The Last Enemy by W. R. Gingell

Author:W. R. Gingell [Gingell, W. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-13T00:05:34+00:00

Drugs on Tap

“No, I swear; we got a group of Uncle Cheng’s lollymen this morning!” insisted the constable. Her face was flushed with a combination of the mess hall’s Third World curry and righteous indignation. “I was in the comms room this morning when everything went down; I’m the one who found the ring!”

“Bet you got a tip through the comms and just don’t want to admit it,” said someone. “Uncle Cheng doesn’t just give up his men like that: no one catches them.”

The constable glared at that someone. “Well, I did! And I didn’t have to follow a tip—the idiots tipped us off themselves! It was the second tap they started on our comms that gave them away: if we hadn’t seen it, they’d still be running drugs across the Twelve Worlds.”

Reprovingly, a detective said, “No one would be that stupid. They already had a tap on our system comms: they knew everything we were up to, and I know for a fact that no one detected it, because I was with the internal boys who found it afterward. They’d apparently been tapping us for the last few months.”

“I know!” she said. “But they started a second one up!”

“They’d have to know we’d be more likely to notice them if they did that!” protested a bright young sergeant. “Who’d put on a second tap when they already know what we’re doing?”

“That’s not all,” the constable said. “They used a second gen tap. One of the old ones that makes its own channel and gives double-ended access.”

There was a chorus of scoffing around the room. One of the other female constables said, “If lollymen went around doing that sort of thing, any of us could be up for a promotion next! We could just wait around in the comms room!”

“You read the AAR,” the first constable said to her partner. “There were two taps mentioned, weren’t there? Weren’t there?”

All eyes fell on her partner, who ducked his head and said, “There were two mentioned.”

“That wasn’t all,” the constable said, with quiet triumph. The others already didn’t believe her; they definitely wouldn’t believe what she was about to say next. That was all right: she had a prominent place in the AAR, and she was quite sure she was looking at an early promotion, which was no doubt why her partner was so out of sorts. “They gave the channel a name.”

Disbelieving laughter erupted all around the room.

“They gave the tap a name?”

“What’d they call it? Come and get us, we’re idiots?”

“Close,” she said, and despite everything, she couldn’t help grinning. “They named it We’ve got drugs. Come get us. We double dare you.”

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