rover force and saving her refugees. In fact she had instead accepted the fealty of the remainder of the Armstrong people when she returned. That wasn’t sitting well with April.

She after all was owed a lot in Heather’s development for her support and transportation services. April had not known she’d be owning a lot in a kingdom. One likely to be disputed.

That bothered her enough, but the cherry on top was that Heather named her and Jeff as peers. She was getting a lot of involvement she hadn’t asked for, but on top of all of it she certainly hadn’t asked to be Dame Lewis!

They were already at a table as she expected. Jeff barely started because he was busy waving his hands and talking to Heather. Heather further ahead because she was methodically eating while she listened. April got a tray, heavy on calories and protein both as she was gene modified and need the extra fuel.

“How long are you here?” April asked right away.

“Maybe three days,” Heather allowed. “When are you coming to visit?” she countered.

“When you have a shower,” April answered without hesitation.

Jeff thought that far funnier than she intended. He launched into a description of the horrors of moon dust that did absolutely nothing to change her mind about the shower.

“Look, you don’t need an entire sanitary plumbing system,” April insisted. “How about just a shower stall standing on a base tank. The mechanism vacuum distills whatever is in the base to an overhead insulated tank. Total capacity say thirty or forty liters. It heats it on a timer when you expect to use it. The base tank has a one liter trap for the solids that get distilled out of the waste water. You remove that and dump it outside every few days. The only loss is what gets carried out on your skin and the humidity lost getting in and out.”

“Thirty liters isn’t much,” Jeff objected.

“You set the temperature at one level. No mixing. You have a momentary contact switch that gives you a quick blast to get wet. You blast – shampoo your hair – blast again soap up your body. Hit the other switch and it runs steady to rinse off. You have a selector to pick fine mist to make it last or a heavier spray, maybe pulsing,” she speculated. “And it isn’t just for you. It is a product to sell. Broken down to assemble or in a box ready to bolt in.

He liked the manufacturing part of the idea.

“A sealed box,” Heather said dreamily. “That could fit in the back of a Russian rover,”

Jeff just looked at her open mouthed.

“You have that much headroom in a rover?” April asked.

“You can just barely stand straight in the rear. You couldn’t stand it on top of a holding tank,” Jeff allowed. “You’d have to put a thin centrifugal lift pump in the floor drain in one corner,” he said, immediately visualizing it, “the motor spinning it just outside the stall, with a waste tank and then a holding tank vertically beside the stall,” He drew in the air with his hands. He looked at Heather again and realized he’d just admitted it was not only possible but he basically had the whole design in his mind already. He bowed to the inevitable. “I’ll draw it up tomorrow and let the specs to a prototype shop,” he promised before she even asked.

“So I understand your refugees are willing to pay for the stuff they took from Armstrong when they fled,” April reminded them. “Have they ever got back to you and named a price or negotiated at all?”

“No, not only are they not talking, but even though the Lunanet satellites are active again they won’t take calls. They tried to sucker a bunch of people back to Armstrong with promises of new freedoms and openness. When you can’t call in or out you know it’s all a lie. I imagine they just want their critical techs back, because they are asking how to run systems that are going down on them without experienced workers.”

“I heard about the lawsuit some of them filed. I understand their motives,” April agreed, “and most of the accusations seem entirely accurate, but I wish they hadn’t named President Wiggen on that list of defendants. In talking to the woman she is one of the few USNA politicians who doesn’t irrationally hate our guts. I doubt the woman had anything to do, or was even aware of the oppressive atmosphere at Armstrong.”

“I hear what you are saying. Wiggen is one of the few things we have going for us, keeping Home and North America from war again,” Heather agreed. “And yet they have a point. If she didn’t know about it she did have a responsibility to know what her government was doing. If her underlings hid things and kept them from her, well, it is her responsibility to keep that from happening if she is really in charge.”

“You may regret setting such a high standard for yourself,” April pointed out. “As Queen of the Moon you have a lot of head strong smart subjects there already. Are you really going to be able to keep them from slipping something past you ?” This was the first talk they’d had about Heather’s new position.”

“I’m not Queen of the Moon,” Heather assured her. “I am Sovereign of The Center of the Moon, which is a very limited thing, and administrator of the Central Lunar Ranches. I advised them on this very suit, but they did not take all my advice. I will not limit my subjects freedom to file in other jurisdictions, although I agree with you about Wiggen. If you hadn’t been a trip wire on your recent trip down to Earth and precipitated the Patriot Party coup attempt before they were ready, I doubt we’d be worrying about Wiggen. She’d have been dead by now.”

“My advice is to get everything you can from the Earthies while she is in power. We really don’t know what is coming after her. And it wouldn’t surprise me if they try again, so you might not have a couple years. If you can get a write-off of the rovers and stuff they took I’d think about dropping at least some of the terms of the complaint in turn. If you get real freedom for the folks left behind in Armstrong who didn’t escape that’s the biggie isn’t it?” April asked.

“I’d think so. If they all insist on being vindictive it will disappoint me. I’m going to quote you about yielding on some points if they reciprocate. You don’t seem to realize it but they respect you.”

“Do they respect me or Dame Lewis?” April asked darkly.

“Now April, be reasonable,” Heather pleaded.”If something happens to me I want to give both Jeff and you the authority to have a say in what happens to Central. If it were a corporate structure I’d have named you to the board as officers. If it were a legal partnership I’d have named you as junior partners. It’s a sovereignty so you are named as peers, as are my first subjects and heads of household Dakota and Bob. Do you suddenly have some irrational hatred of monarchies? I seem to remember you heartily recommending involving the King of Tonga to me as a partner in this adventure. Did he mistreated you when you lifted through Tonga that you changed your mind?”

“It’s just a general feeling I’ve picked up from history lessons and things people say that monarchies are outdated and, you know, despotic. Jokes about ‘Off with their head’ and such. I feel uncomfortable being identified with one,” she admitted.

“If you see me being despotic I’m sure you won’t be shy to tell me,” Heather noted. “In fact if you just see me being stupid I’d really appreciate your saying so.”

“So, we don’t have to wear funny clothes or do any rituals in your kingdom?” April asked.

“Absolutely not. It’s a responsibility not a privilege. In fact nobody is obligated to address people by their titles. If somebody addresses you as Dame Lewis it will be because they respect you and want to,” Heather said.

“Or because they want to be sarcastic, and know they can get my goat that way,” April predicted uneasily.

“In which case it is political expression I dare not stifle,” Heather asserted.

“Great,” April agreed, grinding her teeth. “How benevolent of you.”

“I think April is right about one thing though,” Jeff spoke back up. “It’s to the good for now President Wiggen stays in power, and whatever small influence we have on Earth we should hope she remains and do anything we can to encourage that. We have no agents in place, so we are sort of at the mercy of people like those two lieutenants you had rescued, whose agenda just happens to agree with ours. And that’s kind of scary.”

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Chapter 2 – a snippet of “A Different Perspective”

Chapter 2

Otis Dugan didn’t smile easily. His serious demeanor complimented his physique. He didn’t have the bulked out mass of a body builder, but there was very little fat to be found on him and he moved with the balanced grace of a dancer. His alert posture and his habitual scanning of his environment spoke of someone dangerous even to men who couldn’t articulate precisely why they felt that way after meeting him.

He was a Chief Warrant Officer, recently retired, with a long stint before that as a E7 Specialist Armorer. He knew every sort of small arms the North American military used in intimate detail, and quite a few of the foreign and civilian arms special forces seemed to collect along the way and forget to destroy or turn in. He was every bit as expert in their use as he was in their care. That he considered his body just another weapon to master was an obvious extension of his world view.

Safety Associates of Atlanta happily employed Otis the two years since his discharge. They also employed a lot of common rent-a-cops nationwide in retail stores and manufacturing facilities, but the reason they bought his more exotic expertise was their very expensive personal protection services for celebrities and executives.

Like most truly dangerous men his biggest asset was not strength or lightning fast reactions, but intelligence and mental dexterity. Otis was brought in, not to stand watches like a younger man, but to be involved in planning and corporate liaison. He had advanced in the company already to making the pitch to the customer for such customized protective services.

He was signing for the company later today on a contract to provide such a package to one of the many small specialty studios for their off-lot film shoots. Most of the work was still routine, guarding actor’s private trailers and providing drivers off a secure production lot, but on rare occasions a film shoot put a star or an executive in very dangerous territory, the very worst being a public ceremony where others controlled the security environment. That would call for his personal attention running a team hands on. He also had to plan for such contingencies to be fulfilled on very short notice.

After a quick contract signing at the new customer’s studio in LA he’d be back in Atlanta on a late plane tomorrow. He was dressed in conservative business attire. His suit was far from his best, but a practical combed wool blend that would travel well and he could trust a hotel to clean without damaging it. Neither the suit or his accessories were flashy enough to attract unwanted attention. That was an important consideration, because even if he wanted to go through the hassles of sending a weapon through in his luggage the People’s Democratic Republic of Kalifornia as he called it, didn’t offer reciprocity for his Georgia CCW, or anyone else’s for that matter. Not even for a security professional. He hated the naked feel of going unarmed, but not enough to call in one of the company’s local men to protect him. It just didn’t seem to project the image he wanted to his subordinates.

It was a shame they couldn’t FedEx the documents around instead of meeting, but there were too many signatories scattered in too many places. Safety Associates would be fulfilling this contract internationally. The studio shot Nufilm or video, and had agents and subsidiaries, on every continent but Antarctica. He’d have flown back this evening but he’d been advised by his secretary that the President was scheduled in town on some sort of building dedication. Who knew what that would do to the flight schedules? Better to relax in his hotel until tomorrow.

He’d rather wait for them to clear the whole mess up than to get trapped on a plane in a taxi queue for ten or twelve hours waiting for the big boys to wrap it up. He was flying conventional for economy too. Safety Associates didn’t throw money away on flashy travel. The ballistic flights, orbitals especially, would all be cleared to fly first anyway when they sorted everything out from the mess a VIP visit would make. The peasants in sub-sonic econo-airliners would be released to fly dead last. It might be midnight before everything was back to normal.

Safety Associates had been his second tier choice. Coming home from the service he’d found folks not much friendlier than the natives where he had served in the Trans-Arabic Protectorate. He was ready for a new start in a new place. The only place really fresh and new was off world, but finding a position there was harder than he’d imagined. They had enough high grade applicants they could be picky, and they were.

He’d sent resumes to a couple companies on ISSII and New Las Vegas when he first got out of the service, but nothing had come of it. A discrete inquiry to casino security on a working trip to New Las Vegas for Security Associates had bombed out too. He could have found work as a mercenary easily, but his skills were too lethal and direct for most domestic security or investigators.

He had the price of a ticket in his accounts, but after that he didn’t have enough to live more than a few months at the cost of living in orbit. So going up without a firm offer of work didn’t seem prudent. He wasn’t sure what they did with the homeless up there. They probably didn’t just shove you out of the air-lock. But somebody would be pissed for sure if they had to pay for a ticket down to be rid of him. Somebody who would likely make sure the cost of it would be taken from his wages for the next twenty years.

Applying to a foreign hab was a problem. If his boss found out he was looking for an off world job he might fire him, but he was sure he could still get other security work. On the other hand, if the government got wind of your interest in a foreign habitat then your loyalty would be suspect and you could be blacklisted for any work connected with the Feds. That made it far too risky to try unless it was a last desperate measure.

The seat he was in was too narrow for him in the shoulders despite being in first class. He had the window seat and could twist sideways rather than intrude on the other seat, but it was occupied by a boy of about twelve who was with the couple in the row behind. That made it much more comfortable than flying with an adult beside him. The kid played a computer game plugged into noise canceling headphones, and then slept most of the flight, obviously a veteran of air travel with no nervousness or awe like a newbie. His parents in the row behind were an unremarkable upper middle class couple, dressed for comfort, not business. Otis didn’t sleep where he couldn’t lock himself in. He wasn’t diagnosed as hyper vigilant, but his attitude was common in a veteran.

He’d walked to the lavatory twice, which helped the boredom and restlessness. If you went too often the crew would mark it as suspicious behavior. The three movie choices were insipid, and he didn’t want to work where someone might read his screen. The news was the same old – same old. Another boatload of English had drowned trying to escape to Ireland. The only variation being they went down in bad weather instead of being shelled by His Majesty’s Royal Navy. The Australians were having dust storms blow in from South East Asia so bad they were having brown-outs because the automated cleaners couldn’t keep the solar collectors clean. Sometimes he wondered how much of Indonesia could blow away before there wasn’t anything left. In the end he turned it off. He knew from firsthand experience how bad things were overseas. No reason to think it would change anytime soon either.

The man directly in front of him slept, getting a pillow before they even took off. The fellow beside him up there on the aisle seat stayed awake like Otis. The one time he had gotten up and walked to the toilet he had gotten Otis’s attention because he examined everyone in the cabin much like Otis did. Indeed it seemed to amuse the fellow a little when Otis returned his stare without embarrassment. He was perhaps a couple years older than Otis, in fact he looked a bit like his older brother, with a little grey at the temples and a neatly trimmed moustache.

The engines eased off cruising power and the airplane slowed enough he felt himself shift forward a tiny bit. They were starting the long descent for landing.

An attendant came back from the flight deck and said something to a man in an aisle seat further up front on the opposite side. Something about the tension in her stance caught his eye. The man got up and came toward the rear of the plane with the uniformed attendant following. When he was close but still about two rows away he produced a badge case and displayed it to the attentive fellow in the next row forward.

“Mr. Polzinsky? You are under arrest sir.” His right hand hidden behind him came around with an automatic pistol held in close to his side. He had his finger laid over the trigger guard with good discipline, muzzle dipped toward the floor slightly, but Otis had definitely heard the safety being taken off and the hammer was back.

Otis checked the pistol out quickly. The light caught familiar lines of engraving under the muzzle so he knew it for an Ed Brown made weapon, although he couldn’t really read it at this distance. That was reassuring. Anybody carrying six thousand bucks of pistol instead of government issue likely knew what he was doing with it. He also favored the 1911 model himself, though he liked the modern 12mm Hornady cartridge over the old .45 ACP. Otis was so close to the fellow’s line of fire he welcomed any small comfort to be found regarding the man’s competence.

The man he’d thought sleeping, directly in front of Otis, turned in his seat and produced a set of cuffs holding them in close to his chest.

“Air Marshal, I don’t know who you think I am,” the man protested, “but you must have me confused with someone else.”

“No sir and we’re not Federal Marshals. Look closer,” he suggested still holding the ID folder out, “we’re ONI Protective Services. If you’d turn slowly to your left and put first your left and then your right arm behind you my associate will cuff you.” He was attentive to the point he refused to blink, and Otis felt sure the slightest twitch on the seated man’s part would be fatal.

The fellow complied, very slowly. Otis was relieved when he heard the cuffs ratchet closed. The seated agent felt the man’s arms and waist band before ordering him up.

“I’ll have people meeting me at the gate, or their driver at least, and we can get my identity cleared up with no problem,” the fellow was still protesting.

“Yes sir, I’m sure they would vouch for you,” The agent agreed. “We’re quite aware you have deep local resources. That’s why we’re not getting off the aircraft in this jurisdiction. We’ll remain in the back of the aircraft for the layover and return to Atlanta on its normal turn around.” They ran a wand over him in the aisle, and Otis hoped they would do a full manual pat down in the rear before they got too comfortable.

The boy beside Otis was quite awake now, watching the drama with rapt attention. He leaned out looking back as the agents escorted the fellow out of first class cautiously. The attendant went ahead of them telling the passengers to stay seated and not interfere.

The speaker instructed them to belt up again. Otis had left his latched, just loosening it a bit. The boy turned and looked Otis in the eye for the first time, obviously excited at the arrest, but too well trained to speak to a stranger. Otis knew better than to speak to a strange child in public too. That was a quick way to get a trip to the local lock-up and a court ordered search of his home and computer spaces. Instead Otis turned and looked out the window at the rooftops flashing by and growing closer. They must be under a thousand feet now and the airplane’s wheels went down with a clunk.

4th April Series book started.

“The Middle of Nowhere” is in beta reader review and not ready to publish until some final editing, but I have started writing the fourth April book which will be titled “A Different Perspective” Here is the rough draft of the first chapter.

Chapter 1

April looked at the cubic critically. It was on the half G deck which lowered the price quite a bit. She at first asked about full G cubic and was told there were now only eight residences maintained on Home at the full G level. Mitsubishi politely declined to make usage information public so she had no way to check the agent’s information, and she refused to ask her how she knew that number. She knew a lot of the level had been converted to businesses. A lot of entry hatches were just numbered, so she hadn’t realized just how many.

Growing up she had not appreciated how privileged it was to be able to sleep at home with her family, not to mention her own tiny closet sized bath, but she certainly valued it now. Her grandpa had helped build M3, not as a distant investor but as a working beam dog, and sank every buck he had into the initial auction of private spaces. It was a great investment, but more importantly it allowed him to bring his family up. Leaving Earth was the primary goal of his working life.

When she insisted she was still interested and asked a price she was informed that in the rare event such a property came open she could figure a hundred square meters of floor area would run seven to ten million USNA dollars. Even figuring her recent inheritance from her brother that was still a staggering number to her. That’s why the half G level suddenly looked much better. It ran a third of that.

Children were required by regulation to spend at least their eight hour sleep period in a full G. Most families did that by sending their child to a tiny business that had hot slot beds and a single shared bath. They could miss a few days for something like a illness, but were expected back as soon as they were not contagious.

The full G was needed to stimulate the growth of a normal bone structure. Indeed people were encouraged to add a couple hours a day of vertical time to the sleep hours. Most did this by taking their meals at the cafeteria in full G. That was required until a person was twelve years old or fifteen hundred centimeters, whichever came first.

April was still growing approaching sixteen, but she would be for a long time because she had Life Extension Therapy. What that did to the mix was anybody’s guess since her’s was the first generation to grow up in mixed G and LET. She figured she’d have enough full G exposure to keep her body able to function at that level. If it resulted in her being a hair shorter than she would have grown on Earth that was Okay. Being compact was no disadvantage to a spacer. Indeed being much over two meters made it almost impossible to use standard acceleration couches and P-suits parts.

The cubic was on the inside of the torus with a sloping overhead along one side. If she wanted a view port it would look out at the new ring being built off the hub. That was more interesting than looking at stars streaking by. Even if there was a ship or something to be seen it went by so quickly it was in no way a relaxing view. Her friend Heather lived in similar cubic and she had seen all sorts of tricks to maximize utilization of the area with the low overhead.

The entry door was only twelve meters from an elevator which was very convenient, and that elevator dropped to full G less than a quarter of the ring away from the cafeteria. Some people might not like having the elevator spoke right near the view port pretty much filling a quarter of the view to one side, but April thought the long taper of it ascending to the hub was a dramatic perspective just as her Hawaiian home had a much more interesting view perched on the end of a wooded ridge than a home in the middle of a flat plain of grasslands.

The agent wasn’t talking the place up. In fact she wasn’t chatty at all, had ignored her bodyguard Gunny when she hadn’t introduced him and regarded him as a piece of furniture. But then she was standing off to one side doing a pretty good furniture imitation herself, letting April form her own conclusions about the cubic. April would never guess she intimidated the woman.

“How long has this been empty?” April asked the agent. The floor covering and some of the things left behind and markings by the lighting controls suggested a Japanese speaker if not citizen had lived here. There was a faint odor of tea lingering but nothing unpleasant.

The lady looked surprised. “Just today, the fellow cleared out yesterday. The Sakura Pharmaceuticals company he worked for is in a bit of cash flow trouble on Earth. They still have a production lab on the north end, but they only need three shift workers to oversee the equipment and can’t afford to maintain an on-site administrator. He’d do it remotely now. Residential cubic doesn’t sit vacant, dear. You are the first to look at it, then I have a showing at eleven hundred and sixteen hundred. I’d be shocked if one of you doesn’t take it.”

“What if more than one of us bids on it?” April asked.

“If you bid less than the three point seven million asked I am obligated to present the offer but I’d advise the company to leave it on the market for a second day. I think I priced it very accurately. There is a shortage of materials so the new ring is building slow, yet almost all the cubic there is either pre-sold in this price range or has rental agreements. Mitsubishi is holding back half the new cubic to lease instead of sell. I suggested to the pharmaceutical company they would be better off to rent the space and retain ownership as an investment if they don’t have to provide a local executive living space, but they are eager to have the cash.”

April considered the possibility one of the other interested parties would bid over asking price. A glance at her com said it was 09:17. “I accept your offer at full price. I have the cash to do an immediate wire transfer if you can have the papers ready this afternoon. That should be a plus if they are looking for cash. The other buyers might need financing or time to liquidate something. I want you to communicate this now, and the offer is valid no later than 10:30.”

“That’s smart, but what if they want to hear the other two offers?” he asked.

“That’s their privilege. However if the other parties don’t make as good an offer I’m going to lower my own to the range the others feel is a fair market value,” she warned. “I appreciate this is what new cubic is going for, but I wonder if they will offer as much for used? Surely some of the amenities like lighting and environmental systems are more advanced in the new section, and just like a ground car they only have so many hours life in them before they will need replaced.”

“I’ll text it to them right now,” she offered. If she was offended by April’s reservations on the price she didn’t show it at all. After a few seconds of fingers dancing on the keys she folded the pad away. “It’s up to them now. I’ll contact you when they get back to me,” she promised.

“Thank you.” April checked the time out in the corridor when they stepped out, curious how long it would take her to reach the cafeteria. The answer was slightly less than four minutes plus elevator wait. That was better than the time from her folks apartment so she was happy. She could take the stairs that spiraled around the elevator shaft if she wished, but it was narrow and the angle increased as you went up until the last level was a hand rail and ladder without flat treads. Most folks if they used the spoke section just slid down the rails like a fireman’s pole. Or pulled up it hand over hand it was so close to zero G.

Gunny and she would have a late breakfast, delayed by the cubic viewing.

Heather and Jeff were meeting her for breakfast tomorrow. She belatedly thought she could have had them look at the cubic with her. But then she would have had to reveal all the price information in front of them or go off with the agent to bid. She loved them both, but they were not all joined at the hip. They still had customers and secrets they didn’t share with each her. More than likely things they didn’t share with each other she was sure.

Jeff for example hadn’t shared the existence of the biggest of his private weapons system with them until after it was in place and active with five big warheads. Since then he had expanded that part of the system to an even dozen warheads, replacing one expended, and capped building them at that for now. They were upgraded in new maneuverable buses with decent decoys and jamming. More than that they not only fell at orbital velocity, but now accelerated in the drop phase to the target at another six G, making interception very unlikely.

Her phone gave a priority ding just as they sat down. “You own the cubic,” the lady told her. “Can you meet me at our offices at 13:00 and do the closing?” she asked.

“Sure, I’d be very happy to do that,” April agreed with a big grin. To Gunny she just gave a thumbs up. He simply nodded.

Amazon Affiliate now – notice the book links to the right

Links to my books will be available now on the sidebar. If you order from here I get a little more than sales straight from Amazon through other searches. Thanks to all who have bought my books. I appreciate your support. – Mac’

The Middle of Nowhere is done.

Finished it up and released it to some beta readers. This is the third book of the “April” series, after “Down to Earth”. After an edit and tacking on the commercial blurbs I’ll convert it and post it for sale on Amazon/Kindle. Gotta make a cover too…

Headlines add a little spice

I like to have my characters look at the news and it gives the reader a feel for the world they are living in without adding a big chunk of information to the manuscript. Here are just a few I slipped into “The Middle of Nowhere”

A fourth grader in Mississippi was taken into DHS custody at school for asserting that President Wiggen was indeed, a “poopy head”.

A junior at Jefferson High School in Montpelier Vermont was expelled when she refused to cover her naturally red hair which the administrators deemed a distraction.

Inner city high school students in New York City staged a strike over wages. They remained in class and took instruction, but turned in all state standardized tests unmarked.

A new snippet of “The Middle of Nowhere” – a short chapter

Chapter 8

The Chinese military aide stationed at ISSII was startled at a rapping on his hatch. Most people did business over the com and he had very few visitors to his work space. He liked it that way. “Just a moment!” he called and looked over his desk and shelves carefully to make sure nothing of a confidential nature was visible. Then he shut his computer completely off. Turning just the monitor off didn’t mask the emissions this machine could give off, betraying it activity.

When he answered the door his section chief was standing there with a Laowai right in their secure cubic. He bristled at the sight, but was neither reprimanded nor given any apology. His boss apparently had bigger troubles today than what he or the foreigner either one thought.

“Song Zhang, if we might have a moment of your time, do these have any meaning to you?” He thrust forward a multi-pane printout of tattoos. They were oddly distorted in a way he’d never seen, but still legible. He looked at the White Ghost, unwilling to speak what he knew in front of him.

“We have need of your knowledge. Be assured you will not endanger anyone by telling us what these mean. The body on which these were seen is beyond concerns of the living.”

“That is – unfortunate,” Zhang allowed. “These are inspirational slogans common to the elite of special forces and usually tattooed with other images of unit banners and badges. Yes, I see the edge of one there. May I ask how we come to be in possession of these?”

“Traffic control noted an object slowly drifting away from the station large enough to be a hazard to navigation. When a scooter was dispatched to collect it they were surprised to find a corpse in a rescue ball. The discoloration is due to exposure to direct sunlight and the fact the pressure had bled off somewhat,” he explained.

“Rescue balls are only designed to hold breathable pressure for a few hours unless the person inside releases oxygen from the small canister attached to the inside. This person had been in the ball for something like six hours, and was in no condition to activate the canister when he was put in the ball.”

“You mean he was deceased when he was inserted?” Zhang inquired, surprised.

“It certainly looks that way. He had three rounds to the heart and lungs of a large caliber pistol with frangible ammunition, an ordinary kitchen knife jammed to the hilt through a kidney, and visible burn marks about his head and shoulders that indicate electrocution too.”

“Was he in uniform?” Zhang asked both sickened and alarmed, but hid it from his face.

“No, he was in European civilian clothing, and oddly his hair and upper body were stained with coffee. Does any of this make sense to you?”

“Not at all. But with those tattoos I can assure you he is ours. If you would acquire custody of him I will run his identifying characteristics through the military system and find out to whom he should be returned. Undoubtedly he had comrades and family who would want to know.”

The supervisor just looked a question at the foreigner, and he gave a nod of agreement. So he spoke Chinese well enough to have followed their exchange.

“That is all then. The fellow will be repatriated with our medical section in a few hours so you can conduct your inquiry,” and they left without another word.

It was bizarre. He knew no special forces were present on ISSII. He’d be notified if one was even passing through to another destination.