The Final Stroll on Perseus's Arm Read online

  Jessica said.

  Cargo asked.

  Jessica replied.

  Misha suggested.

  Iris said.

  Jessica asked.

  Trevor reached down and stroked Jessica’s arm.

  Erin said.

  Jessica agreed with Erin’s assessment.

  Misha chortled.

  Jessica nodded.

  Cargo asked.

  Trevor suggested.

  Jessica shook her head.

  Iris countered.

  Misha made a gagging sound over the Link.

  Sabrina interrupted.

  Cargo asked.

 

  Sabrina passed the details over the Link, and Jessica looked the ship over. It was a freighter. Not a small one either. The Laren measured in at over three kilometers in length, and could haul millions of tons of cargo. It was a bit strange to see a ship like that in a system like Sullus. Unless it planned to pick up a lot of beef.

  Iris said before Jessica could.

  Cargo replied.

  Jessica asked.

  Sabrina’s mental tone was short.

  Cargo replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

  The retro-zone was a name the crew had given to the region of space they were currently traveling through. The official name was the Orion-Perseus Expansion Transit District 4A. A fancy way of saying a region of space that lay close to the Inner Stars, and which had to keep its use of advanced technology to a minimum to ensure they remained undetected by Inner Stars civilizations.

  Many of the systems within the retro-zone were settled by refugees during the FTL wars; ships that had fled into the far reaches of space, only to meet up with the FGT who had worlds ready for them.

  The trade-off, however, was an enforced limitation on technological advances, specifically advanced personal mods and a near-ban on sentient AI.

  It was markedly different from the further reaches of Orion Space, which were even more advanced than Inner Stars civilizations—with no limitations to speak of when it came to advanced mods. As evidenced by what RHY Dynamics had done to Jessica.

  The only constant was the dearth of sentient AI.

  Cargo said.

  Nance asked.

  Erin supplied.

  Nance breathed out derisively and shook her head.

  Jessica patted Nance on the shoulder.

  Nance replied.

  Cargo said.

  Nance said.

  Jessica shook her head and turned back to peer at the curiosity shop across the street.

  Misha asked.

 

  Nance asked.

  Finaeus said with a grin over the Link.

 

  Trevor volunteered.

  Cargo said to Trevor.

  The idea of splitting the team up didn’t sit well with Jessica, but a ship like the Laren appearing here after being at the same station as them all the way back in Philia was unusual. Especially since it wasn’t a regular stop for the massive freighter.

  She nodded slowly, looking Cargo, then Trevor in the eyes. “You two be careful. A lot of coincidences here.”

  Cargo nodded solemnly. “Don’t worry. If we need an extract, you can fly the pinnace over and give us a hand.”

  “The pinnace?” Nance asked with a grin. “Do you mean the Sexy?”

  “No, I mean the pinnace.”

 

  Nance asked.

 

  Misha asked.

  Nance laughed.

  Sabrina said, sounding exasperated.

  Jessica said, her tone conciliatory.

  Iris repeated.

 

 

 

  “Let’s go,” Cargo slapped Trevor on the back. “We’ve got a maglev to catch.”

  “And some mountains to fall down.”

  “What exactly are we doing?” Nance asked Jessica. “We’re going to look at every vehicle that left the area? That has to be in the thousands since Cheeky disappeared.”

  “Close to five thousand, yeah,” Jessica said. “But Iris and Erin will be able to go through them faster than us. You and I are going to do the legwork.”

  “Gonna show all that leg while doing the legwork?” Nance asked, looking Jessica over.

  Jessica chuckled. “I don’t really blend in here, do I?”

  “Jess, you don’t blend in most places, but down here, yeah, not even a little bit.”
r />   Jessica fingered a lock of her hair. “Ship’s thirty minutes out. Looks like I have to go shopping.”

  A nervous laugh burst from Nance’s throat. “Jess, only you could turn Cheeky’s abduction into an excuse for a shopping trip.”

  “It’ll just be something simple,” Jessica said. “We’re not going partying or anything. Cheeky and I passed by a place that looked promising a block back.”

  Ten minutes later, Jessica and Nance stepped out of the store. Little they carried fit Jessica’s exaggerated figure, and in the end she had resorted to buying a long, white and blue dress. She wore a loose white jacket overtop, matched by a broad rimmed white hat.

  “You’re still glowing a bit,” Nance said as they stepped out onto the sidewalk once more.

  “I know, my little microbes are fully charged. There’s no stopping them when they get like this.”

  Iris instructed.

  Nance asked as the two women began to walk down the street.

 

  Nance laughed.

 

  They reached the alley and Jessica looked up and down the narrow stretch of road. City trash receptacles lined the alley, and little else—Ferra was nothing if not a clean planet.

  “So what do you need our fleshy bits for?” Jessica asked.

  Erin began.

  Jessica countered.

  Iris said in agreement.

  Nance asked.

  Erin sent a mental affirmation.

 

  Erin said with ghost of a smirk in their minds.

  Iris said a moment later.

  Jessica and Nance shared a look and walked down the alley. Iris directed Jess’s nanocloud up to the camera mounted on a building and a minute later they were staring at a deepening mystery.

  It was confirmed. There was no sign of anyone exiting the alley.

  Jessica crouched down beside a drain pipe and wrapped a hand around it, discharging some of her skin’s accumulated energy into the ground.

  “That helped,” Nance said. “You are decidedly less glowy.”

  “Good,” Jessica said as she rose and dusted off her dress. “Getting tired of the gawking.”

  Over the next ten minutes, Jessica and Nance circled the block, the AIs tapping every camera as the two women spoke with store owners, looking for any clue that someone had come through with a small blonde woman slung over their shoulder.

  In the end they were back in the mouth of the alley, no closer to finding the abductor’s egress route than before.

  “It’s like they just flew away,” Nance muttered as she looked to the sky.

  “Yeah,” Jessica said in agreement as she leant against one of the buildings, staring down the alley. “But that would be on the ATC logs. No way to hide that.”

  “You sure?” Nance asked. “We seem to have a magician on our hands here.”

  “Magician…” Jessica said as she stared down the alley. Then something clicked. “Nance, you are really, really going to hate this.”

  “Why?” Nance asked as Jessica began to stride toward the back of the curiosity shop.

  Jessica stopped and looked down at a sewer access cover.

  “Oh, hell no!” Nance said. “You’re not getting me down there without a hazsuit. No way, no how. I just bought these boots too!”

  “I thought that you don’t worry about being fashionable,” Jessica said as she crouched and stuck her fingers in the three holes on the cover.

  “Not like you and Cheeky, no, but I do like boots that aren’t soaked in piss and shit. Call me crazy.”

  Jessica lifted the cover free and set it aside, sending her nano down into the hole. “Looks like it’s just a storm drain, Nance. No piss and shit in there.”

  Nance snorted. “Not human, no, but guess where the animals go?”

  Iris offered.

  “I know,” Jessica chuckled. “But messing with Nance was worth it.”

  “Dammit, Jess!”

  Iris said.

  “Of course, you know what that means, right, Jess?” Nance asked.

  Jessica nodded. “They could be anywhere by now.”

  MOUNTAINS AND GEESE

  STELLAR DATE: 03.10.8948 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Nise Maglev Line, Ferra, Sullus System

  REGION: Midway Cluster, Orion Freedom Alliance Space

  “Feels like a wild goose chase,” Trevor said as he settled into his seat on the train. “Why would they abduct Cheeky and then go on a ski trip?”

  “Could just be cover,” Cargo said. “Ship like that has a big crew, plenty of people to pull off a snatch and grab while the captain and officers take a little vacation.”

  “You realize that if they’re after us, we can’t just walk up and start asking them questions. They’re gonna know who we are.”

  Cargo thought about the possibility for a moment. “Subterfuge really isn’t our thing, is it?”

  “Not even a little bit,” Trevor replied. “That’s the girls’ gig. We’re usually just the muscle behind their plays. Well, at least I am.”

  Cargo caught the implication. Sure, he was Sabrina’s captain, and most of the time he directed all the ship’s operations, but everyone knew that when push came to shove, Jessica called the shots as often as not.

  It didn’t bother him, she was a skilled pilot, had captained much larger ships than Sabrina, and had been in more fights than anyone he knew.

  Most of the time. It didn’t bother him most of the time.

  Hank said.

 

  Hank nodded solemnly in Cargo’s mind.

  Cargo let the thought hang.

  Hank let slip a grim laugh.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” Trevor said, correctly interpreting the cause of Cargo’s silence.

  Cargo laughed. “It’s OK. Hank was just telling me not to be such a baby.”

 

  “You were, but I’m not,” Cargo replied. “I guess that’s why the girls do the sneaky stuff, and we go bust heads.”

  “Except for Finaeus,” Trevor added. “That guy’s like a ninja. Just appears out of nowhere.”

  “Must be all those years on the run.”

  Trevor nodded silently, and Cargo stared out the window wonde
ring how they would feel out the crew of the Laren. He pulled up the list of crew Sabrina had located at the ski resort, a place named Killashandra Mountain. The name rang a bell, but he couldn’t place it just now.

  Sabrina hadn’t accessed the resort’s member list, just a flight record of a shuttle leaving the Laren and landing at Killashandra. The STC records showed the Laren’s Captain—a woman named Hunter—was at the helm of the shuttle, but no other passengers were listed.

  That didn’t mean she was the only one aboard. A private ship like the Laren’s shuttle wouldn’t be required to list passengers.

  Customs would have the records, and Cargo considered asking Iris to access their systems but decided against it. For now, they’d use some old fashioned legwork to find out who had come down from the ship.

  Or, at the least, see if they could access Killashandra Mountain’s surveillance feeds.

  “So if they were following us,” Cargo said after looking over the information he had, “they will know who we are. I think we do a frontal approach. Find out where they are and simply show up. Their reactions should tell us everything we need to know.”

  Trevor chuckled. “Well, depending on where they are. If they’re asleep in their rooms the reaction will be startlement whether they’re involved with Cheeky or not.”

  “Sorry, in my mind they were at a bar or something.”

  “You know, Cargo, not everyone hangs out in bars. Some people do other things with their spare time.”

  Cargo frowned. “Like what? Gamble?”

  “Or read a book, go to a museum, take in a live show somewhere.”

  “A live show of what? Like acrobats or something?”

  “Yeah, or music. Heck, some people even go bowling.”

  “Trevor, no one goes bowling, that’s just some ancient game you see in old vids.”

  Trevor held up his hands. “OK, you got me. But they could be curling.”

  “Well yeah, that I could see. Everyone loves to throw a rock from time-to-time.”

  “So we just need to figure out where they like to hang out—other than on the mountain. I don’t think you and I are skiing material.”