Crimes of the Grey Detective

Progluge “Mr. Dickens Patrick Charles, you are hereby sentenced to fifteen years in prison for the kidnapping, attempted murder, and eventual murder of Sean O’Malley. Upon the recommendation of the Supreme Justices of First Orbital, sentence is suspended to two years.” Chapter One The guards in the courtyard of Third Orbital Light Correctional carried no guns and not just because they worked in a – allegedly – low security prison. Dickens sat on his favourite titanium bleacher at the far end of the courtyard, massaging the muscle over the Twin Universal Gravity Chips. They were embedded in the skin above each of his lower ribs. He’d barely had a month to get used to the itchy cloth of his jumpsuit – hell, there was still a bit of starch in it – but it was the TUGCs that had been soldered onto his ribs since he first left Earth’s atmosphere that caused him the most constant discomfort. That was two years ago. The jumpsuit felt like a bad second skin, but when the guards looked as mean as they did that day, it was Dickens’ bones that wanted to crawl out of his flesh. He tried to distract himself by scratching the month-old growth of his beard, now twice as thick as the stubble on his head. No use. Though the courtyard was only twenty; strong with petty finance crimes and the wealthy enough to get their attempted murder charges knocked down to self-defence. The air had the itch of the worst type of riot. He hadn’t been a prisoner long, but he had been a detective for nineteen years. Eventually, you just develop an itch for itches. Silas, a guard who had served just long enough for his mean streak to dull into a lump of casual malice, kept eyeing the same trio of greybeards. They were playing digital Hold ‘Em on the e-surface of their table. At regular five minute intervals, one of two younger men in grey jumpsuits would walk past the table, casually brushing against the oldest greybeard. Dickens sighed longingly as he looked up at the massive dome over the yard. It was tinted to deflect most of the Sun’s harsher rays that travelled unfiltered through the cosmic seas. Two more years, old boy, he thought to himself. In truth, his lawyer traded in his nineteen years of good character reports and exemplary work on the force for a reduced sentence. His sentence went from fifteen years down to just two. Two years of rehydrated potato powder and artificial gravy, scratchy suits, a tinted view of the stars, and a dead yard where the only sound was the hiss of hydraulic bench press machines and the occasional thud of a weighted basketball bouncing off a plastic surface. Gone were the days when there were enough unsolved murders to keep his brain from trying to push out his ears in boredom. “Two more years,” he muttered to himself, if only to hear the sound of his own voice. “Then you’ll have someone to talk to who won’t want to tear your colon out of your backside.” There were only forty or so prisoners on the orbiting prison, even though it had been built for nine thousand. When the Second Space Race had started in earnest back on Earth, it had been a scramble for billionaires and billionaires alone. That was until they eventually left the Earth’s atmosphere for good, cushy in the First Orbit. It wasn’t long before they realised that they needed a few minimum wagers to clean their magnetically-chained clusters of domed houses. They needed district councillors too, it turned out. They were there to lobby their interests against the Trillionaires and superpower countries that owned their clusters. Mostly, they needed cleaners, babysitters, gardeners, and farmers. When the rich got to space, the Guild of Inspectors was formed to police them. When everyone else came, a more plebeian police force came with them. Getting promoted from beat officer to detective wasn’t so hard when you worked in an industry only a thousand-strong, but Dickens had been a prodigy straight out of the Central North Ireland JDS (JDS). Turn it around, join the Force, or so the slogan went. Dickens had gone so far as to fulfil half his potential in the program, back in the days when the Earth was still dying. That meant just about anyone who wasn’t taking afternoons off to loot or burn could get into a law enforcement program. Then the Trillionaires finally stepped in and… Dickens looked up in time to catch another pass at the oldest greybeard by one of the two youngsters. The old man scratched a spot on his shoulder just as a stray hand happened to brush against it. He sighed again as Silas finally took the bait. “Oi!” The guard sprinted towards the e-tables, his two subordinate officers tailing him. “On the ground, Maverick!” If Young Maverick had been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to, he would have done the smart thing and spread himself on the plastic floor. But the right person had seen him doing the exact thing he was meant to – for the two large ex-financiers working the bench press, anyway. As soon as Maverick drew the three guards away, the pair of them were bolting for the e-table before any of the greybeards knew what was happening. The oldest one caught a meaty shoulder to the chin that sent his head bouncing off the e-table. The other two had their shins cracked by weighted boots as they tried to run. All three were down by the time Silas caught up with Maverick. Dickens started massaging his chest again. Silas stopped running and reached for a pen-sized clicker in his shirt pocket. “Last chance, Maverick, I said down!” Maverick took three long strides in his sprint to the closing C-Block doors. Silas pulled out his clicker. Three more strides. Silas aimed the clicker at Maverick’s back. The whole yard was silent but for the drum of Maverick’s boots and the hiss of the closing doors. Then the Disabler in Silas’ hand clicked once, a small, sharp sound, like the literal click of a ballpoint. Though Dickens remained perfectly rooted to his bench – and safe, very very safe – his stomach lurched as Maverick’s stride suddenly lifted off the ground. Every compound from the luxurious clusters of First Orbit to the hellish smelters and industrial complexes of Fifth were by law fitted with pressure management systems and gyros that angled them so that “North” was always to the head of a standing man, but that did only so much to negate zero-gravity. It was the Twin Universal Gravity Chips that kept feet on ground. It was Twin Universal Gravity Chips that allowed Orbiters some semblance of the normality they had left on Earth. It was Twin Universal Gravity Chips that negated any need for dome-threatening ballistic weapons. Maverick screamed as he started to float higher and higher, until the secondary and tertiary gravity failsafe finally brought him to a homeostasis of sorts seven feet in the air, arms flailing sluggishly like he was trying to swim through syrup. His shoulders slackened and he looked out beneath hooded eyes as the disorientation of zero-gravity nearly knocked him out. Air sickness, Dickens called it, though not right now. Right now he was trying to keep his stomach from crawling out of his throat. By the time he swallowed his insides, Silas had extended his fishing rod – little more than an extendable pole with a round-tip hook – and started hooking a half-conscious Maverick out of the air. He could have just reactivated his TUGC but that wasn’t a shift you wanted to experience too quickly. Three clicks within ten minutes was flirting with a legal case for torture as far as the Orbital Law was concerned. Most of the inmates at Third Orbit Light Correctional had been put away for less. Dickens cast a curious eye at the greybeards, who were making a vain but valiant effort to get onto their elbows and knees. The two ex-financiers were back at the bench press machines as if nothing had happened. Of course, there were cameras over every bloody inch of communal space in the prison. The Warden would find them and he would punish them accordingly for what little petty vengeance they’d managed to lay on the greybeards. They knew that – they had known that the moment they hired Maverick and his much flakier pal, spread-eagled on the floor. Whatever beef they had with the greybeards, it was worth the punishment to them – so long as the punishment wasn’t the silent end of a Disabler. They knew it wouldn’t be. Disablers were as much a last resort as a gun, but at least a gunshot had the potential to kill you. Dickens scowled as he forced his hands away from his ribs. He was tempting fate, he knew, but he couldn’t help thinking the thought anyway. Well, that’s today’s excitement. A hydraulic door opened – this one connecting the yard to the guard’s quarters. No sooner had Silas started dragging Maverick to the infirmary by the collar, did the Warden step out of that door and aim steel-grey eyes right at Dickens. His close-cropped beard twitched as he contained either a smile or a sneer (Dickens doubted the man knew which it was himself). The Warden’s voice cracked across the yard like a gunshot. “Dickens!” Fuck. Dickens closed his eyes and took a deep breath. There was nothing an ex-juvenile menace, ex-officer, ex-detective, current inmate hated more than a barraging storm of change in the status quo with his name floating in its eye. “Aye, Warden.” The Irishman in him suddenly came to the fore, maybe in retaliation to the muddled accent. Most people who spent more than thirty years interacting with the melting pot of the world’s population in outer space would have a muddled accent, to say the least. Maybe it was his need to feel a sense of who he was when the only threat to the ground under his feet were the tectonic plates moving beneath it. The Warden finally decided on a smile, though a sneer would have had the same effect. “Off to collection with you.” Collection? No one on the Force had sent him anything. Why would they? He’d only nearly jeopardised one of the most important civil cases in the Space Age with some… aggressive detective work, but no one would have gotten as close as they damn well did without him taking one for the team in the first place! “’t’s at collection, Warden?” The Warden hooked a thumb on his belt, right next to the holster of his own silver-plated Disabler. “The filter that keeps big fuckers like you from asking daft questions!” Despite the gesture, Dickens was glad for his own beard hiding his smirk. The Warden’s Scottish brogue was peeking through his hard-earned Orbital accent. “Now,” said the steel-eyed Scotsman, a man three times as hard as any he kept in his facility, “you walking or do I have to float you there?” “Got two feet, don’t I?” Eager to be out of the yard – and anything that reminded him of the chips inside him – Dickens cut across the yard in that slow, careful way of meaty men trying not to look like they were bumbling. “Got two feet,” the Warden muttered. He clicked his tongue. “Sounds just like a man getting out of his sentence before it even begun, it does.” Dickens suddenly forgot that he was a foot taller and an Orbital stone heavier than the Warden. He stopped dead. “Getting out?” “That’s what your girlfriend says.” What girlfrie… Dickens felt hope and apprehension try to acquaint his eyebrows with his receding hairline. “Blonde, persistent, angry?” “Among other things.” The Warden’s smile had disappeared. He turned on a heel made of polished dense-iron. “She’s toting a pardon from a First Orbit Supreme Judge.” Dickens’ feet were firmly planted on the plastic floor. He was undoubtedly getting air sick. “Sera… with a Supreme Court pardon?” “Don’t count yourself lucky,” the Warden said, doors hissing as they split before him. “Being that one judge is allowed one pardon every five years, whoever she networked with to hustle one for you for something as petty as a two-year sentence… Well, I suspect you would have been better off taking a two-year vacation in jail.” Knowing Sera… Dickens followed the Warden, doing his best to ignore the phantom itch at the bottom of his chest. *** Collection looked different when you were going out than when you were coming in. The steel grey of the walls didn’t seem quite as dull and they didn’t make wide lobby feel like the polished hollow of a gun barrel. Hydro lamps lined the ceiling lengthwise, reflecting off the titanium chairs in the waiting area and the Plexiglas panels that separated it from the clerk offices. Only one other prisoner was in the waiting area as the Warden led Dickens into the middle of the room. His pale head was shaved, the light harsh against the age spots on his dome and the milky blue of his tired eyes. The Warden walked past him on his way to one of the clerical panels, waving for Dickens to wait. Perhaps a little jaded by the isolation that came with only eighty warm bodies in a four-thousand-cell prison, Dickens decided it wouldn’t be the worst thing to avoid the twenty other seats in favour of the one right next to the man. “Seat’s taken,” the old man said half-heartedly as Dickens eased into the cold, hard titanium chair. “It is now.” Dickens extended a meaty hand to the man. “Charlie.” The old man craned his neck to look him in the face, his thin mouth working with the same vigour as the suspicion behind his eyes. “Seen you around the yards some. Thought your name was Dickens.” Dickens winced reflexively, sensing a conversation he’d been having with folks since he was old enough to read. His hand was still out as he smiled sheepishly. “First name, aye. Dickens Charles. Mum wanted to give Da a laugh and the bloody nurse overheard them and passed it on to whoever’s in charge o’ typin’ ya’’ name into the system for all time.” “Sound like arseholes, the lot of them.” At last, the old man shook his hand, the suspicion in his eyes only slightly tempered. “Daniels.” “If ya’’ tell me your first name’s Jack, it won’t be the first time I’ve had the piss.” Daniel’s thin mouth twitched. “Just Daniels.” “Good on ya’’, Just.” “Go fock yerself.” Daniels cleared his throat. “Yourself, I mean.” It was Dickens’ turn to twitch a laugh. It seemed everyone was desperate to adapt to the Orbital accent. It was a point of pride for the rich First Orbiters and a desperate sense of belonging for most everyone else. The older Orbiters had the most struggles in shedding their individual Earth accents, honed through centuries of community and conversation. They were only sharpened by the anti-industrial era that saw most of the world’s cities torn down in favour of scientifically monitored “Eden Systems.” While the Billionaires tried to play God by creating their own rain forests and eco-rich lands, the normal people who still remembered what a tin of beans cost held onto the one thing they could control: who they were. Or who we think we are. Dickens smiled, sifting his memory for a touch of home. “Daniels, aye? Belfast?” Daniel’s expression dropped to disbelief. “Dublin. You can’t tell the difference, boy?” “Left Earth when I was twenty,” Dickens said, relaxing into his chair now that he’d managed some conversation to relax himself. “Spent the next twenty trying to work out why Orbitals pronounce their ‘ahs’ and ‘ars’ like they’re hiding dry ice under their tongues. How old were you when you left?” “’Bout as old as you are now,” Daniels said, seemingly falling back into the old comforts of his mother tongue. He smiled as if he was savouring it a little. “Second Orbit was short a gardener or two.” “Because of course they were,” Dickens muttered. He’d done a bit of Force work in the Second Orbit investigating the suicide of a Fourth Orbit union head (who had somehow hoovered up enough money from cell cleaners and rubbish collectors to afford a cushy Second Orbit condominium). Money had a habit of turning the guilty out… “Something wrong?” Daniels eyed Dickens out of the corner of his eye. Dickens cleared his throat and settled a hand over his right-hand Universal Gravity Chip. “Just thinking about work.” “Oh? You got something lined up for when you get out this shithole?” Was that a hint of resentment in the old man’s voice? Dickens shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Depends on the woman waiting in the next room.” He realised he was tapping the bare bar of his arMr.est; for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how to stop. “I used to work for the Force. Detective of the Third Orbit Division up until two months ago.” “That’d make you the first cop to be thrown in an Orbital jail.” Daniels laughed darkly, though there was a little sympathy when he spoke now. “You’ve got as much chance of finding law enforcement work as a gardener with a criminal record.” “Cheers to that.” Dickens eyed the Warden’s back as a clerk arrived at the glass pane. “It’s the age of space exploration; it’s a time of firsts for everybody. Though to be fair, it’d be more expensive to shuttle new hands from Earth than to just hire a gardener who went to jail for…” Daniels coughed a laugh. “Stealing from the boss.” Dickens did a double take. “How long you been locked up for?” “Eight.” “Eight months for petty theft?” “Years,” he corrected. “And the theft was not petty, thank you very much.” Daniels seemed to sit up a little straighter. “When the entire world’s precious metals were pooled for our space age machinery, suddenly everyone was hungry for gold like we were pioneering the Midwest again. The old boss had splurged on a gold chronograph; it was probably worth a quarter of his house.” Dickens sat up. “They caught you with gold?” “Aye.” Daniel smiled widely, revealing two pre-molars that glowed oddly in the light, the dull lustre of… “Bastard.” Dickens actually laughed. “A third of the watch got me into a smuggle train to the Fifth Orbit, where an independent forge warden was only too happy to take a third in exchange for melting down the gold. What was left of it, well,” Daniel’s smile retreated back into a tight line, though his lip was still curled upward. “Went back to work the next day worth a hell of a lot more, but with none the wiser, until the boss’ Mister happened to tell a bloody good joke.” “Hope it’s kept you laughing these past eight years. How come they didn’t strip it?” Daniels shrugged. “Orbital Laws are bastards about human rights. They couldn’t sooner pull out one of my real teeth, though I suspect the old boss’ been counting down to my release date. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m met with a thug or two to pick me up once I leave here, maybe with a Disabler aimed at my naval for a little space walk.” Dickens frowned. “So what are you in for?” Daniels asked into the silence that had started to open up between them. The slap of a fist smacking flesh filled Dickens’ inner ear. He could almost feel the jar of loosening teeth through the toe of his boot. “Aggressive interrogating.” “Let me guess, he was guilty and just needed a little help admitting it?” “Something like that.” “There was more to it?” “Not really, no. He killed, I caught him, I tried to get him to confess.” “Orbital Law doesn’t like duress.” Daniels rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “When you f**k up one civilisation for thousands of years, to the point where you’ve got to burn the whole s**t down and start again, well… That’s when the Trills and the bills think they can police the system with stricter laws. And ‘an aggressive sense of community.’” “Creating the five Orbital colonies was thousands more expensive than sending a couple of engineers to the moon. As much as we don’t like to admit it, we’re expensive commodities to the Trills, the lot of us. A gardener in space is worth ten kings on Earth.” “Earth’s regressed back to monarchies now?” “Nah, we’d only backslid to high-functioning hippies by the time I left. “ Daniels snorted. The Warden turned away from the clerk’s panel with a folder under one arm and a yellow nylon bag in his other hand. “That’s my cue,” Dickens said, suddenly not in the mood to get up. “Don’t get beat up, yeah?” To his credit, Daniels took it with a laugh. “Here’s hoping I take a fist to the metal teeth, save myself a cut to the cheek.” “That’s an optimist.” Dickens stood, and then turned back to Daniels, extending his hand again. This time, when Daniels took it, he noticed the strength in the old man’s palm, the deftness of his fingers. Dickens was suddenly glad he didn’t have a watch or wallet on him. “To good health,” Daniels said. The suspicion in his eyes now cooled to a sort of slow, silent melancholy. Dickens nodded. “Something like that, aye.” “Bit late to be making friends,” said the Warden. “Daniels, I’ll deal with your belongings in a minute. Charles.” Dickens caught the bag the Warden tossed so casually to him. Why did it feel heavier than when he’d left it? “Dickens.” The Warden was clearly keen to get Supreme Court paperwork out of his prison as soon as possible, as if pardons might be infectious. With a final nod to Daniels, Dickens turned on his heel and followed the Warden to the double doors that led out to the visitor’s waiting room. It’d connect the phone rooms and the general visiting area, creating the only open public point of exit and entry on the entire station. Not that it mattered much. Any successful prison break would be met with the ultimate last line of defence in the gravity-less cosmic seas. As it was, Dickens was leaving a free man with a few trepidations about what was ahead, a little sad to be giving up the rest he’d just started getting used to, and absolutely dreading whatever mess Sera was about to get him into. The double doors opened as he approached with the Warden, and there she was, smiling wickedly at him as if they hadn’t beaten a man to death together. Her blonde hair was tied up in a loose knot, out of the way of a pink face dusted with freckles and studded with the odd patch of mild acne. The top of her pressure overalls was undone and tied to the waist by the sleeves, leaving her arms bare. Dickens stopped halfway out the door, his gaze falling from her face to the wrists of her arms crossed against her chest. Ring tattoos went halfway around each. Her double shoulder holster had a disabler in one holster, and a tightly rolled piece of parchment in the other. A badge for the Guild of Inspectors hung from a chain on her hip.