Ric Locke - Temporary Duty

The Federal Security Administration had an astounding amount of information, some of it quite detailed, about what had gone on aboard Grallt Trade Ship Llapaaloapalla during the last uzul and a half, and had shared it generously with the IRS. It wasn’t sorted worth a damn—that was part of what they wanted him to do—and there were many lacunae, but the data had painted a surprisingly complete picture. Informers, of course, but who?

Jacks. Had to be. Smiling, gregarious Jacks, who was slightly older than was really credible for his rate and rating, and who had established a close relationship with a Grallt. Se’en wasn’t stupid, quite the contrary, but she liked to gossip and didn’t pay attention—and she’d been part of the communications and translation section for most of the voyage, and involved with Peters’s coordination between Traders and humans for the last zul of it. If she’d told Jacks everything she knew or surmised, the pattern of information the Feds had matched what Jacks would have known. The name went on his list. The chances of his getting to act on that list were minimal to nonexistent; he kept it anyway.

At the end of the form-filling and information-sorting his total tax obligation had come to $178,714,231.17; they’d offered to strike the seventeen cents, making it come out in round dollars, but Peters refused out of whimsy. Penalties, interest, and a whopping fine had brought the total as of the arbitrarily selected cutoff date of 1 June 2056 to a trifle under a billion dollars—$982,211,704.84, to be exact. Six and a half percent interest added over five million dollars a month, almost two hundred thousand a day. Five bucks a breath, more or less. The cost of living was outrageous these days. At that point Briggs had entered the picture, and one of the first things the lawyer had accomplished was to get the continuing interest accrual stopped.

The IRS had offered to accept a handwritten order of payment to be delivered to Llapaaloapalla , in ornh at one to the dollar, exactly as he and Todd had predicted. Peters had cheerfully written it out, in English and decimal numbers, and gotten transferred to a high-class prison with windows and grass outside when he handed it over. Two weeks later he’d been brought here and tossed into solitary for ten days. He knew why, too: he could just imagine Prethuvenigis’s face when the paper had crossed his desk.

“I don’t see a check,” he told Briggs. “That’s the only thing I know of that’ll get me out of here.”

The lawyer smiled again, and Peters drew back. He hadn’t realized that a pudgy, blond, balding guy in a sharp suit could look so feral. “Well, not quite the only thing,” Briggs said, his tone tense with an overlay of whimsy.

Peters was trying to formulate an answer when the door behind Briggs opened briskly and Dzheenis strode through, carrying one of the bent-level bür weapons and wearing a bright shield on his left breast. Must have stuck the pin in the pocket slit , Peters thought irrelevantly, as the guards on Briggs’s side brought weapons to bear and the two by him, whom he’d ignored as usual, aimed pistols at his head. The damnedest assortment followed the Grallt: a pair of bür, also with shiny badges; two Marines with M27 sliver guns; a couple of ferassi in Trader 1049 livery, with badges; and Prethuvenigis’s goons, again with shiny shields. There seemed to be more outside, but the room was only so big.

“U. S. Marshals, by direct Presidential appointment,” Dzheenis said, and tapped the badge. “Put down your weapons. You behind the glass, release that man and step aside.” The two guards did no such thing. One of them grabbed Peters’s collar preparatory to dragging him off, and the two bür demonstrated what the armor glass was worth to Maker weapons.

Briggs had ducked below the counter. Peters did the same, wiping his face. Glass cylinders five millimeters in diameter, fifteen centimeters long, and moving at several Mach made for really messy head shots. More guards ran up the corridor from the cell block, and one of the bür methodically picked them off as they rounded the corner. He got three before the rest figured out that that wasn’t the way to do it. Then the world started getting fuzzy and accelerating on odd vectors.

Peters woke strapped to a gurney with an oxygen mask on his face, being carried down a corridor with lots of fresh scars on the walls. It took a bit for him to recognize the man walking alongside, and longer to credit it. “Good, you’re awake,” said Dr. Steward. “I already injected the antagonist, you’ll be fine in a minute.” He brandished a small handweapon, either the one Peters and Todd had taken from the nekrit or one just like it. “Audit this, motherfuckers!” he shouted derisively, and several people cheered.

Being carried up stairs on a stretcher isn’t pleasant, but the two bearers did a good job. After two flights they came out at street level, on a cold, blustery day with mist swirling around. Wherever they were it was the middle of town, concrete and stone and glass in various configurations. “Do you know where you are?” Steward asked. “IRS headquarters in downtown DC. Some changes are being made.” He looked down, and his face changed. “Somebody get this man a couple of blankets,” he snapped in fair Trade. “He doesn’t have a suit.” A blanket arrived immediately, and the doctor looked on benignly as Peters was wrapped. “I work for you now,” he told the bewildered ex-sailor. “My daddy was a science fiction publisher. I always wanted to go to space, so I jumped on Dzheenis’s offer, but I’d have sold my soul for this opportunity.”

“Bonus time,” Peters mumbled weakly, and Steward grinned like a thief.

The bearers popped one set of wheels out on the gurney and set Peters at an angle against a wall so he could see. A bür smallship took up a good part of the street, and two men in sharp suits were maneuvering a ladder into place. A third man, also nicely dressed, climbed the ladder and reached behind to help a woman. Hatches popped, and Marines, bür, and more Secret Service people climbed out in no discernible order, to take up suspicious watches all around. The well-dressed man held up a bullhorn and said into it, “I’m Gene Hansen.” The crowd didn’t go wild, but there were cheers, along with enough weapons held aloft to give the most militant pause.

When relative quiet was restored Hansen continued: “Pursuant to Executive Order nine-oh-one-three, which I just signed an hour ago, no employee or contractor of the Internal Revenue Service is authorized to carry a weapon as defined in the Peaceful Streets Act of 2017.” Nail files and up, that meant. “If you are an IRS employee and are carrying a weapon, go immediately to the nearest U.S. Marine and surrender it. If you aren’t sure of the definition, be conservative. Carrying a weapon in violation of this order is a felony, and peace officers are authorized to shoot to kill if such a violation is detected.”

Another cheer, followed by stirs and eddies in the crowd accompanied by a few clinks and clanks. “The rest of it is too complicated to go into here,” Hansen continued, “but the end of it is, you tax collectors work for the people of America, not the other way around, and if I have to call in help from the farthest star to insure that, well, I’m just grateful that such friends exist.” More cheers went up.

“Dr. Steward, may I borrow that handweapon?” Peters asked calmly. The President was still talking, but Peters was sure he’d seen the fellow in the blue anorak before.

“Certainly. It’s yours anyway. Let me loosen the straps so you can get your arm out.” Steward suited action to the words, leaning across Peters to do so.