Tales From the Maid Wars Episode Three:
The Continuing Search

“We’re almost here…” Morris said, as he turned the ground car off the main road onto a side street. “Just another block or two.”

Helen nodded, looking up from her data pad and the report she’d been reading. The MASA intelligence officer glanced out of the cars windows. They were driving down a pleasant looking, suburban neighborhood; upper-middle class homes, doctors, lawyers, mid-level government officials and other business professionals, only a few miles outside the planet capital, a short commute by ground or air car.  

The houses, built of synthetic wood, in a light, airy style that befitted the tropical climate, were spaced out, with large, well-tended yards. More than a few had private gates, either of stone or wrought iron, to keep the outside world at bay. Others were open and inviting, with large front porches that seemed to welcome visitors.

Helen didn’t see many people out and about, a few older men and women sitting on the front porches, sunning themselves, a number of gardeners, tending to the pristine lawns and gardens. It was still early in Koat IV’s day cycle, most people were out working; the children were at school. Well, almost all of them…

“Should be just up here.” The security officer said.

With a sigh, Helen shut off her data pad and slid it into her bag, with a soft sigh. The latest report from the Koat Chief of Security, a large, humorless veteran of police bureaucracy of fifteen years named Jürgen Werner, written in a dense, plodding tone that seemed to suck the life out of the reader, was just as unpromising as all the others Helen had struggled through since her assignment to this case.

In the three days since Helen’s arrival on-world, the Koat Security Force had been turning the planet inside and out, looking for any trace of the Robolord’s assassins, without much luck. With few leads to go on, Chief Werner had settled on a policy of brute force. Every informant had been pumped for information about the attack, every known criminal hideout had been raided by security forces, every lowlife and hoodlum on the planet was hauled in for questioning.

The assassins, even if they were from off-world, must have had some contacts on Koat IV, some way of getting weapons and explosives smuggled down to the planet, and some plan of getting off-world after words, with the main spaceports under lockdown and all passengers thoroughly checked. Someone must have seen them, talked with them, taken their money… If Security could find them, apply the right leverage, get them to talk; they would find their assassins.

It was like trying to sort through a hay stack one straw at a time. Sooner or later you’d find your needle, yes, but in the meantime, it would take far longer and far more effort than it was probably worth in the end. On the other hand, Helen hadn’t thought up any better ideas. And one happy side effect of this shakedown, many of the suspects swept up in the search for the assassins were guilty of other crimes, more than a few long known centers for criminal activity had been shut down. Even if the assassins were never found, Koat IV would be a much safer place in the near future.

For the moment, Helen was content to stand back and let the local forces handle the search. They knew this planet better than she did, they knew who look for, who to ignore, who to cut a deal with and who to haul in for questioning. If, by some miracle, they found a credible lead, she could step in. In the meantime, Helen was pursuing her own angle of investigation.

“We’re here.” Morris announced, parking the car in front of one of the houses. Helen unbuckled her harness and got out. This was one of the addresses Miss Lawrence, the sole remaining teacher from St. Joane’s Girls Academy, had given Helen. It was the home of one of the students who had been left behind the night eighteen students and six teachers had disappeared without a trace. Before the police could finish their investigation, they had been pulled off the case for the search for the Robolord’s killers. In the meantime, all the remaining students had been split up and sent home.

Helen, assisted by Morris, had been trying to meet with the girls, to see if they had noticed anything that night which might shed some light on the fate of their teachers and classmates. So far, her efforts had been about as successful as the local security forces. Many of the girls were still too upset by the disappearances of their friends and classmates. Interviewing them about it would only risk traumatizing them further. A number of parents had declined to let Helen meet with their daughters.

And finally, of those Helen did meet with and question, none of them, so far, had been able to recall anything odd that night. Most reported sleeping soundly through the night, only discovering the next morning that the entire upper class and all of their teachers had vanished without a trace. Helen had been wracking her brain trying to figure out this mystery. Could they have been drugged somehow? A gas, perhaps? Unlikely, no trace of any chemical agents had been found in the dormitories. A medical team had examined the remaining students and they had all checked out as completely healthy. But what then?

Lost in thought, Helen walked up a stone pathway across the front yard to the door of the house. She rang the doorbell and waited. A moment later, it was opened by a woman who looked a few years younger than Helen, though exact age could be hard to guess from appearance in an era of cosmetic gene-treatments. She was dressed in a plain blue dress. Her light brown hair was pulled back in a bun. She had a pair of spectacles on; purely decorative, poor vision had gone the way of smallpox and polio decades ago, another thing to thank the Benefactors for...

“Hello, you must be Officer Pierce, right?” she asked in a soft voice.

Helen nodded. “And I take it you are Mrs. Fuller? I spoke with your husband over the video phone a few days ago.” She replied.

Mrs. Fuller nodded. “Please come in.” she said, stepped back and waving Helen inside. The home was decorated in a simple, but tasteful style. Hanging on the walls were several framed pictures. A number of them were landscapes. She recognized a few well known ones of Old Earth and Mars and some she guessed were local. Mixed here and there were pictures of people, Mr. and Mrs. Fuller and others she took for friends and relatives.

“Suzette is in here…” Mrs. Fuller said, leading Helen past a living room and what appeared to be a home office. The room she stopped at was a child’s bedroom. Sitting on the bed was a young girl who was a younger version of her mother. Her light brown hair was braided in pigtails. She was barefoot, wearing a light blue t-shirt and white shorts. As Helen stepped into the room, she saw the girl, Suzette, was playing with a small, brown teddy bear.

“Hello, Suzette…” Helen said, quietly, sitting down on the bed beside the younger girl. “My name is Helen Pierce. Who is this?” She pointed to the bear in the girl’s hands.

“This is Mr. Puddington.” Suzette said, holding up the small plush toy. “He’s my special friend. The robots gave him to me.”

“We went to the big celebration, last year, when the Benefactors officially opened their facility on Koat.” Mrs. Fuller explained. “They were giving away these toy bears as prizes to the children.” Helen nodded. She’d seen the bot’s handing out similar teddy bears at public appearances before. It seemed odd to Helen that the machines were fond of small plush toys shaped like an old Earth animal, but she guessed the smile on a young girl’s face when one of the Benefactors handed her the cute little bear made for good PR.

“Suzette…” Helen continued, “I’m an officer in MASA intelligence. Do you know what that means?”

The young girl looked up at Helen. “You fly around and zap all the bad guys, right?”

“Er…yes, that’s right.” Helen replied, wondering what children’s cartoon she’d watched to get that idea of what a MASA officer did.

“Are you going to zap the bad men who took all of my friends?” Suzette said softly.

“Yes, Suzette…” Helen said, as reassuringly as she could. “I’m going to find your friends and make whoever took them pay. But I need you to help me. Can you do that Suzette?” After a moment, the little girl nodded. Helen pulled out her data pad. “Now, can you remember anything odd the night of the disappearances? Anything at all?”

Suzette turned, lowering her head, not wanting to think about that night. She hugged her bear close to her chest.

“Please, Suzette. I know this must be difficult for you, but I need your help. Think carefully. Is there anything you can remember? Anything at all?”

The girl was quiet for a moment. After a minute or two, she spoke up, so quiet at first Helen almost didn’t realize she was speaking. “Well…” she said, hesitantly. “I remember I got up in the night. I needed to use the bathroom, so I got out of bed and went down to the end of the hallway. I was walking back to my room, when I saw someone else coming up the hallway.”

“Who was it?” Helen asked, looking up from the notes she was taking. “Did you see who they were?”

The young girl nodded. “When I got closer, I saw that it was Meredith.” Helen immediately recognized the name as one of the missing students. “She was walking down the hallway, but she looked…odd.”

“Odd? How so?”

Suzette thought for a moment. “She was acting very strange. It was like she sleepwalking, or something, only her eyes were open and she had a smile on her face. I saw her head to the stairs and go down. We’re not allowed out of our rooms at night, except to use the bathroom, so I went back to my bed and went to sleep.” She was quiet for a long moment. “Then, the next morning, when I got up, I found out Meredith and the other girls were gone.”

Helen asked a few more questions, but Suzette didn’t know anything else about the abductions. “Thank you for helping me, Suzette.” Helen said, putting her data pad in her bag. Reaching deeper in, she pulled out a large bar of chocolate. “I know it was very hard for you to remember what happened. You were very brave and brave girls deserve chocolate.” Suzette’s eyes widened in gleeful surprise when she saw the candy. Helen smiled. “That is, if it’s okay with your mom.”

Mrs. Fuller shrugged. “After dinner…or you’ll spoil you appetite.”

Happily, the young girl grabbed the candy bar from Helen. Smiling, Helen stood up. “Don’t worry, Suzette. I’m going to do everything I can to find your classmates.” She let Mrs. Fuller lead her back to the front door. After saying her goodbyes, Helen returned to the patrol car, where Morris was waiting.

On the trip back into town, Helen reviewed her notes of her interviews with all of the students so far. Suzette’s story matched up with the others and with the initial investigation of the school grounds. There was no sign of any forced entry. None of the doors or windows had been forced open, though several doors that were normally locked had been unlocked…from the inside. Despite an extensive forensic sweep of the dormitories and grounds, the only fingerprints and DNA traces found were those of the faculty and students. Save for the landing site Helen had found there was no other evidence anyone had set foot on the grounds at all that night.

It almost seemed as if the 24 missing women had, for whatever reason, all gotten up in the middle of the night, ‘like they were sleepwalking’ as Suzette had said, and walked out onto the grounds, to the mystery craft and boarded it, without struggle or coercion of any kind. “If this was some B-movie, I’d be tempted to suspect mind control rays from space…” Helen thought with a smirk.

Humanity had been working on creating a form of practical mind control for centuries. As a high-level MASA intelligence officer, Helen was aware of her own agencies experiments in the field, but even those methods were complex, unreliable and required a very direct application of massive, laboratory equipment. A far cry from a sort of ‘ray’ one could turn on and immediately cause 24 women to all, suddenly, hope out of bed and rush out to be kidnapped. It would require a level of technology far beyond that humanity had achieved.

Just like our impossible, invisible VTO landing craft? A voice in Helen’s mind spoke up. She frowned. Mulling it over. If one, why not the other, right? But this was on a level far, far greater than a mysterious silent landing craft. “And we know who would have the kind of tech necessary.” The insistent voice added. Helen shook her head. What reason would the Benefactors have, either for providing their technology to a group of kidnappers, or worse, carrying out the abductions themselves? It didn’t make any sense…

“Back to the hotel, Miss Pierce?” Morris asked, interrupting her thoughts.

Helen shook her head, more than a little relieved for the distraction. “No, I want to stop at Security Headquarters first, check up on how the main investigations are going.” Judging from Morris dismissive snort, he obviously had about as much faith in that as Helen did. “I also need to report my own findings.”

He nodded. “Right.” The main headquarters for Koat security in Rajani was bustling with activity when Morris and Helen arrived. Morris parked the patrol car just in time to see a security wagon pull up in front of them. As Helen got out, a number of burly security officers opened the back door. From inside spilled out what must have been at least two dozen young women. Their hair styles were dyed to every hue of the rainbow and the girls’ tight outfits left little, or in some cases; nothing, to the imagination.

All of them had their hands cuffed behind their backs and their feet fitted with leg irons. They hobbled along, tottering on platform heels as the security officers hustled them inside. The girls struggled, howling abuse at the officers and squealing in outrage whenever one of the men let his hands get a little too friendly.

“We hit one of the major Syndicate Brothels downtown.” One of the officers told Helen as she walked up to the door, keeping her distance from the mob of shackled joy girls. “Nabbed these girls, their handlers…” he grinned, “…a couple government officials; even two members of the Planet Legislature, if I heard correctly. Chief’ll probably keep them a day or two, sweat ‘em until he can get a couple to agree to testify against their bosses in the syndicate, put one or two of the big dogs away for a couple decades behind bars.”                    

“Good job.” Helen replied. She ducked inside. The situation inside was just as chaotic and noisy as outside. Chief Werner had made good on his threat to bring in every lowlife on the planet until one of them coughed up the identity of the assassins. Everywhere Helen looked, Security officers were dragging cuffed suspects from cell to interrogation room or back again. Some of them went quietly, used to being dragged in for questions. Others were less so; struggling every step of the way and heaping abuse on the officers around them.

Helen, standing out from the crowd in her MASA uniform, attracted more than a good bit of attention from the crooks. “Imperialist bitch!” the man shouted, trying to spit at Helen, but she stepped back quickly, dodging it. “Corporate lapdo-ooOOWW!!!” he cried out sharply as the officer manhandling rapped the crook sharply across the shoulder with his riot baton.

Luckily, Helen managed to make it to the elevators without any worse incidents. The upper floors were quieter, with men and women quietly hustling about, struggling to deal with the flood of paperwork the efforts of their coworkers downstairs was generating.

Chief Werner had set aside a small office for Helen to use for the duration of her assignment here. She was about halfway there when a junior officer approached her. Her light blue uniform was a crisp and neat as a recruitment poster and her reddish-brown hair was cut to regulation length. “Lieutenant Pierce?” she asked, snapping off a parade ground salute. When Helen returned it, the younger woman held up a sealed envelope. “We received a message from MASA intelligence, addressed to you, by currier shuttle a short while ago.”  

“Thank you… Officer Brown.” Helen replied dredging up the younger woman’s name, from her memory, before taking the envelope from the security officer. The younger woman smiled with joy at being recognized, snapped off another precise salute, spun on her heels and hurried back to her desk, as if on inspection.

Helen shrugged, with a sigh, watching her go. Some planetary security officers had no love for MASA personnel, seeing them as overbearing off-worlders, sticking their noses everywhere and blundering things. Others seemed to worship the ground MASA officers walked upon and tried their best to impress what they saw as the professionals, no doubt hoping good service might be their ticket out of the dull, backwater planet they found themselves stuck on and on their way to better things. Officer Amanda Brown was in the latter category, and seemed to take every chance she got to interact with Helen.

A moment later, Helen found her office and shut the door, locking it. Opening the envelope, she pulled out a small data pad. The pad had a built in thumb-scanner. As the message was addressed to Helen, hers was the only print which could unlock it. If anyone else tried, the message would be scrubbed from the pads memory, which would then, shortly, self-destruct.

The pad beeped, accepting Helen’s identity. The screen lit up and Helen saw the face of her commanding officer, Admiral Rolland looking up at her. He did not look happy. “I have been following your reports, Lieutenant Pierce.” He said. “I am not pleased with the lack of progress thus far. Do what you can to speed things up.” He paused for a moment, glancing at his notes.

One of the problems of interstellar travel was that communications could only travel as quickly as the fastest starship. In this case, a MASA navy courier boat, little more than a set of massive engines with enough space and life support for a handful of crew and room for dispatch messages, could travel the distance between Koat IV and the naval base on Kieto in roughly eight hours, real time, a third the time it took for most civilian craft. In this case, Rolland was responding to the last set of reports Helen had sent back detailing her efforts over the last few days.

Admiral Rolland spoke again. “I am also not happy to hear that you have been wasting your time sticking your nose into local police matters. Forget about this case with the school. As sad as it is, MASA intelligence does not have jurisdiction to be making inquiries into this case. Besides, your sole purpose on Koat is to aid the local security forces in finding and capturing the assassins, nothing else. I trust I have made myself clear, and I do not want to hear about this again. That is all. Rolland Out.” With that, the screen went dead.

Helen sat back in her chair. A heavy sigh escaped her lips. The young woman was sure the abductions were key to this case; she felt it in her gut. And now, Rolland had all but given her a direct order to stop any investigation along that line.

“Unless…” Helen grinned. Sometimes, the communications delay could be a good thing… Going by protocol, Helen didn’t have to report back in for another three days. If, during that time, she could crack this case and find concrete evidence of those behind the abductions… MASA’s high command was aware the limitations of interstellar communications put on the ability of commanders to manage their subordinates. Sometimes, the junior officer on the spot saw things more clearly than her command, a dozen light years away. If she could deliver on it, any insubordination would be forgiven. If she couldn’t… Helen didn’t want to think about that, but if risking her career would mean a chance of rescuing over a dozen innocent girls…she would take that bet in a heartbeat.

When Helen went back downstairs, she saw Morris, with some other officers, struggling to control a knot of Syndicate enforcers who had emphatically decided against cooperating with security forces. She headed out the front doors and walked to a public transport terminal. The Hotel Imperial wasn’t far from Security Headquarters, a massive structure, rising gracefully towards the sky with clean lines of steel and glass.

The hotel staff was used to dealing with MASA personnel. Koat IV was a popular destination for off-duty navy men and women to take leave: located a day away from the major military bases on Kieto. Already staying at the hotel was a Vice Admiral, a couple captains and a major in the marines, not to mention plenty of junior officers, who jostled with the hotel staff in looking after their illustrious charges.

Helen grabbed her cardkey from the front desk and found a free lift. Lost in thought, she walked down the hallway, glancing at the small brass plates on the doors until she found her room. Slipping the card key inside, she opened the door and stepped into the dark room.

The door close silently behind Helen on oiled hinges. Suddenly, the young woman felt herself being grabbed. A gloved hand clamped tight over Helen’s mouth, just before she could order the lights on, cutting her off. Another arm wrapped around Helen’s chest, pinning her arms to her sides. Helen struggled to raise her arm, her pistol already in hand, but a second attacker stepped forward and wrenched the gun away.

Helen squirmed, trying to gain some leverage on her attackers to throw her off, but before she could, the second, unseen attacker stepped forward and suddenly pressed a thick, padded cloth over the MASA officer’s face. Helen’s nostrils prickled as they detected a sharp chemical smell. Realizing they intended to drug her, she held her breath, but her struggles worked against her, quickly burning through the oxygen in her lungs. Before long they began to burn for air.

Finally, she couldn’t hold out any longer. With a groan, muffled slightly by the cloth pressed over her face, Helen breathed in, inhaling the drugged fumes. Almost immediately, the young woman began to feel lightheaded. Her struggles grew weaker, as all the strength left her body. Before long, Helen slumped down in her captor’s arms, slipping into the inky blackness of unconsciousness…