“Put ‘em on the screen, if’n you please.”
Berenger plopped himself down in the pilot’s seat as the casefiles of Wadsworth’s search results were displayed on the bridge’s viewscreen. Deckland stood beside Berenger at the ship’s control console, drinking his water as he eyed the images of the children in question while Berenger scrolled through them.
“There!” said Deckland, pointing at one of the files being displayed.
Berenger enlarged the file his partner had referenced, a little girl’s image growing on the screen. It was a girl with dark hair and a soft face with big, innocent eyes. He called up their homicide file and ran facial recognition against images from the autopsy. The results came back positive.
It was indeed their victim.
“I don’t believe it. We found her!” muttered Deckland, a feeling of excitement in his gut from uncovering the case’s first solid lead.
“Roseca Villem,” said Berenger as he read the girl’s name from the casefile. “Reported missing two months ago from science station SC-8952, out in the Kobolt Koy system.”
Deckland tapped at the console to bring up a map on the viewscreen, showing the space station in question located several lightyears from Sarjana. “Looks like Kobolt Koy is quite a distance from here,” he noted.
“Looks like,” agreed Berenger.
“How does a ten-year-old girl from a space station wind up dead on a planet lightyears away from her home?” asked Deckland.
“That’s a mighty fine question, Rook,” drawled Berenger. “What’s say you and I go find out?”
Chapter 9
Aside from supply depots and waystations, science stations were the most common type of space platform in the Frontier. The reason for this was that science stations were necessary to determine the viability of a planetary system for colonization, studying the system’s star, planets, moons, and asteroids to quantify the benefits, risks, and challenges a system could present to those looking to settle in it.
Science station SC-8952 was one such station orbiting a planet in the Kobolt Koy habitable zone. It was a large structure with big scanning arrays on its exterior, all pointing toward the planet as the station orbited around it, collecting sensor data and sending out probes, starships, and expeditions to the surface below.
The inside of the space station wasn’t much different from other stations tasked with similar duties. In fact, it was very similar to a pod city, with different sized modular units connecting together and sharing a central spine that served as the core structure of the station. The interior was a collection of cookie-cutter corridors and rooms with little variation, built for utility rather than comfort.
The office for the station’s security chief, a Karkovian by the name of Percy Grumham, was a tad cramped for Deckland’s taste. Then again, he understood that space was at a premium in stations like SC-8952 – something most who grew up on actual planets took for granted. He couldn’t imagine how small the personnel’s living quarters may have been if their offices were all so tiny.
Grumham frowned as he looked through the casefile Deckland and Berenger had presented him. His long face grew remorseful as he scrolled through the data on his desk’s visual display. “And you’re positive this is her? This is Roseca?” he asked.
“Facial recognition was a positive match,” Berenger replied. “We’re cross-checking with your station’s medical center to compare her DNA profile just to be thorough, but as you can see, it’s her.”
Two of Grumham’s hands massaged his temples as another pair smoothed out his blue and black uniform while the final pair tapped at his keyboard, minimizing the file. He leaned back in his chair, looking none too pleased. “Blast it,” he muttered. “I knew there was a chance something bad may have happened to her, but I’d hoped she’d just stowed away somewhere.”
“Stowing away seems pretty dangerous on its own,” Deckland said.
“It’s actually not that uncommon on space stations,” Grumham replied. “Kids want to live on a real planet, so they sneak off on some docked transport or ship. Happens all the time.”
“Roseca Villem was ten cycles of age. That’s a little young to be running off on starships, wouldn’t you say?”
“Squick, I’ve had kids as young as five try stowing their way off the station,” Grumham said. “Unless you’re born a spacer, you can’t understand the allure of living on a real planet. To many kids out here that very concept is like some mythical fantasy they long to fulfill. Especially if their home life is difficult.”
“Was Roseca’s?” asked Berenger.
“I don’t believe so. At least, I never got any reports of abuse,” Grumham replied. “Her mother passed when she was very young, and her father works a lot, so worst one could say was that she was neglected a bit, but no more so than any other station kid being raised by a single parent. If anything, being on her own a lot made her very independent, which is why I just figured she’d run off.”
“What can you tell us about your initial investigation into her disappearance?” Deckland asked.
Grumham shrugged. “I began looking into it when her father came in saying he hadn’t seen her in about a week. Did all the normal checks and searches, and when we couldn’t find her, I chalked it up to a stow-away and filed the missing person’s report as per procedure.”
“The father didn’t come in until a week after she’d first gone missing?” asked Deckland, sounding a bit indignant at that bit of information. “How could he not have noticed his daughter was missing right away? Especially on a station this small?”
“It wasn’t unusual for her to disappear for long stretches,” Grumham said. “She was a wall-rat.”
“A what?” Deckland asked.
“A wall-rat,” repeated Grumham. “You know how all space stations have a slew of maintenance tubes and large ventilation ducts and whatnot? Sometimes kids like to sneak into them and crawl around and play and stuff. Some practically live in them, finding secret cubby holes and setting up club houses and squick like that. We call them wall-rats because they’re always scurrying about back behind walls and under floors.”
“And Roseca did that often?” asked Berenger.
“Often enough. She probably knew the insides of this station better than our engineers. Most wall-rats do. Her dad said it wasn’t uncommon for her to spend the night in one of her cubby holes somewhere, but after about six days he figured he should report her missing in case she was injured and stuck somewhere she couldn’t get out of.”
“And how did you conduct the search?” Deckland asked.
“First, I ran a life sign check using the inter-station sensors, looking for anyone where they weren’t supposed to be. Then, I sent men out to all the unauthorized life signs we picked up within the station’s interior, but none of them was Roseca. We did checks with her known friends to see if she were staying with someone, and we did a manual search of all the common areas. When that didn’t turn up anything, we searched all docked starships and put calls out to all our active expeditions asking them to let us know if they saw her anywhere. Pretty standard stuff.”
“Did you ever consider it could have been a kidnapping?” asked Berenger.
“Well, sure, I considered it,” Grumham said. “But it seemed unlikely.”
“Why’s that?” asked Deckland.
“Because it’s not easy to kidnap people in space,” Grumham said. “I have security feeds all throughout this station, and SC-8952 ain’t all that big compared to other platforms, so simply getting someone somewhere that you could get them off the station is quite the task. And even if an individual succeeded in doing so, all our starship traffic is monitored and verified. It’s not like we’re a waystation where we have transient travelers constantly coming here. They’re all expeditionary shuttles that never leave the system, personnel transports that rotate people in and out, and supply vessels, all of which have been vetted extensively. I mean, squick, we have some of the most adva
nced sensors available on this station. If someone were trying to kidnap a child, we’d know about it, or at least have some type of record of it.”
“And there was no record at the time around Roseca’s disappearance?”
“None. All sensor scans of ships leaving the system matched their crew rosters and manifests.”
“Can you think of any reason why she’d end up on Sarjana?” asked Berenger.
“Shoot, I’d never even heard of Sarjana until you fellas arrived,” Grumham replied. “How far is it from here, again?”
“It’s a bit of a hike,” Berenger said. “Couple lightyears away.”
“Well, what we’re doing in Kobolt Koy has nothing to do with Alpha Renway, far as I know,” Grumham continued. “This system hasn’t even been cleared for settlements, yet. SC-8952 is the only thing here.”
“And if you don’t mind me asking… who’s sponsoring the system’s evaluation?” inquired Berenger. “Who’s footing the bill for y’all to be here?”
“It’s an organization called the NFC. Stands for ‘New Frontier Conglomeration’. It’s a collection of private businesses that have banded together to share the cost of exploring the Frontier, looking for viable planetary systems to settle.”
“And your security officers… none of them would happen to be on loan from the Pink Suns, would they?”
Grumham laughed at that. “Pinkies? Here?” he said, amused. “Shoot, we’re not high enough on the food chain for that level of security. Most of my men are barely a step above shopping mall guards. SC-8952 doesn’t have anything of value enough to warrant having Pinkies around to protect it.”
“What about Roseca’s father?” Deckland asked. “How has he been handling her disappearance?”
“About as well as could be expected, I suppose. Talban Villem ain’t never been a very emotional guy, least for as long as I’ve known him, so he hasn’t exactly emoted a lot about Roseca disappearing. I have noticed him hanging around in the station’s boozskeller more often, though. But he was always a bit of a drinker.”
“What’s his position here on the station?”
“He’s a maintenance worker. Mostly does small things like replacing air scrubbers, plumbing, light repairs, menial stuff like that.”
“So, he doesn’t hold a position of influence or possess any important skills that might warrant the kidnapping of his daughter?”
“Nope,” replied Grumham. “He’s just our resident handyman. Nothing special about him at all.”
“Did he show any signs of interest in following up on your investigation? Anything that would signal he actually wanted his daughter found?”
“He got drunk one night and gave me a hard time about not doing enough to find her,” Grumham admitted. “But short of tracking down every single ship that she could have stowed away on, there wasn’t much else I could do that I hadn’t already done.”
“And why didn’t you try tracking down those ships?”
“Squick, I don’t have the resources for that type of thing,” Grumham said. “I put calls out to them, but you know how things go. Ultrawaves get blocked, interfered with, and sometimes ships just don’t reply back. Had I known Roseca was in danger, I’d have certainly been more aggressive in the investigation, but honestly, I just thought it was a run-of-the-mill stowaway scenario.”
“It very well might have been, at first anyway,” Berenger said. “It’d be mighty helpful if you could give us access to all the station’s docking reports and ship manifests from the timeframe of Roseca’s disappearance, as well as your archived security footage.”
“Of course. I’ll have those sent to you immediately,” Grumham replied. “Anything I can do to help.”
“Much obliged,” said Berenger as he got to his feet.
Both Berenger and Deckland shook one of Grumham’s hands goodbye before exiting his office. As they walked, Deckland glanced over at his partner.
“You think she really was a stowaway and not a kidnapping?” he asked.
“I ain’t ruling out the possibility. Not yet, anyway,” Berenger replied. “As the Chief said, it’s hard to kidnap someone off a station like this one.”
“Hard. But not impossible.”
“Nope. Certainly not. Guess we’ll know more when we review the security footage.”
“We should interview the father while we’re here,” said Deckland. “He may have had something to do with this.”
“He may have. Or he may just be guilty of being a bad parent. Either way, I’ll leave that to you.”
“Leave it to me?” asked Deckland, skeptically. “Don’t you find his behavior the least bit suspicious?”
“I find a lot about this case suspicious,” Berenger replied. “You go with your gut, Rook. I’ll go with mine. We’ll meet up later to compare notes. Or did you need me to hold your hand while you talk to the daddy?”
“You know I don’t.”
“Then I’ll meet you back on The Leadbelly when you’re done,” Berenger said as they parted ways.
After checking in with the Maintenance Office, Deckland found that Talban Villem had already clocked out for the day. Going off Chief Grumham’s tip, Deckland made his way to the station’s boozskeller, aptly named just “The Boozskeller.” The establishment was in the central spine of the station and was probably the largest room in SC-8952 – at least as far as Deckland could tell. The station was in the middle of a shift change and that was reflected in the large crowd that had assembled there after getting off work for the day.
Deckland called up Villem’s personnel file on his datapad and scanned around for someone matching his profile picture. He found him drinking alone at the bar centered in the boozskeller, nursing a glass of neat whiskey.
“Talban Villem?” Deckland asked as he approached, showing his badge. “I’m Deckland Prescott, Galactic Ranger. I’m here investigating your daughter’s disappearance.”
Talban looked at Deckland warily, his eyes already starting to get glassy from drink. He was still in his work coveralls, his dark hair disheveled and his face scruffy and unshaven. “Galactic Ranger?” he muttered. “What the squick is that?”
“It’s like an Imperial Marshall, but instead of policing a planetary system, we do the whole quadrant,” explained Deckland.
“And you’re investigating Roseca? What for?”
“We take missing children very seriously, Mr. Villem,” Deckland said. “Do you have time to answer a few questions?”
Talban shrugged and went back to his drink. Deckland took that as an affirmation and sat in the seat next to him, ordering a club soda when the bartender approached.
“Mr. Talban,” Deckland began, “why did it take you so long to report your daughter missing?”
“We barely ever saw each other,” Talban replied. “I work all day and don’t get home until late, at which point I usually just go right to bed. The next day I wake up, head to work, and do it all over again. Roseca would either be gone or already in her room whenever I’d come back to our quarters. Wasn’t unusual for us not to see one another for days at a time.”
“Then what made you suspicious that she’d disappeared?”
“Got a message from the station’s school saying she hadn’t been attending class. That wasn’t unusual either. Roseca skipped school every now and then, but she’d always come back to see her friends and whatnot. But then I noticed her bed hadn’t been slept in for a while. I knew she liked to go exploring in the walls and stuff and thought maybe she’d gotten stuck somewhere she shouldn’t have been, so I took it to the security office and asked them to do a search.”
“And what would you say your level of concern was at the time?”
Talban gave Deckland a strange look. “My level of concern?” he asked, as though it were the dumbest question he’d ever heard.
“Your daughter was missing,” Deckland said. “I’m just wondering how you were feeling when Chief Grumham wasn’t able to find her.”
Talb
an frowned. “Honestly, I wasn’t too bent out of shape,” he muttered. “Rosie’s a smart girl. Resourceful. Independent. She knows how to take care of herself. I had a feeling in my gut that she was going to run off, eventually. She never really fit in here on the station. She had one of those… what do you call them… enterprising spirits? Much like her mom, rest her soul. Rosie didn’t like being caged up, which is why she was always crawling through the walls and stuff. She liked exploring.”
Talban chuckled as he swished his whiskey around in his glass.
“There was this one time, me and her got into a row,” he continued. “Yelling and screaming and whatnot. So, I locked her in her room as punishment. After a couple hours, I went to check on her to see if she was willing to apologize for her behavior… and wouldn’t you know it? She was gone.”
“Gone?”
Talban nodded. “Turns out she’d pried off a wall panel in her room leading to a maintenance tube,” he said. “Crawled right on out of there the minute I’d locked her door. She’d met up with some friends and had been playing with them the whole time she was supposed to be suffering her punishment!”
The man laughed, downed his drink, and ordered another.
“I swear, that girl could find her way out of any room you locked her in,” he continued. “If she couldn’t find a maintenance tube, she’d find a vent. If she couldn’t find a vent, she’d find a hole. If she couldn’t find a hole, she’d make one. Guess that’s why I figured she was never in any real danger when she disappeared. She was too resourceful to get stuck somewhere she didn’t want to be.”
Deckland made a note of that in his datapad. “Mr. Talban, have you ever heard of Sarjana?”
“No,” he replied. “What is it?”
“It’s a planet. You’re completely unfamiliar with it?”
Lawmen- Rook and Berenger Page 10