Memento Mori, Chapter 02
Nov. 5th, 2011 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keaalu posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
memento_mori_11 Her first free day for several dozen did Blink a surprising amount of good. When Rae finally rolled out of bed the following morning, looking rather the worse for wear after an energetic night of bad dreams (mostly about strange pale laima that kept trying to eat his head, and not in a good way), the big female was already up. She sat on her berth in her alcove, feet stretching out into the living area, giving her dark blue paintwork a good polish.
“Good morning, Rae,” she greeted, with a genuine little smile. “Did you sleep well?”
He managed to grunt something that sounded vaguely like a good morning, and stumbled blearily off into the kitchenette, hoping to find a hot beverage of some description to wake himself up a little. “Well, I slept. Let's leave it at that,” he replied, careful to get the scalding water from the instaBoiler to go into his cup and not over his hand.
“Did I keep you awake?” Her mood faltered, ever so slightly. “I'm sorry-”
“Ha, don't flatter yourself,” he joked, at last, rummaging through the cupboards and finding a fruit pastry that looked like it might be reasonably palatable. “It was your creepy friend with the skin like a sheet of paper did that.” He dropped his weight down into a chair, and gave his face a rub. “You could have warned me she was visiting.”
“I would have if I'd known. She surprised me too, remember?”
Seeing her piqued little glare, he put up his hands and backed down. “I know, I know. Sorry. Guess my early morning humour needs a little work, huh.” He retreated into his cup of keem, for a while; hot, milky and lightly spiced, the sweet herbal infusion felt like a balsam for his mood. He inhaled the steam rising from the surface and sighed quietly in enjoyment.
Blink smiled, amusedly. “What ever would you do if we ran out of that stuff?”
Rae exaggerated the pleasured sigh once again, for her benefit. “You better hope we don't, for the sake of preserving your hearing,” he joked. “Your hearing circuits would spontaneously combust from all the grumbling you'd have to listen to.”
She actually laughed, at that; further proof that she was more relaxed.
“Seriously, Honeybee. I'm glad you're looking so much chirpier today. I was getting worried by how down you'd looked,” he acknowledged, nursing his cup between both hands and watching her fuss over the little scratches that had accumulated around her lower leg. Dare I say, taking more pride in your appearance, too? “Seeing your friend must have been good for you.”
“Maybe. I don't know.” Blink smiled and shrugged, sheepishly. “Not just her, I mean. I think it's a combination of things, to be honest. Talking with you, talking with Frond... I feel a little more confident, I suppose. Not so scared as I did, the other day. I was so convinced they were going to be angry, I just didn't dare take that last step to approach them.”
Rae smiled and shook his head. “So you thought you'd leave it longer, and presumably let them get angrier, before you plucked up the courage to call them? No wonder you were in such a vicious circle – the longer you left it, the more pee'd off you imagined them getting, and the scareder you were – so the longer you left it.”
She poked a pale grey tongue out at him. “I never claimed to be trying to make sense, Rae.”
He threw the wrapper off his pastry at her, in response.
“Anyway. I'm going to call them this evening. I've made up my mind. This time-” She faltered, ever so slightly, but quickly recovered her momentum and went on. “This time I'm not going to be a coward. I-I mean... sitting there just staring at the computer hasn't fixed things for me yet, right? I need to...” She waved her hands, trying to magic an explanation out of the air. “Take control of my destiny, I suppose.”
Rae gave her a probing look, semi-suspicious that it was just a little speech she thought he wanted to hear, to get him off her back, but decided that no - trust worked both ways and he ought to make an effort to believe her, even if she might just be stringing him a line. “Well, that's good! And the offer still stands, y'know. If you want a bit of moral support, just page me and I'll come sit with you, or something.”
“I will do.” Blink smiled, and nodded. “Thank you.”
* * * * *
The apartment was empty, when Rae finally got in from work, later that evening. I'll call that a good sign, he told himself, face turned up into the deliciously hot water from the shower, letting the powerful jets dissolve the knots out of his muscles, then corrected himself; I hope it's a good sign. Optimism was always a good thing, but when certain big machines were concerned, it was always prudent to observe a little caution, too. She'd come home late a few days ago, after all, and it hadn't been because she'd managed to get through to her family and been whiling the hours away talking to them.
And she'd not paged him, either, in spite of telling him that she would. He'd intentionally held off calling her, figuring that well, it was her life and she didn't have to have a nosey little hanger-on checking up on her every move, but... If she'd backed out again because of it? He'd kick himself. They'd be right back at square one, if she hadn't managed to set herself even further back.
Hungry though he was, Rae flopped down on the couch, under a blanket, to wait for his giant roommate to come home. Once she was safely home, and he'd reassured himself that all was still well with her world, he could go find himself an exotic foreign takeaway in the spaceport passenger terminal, maybe as a little reward to himself for helping out.
There had to be something worth watching, on the holoscreen – something with plenty of action, but shallow enough that he didn't have to think too hard about any hidden meanings or subtle nuances of plot. After channel hopping for a while, he found himself a second-rate action thriller that he'd seen at least three times before (but which had the cutest little fessine actress in, so he didn't mind watching again), got comfortable, and ultimately descended into a doze.
The midnight chimes at the end of the late-evening news jolted him rudely back to wakefulness. He glanced up at the clock in the kitchen, not really believing that it could possibly be that late, but found that he had indeed slept quite soundly ever since he'd got settled, here – all the way from the late afternoon. Which meant Blink had either snuck in, so not to disturb him, or hadn't got back at all, yet.
She's probably just catching up on how things are back home, with that weird... 'friend' of hers, he consoled himself, nonetheless unable to shake the niggling little doubt in the back of his mind as he moved from the couch towards his bed. He peeked around Blink's curtain to settle the doubts in his mind, and indeed, her room was still empty. He got settled in his own bed, but his sleep – when he finally got there – was disturbed, and hassled by dreams.
* * * * *
Blink’s curtain was still closed when Rae got up, next day.
“Hey hey, girly, you’re gonna be late for work!” he called out, hopefully, just in case she did sneak in at an ungodly hour of the morning.
Hm, no answer. Not that it was too great a surprise, she often deactivated her hearing to avoid hearing him snore, but coupled with yesterday's no-show, it made him uneasy. He poked his head around her curtain to find the alcove empty of its usual big inhabitant. “Huh. Nice of you to jump ship and not tell me you were going,” he told the empty room.
Midday rolled around with still no word from Rae's big friend, and he was feeling distinctly antsy, when his team's supervisor finally let them head off to find something to eat. Maybe Val would know something, he reassured himself. Rae and Valdis had come to tiao'I on the same migrant vessel, so were fairly close, and usually sat together (discussing all the latest gossip) at breaks. If anyone knew anything about anyone, it was usually the security guard.
The dark-skinned male sat with an umskel’i desk assistant, whose real name no-one could pronounce and led to him instead being dubbed “Flicks”, after a nervous twitch that always came out when the passengers challenged him, and a pale vulline whose name Rae had never quite managed to learn. Ooshi, or something. Valdis had his back to him, but the other two at the table saw him arrive, and waved him over.
After miming back to them about getting some food, Rae snagged a plate of what looked like coarse brown pasta, topped with a tomatoey sauce and thick slices of some kind of sausage, and meandered his way through the throng to his friends’ table. “Hey there, boys and girls.”
Valdis glanced up and wiggled his fingers in a wave. “Greets, Raymondo. How's things?” he wondered, around a mouthful of food. “You're looking antsy. Problem?”
“It's that obvious? Egh. I’unno, yet.” Rae put his tray down and turned to fetch a chair from the neighbouring table. “I just haven’t seen Bee since yesterday, and I’m worried something’s happened to her. Have any of you lot seen her, recently?” He plopped himself down next to Valdis.
The umskel’i flickered his nictitating membranes and fluttered his gill-flaps in a laugh. “No, but you of all people should know that does not generally mean much,” he pointed out, in his high, reedy voice. “She has probably had another of her ‘episodes’ and fallen over under a gantry.”
“Yeah, you worry too much, Rae,” Ooshi agreed. “She’ll come home tomorrow all apologetic for missing half her appointments, and stinking something painful, again.” She gestured a fork at his loaded plate. “That food-mountain is gonna give you indigestion if you keep on stressing yourself out, too.”
Rae muttered something under his breath, and stabbed his fork into a thick slice of sausage, annoyed. “Yeah, well. I am worried about her. She’s never done this before.”
“Oh come on-!” Ooshi snorted. “She’s always getting melodramatic about something and falling on her aft.”
Valdis nodded. “You can't argue that she's particularly reliable. How many times has she been hauled in before the boss for another no-show?”
“Not when she was fine the evening before.” Rae gestured with his cutlery.
“Hey, steady on.” Finding a fork suddenly dangerously close to his face, Valdis carefully pushed the waving implement away. “I like my eyes where they are, mate.”
“Sorry-...”
“Look, when was the last time you spoke to her?”
“Yesterday morning, before she headed off for work. She was in a pretty good mood, too.”
“Right, okay... Have you tried comm’ing her?”
“That won't mean anything much. It doesn’t always work, half the time, does it. Not when she's in an engine, somewhere, rooting about behind them big particulate shields-”
“But have you tried?”
Rae checked the time. “Not recently,” he admitted. “I did first thing, and she didn't get back to me.” He used his fork to steer a stray piece of pasta around his plate, dispirited. “I thought she was avoiding having me hassling her again. She was gonna call her family, she probably didn't want me bending her ear if she'd not done it.”
“All right.” Valdis wiped his mouth. “I’ll check where she was assigned to be working, see if I can’t find anything out. Coming?”
“You think I trust you to do it alone? Of course I'm coming...”
* * * * *
The efficient, clean main office of tiao'I spaceport security made Rae feel self-conscious and scruffy. He stood and fidgeted quietly behind Valdis' chair while his friend logged into the hub, waiting to be grabbed and kicked out at any minute.
“Here we go.”
His friend's unexpected words made him jump; Rae had to work hard at not looking as startled as he felt. “What?”
Valdis pointed to the long list of staff itineraries, and called up Blink's details. “Average day for her, looks like. No reason for her to have been delayed in leaving.”
“Uh, what am I looking at?” Rae peered at the screen, with its clutter of incomprehensible figures.
“I thought you baggage handlers knew all about flight itineraries?”
Rae cuffed him in the shoulder. “Ha ha. We don’t get your fancy software, down in the guts of the port.”
“Yeah, I heard they make you chisel your work order into the bedrock, right? No wonder you guys keep losing bags.”
Ordinarily, Rae would have played along with the banter, but right now he wasn't in the mood. “Come on, Val. Bit of focus?”
“All right, all right.” Valdis turned back to his screen. “This says she had... three ships to work on. Two minor repairs – both signed off as complete, so she was definitely about early in the day – and one medium core refit. Hm. It's tagged as complete, but it's not been signed.” A little frown creased his brow.
“Can you call up that last assignment?” Rae pulled up a kick-stool and shuffled to sit closer to the desk.
“All right...” Valdis used two fingers to tap the screen, and the box exploded to fill the viewing pane. “Work on the engine core of the yacht Happenstance. Looks… fairly standard fare, for her?”
Rae made a non-committal noise that could have meant anything. “Who was she working for?”
“You don't think they've had anything to do with it, do you? Bit of a stretch, eh?” Val lifted his hands and mimed someone laying out a dramatic headline. “Marauding crew of mystery pirates abduct innocent giant alien robot!”
Rae matched stares, and glared him down. “You could stand to take me a little more seriously.”
“I am taking it seriously. You could stand to try and not overreact all the time.” Valdis returned to his keypad. “Crew has seven members, in addition to the owner, a mistress... Larissa, it looks like.” The head of security squinted at the display, then punched in a code and called up the criminal records of all the crew. “Nothing of particular note on here; just a couple of forged permits from a few years ago, on Larissa's record.”
Rae huffed a sigh. “All right, all right, say it. ‘I told you so. You’re jumping at shadows again.' I'll go get back to shuffling bags around.”
“No no, hold up…”
At last Rae noticed Valdis frowning at his screen, and his stomach gave a little anxious lurch. “You found something?”
Valdis shook his head, with a disappointed sigh. “No, it’s… probably nothing. It’s just strange.” He tapped a blank spot. “There’s no details of their departure destination, see?”
“I see. And… uh… why is that making you suspicious?” Rae narrowed his eyes, confused. “It’s significant?”
Valdis waved a dismissive hand. “Well-… nah, to be honest it probably isn’t.” He bared his teeth in an uneasy grin. “I’m just getting suspicious in my old age. Ignore me.”
“My friend has vanished, and you're getting suspicious of her last work assignment, and now you want me to think you're just over-reacting?” Rae threw up his hands. “Come on, Val.”
“We-ell…” Valdis shot him a glance. “I was just thinking. We’ve not had anyone trying to get to Hesger, recently. Folk tend to leave their itinerary blank if they're going to try breach quarantine.”
“...okay, so they're making you suspect they're going to hop across to plague-world. They're morons who'll either get shot down by the security grid, or catch the fury and die. What's that got to do with Blink?”
“Well, how better to fetch valuable knick-knacks from the surface than by sending out someone who's immune to the disease?”
A big hole opened up under Rae's stomach; he immediately wished he'd taken Ooshi's advice on his dinner. “Voi kyrpa,” he swore, faintly. “They took her.”
Valdis huffed a sigh. “All right, all right. Actually? I'm gonna retract my suspicions, because I'm only feeding your paranoia. She could have gone willingly, you know. She might not thank you for sticking your nose into her business.”
“She knows more about Hesger than I do-”
“Well, that doesn't take much.”
“-and she's already told me, if she went there? She's good as dead. There's no technology, any more, no electricity, she'd eventually run out of power and that'd be it. No more Blink.”
“You're forgetting she's a big girl, Rae. Seriously big. She weighs as much as a truck, and you've seen her punch through plate steel without barely getting a scratch. How are these folk going to force her to go along with them?”
“I don't know. Maybe they shot her.” Rae pursed his lips. “I’m going to follow them.”
Valdis caught his arm. “Woo, now hey, hold up a second. You haven't exactly thought about this, have you?”
“My friend is missing and I want to know if they've abducted her. What is there to think about?”
“You realise no-one will be able to follow you, right?” Valdis gave him a long, serious stare. “Hesger’s quarantine is meant to be absolute. That means, if you get in trouble? Like, if you get shot down so you can't export a killer virus? You’re on your own.”
“You won't help me?”
“I can't help you.” Valdis threw up his hands in despair. “Come on, Rae, be fair. I know you're worried about your friend, but you don't even know if she's gone anywhere. You're risking your life just by trying to breach quarantine! And if you catch heff, that's it. Even if you somehow survive it, you're never gonna be able to come home.”
Rae studied his fingers. “I guess I'm just thinking about Bee,” he said, softly. “I mean, if she's been taken there? She'll be stuck – and all on her own.”
“So might you be. And you might die.”
“Well, at least then I won't be lonely, huh? Look, I probably won't even get through the security grid – they probably won't have, either! I'll bump into Happenstance on the border, they'll admit what they did, and that'll be it.”
Unexpectedly, Valdis gave him a hug. “Take care, all right?” he sighed, quietly. “I know I'm not gonna persuade you out of this, short of having you arrested. But I swear, if I find you've done something stupid like get yourself killed, I'm coming out there to wallop you, myself.”
* * * * *
Squib was never going to win awards for being the fastest ship in the galaxy, but then hopefully she wouldn't have to be. Hesger was a good few days travel away, most of which Rae spent in a doze, waking only to check the sensory readout and eat a mouthful or two of (disgusting, plastic-tasting) concentrated rations, before retiring back to sleep with dire warnings to Squib to wake him if anything new came up.
Dutifully, Squib chirped her alarm and tugged Rae out of his dreams when they were “within spitting distance of the quarantine grid.” The drowsy spur sagged into the pilot's chair and took a minute or two to study what had happened – or rather, resolutely not happened – while he'd been hibernating.
He wasn't sure whether this was all a big misunderstanding, or something had gone wrong, but for a vessel engaged in potentially criminal activity, Happenstance didn't exactly make herself very difficult to track. Her engines drew a particulate trail that showed up on Rae's monitor as a mile-wide neon-bright streak through space.
“Happenstance, this is Squib. Please respond, over.”
Rae propped his head on one hand, and sighed. The way they wouldn't answer him at all was what was worrying him most. He would have expected to have had some kind of comeback, even if it was just a leave us alone you nosey spur! (and would have justified him in calling the police, even if it did put him in danger of being arrested as well.) But nothing at all? Maybe something had gone really wrong.
“Approaching vessel,” a disembodied voice came from the speakers. “You are approaching a restricted area. Please transmit appropriate security clearance codes or change course. Unauthorised passage through security net will be met by force.”
Rae bit his lip. All right, so... proof the guards maintaining Hesger's quarantine had seen him. Maybe he could sweet-talk his way through? “Um, hello. Uh... Can I speak to your boss, please? It's important.”
The voice did reply, but was not especially helpful. “Hesger quarantine restrictions are automatic. If you wish to speak to a security operative, please proceed to tiao'I primary spacedock and request to speak to the Hesgeri Embassy.”
Great. It was all computerised, which meant it was probably not too smart, either. “Well, I'm coming through whether you like it or not, so I figure you'll have to just... shoot me down or something,” he said, softly, mostly to himself. Although he couldn't completely discount the idea that Happenstance's crew had obtained a security code from somewhere, they'd got through as well, if their trail was anything to go by.
After a short while longer, Security's voice spoke up again, and a little more urgently this time. “Unidentified vessel, you have breached quarantine restrictions. Please transmit clearance code or turn back immediately.”
Rae fidgeted in his seat, but otherwise ignored the computer. The planet itself had now shown up in his viewscreen; a slightly brighter dot than the surrounding stars.
“Unidentified vessel, this is your final warning. Continued non-compliance will be met with force.”
Rae looked at the speakers. “Fine. Shoot me down, then,” he murmured to himself.
The silence that ensued – complete and utter silence, no more warnings and more importantly, no shots – frightened Rae more than any dire warnings had. The security grid must be down, he allowed himself to recognise, at last. Which meant the planet was completely unprotected. And the lethal virus that the planet's inhabitants had sought to contain by preventing any travel out of their territory? Any idiot visitor (and he counted himself among them) could end up exporting it.
Rae leaned closer to his communications terminal and dialled up a code. “This is an encrypted message for Valdis a'Verdi only, unencrypt cipher A-7-KK-3. Start message.” Rae took a second to compose himself, then stared into the camera and spoke, as clearly as he could manage. “Val? This is Rae – and it's important, so don't you dare hang up before you hear me out. You need to get this message out to the Hesgeri Embassy as soon as possible, before anyone else notices and takes advantage.”
He took a deep breath to steel his nerve. “The quarantine net has broken down. I repeat, the quarantine net is completely down – it's unarmed, it's all just... bluster. The planet is fully accessible to anyone brave enough to ignore the net's warnings. You need to get someone sent out to fix it before more folk than just me and a few criminal nobodies get through.”
Painfully aware that he had essentially told his best friend to strand him permanently on a diseased world where he could very easily be killed, Rae flew uneasily onwards.
8362 ♥ 50000
“Good morning, Rae,” she greeted, with a genuine little smile. “Did you sleep well?”
He managed to grunt something that sounded vaguely like a good morning, and stumbled blearily off into the kitchenette, hoping to find a hot beverage of some description to wake himself up a little. “Well, I slept. Let's leave it at that,” he replied, careful to get the scalding water from the instaBoiler to go into his cup and not over his hand.
“Did I keep you awake?” Her mood faltered, ever so slightly. “I'm sorry-”
“Ha, don't flatter yourself,” he joked, at last, rummaging through the cupboards and finding a fruit pastry that looked like it might be reasonably palatable. “It was your creepy friend with the skin like a sheet of paper did that.” He dropped his weight down into a chair, and gave his face a rub. “You could have warned me she was visiting.”
“I would have if I'd known. She surprised me too, remember?”
Seeing her piqued little glare, he put up his hands and backed down. “I know, I know. Sorry. Guess my early morning humour needs a little work, huh.” He retreated into his cup of keem, for a while; hot, milky and lightly spiced, the sweet herbal infusion felt like a balsam for his mood. He inhaled the steam rising from the surface and sighed quietly in enjoyment.
Blink smiled, amusedly. “What ever would you do if we ran out of that stuff?”
Rae exaggerated the pleasured sigh once again, for her benefit. “You better hope we don't, for the sake of preserving your hearing,” he joked. “Your hearing circuits would spontaneously combust from all the grumbling you'd have to listen to.”
She actually laughed, at that; further proof that she was more relaxed.
“Seriously, Honeybee. I'm glad you're looking so much chirpier today. I was getting worried by how down you'd looked,” he acknowledged, nursing his cup between both hands and watching her fuss over the little scratches that had accumulated around her lower leg. Dare I say, taking more pride in your appearance, too? “Seeing your friend must have been good for you.”
“Maybe. I don't know.” Blink smiled and shrugged, sheepishly. “Not just her, I mean. I think it's a combination of things, to be honest. Talking with you, talking with Frond... I feel a little more confident, I suppose. Not so scared as I did, the other day. I was so convinced they were going to be angry, I just didn't dare take that last step to approach them.”
Rae smiled and shook his head. “So you thought you'd leave it longer, and presumably let them get angrier, before you plucked up the courage to call them? No wonder you were in such a vicious circle – the longer you left it, the more pee'd off you imagined them getting, and the scareder you were – so the longer you left it.”
She poked a pale grey tongue out at him. “I never claimed to be trying to make sense, Rae.”
He threw the wrapper off his pastry at her, in response.
“Anyway. I'm going to call them this evening. I've made up my mind. This time-” She faltered, ever so slightly, but quickly recovered her momentum and went on. “This time I'm not going to be a coward. I-I mean... sitting there just staring at the computer hasn't fixed things for me yet, right? I need to...” She waved her hands, trying to magic an explanation out of the air. “Take control of my destiny, I suppose.”
Rae gave her a probing look, semi-suspicious that it was just a little speech she thought he wanted to hear, to get him off her back, but decided that no - trust worked both ways and he ought to make an effort to believe her, even if she might just be stringing him a line. “Well, that's good! And the offer still stands, y'know. If you want a bit of moral support, just page me and I'll come sit with you, or something.”
“I will do.” Blink smiled, and nodded. “Thank you.”
The apartment was empty, when Rae finally got in from work, later that evening. I'll call that a good sign, he told himself, face turned up into the deliciously hot water from the shower, letting the powerful jets dissolve the knots out of his muscles, then corrected himself; I hope it's a good sign. Optimism was always a good thing, but when certain big machines were concerned, it was always prudent to observe a little caution, too. She'd come home late a few days ago, after all, and it hadn't been because she'd managed to get through to her family and been whiling the hours away talking to them.
And she'd not paged him, either, in spite of telling him that she would. He'd intentionally held off calling her, figuring that well, it was her life and she didn't have to have a nosey little hanger-on checking up on her every move, but... If she'd backed out again because of it? He'd kick himself. They'd be right back at square one, if she hadn't managed to set herself even further back.
Hungry though he was, Rae flopped down on the couch, under a blanket, to wait for his giant roommate to come home. Once she was safely home, and he'd reassured himself that all was still well with her world, he could go find himself an exotic foreign takeaway in the spaceport passenger terminal, maybe as a little reward to himself for helping out.
There had to be something worth watching, on the holoscreen – something with plenty of action, but shallow enough that he didn't have to think too hard about any hidden meanings or subtle nuances of plot. After channel hopping for a while, he found himself a second-rate action thriller that he'd seen at least three times before (but which had the cutest little fessine actress in, so he didn't mind watching again), got comfortable, and ultimately descended into a doze.
The midnight chimes at the end of the late-evening news jolted him rudely back to wakefulness. He glanced up at the clock in the kitchen, not really believing that it could possibly be that late, but found that he had indeed slept quite soundly ever since he'd got settled, here – all the way from the late afternoon. Which meant Blink had either snuck in, so not to disturb him, or hadn't got back at all, yet.
She's probably just catching up on how things are back home, with that weird... 'friend' of hers, he consoled himself, nonetheless unable to shake the niggling little doubt in the back of his mind as he moved from the couch towards his bed. He peeked around Blink's curtain to settle the doubts in his mind, and indeed, her room was still empty. He got settled in his own bed, but his sleep – when he finally got there – was disturbed, and hassled by dreams.
Blink’s curtain was still closed when Rae got up, next day.
“Hey hey, girly, you’re gonna be late for work!” he called out, hopefully, just in case she did sneak in at an ungodly hour of the morning.
Hm, no answer. Not that it was too great a surprise, she often deactivated her hearing to avoid hearing him snore, but coupled with yesterday's no-show, it made him uneasy. He poked his head around her curtain to find the alcove empty of its usual big inhabitant. “Huh. Nice of you to jump ship and not tell me you were going,” he told the empty room.
Midday rolled around with still no word from Rae's big friend, and he was feeling distinctly antsy, when his team's supervisor finally let them head off to find something to eat. Maybe Val would know something, he reassured himself. Rae and Valdis had come to tiao'I on the same migrant vessel, so were fairly close, and usually sat together (discussing all the latest gossip) at breaks. If anyone knew anything about anyone, it was usually the security guard.
The dark-skinned male sat with an umskel’i desk assistant, whose real name no-one could pronounce and led to him instead being dubbed “Flicks”, after a nervous twitch that always came out when the passengers challenged him, and a pale vulline whose name Rae had never quite managed to learn. Ooshi, or something. Valdis had his back to him, but the other two at the table saw him arrive, and waved him over.
After miming back to them about getting some food, Rae snagged a plate of what looked like coarse brown pasta, topped with a tomatoey sauce and thick slices of some kind of sausage, and meandered his way through the throng to his friends’ table. “Hey there, boys and girls.”
Valdis glanced up and wiggled his fingers in a wave. “Greets, Raymondo. How's things?” he wondered, around a mouthful of food. “You're looking antsy. Problem?”
“It's that obvious? Egh. I’unno, yet.” Rae put his tray down and turned to fetch a chair from the neighbouring table. “I just haven’t seen Bee since yesterday, and I’m worried something’s happened to her. Have any of you lot seen her, recently?” He plopped himself down next to Valdis.
The umskel’i flickered his nictitating membranes and fluttered his gill-flaps in a laugh. “No, but you of all people should know that does not generally mean much,” he pointed out, in his high, reedy voice. “She has probably had another of her ‘episodes’ and fallen over under a gantry.”
“Yeah, you worry too much, Rae,” Ooshi agreed. “She’ll come home tomorrow all apologetic for missing half her appointments, and stinking something painful, again.” She gestured a fork at his loaded plate. “That food-mountain is gonna give you indigestion if you keep on stressing yourself out, too.”
Rae muttered something under his breath, and stabbed his fork into a thick slice of sausage, annoyed. “Yeah, well. I am worried about her. She’s never done this before.”
“Oh come on-!” Ooshi snorted. “She’s always getting melodramatic about something and falling on her aft.”
Valdis nodded. “You can't argue that she's particularly reliable. How many times has she been hauled in before the boss for another no-show?”
“Not when she was fine the evening before.” Rae gestured with his cutlery.
“Hey, steady on.” Finding a fork suddenly dangerously close to his face, Valdis carefully pushed the waving implement away. “I like my eyes where they are, mate.”
“Sorry-...”
“Look, when was the last time you spoke to her?”
“Yesterday morning, before she headed off for work. She was in a pretty good mood, too.”
“Right, okay... Have you tried comm’ing her?”
“That won't mean anything much. It doesn’t always work, half the time, does it. Not when she's in an engine, somewhere, rooting about behind them big particulate shields-”
“But have you tried?”
Rae checked the time. “Not recently,” he admitted. “I did first thing, and she didn't get back to me.” He used his fork to steer a stray piece of pasta around his plate, dispirited. “I thought she was avoiding having me hassling her again. She was gonna call her family, she probably didn't want me bending her ear if she'd not done it.”
“All right.” Valdis wiped his mouth. “I’ll check where she was assigned to be working, see if I can’t find anything out. Coming?”
“You think I trust you to do it alone? Of course I'm coming...”
The efficient, clean main office of tiao'I spaceport security made Rae feel self-conscious and scruffy. He stood and fidgeted quietly behind Valdis' chair while his friend logged into the hub, waiting to be grabbed and kicked out at any minute.
“Here we go.”
His friend's unexpected words made him jump; Rae had to work hard at not looking as startled as he felt. “What?”
Valdis pointed to the long list of staff itineraries, and called up Blink's details. “Average day for her, looks like. No reason for her to have been delayed in leaving.”
“Uh, what am I looking at?” Rae peered at the screen, with its clutter of incomprehensible figures.
“I thought you baggage handlers knew all about flight itineraries?”
Rae cuffed him in the shoulder. “Ha ha. We don’t get your fancy software, down in the guts of the port.”
“Yeah, I heard they make you chisel your work order into the bedrock, right? No wonder you guys keep losing bags.”
Ordinarily, Rae would have played along with the banter, but right now he wasn't in the mood. “Come on, Val. Bit of focus?”
“All right, all right.” Valdis turned back to his screen. “This says she had... three ships to work on. Two minor repairs – both signed off as complete, so she was definitely about early in the day – and one medium core refit. Hm. It's tagged as complete, but it's not been signed.” A little frown creased his brow.
“Can you call up that last assignment?” Rae pulled up a kick-stool and shuffled to sit closer to the desk.
“All right...” Valdis used two fingers to tap the screen, and the box exploded to fill the viewing pane. “Work on the engine core of the yacht Happenstance. Looks… fairly standard fare, for her?”
Rae made a non-committal noise that could have meant anything. “Who was she working for?”
“You don't think they've had anything to do with it, do you? Bit of a stretch, eh?” Val lifted his hands and mimed someone laying out a dramatic headline. “Marauding crew of mystery pirates abduct innocent giant alien robot!”
Rae matched stares, and glared him down. “You could stand to take me a little more seriously.”
“I am taking it seriously. You could stand to try and not overreact all the time.” Valdis returned to his keypad. “Crew has seven members, in addition to the owner, a mistress... Larissa, it looks like.” The head of security squinted at the display, then punched in a code and called up the criminal records of all the crew. “Nothing of particular note on here; just a couple of forged permits from a few years ago, on Larissa's record.”
Rae huffed a sigh. “All right, all right, say it. ‘I told you so. You’re jumping at shadows again.' I'll go get back to shuffling bags around.”
“No no, hold up…”
At last Rae noticed Valdis frowning at his screen, and his stomach gave a little anxious lurch. “You found something?”
Valdis shook his head, with a disappointed sigh. “No, it’s… probably nothing. It’s just strange.” He tapped a blank spot. “There’s no details of their departure destination, see?”
“I see. And… uh… why is that making you suspicious?” Rae narrowed his eyes, confused. “It’s significant?”
Valdis waved a dismissive hand. “Well-… nah, to be honest it probably isn’t.” He bared his teeth in an uneasy grin. “I’m just getting suspicious in my old age. Ignore me.”
“My friend has vanished, and you're getting suspicious of her last work assignment, and now you want me to think you're just over-reacting?” Rae threw up his hands. “Come on, Val.”
“We-ell…” Valdis shot him a glance. “I was just thinking. We’ve not had anyone trying to get to Hesger, recently. Folk tend to leave their itinerary blank if they're going to try breach quarantine.”
“...okay, so they're making you suspect they're going to hop across to plague-world. They're morons who'll either get shot down by the security grid, or catch the fury and die. What's that got to do with Blink?”
“Well, how better to fetch valuable knick-knacks from the surface than by sending out someone who's immune to the disease?”
A big hole opened up under Rae's stomach; he immediately wished he'd taken Ooshi's advice on his dinner. “Voi kyrpa,” he swore, faintly. “They took her.”
Valdis huffed a sigh. “All right, all right. Actually? I'm gonna retract my suspicions, because I'm only feeding your paranoia. She could have gone willingly, you know. She might not thank you for sticking your nose into her business.”
“She knows more about Hesger than I do-”
“Well, that doesn't take much.”
“-and she's already told me, if she went there? She's good as dead. There's no technology, any more, no electricity, she'd eventually run out of power and that'd be it. No more Blink.”
“You're forgetting she's a big girl, Rae. Seriously big. She weighs as much as a truck, and you've seen her punch through plate steel without barely getting a scratch. How are these folk going to force her to go along with them?”
“I don't know. Maybe they shot her.” Rae pursed his lips. “I’m going to follow them.”
Valdis caught his arm. “Woo, now hey, hold up a second. You haven't exactly thought about this, have you?”
“My friend is missing and I want to know if they've abducted her. What is there to think about?”
“You realise no-one will be able to follow you, right?” Valdis gave him a long, serious stare. “Hesger’s quarantine is meant to be absolute. That means, if you get in trouble? Like, if you get shot down so you can't export a killer virus? You’re on your own.”
“You won't help me?”
“I can't help you.” Valdis threw up his hands in despair. “Come on, Rae, be fair. I know you're worried about your friend, but you don't even know if she's gone anywhere. You're risking your life just by trying to breach quarantine! And if you catch heff, that's it. Even if you somehow survive it, you're never gonna be able to come home.”
Rae studied his fingers. “I guess I'm just thinking about Bee,” he said, softly. “I mean, if she's been taken there? She'll be stuck – and all on her own.”
“So might you be. And you might die.”
“Well, at least then I won't be lonely, huh? Look, I probably won't even get through the security grid – they probably won't have, either! I'll bump into Happenstance on the border, they'll admit what they did, and that'll be it.”
Unexpectedly, Valdis gave him a hug. “Take care, all right?” he sighed, quietly. “I know I'm not gonna persuade you out of this, short of having you arrested. But I swear, if I find you've done something stupid like get yourself killed, I'm coming out there to wallop you, myself.”
Squib was never going to win awards for being the fastest ship in the galaxy, but then hopefully she wouldn't have to be. Hesger was a good few days travel away, most of which Rae spent in a doze, waking only to check the sensory readout and eat a mouthful or two of (disgusting, plastic-tasting) concentrated rations, before retiring back to sleep with dire warnings to Squib to wake him if anything new came up.
Dutifully, Squib chirped her alarm and tugged Rae out of his dreams when they were “within spitting distance of the quarantine grid.” The drowsy spur sagged into the pilot's chair and took a minute or two to study what had happened – or rather, resolutely not happened – while he'd been hibernating.
He wasn't sure whether this was all a big misunderstanding, or something had gone wrong, but for a vessel engaged in potentially criminal activity, Happenstance didn't exactly make herself very difficult to track. Her engines drew a particulate trail that showed up on Rae's monitor as a mile-wide neon-bright streak through space.
“Happenstance, this is Squib. Please respond, over.”
Rae propped his head on one hand, and sighed. The way they wouldn't answer him at all was what was worrying him most. He would have expected to have had some kind of comeback, even if it was just a leave us alone you nosey spur! (and would have justified him in calling the police, even if it did put him in danger of being arrested as well.) But nothing at all? Maybe something had gone really wrong.
“Approaching vessel,” a disembodied voice came from the speakers. “You are approaching a restricted area. Please transmit appropriate security clearance codes or change course. Unauthorised passage through security net will be met by force.”
Rae bit his lip. All right, so... proof the guards maintaining Hesger's quarantine had seen him. Maybe he could sweet-talk his way through? “Um, hello. Uh... Can I speak to your boss, please? It's important.”
The voice did reply, but was not especially helpful. “Hesger quarantine restrictions are automatic. If you wish to speak to a security operative, please proceed to tiao'I primary spacedock and request to speak to the Hesgeri Embassy.”
Great. It was all computerised, which meant it was probably not too smart, either. “Well, I'm coming through whether you like it or not, so I figure you'll have to just... shoot me down or something,” he said, softly, mostly to himself. Although he couldn't completely discount the idea that Happenstance's crew had obtained a security code from somewhere, they'd got through as well, if their trail was anything to go by.
After a short while longer, Security's voice spoke up again, and a little more urgently this time. “Unidentified vessel, you have breached quarantine restrictions. Please transmit clearance code or turn back immediately.”
Rae fidgeted in his seat, but otherwise ignored the computer. The planet itself had now shown up in his viewscreen; a slightly brighter dot than the surrounding stars.
“Unidentified vessel, this is your final warning. Continued non-compliance will be met with force.”
Rae looked at the speakers. “Fine. Shoot me down, then,” he murmured to himself.
The silence that ensued – complete and utter silence, no more warnings and more importantly, no shots – frightened Rae more than any dire warnings had. The security grid must be down, he allowed himself to recognise, at last. Which meant the planet was completely unprotected. And the lethal virus that the planet's inhabitants had sought to contain by preventing any travel out of their territory? Any idiot visitor (and he counted himself among them) could end up exporting it.
Rae leaned closer to his communications terminal and dialled up a code. “This is an encrypted message for Valdis a'Verdi only, unencrypt cipher A-7-KK-3. Start message.” Rae took a second to compose himself, then stared into the camera and spoke, as clearly as he could manage. “Val? This is Rae – and it's important, so don't you dare hang up before you hear me out. You need to get this message out to the Hesgeri Embassy as soon as possible, before anyone else notices and takes advantage.”
He took a deep breath to steel his nerve. “The quarantine net has broken down. I repeat, the quarantine net is completely down – it's unarmed, it's all just... bluster. The planet is fully accessible to anyone brave enough to ignore the net's warnings. You need to get someone sent out to fix it before more folk than just me and a few criminal nobodies get through.”
Painfully aware that he had essentially told his best friend to strand him permanently on a diseased world where he could very easily be killed, Rae flew uneasily onwards.