”It’s not the cockroach you see…it’s the hundred you don’t.”If one were to make the inquiry, Captain Hideki Kondo would acknowledge that he did indeed spy a cockroach…two, in fact. The first was the matter of a discrepancy in the ident card of Dr. Lysanger’s patient. Deborah, if that was in fact her name, had raised a low level flag, not by particular incidents on her record, but rather the near absence of information it presented. However, seeing as the woman was clearly not a match for the members of the Anabaptist sect in the Detective’s warrant, the army captain chose to withhold this finding. Whether it was the fact that he found her quite attractive or his building distaste for Detective Hekubah would be a matter of little consequence. He studied the face on the woman’s ident card once again. Deborah Yo would warrant further investigation.
The second ‘cockroach’ was the detective himself. Though duty bound to follow his orders and honor the court issued search warrant to Hekubah’s satisfaction, certain mannerisms in the man’s behavior had begun to raise the hairs on the back of Kondo’s neck. The warrant did list these Anabaptists as unauthorized departures from Capital City’s Blackout Zone. There’s been some mutterings that while the slavers’ trade was a flourishing, permit driven business, certain members of the local P.D. had discovered profit in playing middle man, greasing the official wheels and offering their signatures as legal witness to those seeking the appropriate documents to swoop in and scoop up hordes of the teaming humanity for lives of servitude. There was money in it…good money, he’d been told.
And now, this cockroach was wailing, screeching his protests as all eyes were upon the red faced teenager and her personal stash of toys. “I’ve seen quite enough,” Kondo spoke authoritatively. “Sergeant, release the crew. Then assemble the unit for departure.” As Hekubah railed in the background, the captain handed the captured ident cards to China Doll’s first mate. “My sergeant will hand over other personal effects. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
“Thank you.” The man, Yuri Antonov by name, accepted the cards.
Kondo turned away as the mocha skinned woman they’d apprehended outside now rushed to comfort the fuming teenager. His eye fell upon Corporal Dunn. The woman was down upon one knee, head tilted curiously before the pallets of bricks they’d previously inspected. The look in her eyes was enough to draw him near. “Corporal?” he asked. “Did you find something?”
“I swear, sir,” she shook her head, “that I heard someone coughing.”
“Interesting,” the captain replied absently as he swung the tablet up once more. On his screen still glowed the schematic diagrams of a Firefly Class III vessel, complete with all known smugglers’ spaces denoted. He scrolled away from Abigail’s doll cache, his thumb moving the view across the open cargo deck space toward the center. There, according to the schematic, lay a belly hatch, a resealable hull opening hidden just under a meter below the cargo deck on which he stood. “There’s a void here,” Kondo said to his corporal. “Two meters by two meters by one meter.
Not enough room for forty, he thought,
still…“First platoon!” Kondo shouted. “Corral the crew. Second platoon! On me!” As the orders reverberated through the cargo bay, a host of autorifles now trained upon China Doll’s crew. The clatter of boots echoed as Second platoon hastened to their captain’s side. “Surround these pallets,” Kondo barked.
Detective Hekubah scuttled over. “Did you find something?”
“Possibly. Sergeant!” Captain Kondo shouted. “Bring me the first mate.”
“Sir, yes sir!” the huge man replied as he clapped a hand upon Antonov’s shoulder. “You heard the captain…move. MOVE!”
With the sergeant’s sidearm emphasizing the point between his shoulder blades, Yuri wasted no time in hurrying before the captain and a now gloating detective. “What?” he asked. “I thought we were…”
“Open the belly hatch access,” Kondo ordered.
“But it’s got bricks stacked all over it…”
“OPEN THE GORRAM HATCH!” Hekubah tried to roar, but the timbre of his voice was that of an annoyed bleat.
“With all that weight,” Yuri’s voice was measured, “the hydraulics will blow right out. Let us take the bricks off…” The response came in the form of the sergeant’s pistol, clapping the side of his head as he tumbled to his knees.
“Open it,” Kondo’s tone was crisp. “Now.”
“Okay…shiny.” Antonov was sluggish as he rose to his feet. Then, with the glowering sergeant right on his heels, he made his reluctant way toward the little hatch control surface. After turning a large switch and slapping one of the two red buttons, the search party watched as the brick cargo rose a few inches above the deck. Suddenly, it divided right down the center, the halves now trundling left and right as hydraulics and metal whined under the load.
A dozen Anabaptist refugees, gaunt, pitiful scarecrows still in their traditional garb, blinked upward, into the muzzles of Alliance autorifles.
“Get them out of there,” Captain Kondo ordered. “Corporal, scan them for chips.”
Detective Hekubah had transformed. Where once was a desperate insecurity was now a vindicated ebullience. “I KNEW IT!” he rejoiced. “I KNEW IT!” In this triumph, the only taste that might’ve sweetened the moment would’ve been to find the boat’s captain, and especially so, that irritating nun. “Yuri Antonov,” Hekubah proclaimed, “you and your entire crew are bound by law for illegal human trafficking and unpermitted slave acquisition. You,” he couldn’t help grinning as the cuffs bit again into the first mate’s wrists, “are going away for a long, long time.”
Zoie Hart
Bugman
yobo
wanderingwolf
Antlers
Little Bill
