Dark Energy Supernova - An Anthology of SF SD Shorts

Part 4 Spook Show

For the second time that day Quinn found herself grinding her teeth in impotent frustration.  This time her partner was joining her, Duncan grim as he sat across from her in the MEBI transport.  Both were cuffed, their weapons confiscated and on either side of each a pair of MEBI troopers sat, weapons ready.

The diminutive inspector let her eyes scan over the troopers to where the three white coats sat, quietly discussing something they were looking at on a hand held data pad.

"So Agent Talaran, you seem to be in charge here.  Mind tell us where are you taking us?  Not to your bosses because we're not dropping.  We're climbing."

"Very astute, inspector," Talaran replied.  With her hood down and her rad shield off, Quinn could see she was an Arabic woman with the perfect kind of face one could have being born into the right family, with the right money.  With her hair pulled into a neat bun, she had that polished look that having servants doing it for you often created.

"I've been instructed to take you directly to Chief Minister Vaughn, who has assumed lead on this investigation."

"Vaughn?" Quinn hissed even as Duncan sputtered.

"The head of InterOp himself??"

"Yes," one of the other white coats answered, another woman, this one of East Indian descent.  Her features were as flawless as Talaran's.  "The Ministry of Internal Operations is after all, in charge of internal security.  This situation falls squarely within their mandate."

Quinn speared that one with a hard look.

"I know what InterOp does," she growled.  "What I want to know is,..." she abruptly stopped herself from going on.  No point in questioning InterOp wanting to pursue the investigation on Wilkes-Boothe as that would reveal her knowledge that it was an InterOp official that had gone missing.

Quinn's stopping in mid-sentence made a pair of sculpted eyebrows lift on the women and a frown appear on the man's face.  But one look at Quinn's now carefully blank features and Duncan's bemused expression and the three white coats returned to their examination of the data pad.  Apparently they were satisfied in letting Vaughn take care of things from this point on.

Chief Minister Jakub Vaughn; not much was known about the shadowy head of InterOp.  Mostly because that was the way he liked it.  But there was no denying he wielded great power and his name struck fear in the hearts of not a few, thanks in no small part to the ruthless reputation InterOp itself had.

Thanks to that reputation Quinn felt her palms sweaty and her heart rate climb as the MEBI transport landed and the door opened to the glare of Eta Level, the highest of the seven meta levels and nearly brushing sub-orbital space.  The two inspectors slipped up the hoods on their coats and turned on their own rad filters before nudges from the armored troopers were pushing them towards the door.

Even then Quinn was squinting against the glare of nearly unfiltered sunlight that hammered the mostly heavy industrial platform with unrelenting power.  And her ears filled with the roar of artificial wind generators pumping oxygen onto the platform to keep the air almost breathable.  Almost immediately after stepping into the glare, the AI built into her coat gave a soft 'meep' of alarm.

"Warning, inspector," a soft, sexless voice said into her ear.  "Rad levels at this location are dangerously high.  Seek shelter immediately."

"Acknowledged," she sub-vocalized just loud enough to deactivate the AI's alarm.  Then she was stepping forward in Duncan's shadow as the white coats ahead of them, and the troopers behind herded the pair of inspectors towards a worn out storage building several metres away.

It was as they neared the door that Quinn caught movement out of the corner of her eye.  Thinking it was just her mind playing tricks on her in its heightened state of anxiety, she jerked her head in that direction to confirm it was nothing.  And instead she felt a cold knot of fear appear in her belly to find herself looking at looked like the shadowy outline of a person.

"Q, are you seeing these?" Duncan whispered hoarsely and a quick glance at her partner yielded him looking in the opposite direction at another apparition.

"Yeah," she replied in a hoarse whisper of her own, barely audible above the atmosphere pumps.

"Just like at the station, but bigger and stronger."  Duncan shook his head before looking at Quinn.  "What kind of spook show is this, Quinn??"