The Turalon and Freelander cargos had made a remarkable difference for Port Authority. Granted, most of it—on the first inspection at least—was useless. What good was a condensation module for a 75-16-A566 Series II atmospheric evaporation unit? Especially when no one on Donovan had ever laid eyes on a 75-16-A566 Series II unit? Like so much of the equipment and supplies, they were for devices or machines that had vanished with the previous six ships.
Not that the Corporate planners and procurement officers were entirely to blame. They were more than thirty light-years away. Beyond communication, on the other side of a minimum four-year round trip. The Corporation’s planning for Donovan went back ten to fifteen years. They had laid out the strategy to exploit the planet, designed and built the equipment, produced and dispatched it, only to have most of it disappear “outside” the universe when the ships inverted symmetry just beyond Jupiter’s orbit.
From the various bits and pieces, however, and given the native ingenuity of people like Sheyela Smith—their best electrical technician—they’d been able to adapt, concoct, jury-rig, and somehow cobble together enough disparate parts to reactivate the motion detectors on the perimeter fence. Another fortunate bit of luck had come in the form of light bulbs for the tower lights. Once again, the fields beyond Port Authority’s defensive fence and moat were illuminated at night.
For Trish—born and raised on Donovan as she was—that didn’t mean squat. She’d been six when her best friend, Jeanne, had been eaten. Within a month, her father had vanished in the forest. A slug had killed her friend, Marco, when she was seven. She lost her mother at twelve. And of the sixteen children her age she’d started school with, only four were left.
Donovan was a harsh taskmaster. And even more to the point, she wasn’t about to let the rest of her team bathe in a sense of false security. Just because they had their surroundings awash in light didn’t mean that quetzals wouldn’t still try and infiltrate the town.
Not after what they’d learned from Talina’s latest attacker. The beast had planned, hidden among the shipping containers, eaten four people, and ridden past the shuttle field gate in the cargo. Only then had it managed to somehow make its way to Talina’s, undetected, and attempt to kill her.
No one had anticipated that quetzals had that kind of intelligence. How many other forms of Donovanian life had they underestimated?
Walking down the main avenue, Trish stared up at the night sky, where patchy clouds blacked out large swaths of the stars. The evening felt cool, damp, with the promise of more rain.
Having checked each of the perimeter positions, she had all of her sentries on their toes. Now she passed through the residential area, flashing her light and thermal detector this way and that, knowing from hard-earned experience which places quetzals instinctively tried to hide themselves.
How had Talina’s attacker—over five meters in length, two meters tall at the shoulders—managed to reach Talina’s house in midday, no less?
That had puzzled her for months now.
Even as she brooded over the problem, she illuminated Talina’s dome with her light. She climbed the steps and checked the latch. Locked. As it should be.
A gust of breeze flapped the plastic taped over the hole in the dome’s side.
Stepping down, Trish rounded the curve and shone her flash on the damaged wall. It took a lot of force to break the duraplast coating on a dome. Talina’s quetzal had knocked quite a hole in . . .
The plastic flapped again, clearly displaying a long slit.
“Bite my damned ass,” she growled, then accessed her com. “Two Spots, you there?”
“Gotcha Trish. What’s up?”
“Got a cut in the plastic they taped over Talina’s broken wall.” She stepped close to inspect the long cut.
“Quetzal? Should I sound the alert?”
Something about it . . .
“No.” She fingered the cut. “This is too clean, sliced by something really sharp. Quetzal claws would have ripped it unevenly. My guess is human.”
“Roger that. You want back up?”
“Not yet. But stay on the line while I check it out.”
Thievery was uncommon in Port Authority. They really didn’t have enough people—not to mention that everyone pretty much knew who owned what.
She backed around to the door, drew her pistol, and eased up the steps. With a finger, she input Talina’s security code. The lock clicked, and Trish let the door swing open. Her thermal scan suggested the room was unoccupied, and she hit the lights.
Opulence wasn’t a common theme when it came to personal quarters in Port Authority. Yvette’s place was about as fancy as domestic furnishings got, and it was mostly handwoven rag rugs, lacy curtains, and embroidery. As tough and cutting as Yvette’s personality was, who’d have ever suspected she was into crocheting doilies?
Talina’s home was as Spartan as a place could get. Just the essentials: breakfast bar with four stools, an easy chair with reading light. Stack of books on the floor. Empty spot where the couch had been. Dirty dishes sat in the sink, counter clean.
And to her immediate right . . .
“Shit.” She accessed her com. “Tal? You have your bolt-action rifle with you? You loan it out?”
“Negative on that, Trish.”
“It’s not in the rack.”
“Roger that. Watch your ass, Trish. I’m on the way.”
Trish flipped the pistol’s safety off, every sense on alert.
“Just hold it right there, Officer Perez,” a voice called from the darkness beyond the bedroom door. “I’ve got this gun pointed right at your chest. We’re not here to hurt you. So, please. Don’t make us. We just want to talk. Now, holster your pistol.”
Trish took a deep breath and slipped the pistol back into its holster. “So talk.”
She watched as a dirty man in overalls stepped out, the rifle held awkwardly in his hands. Two women, one redheaded and freckled, the other slim and dark-skinned, emerged behind him. Like the man, the women were dressed in worn overalls that didn’t fit so well. They looked hungry and lean. Trish could see ground-in dirt in their hands, the corners of their eyes, and the lines where the skin on their necks creased.
“I don’t recognize any of you.” Trish kept her hands open, palm out.
“We came off Turalon.” The man told her warily. “Didn’t want to space back. So we signed an indenture with that scum-sucking Dan Wirth.”
“Ah, you’re his missing indentures.” Trish filled in the pieces. “You’re working Tosi Damitiri’s claim about twenty klicks out.”
“Yeah,” the dark woman said. “And we’re not going back.”
“Thought you signed a contract.” Trish cocked her head.
The man’s expression almost broke, eyes pleading. “You don’t know what it’s like. We’re not animals!”
“Hey, okay, ease down.” Trish made a patting motion with her hands. “Just tell me your side of the story.”
“There’s work, and there’s work,” the slim black woman told her softly. “Petre, Rita, and I, we’re willing to work. But not fourteen hours a day. Not in conditions like Damitiri has us living in. We get fed crap. We get locked in a shed at night to sleep on mats on the floor. We think Ngomo’s dead. Got his leg crushed in a rock fall. Damitiri said he was taking him to town. So he locked us in the shed, was gone for two days, came back hungover to beat hell, and said Ngomo died at hospital.”
“Two Spots?” Trish accessed her com. “Check with Raya, see if some guy named Ngomo was admitted for a broken leg?”
“Roger that.”
“So, what are you trying to do here?”
“Officer Perez,” the redheaded woman, Rita, began, “we want a hearing, as is our right, to declare our contract with Dan Wirth to be null and void.”
“You signed this under duress? He had a gun to your heads? Threatened you?”
“As good as,” the thin black woman almost spat. “It was that or die in space aboard Turalon or Freelander. And when it comes to Freelander we’d have rather been spaced than set foot on that dead man’s bucket again.”
“You signed the contract,” Trish told them softly. “You’ve got your copies?”
All three reached into breast pockets, producing folded papers. “Right here.”
“And there’s more,” Petre told her. “You don’t know Dan Wirth like we do. We demand a hearing, but more than that, we want to be alive to attend it. We also—as is our right—demand legal representation. We want protective custody and a lawyer. Now.”
“Look, we don’t really have a contract lawyer.”
“Well, who hears your legal cases, Officer Perez?” the black woman asked.
“What’s your name?” Trish lifted an eyebrow.
“Ashanti Kung. Atmospheric Tech, third class. This is Rita Valerie, Engineering Tech, third class. And this guy is Petre Howe, Hydroponics Specialist, third class.” Ashanti stepped forward, reaching out with callused hands.
“Officer Perez, we’re counting on you.”
“Why’d you come here?”
“Because, ma’am, you’re the only person on Donovan that Dan Wirth fears. If you can’t protect us, you just go ahead and shoot us down right here.”
Trish wrinkled her nose. “Officer Perez, huh? Well, if you think I’m Talina Perez, I’d say you are off to a rocky start, ’cause you’re not exactly blowing my skirts up with your competence.”
“Then, who are you?” Rita asked uneasily.
“Officer Trish Monagan.” Dan Wirth might not fear her like he did Talina, but she could throw a couple of obstacles in the bastard’s way. After all, Wirth had said he’d murder these three for crossing him. Maybe this was a chance to pay the son of a bitch back. So she took the outstanding option, saying, “You three are under arrest for criminal trespass, destruction of private property, and theft of a weapon.”
At the shock in their eyes, she added, “All of which means that you must be placed in protective custody, under Talina Perez’s control, until such time as all complaints are satisfied.”
She smiled and extended her hand. “Now, do you want to give me Talina’s rifle so we can eventually drop the charge of theft?”