‘What a difference a few days make!' Sean said.
Cautiously approaching the new building, Marduk let out a little snarl. He was pacing along the front of it, sniffing here and there and usually sneezing at the chemical smells clinging to the newly erected building, pawing at the one or two mounds of disturbed dirt left over.
Well, no good standing around out here, is there? he said and took the three entrance steps in one.
Gal-3
‘I tell you, Louchard's real ship only just left,' Charas vehemently insisted to Commander Nal an Hon. Once more dressed in the gear of a station brat, there was nothing of the child in her manner as she leaned across the desk, hands gripping the edge, her white knuckles demonstrating the intensity of her belief in what she said. 'That's why you never found the kidnapped victims in any of the ships that had disembarked.’
‘Your instrumentation could be faulty, Charas,' the Commander said patiently although he knew that the diminutive operator was the best surveillance officer money, and loyalty, could buy. In this case, the loyalty was the prominent factor since Marmion Algemeine seemed to instil that virtue in anyone who worked for her. He could have used a bit of that himself, though he tried to be as tolerant and fair-minded as he could, dealing with all sorts of psychologies and temperaments as Commander of Gal-3.
‘Faulty my aunt's left toenail!' She swung away from the desk and began pacing. 'My instruments registered the original mayday from both Madame Algemeine and the Colonel. I followed them to Cargo Bay 30…’
‘And followed the shuttle…’
‘So I did, but the shuttle seemed the obvious escape vehicle… and we were going so fast… My implant returns only life-sign readings past a certain distance…" Charas shook her head: they all had been sure the shuttle had the victims. 'But the signal from the implant suggests that Madame Algemeine is still on Gal-3. I got the strongest response in the Cargo Bay: only there's some sort of a scrambler system that diffuses so one can't accurately locate the source.' She held up a hand when the Commander started to interrupt her, 'Until just this past half hour. Operations say that only five ships have requested clearance in the past hour… hours, that is,' and her smile was grim,' since it's taken me longer to reach you with this information. Freighters, all of them, incapable of moving at any great speed.’
‘Look, I want Madame Algemeine back as much as you do, but I've only so many forces to handle search and recover operations…’
‘Madame Algemeine will, of course, reimburse your costs. What are you waiting for, Commander?’
‘Nothing,' he said, abruptly, recognizing that he had been tardy in assimilating her information. Depressing the alert pad, he issued instructions, detailing the descriptions and numeric IDs of the five ships to be stopped and boarded.
‘Ingenious, you must admit,' Charas said, relaxing now she had got him to act,' remaining on Gal-Three while the first of the search and boards were being initiated. But then we know that Louchard uses state-of-the-art technology. This abduction was very carefully planned.’
She sighed, rubbing her face, for she'd been working with only catnaps to refresh her ever since she'd received the first mayday: prowling about the immense cargo bay, checking every single ship in the facility, time and time again, trying to locate exactly which of the hundred or so ships hid the victims. But her locator, despite being state-of-the-art, displayed so many 'echoes' even when placed against a hull, that she had been unable to pinpoint the target ship. Fortunately, her disguise had saved her from retaliation by some of the ships' personneclass="underline" aliens in particular were apt to take offence if you were seen hanging about their vessels for no apparent purpose.
At the outset of this incident, she'd seen the women in the company of Macci Klausevitch so she hadn't been as close on Yana's heels as she normally would. For that she blamed herself. Getting slack in her middle years: have to quit this kind of work if she was going to be less than top efficient all the time.
So the pair waited. Commander an Hon courteously supplied her with a meal and then a shower in his private facilities while fresh clothing was procured for her. She was adrenalin-poor at this point, having pushed herself for days in her vigil. She had almost nodded off when the first reports came in. The slowest of the five vessels had been apprehended and it was, as it was supposed to be, a drone grain carrier and all its components checked out as they should. The second was carrying only two holds of cargo, to the captain's disgust, and he was in no fit mood to be stopped on such a spurious charge. The third was also innocent and the fourth, but of the fifth all they found were large fragments of the hull.
‘Wasn't blown apart, wasn't hit by any spaceflot, wasn't burned or melted or anything, Commander. Just like the hull had been a weevy-fruit, split open down the axis.’
An Hon and Charas exchanged despairing looks.
‘Damn that Louchard!’
Charas felt as near to tears as she had the day her mother died when she'd been eight years old.
‘Any residuals to track?’
‘We're searching, sir, but they could have just used the drift to take 'em the way they wanted to go and, begging your pardon, it could take weeks to do a search pattern and we'd still not be sure we got the right trail.’
‘Return to base, Captain, and thank you.' Grimly, Commander an Hon looked at Charas. 'You still have a life signal from Madame Algemeine, don't you?’
Charas touched the point on her mastoid bone and inclined her head positively. Madame Algemeine was the only client for whom she would permit such an invasion of her personal privacy but she 'owed' her for her life and sanity so Charas was willing to do anything to protect this client.
‘We can check with Sally Point-Jefferson, too,' she said.
When a death occurred, those carrying the implant tuned to that person experienced an unforgettable blast.
The tall lean Commander waved aside that suggestion with a twitch of his lips. 'If she got the blast, so would you!’
‘Now what? The kidnappers didn't leave a final warning of any kind, did they?’
‘Nothing past the last one M'sser Klausevitch passed on to us.’
‘Klausevitch,' Charas murmured and locked eyes with the Commander. 'Odd man to be chosen as messenger. And Madame herself cancelled Millard and Sally as bodyguards?’
‘Hmmm.' An Hon shrugged for the whimsies of the rich. He'd've had an operative with Yana in the head, her tub, under her bed but who would have thought a kidnapping of someone of Madame Algemeine's status would occur in this day and age after the Amber Unicorn fiasco! True, there were occasional incidents involving lesser lights like merchants, captains, executives and enough freaks eking out a marginal living on any big station like this to account for GBA and 'accidents' as well as extortionist intimidation but nothing on the scale of this felony. 'Madame Algemeine had some critical meeting or other that they had to prepare for and doubtless she felt that she was well-enough known - with the Klausevitch along - to inhibit any confrontation.’
‘And who let the two kids loose?’
‘That has already been dealt with,' the Commander said in a hard voice for the unseen eye supposed to follow the young folk had somehow missed their departure from the Algemeine apartments. His licence had been revoked and he was currently looking for any work he could get.
‘That Klausevitch fellow,' Charas said, returning to one aspect of this whole affair that nagged her like a damaged nerve. 'What else have you discovered about him?’
‘I got a repeat of the original clearance. He certainly wouldn't have been hired by Rothschild's if there was anything suspicious about him. But I've asked again for a comprehensive.’