The Tartarus Directive

Chapter 2

Griff's quarters were on B level. Most "civil service" workers--what they called those who did not have a corporate job--lived on this level. B-level accommodations were what one might call second-class on a conventional seagoing passenger vessel. It would be a mistake, however, to think that the differences between A, B, and C through E were minimal.

Quarters on C level and below (save those reserved for hydroponics scientists on E level) could not even be described as steerage. They matched in both quality and density the tenements of Nineteenth-century New York far more than an idealized space-age communal living space. A-level quarters, however, were sleeker and more stylish than any utopian--or perhaps dystopian--novelist with a good sense of ironic humor could ever dream up. Those on B level experienced a degree of privacy and breathing room that was undoubtedly the envy of the lowest classes, but which those on A level derided for being extravagant given B level residents' "contributions." On the Atlas II, as on Earth, those who bore the greatest burden of labor reaped the least of that labor's fruits.

Griff entered his quarters and locked the door behind him. He removed his coat and hung it on the back of the door. Apart from sleeping or changing clothes (of which the former he got little of), he spent little time in his quarters. The claustrophobic environment was difficult enough for a man who, despite living his entire life on the ship, always felt as though a pair of hands were wringing his neck. After lying awake for some time, sleep got the better of him.

He woke just before five in the morning most uncomfortably drenched in sweat, for his quarters were sweltering. He stripped off the remainder of his clothes and quickly went to shower in cold water. He was lucky enough to have a private toilet/shower combination--a luxury which was shared by few residents below A level. He dressed quickly and placed the soiled clothes in a labeled mesh bag which he deposited outside his room in a laundry receptacle for the dhobi to attend to.

Griff first went to the security service HQ to check in. The desk officer told him Hasan had taken him off his beat to devote his time on-duty to the Burgos investigation. During the night, Rinaldi had seized and was placed in a medically-induced coma he was unlikely to come out of alive.

Griff took the skimmer and fabricator control board Rinaldi had had in his possession when he was arrested from the evidence lockup. Apart from the Zhao-Chen or M&L engineers, there was only one person with the electronics engineering skill to appraise the evidence: Fred Curson.

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Curson had been an engineer for the Zhao-Chen Group for two decades, and had been let go most unceremoniously as a result of his compulsive tendency to tinker with electronics, a habit which was strictly against corporate policy. He made his living fabricating and repairing electronics, an occupation which allowed plenty of opportunity for him to indulge in his tinkering.

He was the first person Griff went to whenever he needed a consultation, and he trusted Curson. The security service, in comparison, did not. They had Curson on their watchlist, and always paid him a friendly visit whenever credit cartridge skimmers popped up on the ship.

Griff boarded the elevator and rode it down to G level. Without a red cent to his name and with a swift eviction from his corporate quarters, Curson had settled down on G level in a disused prefab surface dwelling stored there for use on planetside mining outposts.

Griff arrived just as a mining crew was boarding a shuttlecraft on work rotation at one such mining outpost on the nearby planet. The Atlas had been in orbit for just over five weeks. He pushed past the queuing miners--freshly rested and ready for a week's labor--and walked to the storage bays.

The storage bays here served as warehouses. Components or non-perishable foodstuffs would be stored here and stocks drawn from as needed by teamsters for production on D and E levels or distribution in the market. Short-distance freight elevators to those levels made transport from storage highly efficient. At this early hour, there were only a handful of warehouse workers taking inventory or loading barges with cardboard crates. Each corporation employed their own private security guards, which made the presence of the security service somewhat redundant in some places on the ship, and whose jurisdictions more often than not were at odds. Even so, these security guards were more like hired thugs than the uniformed officers of the service but the differences between the two were far fewer than the officers would ever admit.