Detention
Mark produced a list of five jumps out of nearly ten thousand that had last second correction. The most interesting of course to Rodney was the one from this morning. Rodney thanked Mark for the information. “Let me know what you find,” Mark said returning his attention to his screen.
Rodney gave an noncommittal “uh-huh” then walked out of the office and found a nearby waiting room. It was little more than a padded bench in a hallway, but it would suffice. He would need to focus for a few minutes. He put on his spatial computing glasses and pulled up several monitors and started sifting through the data Mark had given him.
Five jump coordinates. Two were for large shipping companies - that was hardly surprising. To balance supply chain issues they were constantly producing, loading, and shipping supplies to colonies and at times, they did not know where they were headed until the last possible second. It was a form of market making. The money did not get committed until the ship jumped. It was a little mind boggling to imagine a container full of merchandise loaded on the hope that someone would buy it, but given the current colonial growth, it probably wasn’t as risky as it sounded. The sellers always found a buyer.
That let Rodney focus on the other three. The public jump records showed only cursory information. They were private craft, not commercial or government. But the records did include the ship identifiers. Because of his recovery licenses, Rodney had legal access to a wide range of ship inventories and catalogs. Nearly as fast as he could think of it, full dossiers for each vessel appeared on separate displays. He looked them over and frowned. Fuck, he sword under his breath. Those were clan ships. Nothing specific about the registrations, or designs gave it away, but Rodney had been in the salvage business long enough to recognize an extremely expensive vessel masquerading as an ordinary space yacht. The first ship to jump out was the Burning Sword. The second, a day later was the Solar Weaver.
They had both jumped to the same system, and Rodney pulled it up and plotted it, then stared at the answer dumb founded. “Sector 50?” He double checked the plot. There was nothing in sector 50. No colony, no resort, nothing. As far as Rodney knew Sector 50 was outside the bounds of the Union Scout ring - the ever expanding network of privateers that investigated worlds to catalogue for future development and population.
Rodney searched the local copy of the galactic directory for any information on - he had to back reference the coordinates to the system - L1766 and discovered only cursory information. It was a Sol sized system with 12 orbitals. Had Stikine really jumped to that location? Maybe he had nothing to do with it. He cross checked the Clan destinations with todays pilot, not an exact match, but in the same sector. This was too much coincidence for Rodney.
“I need to get that record unlocked,” He thought.
He made one final check. Had the two Clan ships returned? Or at least, had they ended up at any port on the web? The answer came back blank. That wasn’t proof of anything, but after a week, the port record data should have propagated back home. If they had docked at any of the human stations, and most of the galactic ones, some record of their arrival would have appeared. Right now, it looked like not one, but at least three ships had left within three days of each other and vanished.
Rodney tried to figure out his best bet to get the Sunshine Expanse record opened. Part of it started with who had locked it. Rodney was not a hacker by any stretch of the imagination. He preferred to stay away from weaponized ai systems, but he could take a few basic precautions - like trying to access the record from an anonymous account run through a VPN. Just as he suspected, he came up empty handed. And if anyone was monitoring that record they wouldn’t get much. Even if they traced it back to him, they would just find a Reclaimer accessing a record once.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Reclaimers were always monitoring ship jumps and coms for potential business.
While he was at Licensing, Rodney had one more task he could perform. He accessed the information about todays jump. It was another surprise. The ship was registered to a reclamation company in the Bahamas. That was weird. Rodney knew most of the active outfits, and that was when he caught it - a linked record to an unusual permit. This guy wasn’t a Tower, he was a private investigator. His ship, the Dream Writer looked like any other medium standard hull starship, but Rodney had access to insurance records. This thing was kitted out with an incredible array of surveillance equipment. Definitely not Guild standard. The ship’s pilot registry had one name on it, Rashad Khan. Rodney cross checked that against the arrest records but came up empty handed. They apparently had not finished processing him.
Perhaps that was in his favor. Rodney wasn’t sure he wanted to appear as an official visitor. He took off his headset, and tucked the wearable screen into his pocket. He asked the station guide to lead him to the processing center, and illuminated strips on the floor showed him the way. “Time to met Mr. Khan,”. Rodney told himself and followed the lights to the detention center.
The Detention center differed from the rest of the Licensing offices in that there was nothing comforting at all about the space. Gray walls over gray flooring and hard plasteel dividers broke up the space. Rodney felt sweaty the moment he stepped into the reception area. The temperature drop he suspected was also intentional. Whereas the rest of the station adjusted environmental effects continuously, Rodney could feel the space imposing it’s frigid atmosphere against his skin. Detention was even more utilitarian than anything Rodney could have imagine. What ever you thought you were going to get away with, this spaced seemed to impress upon your soul, “Don’t even try it.”.
Rodney turned to the Duty desk that dominated one side of the room. A surly looking man in space blue uniform with a frown that looked like it had been passed down from three generations sat behind the desk. Rodney realized he couldn’t possibly be as old as he looked, but decided not to ask about it. The shift officer didn’t wait for Rodney to announce himself. “Can I help you?” He asked with a tone that indicated anything but a willingness to help.
Rodney smiled. There was not point in taking the bait. The guy behind the counter had all the power and he wanted you to know it. Rodney knew his type from his days in the service. This guy liked to get into fights. Rodney scanned the man’s badge. Corporal Vizer. Small talk would not be his thing. Just get right to it.
“Hello Officer, I’m looking for Mr. Khan, Rashad. He was brought in this morning.” Rodney didn’t state it as a question. There was no point.
“And you are?”. Officer Vizer asked.
“An associate.”
“I don’t care what your relationship is to the guy, what’s your name?”. Rodney knew the officer had already identified him from the moment he’d walked in. Everyone on the station was continuously monitored. Yet he’d asked anyway.
“Rodney Morris, Reclaimer Second Tier, Licensing 46703-5” Rodney repeated his name, rank, and serial number with military precision. He had been to detention once or twice to visit clients. There were more than a few ways to run afoul of the Licensing Department, and some of Rodney’s best clients had found themselves on the wrong side of the holding cell walls.
Without a smile, Vizer looked straight ahead and his eyes focused on something else - most likely a retinal screen Rodney couldn’t see. “He hasn’t finished processing yet.”
“Any idea how long it will take?”
“Shouldn’t be long.”
“Mind if I wait?”
“Suit yourself,” Vizer motioned toward a row of unpadded benches. The welcome area was anything but welcoming.
Rodney took a seat, then decided to make the most of the wait by pulling up what he could find about Geoffrey Stikine, and… he checked his notes. Samantha hadn’t mentioned who was traveling with him. The Stikines, their two kids - and another couple? He requested the launch manifest from central licensing. It took less than 5 minutes to reconstruct the last few moments of the Sunchinse Expanses day a week ago. The ship was stored planetside in a warehouse. Stikine either couldn’t afford, or didn’t want to spend the money on an orbital dock. So his vessel was pulled from the warehouse, prepped, then when he and the family were aboard, lifted into orbit by the space elevator.
That meant his trip was planned. No one “spontaneously” pulled a starship out of a warehouse. The process took close to 8 hours, and it was all tied to your lift time. The elevator slots could be booked months in advance. The Stikines had been planning this trip for a while. But what about the other couple? Sam hadn’t given their names. Rodney pulled up the station registry and was surprised to find that they had not boarded the Sunshine Expanse with the Stikine family but instead had met them in orbit. Using his salvager access - Rodney was able to determine that Stikines guests were Tim and Rhonda Tomet. And they had taken a transit gate to orbit. “Holy shit,” Rodney thought. Transit gate passage to the orbital platform was expensive. If the Tomets had that kind of money why weren’t the Stikine’s traveling on their ship? Rodney checked but surprisingly found no registration of a ship for the Tomets. So they didn’t have a vessel. He made a note to look into them further. But from what he could tell, the Stikines had ridden in their own pleasure craft to orbit, and instead of casting away and jumping - the typical protocol for a surface to orbit launch, they had burned some fuel docking with the station to allow the Tomets to board.
Why hadn’t they ridden up together? Rodney wondered. Another note made in his file.
Rodney checked his watch. Nearly twenty minutes had passed while he followed threads and built an image of the last day anyone had seen the Stikines and their guests. “How’s Mr. Khan’s processing coming along?”
Officer Vizer’s gaze clouded over again, like he was reading a screen Rodney couldn’t see then he did something Rodney didn’t expect at all. He looked surprised. “Well, I’ll be damned. Looks like you missed him.”
Rodney stood up. “What?”
“He’s been released.” Vizer said.
“But how is that possible?” Rodney approached the desk, but Vizer’s face clouded over. “That’s above my paygrade,” Vizer replied sharply. “All I know is that his processing was complete and he was released.”
“And you didn’t bother to tell me?” Rodney felt his irritation rise.
“Not my job,” Vizer’s face had now become a stone wall of “I don’t care.”
Rodney looked around. “If they released him, where is he?”. He hadn’t seen anyone exit the station.
Vizer shrugged. “Again, not my problem.”
Rodney felt his face flush. He choked back a sarcastic, “Thanks for nothing” - being an asshole wouldn’t gain him anything and might work against him in the future. Instead he said simply, “Thanks” and turned to leave the station.
Khan was released? He’d never heard of such a thing. Normal processing and holding lasted at least twenty four hours. He couldnt think of a single instance of anyone being released in under 20 let alone as soon as they had come in. On the off chance he could find him, Rodney tried to access the orbital platforms people search, but as he expected, Khan had activated privacy mode. Only a Cop, family, or a really good hacker could find him now.
Rodney left the Licensing Department and then paused. He realized he had two choices - calls Sam and back out of this right now, or go ahead. The trouble with going ahead was that his next steps were going to be hard to undo even if they worked. Getting the Stikines jump coordinates, tracking down Khan, or investigating the Clan’s reeked of commitment. You didn’t casually hack systems, violate privacy, or start nosing around quasi-criminal-political organizations without a very good reason. This would be an easy job to walk away from, if it weren’t for the kids. And the station log had confirmed, not two, but four kids. Tim and Rhonda also had children.
Rodney made two calls. First, he contacted Tony Capasella. “Tony get the ship ready to deploy. I want to be able to head out as soon as I’m aboard.”
“Yes sir boss,” Tony replied and hung up.
Then he called Sam. She picked up right away. “Have you learned anything?” She asked.
“Yeah, that I shouldn’t answer when you call,” Rodney replied. “Look, did your friend Nina mention if she’d hired a private investigator?”
Sam shook her head. “No. Geoff had the money. Nina and Dave do okay but they don’t have that kind of money. Why what’s going on?”
Rodney answered truthfully. “I don’t know, but I don’t like it. Tell your friend not to worry, I’m sure it will all work out.”
“You didn’t say ‘there’s nothing to worry about’,” Sam observed.
Rodney nodded. “I didn’t say that.”
“What are you going to do?” Sam asked.
“Take the job,” Rodney replied. “That’s all I can say right now. I’ll call you later when I actually know something.”.
Sam looked like she wanted to say more but then bit her tongue. Instead she finished with, “Thank you for doing this Rod.”
“You might night feel that way in a day or two,” Rodney said then hung up.
It was time to break some rules and he knew just the person to help.