Chapter 11: Reporting for Duty

The tubes open up every ten and twenty feet to access tunnels and maintenance spaces that all look the same. The only variation is the section numbers on the walls and the occasional street location markers to let you know where in the city you were under. It took us nearly an hour, but we got to where I wanted to go. The access tunnel under the area known as the ‘Gold Section”. We climbed out of the transport capsule, and each took a moment to stretch after the confinement.

“Now what?” Kayla asked as she pushed her three-foot ponytail back down into the coveralls.

“Follow me,” I said as I led the two of them down a small and dirty hallway to a door. I put my thumb on the pad, and it opened for me. “This is the section I’ve been assigned to for the past week. They’ve got these little offices all over the place so that techs can be on sight quickly to fix anything in their assigned area,” I explained as the light came on in the little five-foot square office that was nothing more than a table, chair and computer interface. “I’m told that when they first laid out and built the city, they had two techs for every section. Since then they’ve cut their budget back so much there is only one technician for every five sections. Most days I never see a soul.”

“Where are we in relation to the city?” Mitchell asked.

“Right under the Star Cruise Line Station,” I said as I directed Kayla to the chair and indicated that I wanted her to sit. I then put in my access code to turn the computer on. “Can you scramble the signal so they can’t trace the log in?”

Kayla smiled and went to work. I looked up at Mitchell and said, “Kayla has a particular talent for computer systems, or at least how to get them to do things they were not intended to do.”

“Like what,” Captain Mitchell asked.

Kayla smiled with a little pride as she typed. “Oh, nothing major. Moving around some credits from one account to another to pay for a meal or shift someone's authorization code around to get an upgrade from a third-class seat to a second class.”

“Why not first class?” Mitchell asked.

“People like me stick out in first class,” Kayla answered, a little vinegar in her voice. “There, now if anyone tries to find you through your access code they’ll think you’re on the other side of town.”

“Good,” I said leaning back over her to look at the small screen. “Now we want to hack into the main database for the cruise line.”

“No problem,” she said, doing a search and then working to bypass their firewalls.

“What’s your plan, Lieutenant,” Mitchell said using my former rank emphasizing that she wanted more direct communication from me.

This is the main hub for this particular cruise line. They have over a dozen ships, and there is a departure almost daily. When the ships come in, there are always some members of the crew that leave the ship and are replaced by a rotating roster of employees that call this planet their home base. All we have to do is find the next ship that’s departing, what jobs need to be filled, create employee files for the three of us and slot them into the opening.”

“And show up on the gangplank right from the sewers,” She said, pointing out that not only was our attire off but so was the odor that we had acquired.

I rubbed the back of my neck that was sweaty and grimy. “Yeah, well we are going to have to acquire some items in a less than legal way. The next departure won't be for a day or two, so we can wait until after dark and break into a couple of places to get what we need.”

“Just like that. Break into a few places and take what we need?” she said, clearly uncomfortable with stealing more than a few city coveralls.

“The people who are trying to kill us will find us the moment we try to pay for anything. You have a better idea?”

“No,” she said. “I hate this cloak and dagger stuff. When I signed onto the JAG office, I thought I would be doing basic investigations, transit theft, domestic abuse, maybe a gambling ring. I had no idea I would be doing anything like this.”

“Well, this isn’t my idea of fun either,” I said, realizing the past few weeks of boring tech work wasn’t so bad after all.

“Got it,”Kayla said. “The Shrelonca Empress is leaving for a three-month cruise to Epsilon the day after tomorrow at noon. They still have five open slots that have not been claimed by their standby crewmembers.”

Mitchell looked at the info on the screen. “Starbase 103 is about halfway between here and Epsilon. If we lay low for a few weeks, I can then transmit a message to their command and ask for a military ship to retrieve us.”

“An armed military ship,” I added, referring to the last one we were on.

“Right,” she said.

“Okay, looks like we have a plan.

~~~

Later that night we used the access tunnels to come up to the street level in a back alley of a luxury shopping complex. Most basic items can be purchased on the net and delivered, but for those who are too poor to have a residence or net access there are still places to shop in person, and for those who are very rich there are specialty shopping complexes where you can be catered on as if you’re royal. With Kayla’s skills, we disabled the security systems and had the run of the place. We started with one suitcase each. Then we found a collection of clothes that look fairly average, but cost more than I could make in a year. The complex had a few restaurants where we could get food, but we couldn’t cook anything because the heat and smell might attract attention. Yet what we found in their storage servers was more than enough. We were also careful to leave no trace of our crimes with the hope they wouldn’t notice the missing items until they ran an inventory sweep, because it would be better not to have the local cops notified until we were long gone.

My little office in the maintenance tunnels wasn’t the best place to wait out the two days. We used it as a place to hide our things and when we needed computer network access, but with other techs who worked other shifts someone would eventually come through that area and with no back door to duck out, we had to find other places. A block down was a 4D cinema that showed movies all night. A lot of people liked to walk around and immerse themselves in the visual surround experience, but others like to sit in a chair at the observation level. We sat in the chairs and took turns sleeping. One of us would stay awake and nudge the others if an usher or manager came in during the movie because they would kick us out if we were caught sleeping. When a film ended, we would get up and move to another showing.None of us could sleep for the first couple of shows with our systems full of adrenaline and our nerves on end, but by the third show, Kayla was asleep with her head on my left arm and Mitchell on my right with her arms crossed and her chin on her chest. I was ready to catch a few winks myself, but I kept myself alert by trying to engross myself in the weak plot and superficial movie obviously written for a younger audience. I don’t know when I nodded off, but suddenly I forced my eyes open when I felt something on my right arm. It was Mitchell. In her slumber, she shifted herself and laid her head on my shoulder and ran her hand under my arm as if she was cuddling a pillow. I slowly shifted my own position to get comfortable, but not too much as I didn’t want to wake either of them. I looked over at the Captain who in her relaxed state appeared much softer and vulnerable than I had seen her before. She mumbled and even giggled in her sleep, which was much more girlish than she would ever let on when awake. It occurred to me that I didn’t know her first name. That suddenly felt odd in this rather intimate setting. Yet, it really wasn’t. We were on the run for our lives and the moment was a situation out of necessity. So I turned my attention back to the show and counted the minutes until I could have a turn to close my eyes for a while.

By the next day, we had everything set up, fake employee files, job assignments and even fake accounts to have our paychecks deposited into. All we were lacking was uniforms. That wasn’t something we could just steel. The cruise line required a custom fit. Their corporate office four miles north of the port was where we had to go to be scanned and issued our work attire. Because that information would be put in a database, along with a medical scan for new employees taken at the same time, we waited until just an hour before departure. If we were going to be caught, it was going to be when our DNA was put into the database. Everything went smoothly, we were each issued two white uniforms with gold trim and two blue uniforms with silver trim lines. The only difference was mine had slacks, and the girls had skirts. As we were about to report in we each kept one on. We charged them to our fake accounts, which really wasn’t stealing as for the next few weeks we would actually be earning the money that would be going into them. I thought we were in the clear when we started to walk out.

“Excuse me, Sir,” The sales manager said and put himself between us and the door. “You can’t leave.”

My heart nearly stopped, but I did my best to stay cool and asked, “Why?”

“Didn’t you get the schedule? The color of the day is white. You’ll have to change before you report in.” I looked down at the blue uniform I was wearing. “Right. Thanks,” The girls were in white, so I was the only one who was holding us up. I ducked back into the back, changed as quickly as I could, which wasn’t easy considering the twelve brass buttons on the jacket and the five buttons on the pants. And to think I use to complain about my dress grays.

On the way out of the building, we had forty minutes to get four miles to the ship. At that point we had no choice. We had to take a cab which required using a credit account. Kayla suggested stealing one from an unexpecting person who left their purse unattended at a café’ table, but if it got reported as ripped off before we got to our destination, we would have a dozen cops on us in a flash. Using our own accounts to pay for a cab would leave a trail for the assassins to follow, but since we weren’t actually wanted by the real authorities, it would take those hunting us time to respond.

We got to the gate for the crew entrance to the port with only a few minutes to spare. As soon as we were aboard the ship, the chief porter confirmed our ID’s with a palm scan, handed us our company data pads with all the information we would need and directed us to stow our belongings in our quarters and report to our assigned supervisors in fifteen minutes. With each of us working very different jobs, our quarters were in different sections on the lower decks. Captain Mitchell took the job as an Assistant Entertainment Director, Kayla took the Sr. Lifeguard job even though she had never swum a day in her life and I was left with a Bartender level two, which would have been a problem since I never drank anything more elaborate than a beer, but the drink dispenser for most of the bars on the ship did all the work. All I had to do was enter the drink order and hand it off to the guest.

What we didn’t know was that Dan, the corporal who turned trader, had convinced his bosses at the JAG office that I had killed Captain Mitchell and was trying to escape the planet. By turning Kayla and me into fugitives, he was able to use the full resources of the military investigations office to hunt for us. So when we were scanned for our uniforms, and our DNA was put into the employee database, Dan got an alert. He grabbed a couple of MPs and headed out to the port with sirens blaring and lights flashing. I was on the observation deck getting acquainted with the bar set up when I saw the flashing lights through the transparent dome encloser that covered the top half of the ship. Sitting on the ground, the cruise ship is about twenty stories tall, and I had a very good view of the approaching trouble.

“You getting this,” Kirk, my new supervisor said as he was trying to explain to me how to do my job.

“Yes, Sir,” I said as I tried to make it look like I wasn’t watching the commotion from the corner of my eye.

“Again, don’t call me Sir. It puts the guest off. We are a first name only crew, except for the Captain and First Officer.”

“Sorry, Kirk,” I said as I watched Dan and the two MP’s jump out of their military hover-car and run up the gangplank to the neighboring ship. “It worked,” I muttered to myself. Mitchell had the idea of having Kayla hack into the cruise line's database while we kept the staff at the uniform store busy. She swapped our DNA scans with three new employees on the other cruise liner that was scheduled to leave the following day. At about the same moment I felt a shudder under my feet followed by an announcement over the PA. “Attention Ladies and Gentlemen. We will now be starting our ascent into orbit. To ensure the safety of all of our guests and crew, you are welcome to watch our rise into the heavens from assigned observations points only. Thank you.”

“Okay,” Kirk said as he grabbed a rag to wipe down the polished wood bar. “We’re going to have about two hundred people on this deck in about five minutes. You have any questions?”

“No, S... I mean Kirk, I believe I’ve got a good handle on it,” I replied with a big grin. He walked away, and I pulled out my personal palm computer. I had it linked to Mitchells with encryption so the wireless signal wouldn’t be identified by anyone. A very common practice so the signal itself wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. I sent a quick text message of what I just saw and then put the device back in my pocket just as the first customer walked up to my bar.