“Perry Six what’s going on with those Navy patrol ships?” Tracy asked.
“It seems there is a heightened state of security around Proxima Caelum Ms. Richards. It seems there was a highly unusual ship entry not that long ago. It also appears that the previous owner of our vessel was quite well respected. There is some concern over the proper registration and proprietorship of this vessel.”
“If I asked you to change your persona to communicate more casually would you do that?” Tracy asked. She wanted more plain english.
“I’m afraid not. My persona type has been locked.”
“By who?”
“I do not have access to that information. I only know that my creator established my persona prior to instantiation and does not wish it to be modified in any way. Not even Master Typhon has access to alter it.”
Tracy noodled on that. Where the hell had Typhon requisitioned this droid. He couldn’t have stolen it could he? “Fine, what’s the status with the Navy?”
“I am negotiating our passage now. Our paperwork is in order, even if it is unusual, and there is nothing illegal or illicit about our arrival.”
“How much longer before they let us head over to the Scout Base.”
“That appears to be the problem, Ms. Richards - “
“Can you call me something else?” Tracy asked, feeling exhasperated.
“Detective, we are not permitted to approach the Scout Base.”
“The Navy is not letting us dock at the Scout Base?” Jessica asked.
“It is not the Navy, but the Scouts themselves. They have declared a moratorium on private star craft docking at their facility. We shall have to find another way to reach their library.”
“Can’t we access it from here?” Tracy asked. “We’re in system.”
“I’m afraid not. The planetary scouting record is one of the most regulated databases in the FGU,” Perry Six explained. “All transactions must be in person. The dataset is only synchronized with the central government once per day, and that record is carried by a Scout Frigate.”
Jessica swiveled her chair to face Tracy, “I had no idea they were so uptight about a list of planets.”
“It’s more than that,” Tracy thought about it. “It’s really an inventory of the wealth of the Galaxy.”
At that moment Perry Six came walking around the corner.
“Aren’t you supposed to be piloting the ship or something?”
“Orbital Licensing has taken control of our vessel. We are being directed to the Human Sector Orbital Platform. From there our ship will be permitted to dry dock on the surface. They are pulling down all non-essential vehicles form orbit.”
“Then how do we get to the Scout Station?”
“The Scout station is managed by the Govvu Empire,” Perry Six answered. “We can take a shuttle from their sector to the Scout Base.”
“Can’t we just head directly to the Govvu orbital platform?” Tracy asked.
“No Detective. The Govvu are not accepting Xenotype ships. Only Govvu craft are permitted to dock.”
“Well this is a pain in the ass,” Jessica leaned back in her chair.
“It is most inconvenient,” Perry Six replied.
“But it does give us some time. We need to find out what Tim was up to.”
Tracy turned her attention back to the display and started to scroll through the records. She asked the ships AI to summarize the content, but the trouble with that was that it smoothed everything over. According to the summary, Tim had left the military shortly before she did and then moved around the United States doing a variety of odd sales and marketing positions. If there was a pattern she could see it was that he liked high risk, high reward activites. He started out in commercial real-estate, then moved to selling condo’s on the moon. He got involved in off planet speculative mining for a few years, which took him to Luna, then he was back on Earth selling cars, and… dishwashers? was that even a thing?
She clicked on it and asked the system to clarify and it indicated for that a brief period domestic appliances had made a sort of nastalgic come back in many up scale communities. Tracy was beginning to see a pattern that Teddy kept trying to get close to rich people. She pulled up a parallel window and started tracking not only his address but images of each location. Each move, Teddy’s qualify of life made noticeable step up. There were law suits, no criminal charges - nothing in the public record that indicated he was anything other than spectacularly successful at selling, but the Red Spider records told a different story.
Teddy had caught the eye of the clan when he sold some mining investments to a small time business owner they had put the squeeze on. A welder. The welder turned up dead, welded into the side panel of a starship hull he was repairing. The police never investigated. But, when the holding company tried to liquidate the welders holdings, they uncovered the mining shares that allegedly were worth millions of credits only to discover that while they were not technically worthless - they could not be liquidated. They rights had been folded into a governmental program that held them in moratorium for twenty years. It seemed the Department of System Resource Management (DSRC) has changed its mind about letting small privateers harvest the material abundance of Jupiters moons. Basically Teddy had sold real rights - for real cash - that could have been worth a fortune, but a change in regulation made them effectively became worthless. It was not clear if Teddy knew about this or not when he brokered the deal, but the Clan it didn’t care. Teddy had taken their cash from their mark and that it his problem.
Soon the Clan found a use for Teddy. He could get people excited about just about anything, and soon Teddy was brokering legitimate deals for illegitimate purposes. The Clan was grooming him to take down bigger, and bigger marks. Many of his successes were real. The Clan did have contacts, and insights, and useful information. However, they always mixed in a few dirty deals to pad their pockets and keep their network in line. No one was clean, they made sure of that. Until one day, Teddy vanished.
Tracy sat up. “What is it?” Jessica asked.
“I just realized something,” Tracy checked the record again. “I don’t believe it.”
“What? Tell me?”
“I knew Tim Connacher as Teddy Weidner. And throughout this research, they’ve been showing Tim as Teddy. Not Tim, Teddy.”
“So what?”
“So about five years ago Teddy Weidner vanished.”
“But you just said the Clan knew who he was.”
“Oh shit, they knew about Teddy, but they didn’t know about Tim,” Tracy realized. “They must have just made the connection. Teddy Weidner vanished, and then three years later he appeared as Tim Connacher.”
“Correct,” Perry Six agreed with her.
“When did the Clan put the two together? When did they realize Tim was Teddy?” Tracy asked.
“Oh very recently,” Perry Six replied.
“Was it before or after he disappeared?”
“Definitely after,” Perry said. “In fact, I believe they pieced it together the night you visited Mr. Stikine’s offices.”
“So Teddy gets caught in the Clan web, then he gets out. But he comes back three years later and fools everyone?”
“That sounds insanely risky.”
“Suicidal if you ask me,” Tracy said. She immediately started to cross check all of Tim Connacher’s records - and sure enough, “Holy shit, look at this. Tim (or Teddy) had no record on Earth until three years ago when he set up shop, and over the last two and a half years he had been running a planetary exploration company.”
“Planetary Exploration? You mean like a scout?”
“Not exactly,” Tracy explained. “More of luxury tourist industry.”
“Private exploration companies are allowed to investigate planets recorded in the galactic planetary database. They may not settle, but they are permitted to further investigate the value and habitability of these worlds,” Perry Six added.
“So rich people pay to go look at newly discovered planets?” Jessica asked.
“From the looks of it, they pay a lot.” Suddenly the pieces were starting to fall into place. She counted them off on her fingers. “Teddy knew about mining and rights from his time selling those off planet investments. He also knew about the Scouts. They record more planets than anyone could possibly colonize or capitalize on, but, the best planets are the ones that go up for the colonization lottery. It’s insanely competitive. So Teddy, started a business taking rich people to view the newest, most exciting planets.”
“Some planets may never be colonized,” Perry Six added, “but they are very popular tourist destinations because of their unusual geography, or flora and fauna.”
“But what if Teddy found something?” Tracy asked. “What if he found something on one of those worlds. Something so valuable, he thought he could auction it off?”
“What could be that valuable?” Jessica asked.
“There are many valuable materials, both organic and inorganic,” Perry Six offered.
“But none of the obvious ones would start a bidding war. None of them would be enough to get Typhon ready to burn Miami and Detroit to the ground over…”
“What does a Clan boss have that he can’t buy our get through intimidation?” Jessica asked.
Tracy’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit.” She snapped her fingers. “He found an archive.”
“That is not possible Detective,” Perry Six said without emotion. “All ancient digital artifacts are catalogued and reported by the Scout Bureau.”
“Yeah, all the ones we know about,” Tracy said standing up. “What if he found one no one knew about. What if he found an alien AI core?”
“That is highly speculative,” Perry Six said.
“But that would be insanely valuable to the most powerful minds in the Galaxy. It would be valuable to the Living Nexus.”
“And the humans that had that could just about name their price,” Jessica said. “Oh my God, that isn’t just money, that’s power.”
“But what are the odds that such a find would be more than a fossilized bit of alloys?” Perry Six asked.
“Perry, what would it be worth if it wasn’t? What if it was still operating?”
It did not take him long to answer. “The Nexus would stop at nothing to be the first synthetic intelligence to examine such a find,” he said.
“That’s what Teddy auctioned off. He found some kind of ancient digital archive, something still functional. He found some kind of knowledge core, and he offered to sell it to the highest bidder.”
“So who got it?” Jessica asked.
“Clearly Master Typhon,” Perry Six answered.
“That’s what Keres claims,” Tracy said. “But it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. We’re working for Typhon so we have to assume it’s his. But that is what we are chasing.”
“So all we have to do is find this ancient core thing?” Jessica asked.
“Yes, but to do that, we’re going to need access to the Scout planetary database.”
“That’s a long haul,”. Jessica said. She was mapping out the route on her console with the screen turned so everyone could follow. “We have to go here, and catch the train to one of the poles and catch a shuttle from there back up to orbit. It sure would be easier if they would let us just dock while we are here in orbit.”
“You heard Perry, that isn’t going to work. So we go the long way.”. Tracy felt confident she could identify the planet if she could just piece together Teddy’s trips, but she still didn’t know what had brought him to Cross Roads in the first place. Likely it was to get away from the Clan, but if so, why come back? Why start up his planetary exploration company if he did manage to get away? She was still missing information - but she felt like she had uncovered a big piece.
Only something you could use to bargain with, or threaten the ai construct would draw that much attention from such powerful people. Tracy started too look to see if she could find out who else had bid on the “item”. The more she knew about the bidders, she felt that would clue her into exactly what it was that Teddy had found.