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Dramatis Personae

Elisha

Once Elisha Hammer bought Lloyd Carter’s personnel file from his informant at the Wayfinder’s Guild he had something to start with. His next of kin was his father and mother, who lived on the planet Uval. According to the database Uval was sixteen jumps away on the most direct commercial route, which meant no one was coming from that direction for at least a couple of days. And it was possible someone was coming. The Guild had reported Lloyd’s disappearance to his family and Elisha knew if he was in the Carter family he’d be coming to have a look for the missing man.

However at the moment the Guild was focusing on standard search and rescue maneuvers. Witnesses confirmed Lloyd had taken his skiff out just prior to his disappearance and it wasn’t like the Helium Seas were the safest place to fly around in. Fatal mishaps did occur on a pretty regular basis. Frankly Elisha wouldn’t see a reason to think Carter’s disappearance as anything other than the hazards of the job if he wasn’t being paid to do so.

Of course, the fact a highly paid Director for the BTL trading concern suspected deliberate action was a kind of proof in and of itself. One didn’t reach that position without information sources beyond the norm. No doubt Ms. Wen had reason to think as she did. But not even the wealthiest, canniest business moguls were perfect and that was why Elisha had a job in the first place.

The Wayfinders didn’t keep very detailed tabs on what their employees did. There wasn’t a list of known associates in Carter’s file, for instance, nor was there a medical history or list of licenses and certifications. There was just a brief performance history, his current assignment and his home address, plus a few basic biographical facts.

Fortunately Carter was currently assigned to the Guild’s DecoTown Hanger. Elisha was familiar enough with DecoTown and the Guild to guess what bars and restaurants Lloyd might have frequented during his time working there. However, while the staff and a few patrons recognized Lloyd’s face or name they didn’t know much that was helpful. He hadn’t looked upset, scared or angry in the last few days. Nor had he mentioned feeling endangered or leaving town for a better life on a nicer planet. In short, no one had noticed anything suggesting Lloyd Carter planned to disappear or thought anyone else would try to make him disappear.

Helpful? No. Expected? Yes.

After an unproductive day rummaging through Carter’s old haunts Elisha tabled that angle of attack and decided to look into his apartment next. If Lloyd had decided to leave on his own there should be some sign of it in his dwelling. On the other hand, if someone had decided to abduct him for some reason there was going to be signs of it there as well. Ironically a totally undisturbed place of residence was the worst possible outcome as it suggested he was just the victim of an accident.

At least that made Elisha’s job simpler.

Casa Carter was a small, one bedroom place in an old but well maintained six apartment block about halfway up the main branch of Ashland Prominence. Elisha had never visited the neighborhood before but he knew it’s type. Near enough to the lower docks and the entertainment of midtown to walk for those who couldn’t jump but not so close as to be prohibitively expensive. The architecture consisted of long colonnades and ferrocrete molded to look like wood. It was a nice neighborhood when it was built about a century ago but it was starting to show it’s age.

The building consisted of two sets of three apartments, each set facing out towards the streets that ran on either side of it. Elisha loitered across from Carter’s place, smoking a cigarette and considering his approach. He didn’t see any obvious cameras or microphones, although most apartment blocks in this kind of neighborhood had them, and there wasn’t any obvious sign of an office or contact number for a realtor on the building. He didn’t want to look it up, in case someone was watching for that.

In most cases he wouldn’t be so paranoid but given that he wasn’t the only one watching the building right that moment he figured he wasn’t dealing with most cases this time around. When he’d arrived there was a very expensive looking hover car approaching the apartment building along the road on the other side. At a guess Elisha priced the vehicle at a cool thirty to thirty five thousand cash. It was a prodigious amount of money to spend on your ride for anyone but in this neighborhood it either belonged to the mob or some other kind of heavy sent on a similar job to his own. Another sign that not everything about Carter’s disappearance was as it seemed.

That made it even more important that he get into Carter’s place. Preferably without getting noticed by the authorities and before the other guys could get in and mess things up.

He’d have to be a little more forceful than he preferred. He dropped the butt of his cigarette and ground it out under his heel then stooped to pick it up. Once he was sure he was out of the line of sight of whoever was in that car he scooted backwards into the alley a few feet away and took off around the back. He’d have to hurry a couple of blocks either way but he could get back around to Carter’s place without being seen. The real question was whether he would find anything there worth seeing.

881

Tarn leaned forward in the passenger seat of the hovercar and studied the street for a moment. “He’s not there anymore but I’m not sure where he went. Made good use of the buildings for cover. Not bad.”

“Is he dangerous?” 881 asked.

“Any fool with a knifer or disruptor can be dangerous. But he’s got some skills on top of that so he’s more so than most. Not a Shran but still decent enough.” He sat back in the seat and stroked the pencil thin mustache he wore, looking vaguely like the Circuit Keeper for a moment. “I said we should have rented something cheaper. He can’t have missed this expensive car in this neighborhood, it sticks out like a gas giant without rings.”

“I thought we were going to be flying out to the place Carter disappeared,” she replied. “Renting aircraft that can handle the Helium Seas isn’t cheap and our transportation under the domes has to match what we use outside.”

“I understand why you did it, Miss Luck, it’s just unfortunate it worked out this way.” Tarn broke open his long barreled knifer and checked the flechettes in the magazine before sealing the weapon closed again.

“Do you think he was just interested in stealing the car?”

“No. He’s going to go for the apartment, I’d bet my caste on it.”

One thing she’d always appreciated about Tarn was his laser-like focus on whatever task he was hired to accomplish. More than once it had reminded her of the way the great intelligences functioned. She could take a few moments to activate her veil’s uplink to the OMNI node to double check his work but she was willing to lean on his opinion. “Do you need to see it before he does?”

“Not necessarily but I need to make sure he doesn’t take out anything I could learn from. We’ll have to try and cut him off.”

“Well don’t fletch him if you can help it, I confess I’m curious who sent him here and if hes connected to my employer’s concerns.” She tugged absently at the fingers of her long gloves. They fit the persona of Lucy Luck and the fashion sense of the sector but not life in the Sleeping Circuits. Gloves were meant to keep the hands clean while touching things. A Sleeping Circuit wore sleeves that covered the hand to ensure they didn’t accidentally touch something they shouldn’t. That made them useful for disguises but she’d never liked them.

Tarn watched her with a distant expression, saying nothing as she pulled on her dark red jacket with a tailored waist and a special pocket sewn into the inside where she could secret her handheld disruptor. Only when she’d settled her hat and dropped it’s veil into place did he say, “I can handle this alone.”

“I know.” She picked up a specially made handbag and slipped its handle over her wrist. “But I have my employers to answer to the same as you do, Tarn. There are things I have to see for myself.”

“I can respect that but we’re more likely to succeed if you keep your weapon holstered. I’m not familiar with Wireburn but we’re in a small city and the lawmen around places like to respond to trouble fairly quickly. I doubt your employers would appreciate the scrutiny.”

“You look ready to use your weapon.”

“I am always ready to use my weapon, Miss Luck. And I specialize in doing it without attracting unwanted attention.” He took his hat off the dashboard and stepped out of the car. “We could always abandon the investigation and go out to the sky like you suggested but we’ll lose any insight we might have gotten here.”

As Tarn donned his broad brimmed hat and tucked his knifer into his shoulder holster 881 locked up the hovercar. The security was beyond state of the art so it should be safe for the time they were away. Tarn buttoned up his overcoat and clipped an oval device about the size of his hand with the fingers stretched out to his belt. She raised an eyebrow. “You’re bringing a sidereal interdictor? Are you planning on turning it on?”

“I don’t have an etheric sense, Miss Luck, and I’m hardly unusual in that regard. We don’t know whether the man we saw does or does not possess the ability to move by the sidereal but if he does there’s one thing I can guarantee you.” Tarn waggled one finger for emphasis. “If he realizes we’re here he’ll turn sidereal to try and ambush us, because that is a tactic that pays off against people like me more often than not. When it doesn’t it’s usually because of one of these.” He turned his finger down to point at the interdictor.

“Fair enough. However it also means I won’t be able to jump us out of there if the situation turns against us.”

“Trust me, it’s easy enough to turn one of these things off. Just push the blue button on the top.” The finger tapped the device next to the button in question.

“What if Carter tries to jump back and realizes his apartment is interdicted?”

One of Tarn’s eyebrows nearly vanished under the brim of his hat. “Is that likely? We’re looking for him because he’s missing, after all, and most people living in a neighborhood like this can’t afford a personal etheric beacon so they can jump straight into their own living room. Unless he’s some kind of smuggler.”

881 wanted to say Lloyd Carter wasn’t involved in any kind of illicit activity that she knew of but she worried that would then make Tarn curious about how she knew. She couldn’t tell him about OMNI, of course, and it was best not to rouse his curiosity. Someone like Tarn sel-Shran could learn entirely too much if he wanted to.

“Very well. But we’ll use it for as short a time as possible. Messing with the etheric like that makes me uncomfortable.”

“Of course ma’am.” Tarn touched the brim of his hat. “We’ll try and keep you as comfortable as possible for the entirety of this process.”

The way he smirked as he said it was nothing like one of the great intelligences.

Lloyd

Etheric beacons were kept in wide, domed structures called some variant of beacon house or arrival zone depending on the part of the Galaxy you were in. At some point the basic design of the structure had become standard. Since there were thousands of beacon houses on most planets only those arrival zones in the most upper class areas were anything other than a basic boxes with very basic accommodations. In short, they were bland, unremarkable rooms that kept the elements away from new arrivals. Nothing more.

In spite of that fact Lloyd still felt a wash of nostalgia when he turned terrestrial after jumping back to the local beacon in DecoTown. After days cooped up in his skiff with nothing but the Seas and L-93 to keep him company it felt good to be back in civilization. Even if the first sign of it was the featureless walls of the beacon house.

He really needed to report back to the Hanger about his missing skiff. He should probably swing by the Couriers and see if he could get a message off to Uval that day. Hopefully his family hadn’t done anything drastic like book a trip to Wireburn yet. They couldn’t afford it.

But before any of that he wanted to get out of his Wayfinder leathers and into some less stifling clothing. It was a lot warmer under the pressure domes than out in the Seas. His place and the Hanger were in opposite directions but they were still only eight blocks apart. More importantly, home was on the way to the Couriers. That settled it.

Lloyd turned his feet towards his building, digging for the keys in his pocket. There were a million weird things he didn’t understand about what had happened over the last few days, to say nothing about what L-93 had told him, but all that could wait at a couple of hours while he tried to put his life back in order. Maybe he even had the time to grab a cup of coffee while he was at it…

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