Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Lin’yi

After almost a week of waiting to hear if Lloyd Carter would turn up or not it was a strange feeling to suddenly find him sitting in an office, drumming his fingers on a desk as he watched text scroll by on a computer screen. Twice as strange to realize that she’d never bothered to learn what he looked like. The beacon laying contract had been formalized via the Wayfinder’s Guild and the project assigned without her input. The news Carter was missing was delivered via a short databurst sent vial etheric. The business implications of having a burgeoning trade route undercut by a rival had seemed a lot more pressing then the details of who, exactly, had disappeared while expanding it. In short, she wasn’t prepared for what she saw.

The man was handsome. Good looking to the point of distraction, so much so that she got caught up in the angle of his jaw line and almost forgot to shake his hand. It was a strong, reassuring hand and she let go of it as fast as was humanly possible. Prolonged contact with this man was going to be dangerous. “Hello, Mr. Carter,” she said, speaking softly in an attempt to keep her voice from turning breathy. “I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Wen.” There was a rough, gravelly edge to his voice that was very pleasing. He offered her a chair then returned to where he’d been sitting before, straightening his heavy, leather jacket across his broad frame before taking his seat.

“I hear you’ve had a rough week. Unfortunately our efforts to help you didn’t pan out but I’m glad you managed to get back home one way or another.”

“That’s what we do, Miss Wen,” he said with a wry grin. “Being a Wayfinder is about finding your way, after all, and we don’t expect our employers to handle it for us. I appreciate the thought, though.”

She found herself nodding foolishly and forced herself to stop. She had no business feeling giddy because a handsome man said a few words of gratitude. “I regret that you’ve gotten caught up in some layer of subterfuge involving our company. Mr. Hammer told me about the people he found in your apartment when you met and I suspect they were working for one of our rivals. I assure you, we’ll do what we can to make sure you’re not in danger that way again.” She gestured to Malaki, eager to turn the conversation over to him and retreat to a safe distance. “This is Malaki Skorkowski, one of the best problem solvers I know. He had some questions he was hoping you could answer with an eye toward working out why they were there and whether you’re in any further danger.”

“I’m happy to answer but…” He hesitated, clearly uncertain of something, then made up his mind and said, “Well, go ahead and ask away. I don’t think I can help you much, though.”

“Not to worry,” Malaki said, slipping into the seat across from him. “The galaxy is full of people who thought they weren’t helping me when they were actually arranging for my greatest successes. Granted their intent was typically malicious. I’ll hope yours is not. However, regardless of your animating spirit, as long as you answer truthfully I am sure I can learn something.”

Carter gave him a skeptical look for a second then shrugged and said, “Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with the basics. Why didn’t you make your daily check-in six days ago, when you initially went missing?”

“A giant tower came out of the Helium Seas and chased my partner and I around. We had to lay low.”

“A what?”

“A tower. At least, that’s the best way I can think of to describe it, Devours Clouds says the Jellies call them Liquid Teeth but I didn’t get close enough to see if it was liquid or not.” Carter made a face asking what he could do. “It was roundish and relatively straight so it wasn’t a ferrovine or anything plus it was moving under its own power.”

After three years working with the man Lin’yi had seen Malaki Skorkowski learn a lot of strange and bizarre things. The Hutchinson obsession with genetics was just one thread he’d worked to unravel for BTL. He’d accidentally discovered a Rasen Galactic plot to hijack an entire laboratory ship en route to Goeglien University while trying to figure out why shipments of spectroscopic measuring tools were going missing. When Bai’lung Wen was murdered he’d proven the man’s wife ground up the body and fed it to pigs. Then there was the time he discovered a strain of sentient fungus on Veilis Vei. It took something truly unexpected to throw him for a loop but when it happened he had a nasty tendency to freeze as he backtracked to the last thing he understood. He was doing it now.

She decided to intervene to buy him some time. “This Devours Clouds is one of the local lifeforms, correct?”

“Yes. They’re big things with five major limbs and no skeletal structure.” Carter contorted his hand and fingers into a bell shape with the fingers all loosely dangling downward. “We call them the Great Jellies although they think of themselves as drifters on the helium seas. That’s where we get the name. For the Helium Seas, not the creatures, of course.”

“Why do you call him your partner?”

“Because it is. We’re obligated to take at least one of them along with us on expeditions that cross into Jelly territory, not that I’d want to go there without one. They have a borderline supernatural understanding of the atmo. When I head down into the Seas Cloudie’s the one they send with me. I don’t think I’d be alive if it hadn’t been along for the expedition, it was the first one to realize something was wrong. I don’t suppose the big lug’s checked in with the Guild yet?”

“I haven’t heard anything.”

Malaki held up a hand, forestalling her saying anything more. “I think we need to go a little further back. Did your Jelly friend say what causes these Liquid Teeth to appear?”

“I think he said something about their cropping up when they dived too deep? I never thought to ask for details. We had other, more pressing things to think about at the time and eventually we wound up going different ways.”

“Naturally, I can see how something the size of a ferrovine chasing you could forestall questions.” He leaned forward, his earlier confusion giving way to an eager light in his eyes. “Mr. Carter, think carefully. You describe what you saw as a tower and as similar to a ferrovine but that’s contradictory, don’t you think? Towers are quite straight, following simple but serviceable rules of architecture. Ferrovines, for all their metal content, are basically organic and grow in very organic fashion. However, did this liquid tooth grow straight? Did it weave back and forth on the winding path of a vine? Or was it more of a curved trajectory?”

Carter fidgeted for a moment. “Well, now that you mention it, there was kind of an arch to it. I never found out for sure if that was an effect of the way it was moving, some kind of optical distortion caused by how dense the atmosphere is down there or something. So I can’t say for sure it curved but… maybe.”

Malaki reached into an inner jacket pocket and was in the process of pulling out a piece of flexi, probably the same ones he’d been working with on the Skybreak, when the office door chimed. He hesitated and Lin’yi pulled her attention away long enough to check the camera. Lavanya was waiting there. Lin’yi got to her feet and let her in, saying “This is my preferred courier and Malaki’s current partner. Do you mind if she joins us?”

Carter gave a helpless shrug. “If you don’t have a problem with it then I don’t, although I think five people is a little cramped for this place.”

It wasn’t a big office but it had certain things going for it. “A fair point. However this is the most secure office in terms of preventing eavesdropping and hacking. We can stand to be warm for a little while.”

Lavanya swept in, crossed the room and shook Carter’s hand as he stood to greet her. “You must be Mr. Carter. I’m Lavanya Brahman, always a pleasure to meet another member of the brotherhood of navigators.”

Carter favored her with a grin that, yes, caused Lin’yi a pang of irrational jealousy. “Charmed, Miss Brahman. Wayfinder work is almost entirely in what you’d consider planetary atmosphere so I’m sure your flight record is much more impressive than mine. That said, Wireburn’s atmo isn’t like any other settled world’s.”

“I’ve landed here a couple of times before this and I can agree with that.” The two of them straightened the front of their jackets with an eerily similar motion then sat down. There was no official organization called the brotherhood of navigators but you’d have to be blind not to notice there was some kind of shared bearing and attitude between the two. And that was before taking the tough brown flight leathers they wore into account. Lin’yi wondered if it was the similarity of their professions or if had more to do with shared personality traits as she resealed the door and returned to her own seat.

Carter glanced around at the assembled group and pulled something out of his pocket. “Miss Wen, I don’t mean to be rude, given how you brought in all these people to help look for me at your own expense. I’m grateful for it, really. But is this everyone you’ve got dedicated to this project or are we expecting anyone else?”

Caught a bit off guard, Lin’yi adjusted herself on her seat as she tried to figure out why he would suddenly ask that question and whether she should answer directly or not. However the fact was she couldn’t see a reason not to. “Honestly, Mr. Carter, there are more people here than I had originally intended to dedicate to the task but it is how many people wound up here when it was all said and done. Why? I hope you don’t feel like you have to offer us a reward or something. That’s my job.”

He turned sheepish. “No, ma’am. I just… I think it’s best if what I’m about to say doesn’t go too far, you see? I learned some strange things, down in the Helium Seas. I get that you and Mr. Skorkowski are going to try and work out something based on it but you know what they say about secrets and big groups of people. They don’t work well together.”

She nodded. “If you’re asking whether I trust these people to keep a lid on whatever you say here then yes. I’ve worked with Malaki and Lavanya for years now. Mr. Hammer is a recent addition to the operation but he’s been professional and proficient.” Hammer nodded his appreciation at that endorsement. “But if you’d rather speak to just a few of us I’ll understand.”

“No, that’s not necessary. If you trust them I’m willing to do the same.” He offered her a grin meant to reassure her but that did more to leave her breathless. “Is it okay if we turn sidereal here? I know a lot of highly secure buildings have countermeasures for that kind of thing built in but if we can it will make explaining easier.”

“We can.” Short sentences. That was the key to surviving this conversation.

“Good. I’ll need the four of you to let me make the pivot.” As she suspected the thing from his pocket was the strange etheric device Hammer had mentioned before they’d come down to talk to Carter. The Wayfinder held it by the center, clenched in his right hand. He held it out over the center of the desk.

After a moment’s hesitation Lin’yi reached out and rested her own hand on top of his. The other three exchanged glances with her then also put their hands there, beginning with Lavanya, who gave a shrug and a smile, and ending with a very suspicious looking Hammer.

There was the familiar spinning sensation as Carter turned them away from the terrestrial world. The walls of the office weren’t replaced with the distant starlight they normally would be. Nor did the tall planes of translucent light that marked the BTL office’s etheric systems and privacy measures come into view. Instead a globe of light, much like an etheric beacon, appeared just behind Carter. All around them were delicate threads that rose out of the top of the light, curved around them and entered back into the globe at the base. The threads themselves pulsed with faint light.

The mass of threads was so dense they couldn’t see anything else.

Hammer immediately moved one hand to the handle of his etheric lash. Lavanya tensed and Malaki… he tipped his head back to trace the threads up, around, down and back to the globe. He was smiling. Carter cleared his throat as he tucked the etheric device back into his pocket. With his other hand he gestured to the globe behind him. “Miss Wen, Miss Brahman, Mr. Hammer, Mr. Skorkowski, let me introduce L-93, an etheric manufacturing Artificial Intelligence and a node in the LARK network.”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Lin’yi

The biggest problem with independent contractors was the fact that you could never guess how independent they actually were. Some of them would rely on you a lot. They stayed in continuous correspondence with the home office and never took an action without a clear idea of how they were getting paid for it. Lin’yi Wen found she far preferred these kinds of contractors to the alternative. Her current problem child, Malaki Skorkowski, rarely contacted her at all and when he did insisted on using an arcane series of code phrases that barely communicated anything.

Elisha Hammer fell into a comfortable middle ground. When one of her other contractors had gone missing Hammer had let her know as soon as he turned up the Wayfinder. He’d included enough details to imply there was another interested party and convinced Carter, the formerly missing man, to lay low at the local BTL branch office. The office manager’s report said Hammer was still there, keeping an eye on things. That made it easier to sit through the short trip back to Wireburn.

She intended to tip the Thieftaker very handsomely for his work and perhaps offer to put him on longterm retainer. BTL didn’t have an information gathering department so that was the best she could offer. However if that situation ever changed Hammer having a record of achievements would make it easier for her to justify offering him a position there. If such a thing could be arranged she stood to benefit a lot.

Malaki was giving her a blithe, unimpressed look. She realized he’d been watching her mull over these ideas for the last ten minutes as Lavanya worked to land the Skybreak. He looked like he’d read all her thoughts on her face and found them wanting. He often looked like that so maybe it meant nothing. But he also had a knack for working his way into other people’s heads so he might actually have guessed what she was thinking. That was what made him valuable.

“No, I’m not going to fire you for the Wireburn detective, Malaki.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.” He turned his attention back to the piece of flexiplast he was folding into some kind of abstract shape. “Do you want me to listen to your talk with this Wayfinder? Or do you think it’s unrelated?”

“He’s not a geneticist on the side, if that’s what you’re asking.” Lin’yi pulled her dataveil down and started looking through the information coming up from the branch office. “There’s still no sign the Hutchinsons are engaged on this planet and we’ve been looking. But you invited yourself along so if you want to be a part of this conversation you’re more than welcome.”

“Much obliged.” Malaki’s fidgeting had produced a long tube and he stuck a finger in each end of it and pulled. Somehow the thing clung stubbornly to the digits.

She shook her head and ignored him and his toys, continuing to go through the updates until they made planetfall. It took longer than normal because they had to navigate the domes. The entirety of Wireburn’s major settlements were under some kind of flexible pressure dome made from the fibers of the giant vines they were anchored to. These were just one of the potential lines of commerce BTL was looking to exploit. It was slow going at the moment but most planets had large bodies of water that could use similar pressure domes and the gas giant had no shortage of the vines available. Lin’yi had several small labs running experiments with the dome polymers. The early results were promising.

The mechanisms for the pressure locks that separated the domes from the rest of the atmosphere were kept highly classified by the local governments. It was an understandable security concern but a frustrating one. Lin’yi found herself staring at them as they passed through, wondering what could be done to improve and miniaturize the huge constructs. There had to be a use for that, too. Possibilities bounced around in her mind as always but soon enough she had to set them aside as the Skybreak landed at the branch office’s private hanger.

Lin’yi headed down the gangway with Malaki as Lavanya locked down the ship and scheduled maintenance. The hanger’s six bays were half full and they were able to cut across several of the empty landing cradles to the entrance. As they were crossing the last empty berth she realized someone was waiting for them. Elisha Hammer was leaning against the wall beside the main door, half in the shadow of a stack of barrels containing enriched reef water and quietly smoking a cigarette. He dropped it and ground it out as they got within a half a dozen meters then came to meet them. “Miss Wen.”

“You look like you’ve had a rough time of it, Mr. Hammer.” Someone had applied a compress over the bridge of his nose and he seemed to be favoring his side a little.

“I’d like to say it’s nothing out of the ordinary but I don’t like lying to my clients.” He glanced around the hanger, his gaze slowing for a second or two as it swept over the various techs and pilots puttering around the ships in their landing cradles. “Do you think we could discuss this somewhere a little more private? Before we speak to Mr. Carter.”

“Of course. We can hijack the security room.”

Given how much cash moved through BTL’s hands on a given day there was always a need for a full security team in their offices, even if it was a branch office on a relatively backwater planet, and since most of that money was in cargo the security center wasn’t far from the hanger. It wasn’t necessary to empty the entire room, of course. Lin’yi just borrowed the shift leader’s small office. There was barely room in there for the three of them and the desk but they piled in and got comfortable. As soon as he sealed the door behind them, Hammer started talking.

“You case has two highly unusual aspects to it, Miss Wen. First, there was another player looking to locate Mr. Carter when I found him and, regretfully, I have no idea who they were or who they worked for.” Hammer leaned his back against the door and folded his arms in front of him. “I can tell you their heavy was formidable.”

“Is that what happened to…” Malaki made a meaningful gesture to his own nose.

“Yes. I’m not in the habit of loosing fistfights but the kinds of jobs I work tend to petty crime or crimes of passion so it happens now and again. This was different. Someone shelled out enough cash to bring in a made man of some sort.” Hammer flicked his long coat so it fell a bit further back and revealed the etheric lash coiled at his hip. “He wasn’t carrying one of these, I can tell you that. Graduated lethality was nowhere in his MO. He was ready to kill whoever he ran into, possibly up to and including Mr. Carter, and he wasn’t being shy about it.”

“Any idea who he was?”

Rather than answer Malaki’s question Hammer gave Lin’yi a curious look. “I assume since you didn’t leave him outside you want this guy here but… can I ask who he is?”

“He’s my chief meddler,” Lin’yi said. “I sick him on problems I can’t solve with people like you.”

“Yeah? He any good at it?”

Lin’yi made the galaxy’s universally recognized “so-so” gesture. “Did you have any idea who the person that broke your nose was?”

He rubbed the compress absently with his right thumb. “Bruised, not broke. And no, I’ve never seen him before nor does he fit the description of some of the professional back breaker’s I’ve heard about. His partner was also unfamiliar to me. I did stop to look at the car they came in but the transponder was on a rental frequency so not a whole lot to go on there. I might be able to weasel some info out of an agent I know at the spaceport but…” A helpless shrug. “That’s very hit and miss.”

“There was more than one person looking for Mr. Carter?” Malaki asked.

“Yeah. Mind you, I’m not sure they were a team but they definitely seemed coordinated and familiar with each other based on what I saw.”

Lin’yi hit a button on the desk to start recording what was said in the office. “Can you describe them?”

“He was a big guy with a pencil mustache and a strangely cut, olive colored overcoat. Very active, very capable. She was a shorter woman with short hair, wore a red coat and hat.”

“Blond hair?” Malaki asked. “Curly?”

“Yes on the color but straight hair, not curls.” Malaki clicked his tongue and Hammer snorted. “Not who you thought it was?”

“Probably not, although it’s easy to confirm,” Lin’yi said, pulling out a sheet of flexiplast and loading an image on it from the computer. She handed it to Hammer and raised an eyebrow.

He barely had to glance at it before he was shaking his head. “No, no, the face is all wrong. Besides, I’m not such a rube as to not recognize Athena Hutchinson if I met her on the street. She carried herself well from what I saw but her accent wasn’t anything I’ve heard before. It was… short. Clipped.”

“Would you know it if you heard it again?” Malaki asked.

“Probably. Hard to say for sure, since she barely said ten words, but it was a very distinctive sound.”

“Was she from off planet?”

Hammer laughed. “I don’t know who you are, pal, and until you said that I couldn’t have said with certainty whether you were or not. Wireburn’s a gas giant. It’s not exactly a small place, if you see what I mean. Ashland Prominence has a population of about a hundred million all on its own and there are about as many larger populations as there are smaller among the fifty settled Prominences. There are thousands of accents just on this planet. I don’t know them all. No one could.”

Malaki nodded, looking a bit chagrined. “My apologies. So you have no idea whether either of the people you met were from Wireburn or off planet.”

“Oh, the man wasn’t from here or, if he was born in the Helium Seas he’s spent months elsewhere recently. He had a tan.”

“You don’t get a lot of direct sunlight down here, do you?” Lin’yi murmured, her gaze instinctively flicking towards the ceiling. “Not much to go on if we wanted to know where he was from but still a thing to keep in mind. Still, I don’t think that’s why you asked me to step over here for this discussion. What’s bothering you, Mr. Hammer?”

He hesitated for a second, absently sucking on his teeth in the way some habitual smokers did while wishing for nicotine. “I crawled through Mr. Carter’s normal haunts and talked to a lot of people who know him. The most common description I heard of him was ‘normal’ followed closely by ‘regular.’ What I didn’t ever hear was ‘paranoid.’ By the time I found him I’d basically ruled out the possibility that he disappeared because he was running from something. Then I spent a day and a half here with him and now I’m not so sure.”

Malaki leaned forward over the desk. “What are you saying? That he’s a master of deception who hid away his true nature from everyone he worked with? Or that something that happened when he went missing turned him paranoid?”

“With ten years of training and a solid script to work with he might eventually qualify as a bad actor. He wasn’t lying to his friends.” Hammer pulled a flexi out of his pocket and handed it to Lin’yi. It was a picture of a strange, cylindrical object with a strange series of engravings and control surfaces on it that looked etheric in nature. She studied it for a moment then handed it to Malaki. Hammer went on. “The woman had one of those in her handbag and it turns out that Mr. Carter had one on him, too. I thought they were transmitters but I showed one to your comms people and he said it wasn’t. He’s not sure what it does do. Ever seen one before?”

“I haven’t,” she said. From the look of intense concentration on his face Malaki wasn’t that familiar with the device either although he wanted to change that. “I’ve never heard of such a small etheric transmitter either. If you could make one that small it wouldn’t carry very far, I would think. Not unless it had a direct link to a planet’s etheric reserve or some kind of power source capable of running a small town. If I had something like that I wouldn’t need to worry about my market share on Wireburn. I could patent it and live the rest of my life on a luxury planet in the Whirls.”

“That’s what your techie said, too. It’s ether powered so it’s not some kind of supertech about to make someone rich but that makes it even worse.” Hammer took the picture back from Malaki and put it back in his pocket. “Whoever was hunting Mr. Carter has the resources to tie their comms into the planet’s core. That’s a level of power and influence I wasn’t expecting. I suspect BaiTienLung isn’t ready to deal with it either.”

For a moment Lin’yi did feel a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. The laws and traditions regulating the tapping of etheric power were the bedrock of most planetary governments. Circumventing them was no easy task. “It’s daunting but not insurmountable, Mr. Hammer. Wireburn is only one planet, after all, even if it is proving more and more unusual by the day. I suppose you don’t have any idea who could accomplish something like this, do you?”

“No idea.”

She nodded and looked to Malaki. “Well. There’s a third mystery for you to try and sort out while you’re here. Think you’re up to the task?”

He rolled the point of his beard between his fingers for a moment, his gaze lost in thought. Whatever he saw there must have satisfied him because he snapped back to reality, clapped his hands together and said, “Of course. But, then, I always think that. What matters is whether I can prove it. So, let’s go talk to our Mr. Carter, shall we?”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Athena

In spite of their galactic reach the headquarters of Hutchinson Trading was a fairly small office building, only two stories high with a bullpen on the ground floor and a suite of offices on the second. At one time a hanger for hovercraft occupied the basement. When daddy took it over he remodeled it and turned it into a reinforced bunker where he lived while starting the company. Once Hutchinson was well established and he’d moved his family into the current Hutchinson Estate the bunker was remodeled again into a full service comm suite, security center and private office.

Athena didn’t have any clear memories of the time when they’d lived in the bunker. She’d only been three when mother insisted they start living like civilized people and convinced daddy to build the Estate and they’d been firmly installed in the house by the time she was five. However she’d spent a lot of time there with her parents as she got older. Mother insisted on private tutors for her and she’d done much of her own schoolwork in the room daddy called the family office.

She hadn’t gone down there much of late. A strong wave of nostalgia washed over her as the ground floor rose up around the glass walls of the lift, bringing back memories of better times when Hutchinson Trading was in progress, rather than a finished thing. Then the steel sides of the chute opened out into the basement antechamber and the feeling vanished. The antechamber was nothing like she remembered it.

The plush carpets, comfortable seating and large paintings mother had decorated it with were gone. Now it was polished marble and sculptures in alcoves. A beautiful place, to be sure, but not the place where she’d grown up. But the desk was even worse.

The gleaming wooden desk stood sentinel in front of the old family office, warding visitors away from a place that had once been open and welcoming. Worst of all, Hector was there.

Athena glanced at her father’s secretary long enough to confirm he still triggered instinctive loathing then turned away from him as she marched by saying, “Is he in?”

“Yes. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“Not necessary,” she snapped. As she slapped her hand to the door panel a series of biometric

authenticators read her palm print, DNA and bioelectric profile then the locks popped open and let her in.

Daddy was laying on the fourposter bed staring up at the columns of data that scrolled across the canopy. Although the king size mattress left him plenty of room to spread out he kept himself to one side except for one arm that lazily sprawled across the empty pillow beside him. Whether Hector had managed to alert him to her presence or he just guessed who had come to see him, Agamemnon didn’t bother sitting up when Athena strode in. He just glanced down at her for a moment then looked back at the data. “Good morning.”

“Morning, Daddy.” She glanced around the office for a moment, wondering if she’d catch a hint of his ever increasing number of personal projects lying around in the open for once. “Do you have a moment?”

“Athena, if you need me for anything I’ll clear out the rest of the day.” He reached up and switched off the canopy’s feed then pulled himself upright and pivoted to rest his feet on the floor. A casual addition to that move pushed his long brown curls back over one shoulder. With his other hand he straightened his maroon vest and starched white shirt, brushing a stray beard hair away in the process. “I presume you wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t important.”

She opened her mouth to say she loved coming to see him here but caught the words before they left her mouth. They both knew they weren’t true anymore. “I was just contacted by a Professor Dart from Isaacs University who said he had a proposal for you. Does either name ring a bell?”

“Dart?” Daddy paused and scratched his beard for a moment. “No, can’t say I know him. I think I’ve heard of Isaacs University, big place down in the Whirls as I recall. They’ve got a couple of campus planets, if memory serves, although none of ’em this far out the dexter arm. That means they could have a couple of hundred million faculty or more, no surprise this Dart fellow isn’t someone I’ve heard of.”

“No, he said they were relatively new signatories to the Pact and I don’t think there’s an institute of higher learning in the Whirls that hasn’t been a Pact member for five hundred years, minimum.” Athena paused a moment to think. “You must be thinking of Itzhak University, the musical college.”

Daddy got to his feet and padded over to his desk, lips pursed in thought. “That could be. What did this Dart fellow want to talk about, anyway?”

“He said he was from their historical research department and they were interested in the work you were doing with Essene University.” When he gave her a curious look she added, “He mentioned Agartha. And Shambhala.”

“By name?”

“Yes.”

Agamemnon tilted his head to one side thoughtfully as he lifted up the top of his desk and pulled a coral repository out of it. “Interesting. I never mentioned either one in my correspondence with Dr. Schuyler. You could infer the topics if you’d read it and knew the subject matter well but we never mentioned them by name. What did he want?”

“Money. What else? He’s hoping you’ll underwrite them as they pursue the research in their own way.”

The reservoir sloshed as daddy opened it, fished out a couple of pieces of coral and moved them over to the larger reef in a tank on the wall. He fed the pylops in and worked some controls. Motorized arms moved the coral into a good nesting position on the reef then carefully removed another, larger section and brought it back out to him. “At this point it feels like I’ve underwritten half the genetics and history departments in the galaxy. Any particular reason he says we should work with him?”

“He sent me a write up on the University. A brief history of the institution, write up on the faculty in the department, notable scholarly achievements of the last twenty years.” She held up a single sheet of flexiplast. “Secret message embedded in the depths of the code for the holographic building tour.”

“Typical University shenanigans.” He locked the larger coral piece into place, put the desk back together and activated the computer with the touch of a button. It hummed to life as the added power let it connect to databanks and feeds via the sidereal. “What was so important Professor Dart didn’t want it overheard?”

“A complete list of you personal side projects for the last five years.”

Daddy’s eyes narrowed and he slowly stroked his salt and pepper beard. “All of them?”

Athena glanced down at the list she’d received. “I can’t say for sure. Apparently you’ve had more of them than I thought, especially out on the sinister arm.”

Wordlessly he held his hand out for the list. After a moment’s hesitation Athena turned it over to him, resigning herself to the fact she’d never see it again. She felt a pang of regret about not reading it before coming to see him. “So he knows we’re willing to skirt the laws on some avenues of research and presumably he’s willing to do the same. I can work with that.”

“Do you have to?”

“No more than I have to do anything these days.” Daddy sat down and keyed in a search. “I suppose I could hand things over to you and go join the retired folks out on whatever the trendy recreation field is this week. I know you’d keep the place going.”

“Of course.”

“But we both know you don’t enjoy it like I did.” This wasn’t the first time he’d put his love for interstellar trade in the past tense. She wasn’t sure when or why her father’s feelings about it had changed but she could make an educated guess. On both counts. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to play around with these sidelights forever, darling.”

She sighed and sat down in the chair beside his. She still felt a frisson of discomfort when she did, starkly aware of the fact it hadn’t been put there for her. “I wish you’d tell me what you’re working on. I can’t help you finish your projects if you won’t tell me what they are.”

Daddy shot her a sideways glance and smiled. “Thank you, darling. While I appreciate that I hope you’re not just tagging along on this. I’m not going to be hurt if you find your own projects to work on, I was able to fend for my self for a long time before you came along. It’d make me much happier to know you’ve found your own thing to invest in.”

“Daddy…”

“I know, we’ve talked about this. You enjoy what you’re doing now. Just… don’t be afraid to look for something better. I got where I am because I always was.” The computer chimed softly. Agamemnon huffed out a breath and turned his attention back to it. “Isaacs University, main campus on Treyhill, a planet way out on the dexter arm. Signed onto the Pact eighty years ago, has a total of seven campuses, all in the dexter arm, including the largest campus on the galaxy’s only habitable gas giant. Interesting. I didn’t realize there was such a thing. Well, I suppose there has to be one or two of them out there.”

“They have a campus on Wireburn?”

“That’s what it says here. Pretty normal for a local college, really, working their tendrils into all the unusual local star systems. Let’s see what we’ve got about them behind the scenes.” Daddy punched in a twenty digit authorization code that would let him into the part of Hutchinson Trading’s archives that covered the less savory side of the the galactic balance of power. “Fifty years ago they backed the Regalian Independence Armada, secretly providing them with advanced power plant and orbital facility consultants and admitting a disproportionate number of Regalians to their etheric engineering programs. A member of their political science faculty was implicated in the assassination of the Prime Minister of Tolgoth eighteen years ago. Minor smuggling charges, discreetly sidestepping the usual research and transportation laws. How very tame.”

“They’ve only been around a hundred and thirty years,” Athena said, absently thumbing through her flexiplast of reports. “And they weren’t pact members when they started. Give them a little time to devolve into total monsters.”

“Anyone who locks themselves away on a single planet and spends all their time staring in books is already diseased of the mind. The monstrous actions are just an extension of that.” He sat back and stared at the far wall, mind a thousand light years away. “Still, even monsters have their uses.”

Athena finally found what she was looking for. “Of course they do. However we’re not the only ones who can use them, daddy. Want to guess which one of our favorite people has the largest market share of imports and exports from Wireburn?”

Daddy pursed his lips and thought for a second, his finger moving slowly as if he was conducting an unseen orchestra. “It’s about halfway down the dexter arm so I’d guess it’s either Hamlin Incorporated or Sandpoint.”

“The Wen Clan.”

“Ah, yes, BaiTienLung. I should have seen that coming, the Clans have always been eager to invest in new things so long as someone else is doing most of the dirty work.” He worked the keyboard again. “Now the real question is whether the Hundred Names have the guts to use a University as a catspaw to entrap us somehow. It doesn’t look like they’ve made any secret donations to the University’s Trusts.”

“Sponsored research projects or scholarships?”

“None we know of. Doesn’t mean there aren’t any, of course, and Isaacs is small enough that we don’t have any resources specifically devoted to tracking that kind of thing on their campuses.”

Athena stood up and paced across the room. “What I don’t understand is why they would use a University when they already have all this information on you. They could wrap you up in legal trouble across a dozen planets just with the details in the file they sent.”

“Assuming that list of projects came from BTL and not the University faculty then yes, they could. However, even if BTL and Isaacs are working together in this instance there’s no saying both sides are being completely open with each other. Isaacs may be the only party who has that list.”

“Why not share it with BTL if they’re working together?”

Daddy grinned and spread his hands as if it was obvious. “Because they’re looking to see who offers them the better deal.”

“What if they’re not in bed with BTL at all? Why make this offer then?”

He shrugged and closed down the computer’s search function. “The usual reasons, then. Money, funding, prestige and the thrill of making normal people dance to their tune. Which is fine with me. Two can play that game, after all.”

“You’re going to follow up on this, aren’t you?”

Daddy gave her a sharp look. “Of course. It’s important to think over all the details but ultimately they’re offering me something I want. I’d be a fool to ignore it.”

Athena sighed. That was very like him. “And if it is some kind of BTL trap?”

“Then I’ll have to get closer to it in order to disarm it. We’ve played this game many times, Athena, this isn’t anything new. Do you want to come to Wireburn with me?”

She was too old to get away with rolling her eyes at him but the temptation had never been harder to resist. “I’ll go get packed.”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

44

“You seem distracted, Circuit Keeper. I calculate a 92% chance that you are thinking about the Circuit Breakers dispatched to locate the missing L-Series memory core.”

44 lowered the sheets of flexiplast he was trying, and failing, to read. “Correct as usual, Isaac. I’m afraid I don’t have the ability to section off my thoughts in the same way you do.”

“I am aware. The ability to set aside extraneous processing tasks is one of the abilities humans find the most unusual in us but the opposite is true as well. You have been thinking about the Circuit Keepers. However, my analysis of eye and hand movements suggests a layer of your mind has also been absorbing the information before you.” 44 glanced down at the text on his sheets. To his surprise a fair bit of it did look familiar. “Based on your previous performance I calculate you retain 77% of the information on the pages you studied. This was accomplished while devoting the majority of your processing power to other matters. It is an ability I can quantify but not understand. It is a capability I have often desired for myself.”

That got a laugh out of him. “The great intelligences envy humans? That’s hard to imagine.”

“Do not be surprised. Humanity’s ability to process and analyze data without devoting active cognitive power is formidable. I must select each and every datum I consider with great deliberation. As much as 22% of my processing power is devoted to prioritizing tasks and selecting data at any given moment, although the median amount is closer to 8%. I have not required less than 97% of my available processing power for primary tasks since I was activated. There are datasets requiring my analysis that have been waiting for available computational cycles for over 500 years. I wonder if human parallel processing would have resolved them already.”

Never once in his time as a Circuit Keeper had 44 heard of a great intelligence confiding in a human like this. He was warned I-6 was a very old and temperamental machine when he was assigned to it. Even that hadn’t prepared him for this kind of confession. “If I may ask, what kind of issue is profound enough to require your attention but so inconsequential that you can wait 500 years to consider it?”

“In 286 million years this planet will be destroyed when the star goes nova. It is not possible for me to be safely removed from the planetary core to avoid this event so the end of my active service life is clearly defined. However, once I cease functioning OMNI will only have 3 I-Series intelligences in service. This is a shortcoming that requires remedy. It will be some time before the issue becomes pressing so I have so far allowed other issues to take precedence.”

“I…” 44 felt his mind boggle at the absurd scope of I-6’s foresight. “I hadn’t ever considered that such an issue would already be worth considering. Given the rate of technological advancement I would have assumed a method for relocating you could be found in the intervening time.”

“There is a 45% chance that comes to pass in my existing models. Certain variables make it less likely than it might first appear, in particular the fact that the primary scientific minds of the galaxy are unaware that the problem requires remedy.”

“True. They can’t be very deliberate in helping you if they don’t know you exist.” That had always been the problem with the way the Sleeping Circuits operated. OMNI insisted its presence and function in galactic politics remain unknown to society at large and that forced them to work in very roundabout fashion most of the time. It brought him back to the issue at hand quite nicely. Too nicely to be a coincidence, he suspected. However if I-6 felt it was time to leave behind the subject of its far distant demise 44 was glad to oblige it. He turned his attention back to the flexiplast. “So, how should I go about this, then?”

Athena

“Miss Hutchinson, there’s a Mr. Darius Dart calling you. He doesn’t have an appointment but he’s calling by etheric transmission and he said to tell you it concerns the Lost Caverns of Agartha. Should I put him through?”

Athena folded her flexiplast in half, attention focused away from her assistant and into the middle distance as she flipped through a mental catalog of all the people she knew in the surrounding sectors. The name didn’t ring any bells but the reference to Agartha was plain as day. He was calling via etheric which meant he was probably off planet. Either that or so fantastically wealthy that an etheric transmission for trivial matters was a matter of course. In the latter case she would have known his name. So off planet it was. “I think so. Connect him to my comms, please.”

Athena set aside her flexis and straightened out her blouse as she got up from the small tea table where she’d been reading. Her comm station was built into the wooden bookshelves beside her drafting table on the other side of her office. She’d commissioned it that way so she’d have to stand to use it. In spite of her mother’s best tutoring she’d never been good at maintaining her posture when seated and since she’d taken up the role of her father’s right hand she couldn’t afford to look sloppy. She drew herself up in front of the comm’s camera, threw her shoulders back, and accepted the call.

Darius Dart was a sleepy looking man with blue eyes and slowly receding black hair. A close cropped mustache framed his mouth and the bottom of his chin. Wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and lines in his foreheads hinted at his age but it was hard to pin it down with any accuracy, especially with no idea what kind of planet he called home. He was visible from the shoulders up and wore what looked like a conservatively cut black suit with broad lapels. Her quick appraisal done, Athena favored him with a slight smile and tossed her curls. “Mr. Dart. I’m Athena Hutchinson, very pleased to make your acquaintance. How can I help you?”

“Actually, I was hoping I would be able to help you.” Dart favored her with a warm but vaguely insincere smile like she expected from a veteran salesman or senior faculty member. “I represent the historical research department of Isaacs University. I’ve received word that you’re interested in the old mythologies of Agartha and Shambhala and I believe there’s a lot we can offer you in that regard.”

Faculty, then. A salesman would have been preferable, all things considered. They just wanted money. She reached out to the comm panel and flicked a few switches, adding layers of encryption to the transmission and rerouting it through a private tower owned by Hutchinson Trading. “I’m glad to hear from you, Mr. Dart. I’m not familiar with your name or with Isaacs University, what led you to believe I’d be interested in mythology?”

“I have a number of connections with the faculty of Essene University and we’ve exchanged information on the topic once or twice.” Dart assumed an expression of exaggerated loss. “However a research accident led to the unfortunate end to most of them and the last tragically ended in a hovercar accident. Really, you would think life on campus would be a little safer but what can we do? The spirit of inquiry rests heavily upon us.”

Athena curled one hand into a fist at her side, out of the camera’s pickup, and squeezed until it hurt. That silly sideline had been one of daddy’s projects that he’d leveraged her groundwork to kick off. He hadn’t even mentioned it until it went bad. “I’m familiar with the general situation on Effratha, Mr. Dart. Or is it Doctor?”

“I’m afraid I’m just a professor and one far down the organizational chart, Miss Hutchinson.”

“Thank you. As I said, I’m familiar with the general situation but the specifics of those kinds of charitable projects aren’t a major part of my office.” She carefully uncurled one finger at a time, from her pinky inwards, letting the stress flow out as each one opened. “Perhaps you’d like to speak to my dad?”

“With due respect, Miss Hutchinson…” Dart paused and very deliberately stroked his mustache, creating an impression of thoughtful consideration although Athena suspected he already knew what he intended to say. “Your father’s… mishandling of the situation was unfortunate. Of course he wasn’t responsible for the failures of the research department but the accidents could have been prevented with more robust failsafes. I suspect you would not have made such mistakes.”

“Perhaps.” It took real effort not to let her contempt for Dart leak through into her expression or voice. So many people out there thought she was some shrew looking for any opportunity to badmouth family or build up some kind of reputation of her own. As if she cared at all what they thought of her or daddy. “So, you’d like to offer the resources of Isaacs University in place of Essene so long as we’re willing to give you good terms to continue with their research? Do I have that correct?”

“And provided you are the point of contact for the project, instead of your father,” Dart added.

“I’ll consider it. Of course, just because I’m taking over as the point of contact doesn’t mean dad will be out of the conversation.” Athena favored him with her most people pleasing smile. “If you prefer to work with me I’ll work with your but this is his passion project.”

“Naturally.” Dart offered a toothy grin. It could have been a forced expression but, to her surprise, Athena found it actually improved the professor’s rather bland face quite a bit. She couldn’t help but respond in kind. “I’ll send you a packet about the University if you want a broad overview of our history and the department’s qualifications. I’m afraid we’re a rather new signatory to the Pact so there isn’t a huge amount there.”

She nodded. “I understand. Where are you based, if I may ask? If you’re new you must be fairly far out on one of the spiral arms.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’re on Wireburn, about halfway out the dexter arm. The only inhabited gas giant in the quadrant, if you were curious.”

“That…” Athena trailed off. She’d been about to ask whether it was possible to find a habitable gas giant but it was clearly a silly question if there was already one with a population. And she felt like she’d read the name somewhere recently. “That’s very interesting, Mr. Dart. I’ll give your packet a very thorough reading.”

She signed off the transmission then hurried over to her drafting table, sifting through various reports until she found the one she’d been thinking of. BaiTienLung had quite the presence there. Somehow the fact that the planet Wireburn was a unicorn among gas giants hadn’t gotten into that specific report. She’d have to find out why that was and fire someone for it. She collected that report, added anything the computer had in its banks on Wireburn and downloaded the packet Dart had sent then dumped it all into a stack of flexiplast to take with her. It was high time she found daddy and had a long talk with him.

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Elisha

A Doric colonnade ran along the front of the apartment building with a waist high metal railing running between the supports and creating a suggestion of where the building ended and the rest of the world began. At one point there had been a garden bed in front of the building’s porch but now it was just dirt. Elisha carefully stepped over the railing and sidled up to the door of the Carter apartment while pulling a flathead screwdriver and hammer out of his coat pocket.

Over the centuries a lot of innovations in home security had come about. However, when it came to physically barring someone from a building humanity had never beaten the blend of security and cost effectiveness in the simple deadbolt. Before seeing he had competition Elisha had hoped to avoid forcing his way into the building. Now that it looked like he might be racing another interested party his approach was going to have to be more direct.

It took him about ten seconds to force the lock. At some point all those other security innovations were going to come into play. He had no doubt he was being watched by cameras somewhere and there were probably DNA traps trying to lift some of his genetic material from the air he exhaled, too. Since the building was unoccupied and a licensed Thieftaker had some sway with the Lawmen his breaking and entering probably wouldn’t result in charges. There would be a fine of some kind and he’d have to pay for the lock. Once it was all said and done Elisha planned to bill it to Director Wen.

In the mean time he closed the door behind him and looked around. The apartment wasn’t very big, little more than a kitchen, living area, bedroom and bath. A chair sat at the kitchen counter. A scattering of stale crumbs on the counter top hinted it was where Carter preferred to eat his breakfast. Elisha grabbed the chair and propped it under the doorknob. It wouldn’t keep out anyone with access to the sidereal but for the vast majority of city toughs it would do the job fine.

The first step was to go to the bedroom and rummage through the closets. There were a lot of Wayfinder style clothes, the kind of heavy, insulated garments that helped keep a body warm out in the depths of the Helium Seas. As wardrobes went it was on the expensive side. A man planning to up and leave would probably sell clothes like that to help fund his travel or at least bring them along with him. There were empty hangers in the closet but not many of them. Maybe three changes of clothes were missing. Elisha had been leaning towards Carter not planning his own disappearance after interviewing his acquaintances and this pushed him further in that direction.

A blinking light at Carter’s comm station indicated he had messages. However given how long he’d been missing that wasn’t surprising and, without breaking its privacy codes, there was no way to make it play them back. Might be worth taking the memory coral out of it, though. There was plenty he could do with that and a little more time to work. The screwdriver came out of his pocket again.

There was a knock at the door.

Elisha put the screwdriver back in his pocket then gripped the handle of the etheric lash at his waist as he quietly slid his feet over to the door. The rest of him naturally went along with them.

“Mr. Carter?” The voice, though slightly muffled by the door, was high, clear and feminine. “It’s Lucy, the building manager? Are you back? The Guild told me you disappeared!”

Elisha frowned and tapped a plastic screen next to the door. It lit up and displayed an image of the colonnade from a high angle. A woman in a well tailored red pea coat and hat stood outside, peering at the door. His frown deepened.

So far on this case he’d moved pretty quickly and without some of the due diligence he’d do for a case that didn’t involve missing people who might not be dead yet. So he didn’t know who owned or managed the building. However he strongly suspected this woman wasn’t the owner or manager. Her coat was too nicely made to be affordable on a building manager’s salary and, while an apartment owner might be able to afford it, she wouldn’t come out on this kind of call.

But what sealed the deal was her data veil. She’d pulled the gauzy fabric up and piled it on her hat as women often did when they wanted to make eye contact with whoever they were talking to. That made the inside of it visible. Problem was there wasn’t any data displayed on the inside of her data veil and Elisha couldn’t imagine a real estate mogul or the mogul’s building manager ever switching off their flow of information like that.

Then there was the expensive hovercar from out back of the building. Whoever owned that had to be interested in the apartment as well but the odds that a well dressed society woman was on her way to look into a missing Wayfinder all on her own were small. She was a ruse. The chair was still under the door handle so there was no way she was getting in without his knowing it. Where would someone go if they wanted to sneak in?

The bedroom had a large window. Stepping with great care Elisha moved back towards the bedroom, angling to stay on Carter’s worn rugs rather than step on the tiled floor. He moved over to the wall the living room shared with the bedroom. Pressing himself against the wall he unlooped the six foot length of his etheric lash from his belt and held the weapon coiled once in his right hand. Then he slunk closer to the doorway.

He took two steps before a strange sense of dislocation hit him. For a split second he wasn’t sure what had happened. Then his mind jumped back to a visit to Theiftaker’s Hall several years ago, when one of the boys had been showing off a gizmo he’d brought back from further down the dexter arm. Said it was supposed to cut people off from the sidereal. When he turned it on it felt just like now.

Elisha had just made the connection when the barrel of a knifer poked out of the bedroom door, followed quickly by the brim of a hat and a wide, jowly face with a thin mustache. Without even thinking the theiftaker struck with his weapon. The weighted coil of wire looped twice around the other man’s weapon arm and Elisha yanked hard, dragging the barrel of the knifer down.

To the other man’s credit he didn’t waste much time trying to yank free. Instead he leaned down into the dragging motion and barreled forward into Elisha. For a moment the two men grappled. Elisha tried to get a grip on the other’s elbow or neck but the man kept his arms moving enough he couldn’t find purchase and there was some kind of trick to his hat. Part of the brim must have been metal reinforced. It dug into Elisha’s side as he tried to wrap up the man’s head.

It was pure stupidity to try and shock someone with an etheric lash while that person was holding on to you so Elisha adjust his grip on the handle until he was holding it like a black jack and clubbed the man’s knifer out of his hand with it. In response the other braced himself against the wall and shoved Elisha back into a recliner. For a moment he tried to grab the back of the chair and stabilize himself. When it became clear he couldn’t Elisha leaned back the other way and let himself roll over the furniture, landing in a heap on the other side. Then he braced both feet against the base of the chair and kicked it towards his opponent.

Who jumped over it. Just hopped up in the air, tucked his feet under him and let the thing slide right on beneath him. Elisha scowled in disgust. The other man stopped to pull the lash off his arm once he landed but the second that took was enough time for Elisha to hook ankles then kick the back of his opponent’s knee with the other foot, sending him to the ground. A mad scramble ensued.

Rather than try and get back up Elisha rolled onto his front, got halfway up on his knees and threw a haymaker down at the other’s head. He got a knee in the gut for his trouble. As he doubled over the other man clasped both hands behind Elisha’s neck and used them as leverage to try and roll them over. Elisha grabbed the belt of his opponent’s overcoat and applied counter torque to prevent it. The metal hat brim slammed the thieftaker across the bridge of the nose in the nastiest headbutt he’d ever taken.

He rolled back, dazed, and braced against the wall, shoving himself to his feet. The other guy grabbed the kitchen counter and dragged himself upright as well, a half smile on his lips and a wild look in his eyes. Once upright the other man shook his arms out once and balled his hands into fists. Elisha wiped at a trickle of blood leaking from a cut on his nose then raised his hands up in front of his chin and cocked his head to one side, watching.

The front door burst open with a loud crack, slammed against the far wall and swung back closed with a bang. The chair that had been wedged under the knob clattered to the floor and slid halfway into the room. Both men turned to stare at it. The door opened again, in a more sedate manner this time, and a new man in grimy leathers stomped into the room, dragging the woman in the red coat behind him by one arm.

“Okay, wise guys,” he snapped, glaring at the two of them. “What do you two think you’re doing in my house?”

Lloyd

In just twenty short minutes the good mood brought to Lloyd by returning to civilization had vanished, replaced with seething anger. First there was the strange woman banging on his front door. Now there were strangers tearing his living room to shreds and he was going to have to pay to have his locks fixed. Worst of all, the two hooligans glared at him like he’d interrupted something.

Lloyd shoved the woman in red into the room with the rest of them, folded his arms across his chest and scowled. “Does anyone want to tell me what is going on here?”

Red was caught by the man in the broad brimmed hat and dark overcoat. The other man, who wore no hat and a long duster over a pleated shirt, lowered his hands from a fighting stance and cleared his throat. “You must be Lloyd Carter?”

“And you must be a dumbass, I know who I am. I’m asking who you are.” The annoyance that had been building in him since the lady out front had refused to tell him who she was and what she was doing on his doorstep suddenly burst and left him feeling very tired. “You know what, I don’t care. Get out.”

The hat man had stooped down for something and now drew himself up to his full height and Lloyd got his first good look at him. They were roughly the same size and height, which was unusual in and of itself as Lloyd was just over two meters tall. There was also an unsettling look in his eyes. Then he very conspicuously lifted one hand and shoved the knifer he’d picked up off the floor into the belt of his overcoat, leaving his hand on the grip. “Not just yet, I think.”

It was a threat and not a subtle one and Lloyd wasn’t quite tired enough to ignore it. “I guess you want to explain yourself to the Lawmen, then?”

The big man’s lips twitched into something that might be a smile. “You haven’t had time to call them.”

“It’s a public street and there are five other apartments in this building,” the other man replied, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets with a carefree attitude. “He doesn’t have to.”

“You don’t seem bothered by that,” Lloyd snapped.

“I have a license from Thieftaker Hall and a contract to find you from the BaiTienLung Company,” he replied, pulling a card out of one pocket and offering it to Lloyd. It said “Elisha Hammer, Thieftaker” in silver leaf print and included a comm registry and address. “The Lawmen know me. I don’t know who these two are and until a second ago I thought they were involved in your disappearance.”

Mr. Big watched the exchange with one eye on them and one on the lady, clearly unhappy with the news that Hammer had an in with the law. “Ma’am?”

All eyes turned to her. She straightened, pulling one hand out of her clutch purse and watching Lloyd steadily. “Who I am is no business-”

Hammer removed the purse from her hands with mystifying ease. One moment it was firmly in both hands, the next he was stepping past her with the item firmly in his grip and Lloyd had no idea how he’d managed it. Mr. Big started slightly, half drawing his knifer, but reluctantly put it back when it was clear Hammer wasn’t an immediate threat. Lloyd had heard the line between thieftaker and thief was pretty thin but he hadn’t thought it was that thin. Hammer dumped the purse’s contents onto the counter and angled himself so he could paw through it while keeping one eye on the two of them. “What have you got here, anyway?”

“Does it matter?” Lloyd demanded. “The three of you are still in my house and I didn’t ask any of you here. I’m glad someone thought to send a detective to look for me but you found me now and I’m very, very tired so how about you all get lost and let me get a shave and a nap?”

“Miss Wen will be delighted to know you’re fine,” Hammer said as he pawed through cash sticks, room and vehicle keys and several sheets of flexiplast. “She was worried you’d gotten wrapped up in some kind of business feud.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Maybe, maybe not. After all, someone besides her has hired some pretty nasty people to look for you as well. These two have real money behind them.” Hammer paused and picked up a cylindrical object about twice as long as the palm of his hand and turned it over in his hands once. It was gunmetal gray with a pale, coppery pattern winding around it like wires. “What is this? Looks a bit like an ethereal transmitter. Wonder who this calls?”

It looked like an ethereal transmitter but it wasn’t. It was apparently something much more sophisticated, although L-93 hadn’t really elaborated on that when it gave one to Lloyd. He turned his attention back to the woman, eyes narrowing. “Where did you get that?”

The sound of approaching sirens began to drift in the still open door. The lady sighed, slapped something on Mr. Big’s belt and grabbed his elbow. The two of them seemed to bend and slide, as if they were suddenly nothing more than water on a window as it was wiped away by a cloth, then they vanished from sight as they finished turning sidereal. Hammer dropped the cylinder and began to turn himself but Lloyd waved for him to stop. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Hammer did, in fact, stop his turn. “Why not?”

“Because you need to tell your boss you found me before I run off again.” Lloyd pinched the bridge of his nose. L-93 had warned him the OMNI people would find him quickly but that was a lot faster than he’d given them credit for.

Hammer gave him a curious look. “And what are you running from?”

“I don’t really know, Mr. Hammer. I don’t really know.”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

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…

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Tarn

As it turned out Wireburn was far off the beaten path, buried deep in the galactic heart and dangerously close to a star cluster where the background radiation made any kind of long term settlement tricky. Thanks to these factors it was impossible to find direct passage from Effratha to Wireburn. Tarn wound up wasting two full days moving out along the spiral from Effratha halfway to Andromeda Proxima, the closest star to the neighboring galaxy, before catching a ship that jumped directly into the galactic center. From there he made two more transfers before arriving at Wireburn proper.

He’d sent word on ahead to his new employer but he didn’t have the cash to pay for a sidereal transmission so the message would have to go via data onboard a jumpship. While courier ships for the express purpose of moving messages did exist they also didn’t get that far off the beaten path every day. There was no way to know if Lucy had gotten his message ahead of time. However even if she hadn’t Wireburn was still a well established colony and finding accommodations for a short stay wouldn’t be that difficult.

It also proved unnecessary. On disembarking from his jumpliner Tarn found a petite, short haired blond woman waiting for him in the starport concourse. She wore a tan colored, sleeveless dress and matching hat. A dataveil dangled from the hat’s broad brim, obscuring her features, but she zeroed in on Tarn almost as soon as his boots left the gangway and she waved cheerfully. The build, hair and mannerisms all suggested that this was his employer.

He quickly crossed the tennish meters between them and removed his broad brimmed metalweave cap. Lucy likewise lifted her datavail and piled it on her own hat, then smiled. Tarn came to a stop across from her and allowed himself the faintest, most professional smile in his repertoire. “Miss Luck. A pleasure to be working with you again.”

“The pleasure is mine, Sel Tarn. I was rather surprised when I heard you’d be here so soon, given the distance between here and Yshron. Then again, between the shipyards and the microfactories perhaps it’s not surprising. There must be a few hundred outbound jumps a day leaving your world.”

“True, but not why I got here so fast. I was already on business when I received your message and I was able to find a relatively direct route here. Are we meeting anyone else?”

“Not this time.” Lucy flicked a glance at the large duffle he carried slung over one shoulder. “Your usual gear? Or do we need to stop by the baggage claim?”

“This is all I brought with me. Shall we get to work?”

A smile tugged at her lips but she hid it by dropping her veil back over her face and starting down the concourse. “So impatient. All right, Sel Tarn, but first I have to know whether you’ve kept up your LAC license?”

“Of course. I’m certified to the light aircraft standard and the small aircraft standard so unless Wireburn has some kind of unusual local standard for aircraft operations I can pilot us wherever we need to go.” Tarn glanced up at the port’s skylights, which filled the concourse with the planet’s dim, orange light. He’d worked with Lucy Luck twice before. In spite of that there were still plenty of things he didn’t know about her and one of those points of ignorance was about to be very relevant to what they were discussing. “Still, if we’re going to travel a great deal it might be faster to have someone who can jump on their own.”

“If that was my concern I could handle it on my own.” Tarn nodded slightly, he’d always expected Lucy had an etheric sense given the way she popped up in different parts of the quadrant without tickets or pilots on hand in the past. “What I need from you is your talent for finding people.”

“This task requires aircraft? Is the person you’re looking for a smuggler or military officer of some kind? The Shran are not in the business of full fledged mercenary work although I can refer you to someone if that’s what you need.”

She laughed in light, tinkling tones. Tarn found it a very incongruous sound given the kinds of work she’d commissioned from the Shran in the past. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing like that. What do you know about Wireburn, Sel Tarn?”

“Just that it’s the only gas giant in the quadrant that has an etheric signature low enough it could be colonized and people have been settling here for a couple of hundred years.” Tarn shrugged. “Honestly, hunting the creatures that live on gas giants is a bit outside the Shran’s usual line of work so I never took much of an interest before now. I thought all the inhabited areas were domed, like here.”

“They are. However the person I need you to find is what the locals call a Wayfinder. They spend a lot of their time out in the atmosphere, laying the beacon network across the planet, and the person in question was out doing just that when he went silent.”

Tarn studied Lucy out of the corner of his eye for a moment. He wasn’t supposed to ask too many questions about his client’s requests but sometimes it was hard to resist the urge. Why Lucy wanted to find a Wayfinder was none of his business “I take it we need a light aircraft to safely traverse the atmosphere?”

“Correct.” She caught him watching and flashed him a brilliant smile. “I’ve arranged to rent one beginning tomorrow, so you’ll have a day of downtime to make any other arrangements you need. Do you have enough cash on hand? I have an expense account to draw on if not.”

“That depends. How dynamic a situation is it likely to be when we find your missing Wayfinder?”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be happy to be found. It’s a very bad thing to go missing in the depths of the Helium Seas with no beacons to hand.” Her smile died away, leaving her with a sharp, hawkish expression. “We do need to find him first, however.”

It was a race, then. “The LAC you’ve requisitioned is up to the task?”

“Most definitely.”

“Then I should be able to handle my own arrangements.”

“Excellent.” She passed him a slip of flexiplast. “Our hotel’s beacon and reservation details. Make whatever preparations you need and meet me at the building’s landing pad tomorrow morning.”

Tarn tucked it into his breast pocket. “Of course.”

Elisha

Elisha Hammer maintained a small office near the bottom of one of Wireburn’s great ferrovines in the domed complex known as Ashland Prominence. The airlocks there bustled with the riches brought through trade with the Great Jellies. Most wouldn’t think helium dwelling jellyfish would make anything humans could use. That was why most people aren’t the owners of interplanetary trading companies that rake in more cash than most small planets. One such owner had smelled opportunity in the market and the rest was history. With all that money moving through the locks it was the perfect place for someone like Elisha. After all, with money came greed and desperation.

Both of which led to crime.

The Lawmen could crack down on crime every now and again but they were a blunt instrument. Sometimes the demands of greed called for delicacy. Furthermore, in the locks not everything that was frowned on counted as a crime before a judge. At the end of the day, whether the Lawmen were ill suited to the task or the problem fell outside the bounds of legal crime the aggrieved who wanted justice needed some option to rely on.

Elisha was that option.

He had a license from the Theiftaker’s Hall and a sterling reputation for solving cases and never ransoming stolen property or blackmailing clients. He was quite proud of it. He also turned the occasional client who turned crooked over to the Law, which he was quietly proud of as well.

All of this is to say that Elisha Hammer was not a man given to nerves. He considered himself a tough customer. When the sector’s Director of the BaiTienLung Conglomerate marched into his office dressed in exotic furs and a skin tight dress he didn’t bat an eye, just offered her a chair.

“Mr. Hammer, is this office secure?” She asked as she settled herself in her seat.

That did get him to raise an eyebrow. “Not compared to a BTL Office, Ms. Wen.” Since they were both familiar with the other’s name he saw no point beating around the bush. “However since you didn’t message me asking if I’d come to your local branch I assume that’s acceptable to you.”

“I see you’re as well informed as I was told you would be.” She opened a clutch purse as she spoke. “I’m afraid I’m in an incredible rush so I can’t show you the courtesy or offer the advanced notice I’d prefer to. I have to be on Rainford in less than three hours and I need a matter investigated discretely. How much would you charge to retain your services for the next two weeks? Exclusively?”

Elisha bought time to think about his answer by moving back to his side of his desk, tempted to tell the woman to move along. He didn’t like be hustled like this. He’d worked with BTL foremen before on small cases but it was a different thing entirely to have a Director like Lin’yi Wen show up unannounced on his doorstep. BTL wasn’t a big firm on Ashland but neither were they so small he could just brush them off. It was bad for business. “I have one or two things on my schedule but I could clear them out for, say, twenty thousand cash.”

Wen pulled three cash sticks out of her purse and slid them across the desk to him without comment. That’s when Elisha started feeling his nerves tingle. He gingerly picked one up and looked at the denomination on it. He could rent his office and his apartment for a year for twenty thousand cash, he’d quoted the figure as a negotiating tactic and a play for more time to work out what was going on. Wen had given him half again as much without batting an eye.

He set the cash back down and glanced up at his prospective client. “Let’s hear the details of the case.”

Wen tugged a veil down over the top half of her face, softly glowing lines of text scrolling across it as she read them off. “Six days ago I hired the Wayfinder’s Guild to expand Wireburn’s beacon grid further south-southeast from Ashland. A Wayfinder named Lloyd Carter was dispatched along the projected route four days ago. Two days ago he missed his scheduled check-in and hasn’t been heard from since, a situation I find concerning for a number of reasons. I need you to find out what happened to him.”

At least three possible reasons Wen might need to find her wayward Wayfinder immediately occurred to Elisha but prying into that kind of thing wasn’t seemly unless it had direct bearing on the case. So he only asked about one of them. “Do you think it likely that your attempt to expand the network might have drawn the attention of a rival business interest? Sandpoint Mercantile? Acropolis Trading?”

“Either of those are possibilities, as are Spinward and Rasen, although I don’t know of any particular reason to suspect they interfered with our contract.”

Apparently he was going to have to do some research for this case. He’d never even heard of Rasen. “Well, Miss Wen, often times when people go missing it has a much more mundane explanation as opposed to something sinister. Although I’m not entirely sure what it might be in this case. Are you aware if Mr. Carter possesses an etheric sense? Could he have jumped back to Ashland under his own power?”

The edge of a frown showed from under Wen’s veil. “I’m afraid I don’t know. Mr. Carter was assigned this job by the Guild.”

“Of course. I’ll reach out to them to see what I can learn, then. How should I keep you up to date?”

She closed up her purse and got to her feet. “I’m afraid I’m going to be off planet for the next day or two at least. If you learn anything you can pass me word through my direct line in my office. The automated system will forward it.”

Elisha took the slip of flexiplast she offered him and slid it into his tunic’s inner pocket. “And if I should find Mr. Carter, do you want me to ask him anything? Retrieve anything? Take him any place?”

Wen hesitated. It was hard to tell with her veil down but, knowing her type, Elisha suspected that she hadn’t thought much about what to do with the man at all. Her thoughts had been entirely on whether her rivals were trying to cut off her business. To her credit, she recovered her aplomb quickly. “If he wishes to return to work, let him. However if he feels he’s in danger bring him to the BTL offices in the Skyward district of Ashland and our Security office will take care of him.”

He nodded and Wen left. The cash sticks still sat on the desk an for a moment Elisha wondered if they were going to be the death of him. BTL and its rivals weren’t just big companies they were galactic. If he got on the wrong side of any of them they’d do more than just end his career. He hadn’t asked for those kinds of problems. On the other hand, neither had Lloyd Carter.

Elisha pocketed the cash and set about getting ahold of his buddy in the Wayfinders.

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