Skies Over Tomorrow: Constellation (8 page)

Exiting the hold, the doors closed Felix out, and he turned about and scanned the light over the outside of the entryway. As on the inside, he found nothing on the metal doors, just the giant painted letter C. He then aimed the beam at the corridor's grated floor, and though the shaft of light was not as effective in the bright hallway, it still exposed traces of particles he believed to be Martian dirt, and he followed the evanescent trail to the loading dock. Whoever was stealing provisions had at last erred and given him a break in the case.

The morning crew still had not arrived—not since his arrival at least. It was rather dim as he stood at the entrance to the open landing stage. From the illuminated trails about the dock, to and from the cargo hold, lifters were used to load freight rigs. However, from investigating the previous four incidents, he believed with certainty that last night's surveillance recording would show just another uneventful night passing by. It would be difficult to prove that rigs came or went within the time frame of the theft as well, for he knew from his preliminary inspection of the facility, the shipping and receiving log was blank of any activity. It only substantiated the dock's reputed uneventful night and its normal appearance when he first arrived on scene.

So, Felix was excited by the trails, as they offered him something to go on for first time since he began working the case. He followed one set to a lifter, which surprised him even more because up until then, one had never been available at the docks he inspected before. In fact, from pouring over prior scenes of vanished reserves, not a single clue had been found. To describe those incidents as clean hits was a gross understatement. Now, before him was solid proof of how supplies were being moved from the holds, which in turn validated his doubt of the dock's record book. He could not help but think this latest episode was either a haphazard operation or staged, to misdirect him.

Looking over the lifter, its tires looked to have been cleaned but glowed from organic saturation under the beam of the flashlight. Upon closer inspection, Felix discovered dirt compacted deep in the grooves of the rear right tire. He put down the flashlight to collect a more concentrated sample. “Yeah, this should be enough,” he said after having filled a second vial half full and looking over the encapsulated proof, and then putting it away. He retrieved the flashlight and continued to scrutinize the lifter, taking a seat at its wheel.

“What have we here?” Among the many finger and hand prints on its controls that radiated in blue, there were a few unique prints in that they had an almost green hue under the ray of the flashlight. Felix pulled a forensic scanner from underneath his coat. Though the device was designed along similar principals as the flashlight and glasses, it analyzed the pattern and composition of hand and foot prints, at the genetic and atomic levels, and saved the data from a scan onto a micro memory disk within its assembly. “Damn,” he said. “I knew it. Jigsaw prints, and flawed ones at that.”

Despite the isolation of suspicious marks, the scanner could not perform a complete evaluation of composite finger and hand prints. The discovery, though, lent affirmation to the theory of a conspiracy—a plot, as Felix determined from assessing the circumstances and details of the case thus far—that made him realize Wilkes should not have reclassified the case. The notion that he should just abandon efforts to uncover the truth, which he would ignore, was absurd.

Slipping the scanner away and getting off the lifter, he tapped on the right arm of the glasses to end its recording. Snapping off the flashlight and removing the spectacles, both were put away, and from the lifter, he looked across the bays of the dock to the surveillance desk. There was no one on duty. He checked the time: 08:05. He then walked over to and entered the security office.

“OK,” he said, taking a seat before a workstation with twenty-five oblong screens in a grid-like formation. “Heard nothing, saw nothing. Let's see about that.” He swiveled and tilted the main monitor on the desk to his liking, and then waved his hand before it, to activate its virtual desktop. The multiple screens went blank as a single simulated interface, limited to the overall dimension of the station, projected forward. Gaining access to the security vault, where surveillance recordings were stored on compact discs, he searched and pulled the video from last night, and then leaned back in comfort to review the nine hours of recording during Private McBride's shift.

With the start of the playback, he observed the time and date. They were accurate. For the first thirty minutes, the image, as it had been viewed from cameras CH-C1 through CH-C4, displayed the provisions sitting undisturbed. With two cameras facing the entryway, and two in its adjacent corners, any happenings in the cargo hold should have been caught on video.

He knew also from the prior incidents that there was no evidence of any camera being hacked as to trace false feeds. Undoubtedly, it would be the same in this instance. The only conclusion Felix could make was that the thefts were an inside job. He just needed to disprove the guards' story, as to validate his conjecture that somehow the actual surveillance feeds were being manipulated; but that been hard to prove, as any tampering with cameras—or even the falsifying of surveillance discs—was well covered up.

“What am I doing?” Felix said, questioning his approach to viewing the recording. He looked at his watch. “I know it's going to be the same as the others.”

Having sat with patience through the full length of surveillance recordings from the previous thefts, Felix decided to fast forward through this one. Also, his hunger would not allow him to sit for so long, as it began to override his sense of duty. Fast forwarding was something he wished he had done before.

Halfway into the recording, the view of the cargo hold remained the same as during the first few minutes. “Heard nothing, saw nothing,” he said. “They all said the same thing.” He stared at the virtual monitor, eyeing for any kind of change in the cargo hold. “Well-trained soldiers can be loyal enough to lie,” his built-in Devil's Advocate argued back.

The footage zipped forward. With his feet propped on the desk, his hands rested in his lap. Then the muttering of his stomach interrupted his concentration. “I know you're hungry,” he said, tilted back in the chair with his arms now folded behind his head.

With abrupt haste, Felix sat up. “I don't believe this,” he said, and cued the video backwards, stopped it, and played it again. He paused and cued it back again, and this time with the slight motion of hand, replayed it frame by frame, viewing the angle at which camera number three recorded the entrance. “I can't believe this.” A few times, his hand swiped sideways across his vision and then back the other way at a controlled pace. The camera's display read CH-C3, and for a split second, the painted letter on the doors was B, not C. Skipping the recording to camera four's viewpoint, the playback started at a slow speed. As with camera three, for a fraction of a second, camera four showed the doors with the letter B on them.

“So they are doctoring the feeds,” he said, standing, and then going to the physical vault adjacent to the surveillance desk; he had to verify the surveillance disc within it. “Damn.” Felix remembered that even a GDI agent needed more than a wave of a hand to access certain areas; in this case, the lock also required a key card.

“May I be of some assistance?”

Felix looked over his shoulder, and as he turned to face the guard on duty, he looked at his watch: 09:17.

“If you're wanting to get in there, then you'll have to come back later in the evening.”

“Why is that?”

“McBride has the only key card to the vault.”

“You don't have one?”

“No. Too many key cards pose a security risk.”

Felix eyed the young sentry up and down.

“Is there anything else?”

“Where have you been?” said Felix.

“On patrol.”

“And how much time is needed to patrol this facility?”

“It depends.”

“It's a simple question.”

“Approximately half an hour, forty minutes at most.”

At that moment Felix's stomach interjected with a vociferous growl, and embarrassed, he said, “All right, I'll return when Private McBride is back on duty.”

The guard stood aside as the discomfited GDI agent exited the security office.

Felix decided his inspection of the storage facility was complete—for the time being—as he just had to get something to eat. He descended steps into one of the bays of the dock to get out to the parking lot. Without thought though, the dusk-red morning captivated him, and he took a moment to revel in the warmth of the sun rising from the southeast. It made him feel alive. “One day,” he said, looking several kilometers high to the framing of the biosphere under which he lived and worked.

One day, atmospheric processors erected by early terraformers will have purified the Martian air such that people will not be confined to conservatories. Until then, the mushroom-like superstructures of polycarbonate and alloy composites, which sprouted and multiplied across the landmass of Tharsis and succeeded with preserving man's fragile but enduring life on Mars, lasted.

Growling broke Felix's trance from the future outlook, urging him on to his universal-transport parked across the lot of the loading dock. The metallic gray vehicle, 142 centimeters in width and 365 centimeters in length, cleared the ground by eleven centimeters and seated two, with the passenger seat behind the driver. The UT recognized his touch and unlocked itself, allowing Felix to pull up on the canopy door and climb aboard. Shutting the door over him while reaching under his coat, he pulled out his ID card and inserted it into the ignition scanner. With an instant and quiet startup, the heads-up display and dashboard became active with red, yellow, amber, and green lights. The electric vehicle idled for a few seconds before heading out onto a one-way concourse that looped around the cluster of six storage facilities, and onto the main parkway.

Felix drove pass several MAC storage clusters to the travel-way connector, where merging at the junction, he switched the transport from manual to automatic, letting the computer take control and drive him through light traffic.

Travel-ways were the interstate highways between biospheres and the sectors within them. It took fifteen minutes for Felix to travel from the MAC sector to the central biosphere, in which at its hub were the headquarters of the GDI and the capitol of the High Council, the William S. Cheney Building. Coming off the travel-way, Felix resumed control of his transport and drove to his favorite tavern in the south sector, the Red Velvet Dust.

After parking and exiting the UT, leaving the vehicle to lock itself down, Felix walked around to the front of the private pub and entered the dim red world of the Velvet. He was pleased that he could count the number of customers on one hand. Of course, he doubted they wanted breakfast. “Hoku!” he said.

The co-owner, dressed in a see-through bodysuit that reflected light off the voluptuous curves of her form, looked up away from the patron she was entertaining and smiled. She made a gesture, and Felix gesticulated hunger by putting his hands to his abdomen and making a face. Her smile grew and she pointed to a stool at the bar.

Taking a seat at the high counter that overlooked an open-kitchen area behind it, Felix looked back in the direction of Hoku, to the runway jutting from the low level stage behind her, to the few occupied tables, and observed the patrons of the morning. A couple of men were drinking and looking to the stage in anticipation. He smiled. No, they were not looking for breakfast at all, not at least the kind Hoku was going to make for him.

“Come on, I'm hungry,” he said to himself while looking her over. It was obvious that the aged gentleman she waited on had taken a liking to her. She bent over and kissed the man on the cheek and then walked off. The fellow held on for as long as he could, and inevitably, her hand slipped from his grip.

As Hoku approached the bar, Felix watched her hips sway and her breasts bounce with each step. Her physical presence, her face, her smile smote him, and underneath her sensual and beautiful exterior was a pure and benevolent soul. He had feelings for her when they first met, and they never seemed to go away. It was those feelings that had led him to marry her.

“Morning, husband,” she said, folding her arms around his neck.

“Morning.” Felix reciprocated the hug.

“What would you like to eat?” she then said, taking a seat beside him.

Felix thought for a minute.

“Hash browns smothered with tomatoes and onions and a side of black-peppered scrambled eggs?”

“Nope.”

“Pecan, cinnamon oatmeal and a buttered apple-jelly toast?”

“No. I want a blueberry crepe with a cheese omelet.”

“You got it.” Hoku hopped from the stool and went to the end of the bar, passed through its gate, down a few steps, and into the kitchen.

Felix saw her grab an apron from an inside wall and tie it around her neck and waist. “You're really something,” he said to her, watching her heat up the grille and prep the cookware. She did not hear him though.

Music started to play, and the sudden intro caught Felix off guard. The stage lights became active with the appearance of a morning dancer, and dressed in a tight, dated nurse's uniform with heavy makeup and a stylish mane of hair, she took her position at the center of the platform. The music played through a slow introduction before its rhythm changed, cuing the dancer into her routine. Her suggestive, gestical choreography hinted at her professionalism. The seductive art of strip dancing was more than prancing back and forth across the stage and removing articles of clothing. Felix knew how to assess a dancer's skill level just from the small movements Hoku had taught him to watch for, and as he looked at the nurse dancer, her every motion was accented by expressive hand and facial gestures. Even more so, he was able to pick up on her eye contact with each of the four men in her audience, and by their responsive smiles, she had captivated and enjoyed her power over them. She was good—very good.