Chapter 33 The bleeding Cube—Daniel
Victoria came forty minutes late. Hundreds of ships came through the Cube everyday to get approval for their transports. And instead of doing anything useful, I had spent those forty minutes watching cargo rails move beneath the boardroom windows. By the time she walked in, she had already cost me money, again.
She came in with two aides behind her walking like it was a show, opening her hands widely with her fake smile, without apologizing for the time. Her aides arranged documents in front of her while she kept her smile and eyes on me. I sneered, watching her through the window reflection.
"The stabilizer proposal," she said, "needs to be on the floor before the situation with Garron compounds further."
"It's already on the fuckin floor."
"It needs your support on the floor, Daniel."
I turned around. Her white hair was pinned back, her dress seemed untouched by the long day and her hands were on her waist. Victoria always looked like she was posing for a portrait. It disgusted me.
"Grandisfield's stabilizers would regulate gravity output across the lower districts," she continued. "Consistent gravity means consistent living conditions, and consistent conditions mean—"
"Less rioting. Yea, I know."
"Then you understand the problem."
"What I understand is it being a fuckin waste of money and it benefits Lunars who don't contribute to the revenue that would pay for it." I walked to my chair and sat down. "So no."
Victoria looked at me with the expression she used when she was deciding how much patience she still had left.
"The riots in the lower sectors are not random," she said. "They are a response to sustained pressure. You cannot continuously take from people and expect stability forever."
"Ya?" I leaned back. "Worked pretty well so far."
She closed her eyes for a moment before opening them very slowly.
"It worked until it didn't. That's the entire history of every collapsed empire, Daniel. It works until one morning it doesn't, and by then it's too late to install stabilizers."
"If the lower sectors collapse, we rebuild them cheaper. Less Lunars to feed! Sounds perfect to me. Ha!" I picked up my vodka and drank it. "Grandisfield had ideals. That's why he's dead."
"Yet his ideas are alive, and we'll use them to our benefit. To give them enough stability to stop tearing the sector apart. Not higher gravity, but at least a stable one, and we can cut out on electricity and spend it on the temperature they desperately want back."
She gathered her documents and stacked them without being obvious about it. That was her tell. She was done yapping.
"Another matter," she said. "Remember Dravenor? He will join us today with my invitation."
"I'm not letting him in. Why would he fuckin come anyway." I said, rolling up my sleeves.
"He is coming. And he wants to see the new boss in charge of this majestic Cube."
"He should already know."
Victoria turned slowly. Her aides stepped aside a half second after her.
She paused before turning toward the door. Her eyes moved across my desk, across the vodka.
"Get some rest, Daniel," she said.
She walked towards the door. It began to close behind her. She stopped halfway. “The Moon's weight is in your head.” She exited.
“Don't expect me to arrive for your tea party!” I yelled.
The shipping sectors were three levels below the administrative floors and the noise hit before the elevator finished opening. Magnetic cranes moved overhead, repositioning freight containers with a mechanical grinding that you felt in your back teeth. Workers in vac suits moved between the rail lines on the lower platforms. Welding light flashed blue-white near the far docking ring. The whole station smelled like scorched metal and recycled air.
I walked to the upper platform with two of my security and found Kallen near the primary cargo intake. He was watching a crane lower a copper container onto the secondary rail without looking at his tablet. His security stood four paces back. He was older than I expected. Maybe fifty. Tall, and bald. His head had a few tattoos covering the sides.
He turned before my security announced me.
"Senator Halverson." He extended his hand firmly.
"Kallen." I shook it. "Seems you're doin fine here.."
"Ay sir," he said. "I've been watching the intake sequence. You're losing about nine percent in transfers. The rails are off. The containers bounce on the secondary connection."
I looked at the crane.
"My logistics team says seven percent," I said.
"Your logistics team is measuring the wrong transfer point." He said without an attitude.
I grinned looking above.
We walked the upper platform while the sector ran below us. I let him talk first. He knew the belt supply lines in a way that amazed even me. He wasn't reciting briefings. It was clear he had been out there.
After a while I stopped near the freight window overlooking the outer docking ring.
"Copper's a pain in the ass," I said. "Everyone watches it."
Kallen glanced toward the rails outside.
"Gold's cleaner. Earth tech is even easier. Cargo gets delivered before the paperwork catches up half the time. Easy money. Ha!”
"Unrecorded," Kallen said.
"Completely." I observed him. "I reroute during that window. Before taxes and shit. Before admin logging. The operation has been running for a while without a flag."
Kallen was quiet for a moment.
"And if someone notices?" he said.
"Then bang." I opened my eyes widely at the docking ring. "I'm offering you the outer belt side of it. You control the supply timing as you are doing. The split is eighty-five me, fifteen you, because the risk on my end is higher."
He nodded slowly.
"I'll want to see the registry window process myself before I agree," he said.
"That's reasonable."
We kept walking.
The first thing that felt wrong was Docking Bay Eleven going silent. One of the cargo ships landed and never confirmed arrival. My logistics coordinator checked the system twice.
"Nothing," he muttered.
Then another ship disappeared from the board entirely. I grabbed the traffic controls myself.
"Where's the confirmation on the Outer Belt carrier?"
The controller was young. She looked at her screen, then back at me.
"It's not responding to hails," she said.
"Explain."
"I've sent four hails. No response." She paused. "It's still on approach. No adjustment."
"Force it to fuckin adjust."
"Yes sir. I'll do all I can."
I looked at Kallen. He was locked on the window.
The comms board crackled. Static. Then silence.
"Give me visuals," I said.
The wall screen switched to the outer docking ring.
The carrier filled the frame. Coming in without stopping.
“Shoot it—NOW!”
It was too late. The ship collided with the Cube. The impact hit first. The sound came after, deep and slow, running through the floor.
The deck shifted under us.
The Cube shook. People fell. I grabbed the desk rail. Emergency bulkheads slammed shut across the sector entrance with a pressure that shook dust from the ceiling panels.
Kallen was on his feet. A hissing sound started from somewhere below the platform. High and constant, so I got to the window. Outside, the freight ring on the Cube's external docking spine had collapsed across a forty-meter section. Copper containers tumbled slowly away from the breach, rotating in the vacuum with their locking seals blown open. The carrier was embedded in the rail structure, its forward section crushed inward, its engine housing still burning in the oxygen venting from the hull breach. White atmosphere smoke poured from the gap in a thin continuous stream and spread immediately into nothing. Debris rotated quietly through the space outside.
Workers were screaming on the lower platform. Emergency lighting kicked on across the sector in deep red strips.
My security commander reached me through the bulkhead door still sealing behind him. He was holding his helmet under one arm. There was glass on his shoulders.
"Pirate vessel," he said. "The transponder was disabled. Engines were locked forward. No survivors."
I watched the window again.
"They sent a transmission before the collision," he yelled over the noise.
I turned around. "What transmission?"
"A warning." He looked at his tablet briefly. "If the Cube interferes with the pirates again, the next strike won't target cargo."
Alarms were all going off, pressure warnings, workers, the ongoing structural groaning of the damaged outer ring. All of it at once.
I looked back through the shattered glass.
Someone ran towards me. “Sir!” He yelled over the noise. “We lost three other ships. Cargo is destroyed.”
The debris field turned slowly in the space beyond the hull. Emergency lights from the Cube's exterior ran red and white across the damaged section. Pieces of rocks and metal drifted away toward the dark in every direction.