April 2: Down to Earth (11 page)

"Oh, she knows them all," Cheesy informed them, from across the counter, all amused. "She's April
Lewis,
Master of the
Happy Lewis,
" he said, emphasizing the last name for them.

Both of them turned to look at her again, surprise written on their faces, but she was gone.

Chapter 8

Out the door and down the corridor, if April zipped in like a bird, she flew out much slower, like a freight Zeppelin overloaded with cheeseburgers. Going to the docks, she just went with the flow. If you weren't passing them most people didn't look up to make eye contact. New Las Vegas was the big city, compared to Home's small town atmosphere. A few folks would always look her over from afar. After all NLV was a magnet for all sorts of strange people, the people watching was prime and she probably qualified as one of the more exotic. But it was still USNA territory too and people might look, but were almost as reluctant to actually meet strangers as people Earthside. The NA system of Homeland Security and neighborhood snoops was still very much in place and had gained a foothold on NLV with its transient population, it had never acquired on the backwater Home was before independence.

Upon waging and winning a week long war and an unconditional surrender a year ago, Home had wisely made no attempt to change the internal workings of the USNA, given the difference in size. Any changes would have required more people to enforce and monitor than their entire population. They had only imposed some few specific conditions, about how NA treated Home. Even those few demands meant that when she meet USNA military personnel in the corridors here, she often received a venomous glare of hatred. The foremost condition was that NA not lift any more armed ships past the atmosphere. The military in particular resented  being forced to hire out satellite launches, or freight lifted, to foreign vessels.

In just a year the USNA was already chaffing under the restrictions and people were publicly calling the surrender a mistake. Many were calling for the resignation of those who had surrendered. Nobody seemed to remember they had been forced to swear the postmaster general in as President, due to the decapitation of their government and military. The fact they still did not have a permanent bridge rebuilt, anywhere along the Mississippi, or the vast majority of their geostationary satellites replaced, seemed to be a lesson lost on them.

They had no choice, given they were still rebuilding the capacity to construct even unarmed space craft after Home's bombardment. They had suffered the loss of too many small shops making critical components, like shuttle tires. The selective destruction had been as easy as reading brag articles in the professional journals and then making a location confirming phone call,  before reducing their specialized shop to rubble. Whatever small armed assets they still had in orbit or the Moon, they were probably hoarding, as they couldn't re-supply them right now. The situation made them feel like a third world power, even though they were still the dominating power on the Earth's surface. Home didn't care about that.

Too many civilians seemed unable to accept the reality that they lost the war, even though the country was still having trouble distributing power and goods. They still had no idea what the nature of the weapon used against them was, or how to counter it. It was a strange national state of denial. The majority of the military for all their hatred, was not so eager to actually fight again.

Well before the war with Home, the USNA government had stopped public release of causality figures and only officers were transported home for embarrassing funerals. But too many in the service were comparing notes, on how many friends and former unit mates they couldn't find any more. Indeed entire bases and carrier groups had disappeared off the lists. There were a
lot
of them gone.

The civilian population on the other hand, seems to blame the politicians, not Home, for empty store shelves or brown outs on the power grid. The military they dismissed as cowardly and not really trying at all and secrecy kept them from defending their actions.

April wore the recently introduced emblem of Home as a pin. Doris Chalmers had won the design competition for the symbol and flag. It was three overlapped ellipses increasing in size right to left along the top edge of a larger canted ellipse. An abstract form that suggested orbits and motion. The shape was represented in gold on the upper left two thirds of a deep blue square flag like Switzerland's.

April knew the emblem might irritate some, but anyone of any intelligence would know where she was from anyway. Foreign visitors to North America were issued a laminated ID card, for anytime they went out in public. Home had not argued an exemption for that requirement under the terms of surrender. Instead they had accepted it as shameful for NA, not them. Like wearing a Jew's star in the Nazi Reich. Besides if they didn't use it, they would probably have to issue some sort of ID themselves, for use off Home. The cards were color coded to be visible from a distance, Blue for UK, Red for China, Brown for Europe and so on.

Some bureaucrat decided Home would be Black, probably thinking it had a negative connotation. But actually it lent a sinister air to them, that gave them a strange sort of status, so they were sometimes referred to as black cards on the news. Besides it went extremely well with April's customary outfits. Home had no professional military, just a volunteer militia and they lacked a uniform but black was becoming the custom for militia members to wear as a sort of ad hoc uniform and an inside joke of sorts.

When she got to the end of the public corridor there was a duty free shop, before the security area check through from public cubic to spacer country. She didn't have any duty to save but it was still a convenient place to pop in and get a gift. She had found out Jon Davis enjoyed an occasional bottle of Champagne. She had tried buying him an expensive French vintage the first time, but he was no wine snob and actually preferred the less expensive Australian brands. She bounced in and perched at the counter.

"Hi, I need a case of Veuve Clicquot Reserve at dock nine. Send it to the
Happy Lewis
if you would please, within the next half hour or so and be sure it's still in a high G boost pack." she said, with her pad out to pay.

The clerk looked down right panicky. "We can't sell to anyone under twenty-four. In fact we could be fined for you just being in the store. If you'd just leave quietly it would be so much easier. Otherwise I'll have to call security, so it's on record we didn't encourage you to come in."

"Ah. You're new. I get this all the time. I'm from Home," she said pointing to the black ID card. "Call your manager and he'll tell you it's OK. I've bought from him before. I have the right under treaty terms. I'm an adult in my own country."

He looked dubious, but called on the com in the counter. April could not hear the other end of the conversation, but this end consisted of several objections starting with "But," that were all cut off from the other end and one final capitulating, "OK."

Still looking a little worried, as if it would all turn out to be a nasty joke on him, he took the payment off April's pad and promised the case at dock before they separated. April went back out in the public corridor. Her new friends the Frenchmen were just passing through security to dockage. She was glad they didn't stop in the shop, as they would have probably razzed her about calling an Australian product ‘Champagne' at all, instead of sparkling wine.

The security barriers were next to the duty free shop, with an in and out portal and a shared scanning and inspection station. The corridor widened out here, with the full space that was occupied by a storefronts on each side normally, now open on each side to a plaza like volume, with seating and machines for scanning freight and luggage, or even opening them for a hand inspection. They still kept everything oriented to one deck, in the public zero G area though, because inexperienced people got disoriented easy, if everything poked out in seemingly random directions and signs were upside down or at odd angles.

April was about jump to the exiting queue, to let them scan her out, when she got a silent vibrator com call signal from Click. She slipped out of the way of traffic, around the shop corner to the side and took the call on her spex.

"April I'm talking to a fellow stopped at the security barrier, who claims you know him. He says his name is Don Adams and he'd like to take passage with us to Home, but he can't get to the ship from public cubic without a boarding document."

April's mind flashed back on a scrawl, written with a vacuum marker on the hatch of the
Happy Lewis
. It was still there, sun faded and scratched away somewhat, but nobody would wipe it off. The maintenance crew knew to leave it alone. Don had manually released them from the dock at ISSII a year back, or they'd have been arrested by the Chinese. He'd scrawled that message, afraid to say his name aloud on com, before he scrambled off to hide until the battle sorted itself out. He'd been very brave for a ship full of strangers.

"I'm just outside security myself Click. Don Adams is a good friend. Ask him where he is exactly and what he's wearing and I'll fetch him along"

"He says he's in one of the public com booths, opposite the duty free shop and he's wearing a gray work suit and carrying a blue bag. He'll clear the privacy screen so you can see him."

About ten meters away there was a collection of privacy booths and the glass front of one suddenly went from an advertising video to full transparency. The middle age fellow inside looked both worried and angry. He was in a gray collarless jump suit with a logo patch on the shoulder and padded areas on the elbows and knees, that meant it was able to double as a suit liner also. He had a buzz cut, showing out from under a flannel helmet cap - your typical working vacuum rat, with no spex, no jewelry and no makeup or tattoos.

April was about to jump over to him, but from the station side two young fellows appeared, moving fast in the zero G, headed straight for the com booth. Such quick action and knowing exactly where to zero in could only mean they had been monitoring his call. They were not in uniform, but had Security written all over them, more by the Lords of Creation attitude they radiated, than the bodybuilder profile.

Not only for caution, but because she wanted to see exactly what they would do, April didn't go straight across, but jumped for the seats that were a sort of waiting area closer to the booth, but still a public area. She darkened her spex to hide her eyes and kept her left side opposite the booth, to hide her pistol with her body. She kept her face looking straight ahead at the chairs.

 One of them looked over his shoulder and surveyed the volume. He dismissed the few folks visible as no hazard, including the young girl headed to the seats and turned back to the booth.

Inside Don slipped a tiny screwdriver out of his breast pocket and did something to the handle on the sliding door. Whatever he did was effective. Although the one young man strained to open the booth, one hand on the door latch and the other hand on the corner of the booth for leverage, nothing budged. The guy had enough size and a beefy look, that it was surprising he didn't bust the handle right off.

The other man pulled out some sort of ID and put it against the glass for Don to see. His other hand was holding a set of cable tie style restraint cuffs. He was somewhat skilled in zero G, although visibly an Earthie and had hooked his toe in the bar that ran along the deck in front of the com booth. April liked what she saw less and less. She softly asked Click through her spex, to request station security to come to where they were quickly.

She would have waited for them to show up, but the one trying to open the door gave that up for a lost cause,  pulled a large automatic style hand gun out of his waist band and rapped hard on the glass a couple times with the butt end of it. The few people in the seats started turning and looking at the pounding sound, to see what was going on. He hadn't pointed the gun yet, but the threat was still clear enough just by displaying it. He was starting to irritate April.

One smart older man at the seats, took his bag and calmly exited the area up corridor, when he saw the gun. April jumped off the back of the seat. Both thugs were still turned back to her and unaware. She rolled over once, drawing her pistol in midair and landed on the back of the one with the ID and cuffs. She clamped her legs around his waist from behind, ripped the spex off his face with her left hand and grabbed a handful of hair which was surprisingly long up on top. He bent forward from the impact, but he had the one hand on the glass already showing his ID and a good anchor on the toe strap, so he recovered and straightened back up.

April shoved the muzzle of her pistol under the fellow’s ear and told him just one word, "Freeze." Feeling something cold and metallic jammed hard in his neck and a hand restraining his head movement, he didn't argue at all. It was surprising how much anger could be conveyed by one simple word like 'freeze'. He clearly heard, "Or I'll be very happy to blow your silly head off," echo under the single word.

The other agent was so shaken by her maneuver, he extended the pistol in his hand toward her face, looking wide eyed over his buddy's shoulder. Unfortunately it was still backwards in his hand and he was pointing the magazine end of the grip at her. She just looked at him with an exasperated expression, while he did a double take at his own weapon. She was almost completely shielded behind his partner anyway. She felt her mount squat just a fraction, not trying to get away from her, but scared of his own partner swinging the gun around on him in a careless panic - even if it was backwards.

The booth door popped open and a big hand grabbed the wrist like a vise and then the other big paw gently removed the reversed pistol from his grasp with great restraint. It would have been only too easy to just pull the trigger, while the idiot held it pointed at himself. In fact, those huge paws looked like he could snap the hand off at the wrist, if the fellow wanted to argue. A metallic ‘snick' announced he had engaged the safety and it was stowed in his suit front with the grips hanging out, still handy.