A novel by Matthew Jarpe  •  Home  •  About the Author  •  About the Book  •    •  Short Stories  •  

By Matthew Jarpe

‘Sir, there’s a Linling here to see you,’ Gail said over the intercom.

‘Send it …’ Finn paused. ‘I’ll be right out.’ No sense messing up the carpet in his office as well. He stepped out into the reception area to greet his visitor.

When Terrans first got to Vega Ring and were thrown in with the hundreds of species that made up the Conglomerate, they usually tried to attach some kind of animal identities to the beings they saw around them. The Krchaitch were bugs, the Loloft were reptiles, and so on. But after a while they gave up. Most of the aliens didn’t look like anything on Earth. Most of them barely looked like something that could be alive.

Even among the thousands of strange creatures of Vega Ring, the Linling were hard to look at. Finn searched the heaving blob in front of him for some kind of facial feature, something to lock in on, to speak to. But the mottled surface was impossible to find pattern in. Jerry said that the Linling were inward facing. All of their limbs and sensory organs were inside and the skin was nothing but a food absorption surface. What waited in the outer office was an undifferentiated bag of life.

Finn skipped the usual pleasantries. They would have been lost on the creature. ‘What can I do for you?’ His implanted translator contacted the one in the Linling by infrared, then modulated some kind of chemical message the alien could understand.

‘This entity has discovered that a data storage device of Linling make was stolen by Terran individuals in this office.’

‘Hmm,’ Finn said. ‘Which data storage device is this?’

‘The one installed in the office of Bidli of the Ptang.’

‘Well, if it’s installed there it isn’t stolen is it? Brilliant. Mystery solved. Thanks for dropping by.’

‘This entity has traced the unauthorized relocation of the device to these offices. This is a crime. This entity is prepared to bring this information to the Vega Ring authorities.’

‘Ah,’ Finn said. ‘But you haven’t done so yet? Tell the authorities, I mean?’

‘Not yet. It is necessary to complete all information gathering before doing so. The item was tampered with. This entity wishes to know what information was extracted, and with whom that information was shared.’

Finn looked over the top of the Linling at Jerry and Bogs, who had come in from the back offices. ‘And with whom have you shared your suspicions, if I may ask?’

‘Until all pertinent data has been collected this entity will not share these suspicions with anyone. Please describe the tampering that was done to the data storage device, detailing the information that was extracted and the fate of that information.’

‘Yes, of course. Just a moment, though. Are you telling me that nobody knows about these suspicions of yours but yourself?’

‘All of the information regarding this case is stored within the enhanced memory capacity of this entity.’

‘You’re not kidding me, are you?’ Finn winked at Jerry and leaned over to jab Nine with an elbow.

‘This entity is incapable of lying,’ the Linling said. ‘Please describe the tampering that was done to the device in question.’

‘Sure, no problem. Jerry, why don’t you transmit the file you showed me to this gentleman.’

Jerry pulled out his computer and called up the file. He beamed it to the alien over the IR link. ‘There you go, sir. That’s all the pertinent information I extracted from the data storage. I saw some other things, but they weren’t as interesting as this little item.’

‘And with whom was this information shared?’ the Linling asked.

‘Just Mr. Finn, sir. I haven’t shown it to anyone else. Mr. Finn, you told anyone about this?’

‘I’m still trying to figure it out myself, Mr. Tollman. Maybe this here fellow can enlighten us. You think?’

Jerry stroked his chin. ‘Well, maybe he can at that.’

Finn addressed the Linling. ‘We were wondering about that file we found. See, it looks to us like a whole lot of Ptang transports are en route to the Terran home system. We were trying to figure out why that might be. Any hints?’

‘These shipping schedules are Ptang secrets,’ the Linling said. ‘They are not to be shared with others.’

‘Well, we already know about it, though,’ Finn said. ‘We just want to know why they’re going there.’

‘The Ptang own the Terran home system,’ the creature said. ‘They are claiming their property.’

‘Own it? How do they figure?’

‘The are now in the process of purchasing the Terran system from the Conglomerate. They may dispose of the system and its planets as they see fit.’

‘Is that right? And what about the Terrans who live there?’

‘Those who wish to remain and labor for the Ptang are welcome to do so. Others will be shipped to the new Terran colony worlds, or held in storage until such time as their services are needed in the space stations.’

‘Very interesting,’ Finn said. ‘I’m enlightened. Jerry, anything you’d like to ask before we take leave of our guest?’

Jerry cleared his throat. ‘What gives the Conglomerate the right to sell the Terran home system to anyone?’

‘It was a stipulation of joining the Conglomerate,’ the Linling said. ‘Elevation of your technology to allow interstellar travel, the colony worlds suitable for habitat modulation: these were not given freely. The Terran homeworld was held in escrow until the Terrans paid off the debt. Unfortunately, the Terrans did not realize their economic potential until after the loan period had expired, and the Ptang purchased the system before they could pay off the loan. All of this information is freely available, if one knows where to look for it. A Linling document search device would make the task much easier.’

‘He’s trying to sell us a system,’ Nine said. ‘I don’t believe it.’

Finn shook his head. ‘Well, I’ve heard all I need to know. Nine, Bogs, take our guest out to the loading dock and whack him.’

The Linling squelched after Bogs, who beckoned toward the rear door. ‘The term ‘whack’ does not translate well. Please explain its meaning.’

‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ Finn said, walking back into his office.

‘I never took out one of these before,’ Nine said, walking past him.

‘First time for everything,’ Finn answered.

Twenty minutes and about a hundred muffled gunshots later, Nine came back into the office, dripping ichor on the beige carpet. ‘We got an axe somewhere? We’re having a little problem with this one.’

#

Finn stared at the white ceiling in the dim room and saw colors. Loni lay beside him, radiating warmth and breathing slowly, asleep. Finn saw combinations that no one had tried, and decided what worked and what didn’t. He saw textures and light, arrangements of furnishings and the often neglected poetry of empty space. In his mind he placed couches just where they belonged, and painted walls the perfect shade. He chose rugs that would tie everything together, and he asked himself why.

He had always known what looked good. He had always dressed well, had always known when a room was right and when it wasn’t. But it wasn’t until he emigrated to Vega Ring that he had found out how gifted he was. He had set up Finn and Company as a front. He had no intention of actually decorating alien offices and spacecraft. But he had to do something to give him an excuse to get his men in there to steal things, so he had pushed a few chairs around and had tossed around a few color swatches. And he had found his true calling.

The aliens didn’t really know. A few of the oxygen breathers had decided that Terrans knew all about design and fashion and had started hiring them for decorating jobs. At best, Finn suspected that it was a joke. At worst, that it was the Conglomerate’s way of keeping the Terrans down. But in any case the laugh was on the aliens, because they were paying a lot of money for people with no skills to do a job they really didn’t understand.

But Eric Finn was the real thing, and he knew it. He often considered giving up his life of crime and becoming a full time decorator. He was considering it as he lay in bed next to his beautiful young girlfriend. He looked down at her, the sheet casually draped over her naked body, her breasts rising and falling under the silk, one long and shapely leg tossed over his. Forget about it, he thought.

Then the sound of the front door slamming open came from the living room. Finn rolled off one side of the bed, and Loni woke up and immediately rolled off the other. She had good instincts. Finn groped for his weapon on the nightstand as his heads up display gave him the tactical intelligence.

Three men were in the apartment, heavily armed, moving right toward the bedroom. They came upon the first tripwire and jumped back as the forcefield scythed across the room. One of them returned to the door and set an electronic device against the security system panel.

‘Window,’ Finn hissed. Loni crawled across the floor and reached up to open it. It wasn’t really a window, of course. In most apartments it would have been a complete fake, just a viewscreen with a fan to simulate wind. The viewscreen showed the Boulevard, a live shot, with people of all descriptions strolling along the sidewalks and trolleys moving up and down the street. Loni had never let Finn decorate her apartment. She liked it the way it was. But she had let him make a few modifications, and the window was one of them. The viewscreen lifted up to reveal a little crawlspace.

The forcefield cut out and the men spread out to either side of the bedroom door. They had lost the element of surprise and were now being cautious. Their initial manipulation of the security system that had let them in without alarm had not been complete. They now knew that there were backups, and they suspected backups to the backups. They had no idea.

Finn picked up his weapon and headed for the closet. He turned to see Loni motioning him to follow her into the crawlspace. That would be the safest thing to do, but that wasn’t what Finn had planned. He waved her to go on without him, and to her credit, she did. The viewscreen slid down to hide her escape.

Finn opened the hidden panel in the back of the closet just as the three men burst through the door, firing their lasers at the bed. When the smoke cleared, they realized their mistake and fanned out. The first one through the door headed for the open window, leaned out, and banged his head on the viewscreen. Old country. Did he think there were open windows looking out on the Boulevard? A second one threw open the closet door and prodded around Loni’s clothes with the barrel of his gun. Nothing.

A noise from the living room, the apartment door slamming. The three men tensed. One motioned to another to check it out. He was gone for five seconds, and when he came back in his throat was cut. He collapsed on the bed.

The leader dropped to the floor and crawled out, his gun held before him. He scored the walls of the living room with his laser, rolling around to avoid whatever weapon Finn was using. Nothing.

The apartment door was open again. The leader slowly stood up, glanced into the kitchenette, then poked his gun, then his head, out the door.

Finn pushed the door from behind, slamming the man to the ground. The attacker turned to point his laser at Finn but the reactivated security system was too fast for him. As he pushed his gun past the threshold the forcefield took his hand off. In reaching up to cradle the stump he lost the other one. His screams weren’t audible through the field.

The last man had the drop on Finn. From the bedroom door he sighted his laser on the naked back of the crime boss. Before he got a chance to fire a briefcase slammed down on his head. He dropped to his knees, rolled and looked up at Loni, getting a view of her naked body that would have cost him fifty bucks at the Human Condition. He raised his gun, but he still didn’t get a chance to fire. Now that he was in the living room, the security system could see him. Nozzles in the ceiling opened up on him and in less than a second he was covered in fast setting glue.

Finn stepped over him and hugged Loni, who was hyperventilating and trying not to scream. ‘If this is too much adventure for you,’ he told her, ‘let me know. I’ll stop coming around here.’

#

Jerry lived on the very edge of the Terran enclave, in the nicer section but right up against the wall. His backyard was thick brambles and shrubs, then a solid metal surface. His house was the smallest one on his block. He lived alone. He walked home at the end of the day, when the sky above the enclave was darkening to reveal the familiar stars of home.

As he turned onto his street, he saw the danger only when it was too late to avoid it. Three men appeared out of the shadows in front of him, and three more behind. They were using some sophisticated electronic jamming devices, or he would have seen them.

They didn’t waste words. They weren’t here to send a message to Finn, at least not one that Jerry would take to him alive. All six men pulled out lasers and opened fire.

Jerry ducked and rolled to the side of the street, seeking cover. He had his own weapon out by the time he hit the ground. He’d dropped two of the men in front of him by the time he’d finished his roll. He was firing poison darts with deadly accuracy, but there were still four men shooting at him.

As he downed one more man, the laser fire found him. His right leg was taken off, and his torso was carved open. He fell to the pavement, still.

‘That’s enough,’ one man said. ‘We got to leave something for his boss to see who it was.’ He pulled a paper out of his pocket. ‘We’ve got to have someplace to stuff this.’ He reached down to pry Jerry’s mouth open.

Jerry reached up and grabbed his wrist, twisting until the arm pulled loose. The man screamed as Jerry tossed him aside. The other two men reached for their weapons again, but they were far too slow. Jerry stumbled a bit with one leg, but he snapped bones and pulverized organs in silent fury.

A calm settled over the street as the men bled into the gutter.

#

‘A fucking android,’ Finn said. ‘My caporegiem, the man who’s been my own right hand for fifty years, you’re telling me you’re a fucking android.’

Jerry sat in the recliner in his living room, his severed leg propped against the coffee table, a drink in his hand. He had put on a houndstooth jacket to hold his guts in, but the blood soaked the fabric. He didn’t seem to mind. ‘I know,’ Jerry said. ‘Many is the time I wished I could have told you, but I just wasn’t programmed that way.’

‘How were you programmed? To rat me out?’

‘Eventually,’ Jerry said. ‘Titan cops made me to keep an eye on you.’

‘I guess you’re a made man in more than one sense of the word,’ Bogs said. They all had a good laugh over that one.

‘So you’ve been feeding them information on me this whole time?’ Finn asked.

‘No,’ Jerry said. ‘The plan was I was supposed to be 100% loyal and rise up through the ranks. When they wanted to grab the top man, they’d give me the signal and I’d spill my guts.’ He looked down at the bloody jacket. ‘Sorry, poor choice of words.’

‘So when was that supposed to happen? Am I a big enough fish to go after? An underboss worth blowing your cover?’

Jerry shrugged. ‘I’ll never know. When you invited me to come with you to Vega Ring, they had no way to get me to stay. Whatever signal it takes to break my code of silence, its back at Titan.’

‘You think the Provost knows the right signal?’

Jerry shook his head. ‘She’s not in the right chain of command. They’d never even tell her I exist. The fuzz are terrible at cooperating.’

Finn sighed. It was late. He’d come out here expecting to get rid of some bodies, one his trusted friend. And instead he was sitting in that friend’s living room, drinking brandy and feeling his whole world unfold underneath him. ‘So I need to decide here if you’re still my man.’

‘I’m still 100% loyal,’ Jerry said. ‘Until someone comes along with that signal, I’m the perfect soldier.’

Finn looked over at Bogs, who held up his hand in surrender. ‘Everybody’s got some kind of weakness, boss. At least with Jerry, you know what that is. You look at me and you don’t know what’s going to turn me against you. I don’t know. With Jerry, this one time, you know.’

Finn looked back at Jerry, then down at his severed leg. ‘So what the hell do we have to do to fix you up?’

#

‘Let me get this straight,’ Van Leiden said. ‘You want to declare a truce? You’ve killed 42 of my people and maimed another and you want to declare a truce?’

‘Well,’ Finn said, ‘to be fair, the last six were killed trying to whack Jerry.’ Finn glanced back at his newly repaired capo. ‘And by the way, you might want to make a mental note not to try that again.’

Van Leiden shook his head. ‘I can’t believe this. You don’t got the stones to run this operation. The old man was right, you’re a weakling.’

That stopped Finn. ‘The old man said that, really?’

‘He said as much. Said you didn’t want to do this thing of ours anymore. All you wanted to do was decorate apartments. I’ve been here a couple of weeks and I think I can report back that he was right. You guys don’t steal anything.’

Finn forced himself to remain calm. ‘That’s not important anymore, Dutch. This problem we’re facing is bigger than us. We need to stop fighting and take care of this.’

‘What is this big problem you’ve been talking about?’ They had met in a little pub in the Enclave. One man each. Van Leiden’s man was a silent hulking figure by the door. Jerry had joined them at the table. He took out his printout of the stolen data file.

‘We got this from the Ptang. They’ve got over a hundred starships converging on Sol at the same time, about three years from now. Apparently they think they own the place, and they’re kicking us off.’

Van Leiden frowned down at the printout. ‘Those bastards. All right, assuming what you’re telling me is true, what can we do about it?’

Finn held up his hand and started ticking off fingers. ‘One, we could tell the Provost and she could warn Earth to get ready for the invasion.’

Van Leiden shook his head, his jowls flapping. ‘Omerta. You don’t talk to the Provost.’

‘Not to mention it wouldn’t do any good. The Ptang have weapons nobody wants to mess with. A hundred ships all at once is too many even for Sol. Two, we warn the old man and let him figure something out.’

‘That’s the one I like. Let’s do that.’ Van Leiden got up and headed for the door.

‘But I’ve got an even better idea,’ Finn said.

‘Basta. Enough with your ideas. I’m telling the old man. He can get himself out of harms way.’

‘But what about the human race?’ Jerry asked.

‘Fuck the human race,’ Van Leiden shot back. ‘All I care about is the Family.’

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