“I’ve only ever been two places in my life, mister,” Talban said. “Barnholm and SC-8952. I barely concern myself with the planets here in Kobolt Koy, why would I concern myself with any outside of it?”
“So, you have no connection with Skinny Plains, Stygaard Industries, nothing like that?”
“What’d I just say?” Talban replied, annoyed. “Unless they’re here on the 8952, they ain’t of concern to me.”
“What about enemies?” Deckland asked. “Do you have anyone who’d wish to do you harm? Or your daughter?”
Talban chuckled bitterly at that. “Enemies…” he grumbled. “You know how many people live on this station, Ranger?”
“Close to three thousand, I believe.”
“And do you see any of those three thousand drinking with me?”
“I do not.”
“Right, you don’t. I’m a maintenance worker. Bottom of the rung. I fix their toilets when they stop working. I’m one of a handful of men doing a job that could easily be done by a maintenance-bot. I don’t warrant having enemies. I ain’t important enough.”
Deckland nodded. He’d heard all he’d needed to. Despite his initial suspicions, it was obvious to him that all Talban Villem was guilty of was being a drunk and a bad parent. He finished his club soda and then stood to leave.
“Thanks for your time, Mr. Villem,” he said. “I will keep you informed should we find anything concerning your daughter.”
Deckland turned to leave but stopped when Talban spoke once more.
“Something bad has happened to my little girl, hasn’t it?” he asked.
Deckland turned back to look at the man. “What makes you say that?”
“I been on this station for going on fifteen cycles now,” Talban explained. “Don’t nobody special get sent out to investigate stowaways, not in all my time here. If you’re an Imperial lawman like you say, you’re here because something happened to Rosie. Tell me true, Ranger. She dead?”
Deckland hesitated for a moment. He hadn’t planned on informing the man his daughter had died. He’d planned to leave that duty to someone who knew him better, like Chief Grumham. But it didn’t feel right to leave without giving the man an answer to his question. Thus, Deckland simply nodded. “I’m sorry to say… yes, she is. Her body was found a few days ago in the Alpha Renway system.”
Deckland wasn’t sure how Talban was going to react upon hearing the news, but the man simply nodded and ordered another drink.
“You don’t seem too broken up about it,” Deckland noted.
“What do you want me to do? Break down and blubber like a woman?” muttered Talban as he sipped on his drink. “I ran out of tears the day I lost my wife. I made peace with Rosie being gone when I thought she’d stowed away. Whether she ran, or she died, the result’s the same. She’s gone, and she ain’t coming back.”
“Still… she was your daughter.”
“Maybe by blood, but not in any other manner. She didn’t care for me much. Took care of herself mostly and let me be. We both preferred it that way.”
“Did you not love her?”
“I loved my wife,” Talban said. “I wouldn’t say I hated Rosie, but she reminded me too much of her mother. Every time I’d look at her, I’d feel my wife’s loss all over again. It was just too painful. I couldn’t be around her, no matter how hard I tried. Every time I looked at her I felt like I was looking at a ghost.”
“Mr. Villem… are you saying you were glad your daughter disappeared?”
“Not so much glad,” Talban replied. “More like… relieved. She hated living in space, and I hated living with her. Figured if she wanted to run off, I shouldn’t stand in her way. The only reason I reported her to security was on the off-chance she might have still been on the station and hurt. But once Grumham ruled it a stowaway, I washed my hands of the affair.”
“And yet, Grumham said you accused him of not doing all he could to find Roseca,” Deckland said. “Why would you be angry with him if you’d washed your hands of everything?”
Talban frowned and looked down sadly into his glass, turning it slowly in his hand.
“What’s it matter?” he muttered. “She’s with her mother now. Maybe she can finally be happy.”
With that, Talban downed what was left of his drink and then walked away, stumbling slightly as he went. Deckland frowned as he watched him go. He didn’t hate his daughter. He loved her too much, and now he’s blaming himself for what happened, thought Deckland.
The exchange with Talban Villem had put Deckland in a somber mood as he left the station’s boozskeller and made his way back to where The Leadbelly was docked. He was beginning to understand why people in the Frontier looked down upon core worlders like him so much.
Frontier life differed greatly compared to the life from which Deckland had come. The idea that a father would be able to so easily let go of his own child like Talban Villem had done was such a foreign concept to Deckland. Even life on the space stations was vastly different from what he’d witnessed on the larger and more advanced stations in the core of the Empire. In his previous visits to space stations, they were not nearly as claustrophobic or depressing as SC-8952. Then again, he’d only ever been to the ones located at high-traffic hyperspace routes and maintained by established Legacies. And he’d certainly never met a man so beaten down by life as Talban Villem seemed to be.
Perhaps there is something to Berenger’s insistence that things need to be done differently out here, Deckland thought. But are we not here to change things? Make them more like they are in the core worlds? How can we expect to civilize the Frontier if we’re forced to adapt our principles to suit it?
Deckland returned to the bridge of The Leadbelly to see Berenger at the holo-table in the center of the room, going through the files that Grumham had sent over. As Deckland entered, Wadsworth hovered toward him.
“Welcome back, sir,” the robo-butler said. “May I take your hat?”
“Sure,” said Deckland as he handed the hat Moreland had given him to the robot.
“Would you care for a drink, Deckland Deckland Prescott?” asked Wadsworth. “Coffee? Tea? Perhaps an adult beverage of some type?”
“No, I’m fine. And call me Deckland. Just Deckland.”
“As you wish, Deckland Just Deckland.”
Wadsworth hovered away before he could be corrected again. “Why can no one ever get my name right?” Deckland grumbled under his breath.
He heard a hoarse laughing noise and turned to see Spur looking up at him and smiling his creepy Lampak grin.
“Oh, shut up,” Deckland said.
He made his way to Berenger’s side, looking at the holographic display of the security footage his partner was studying.
“How’d your interview with the father go?” asked Berenger.
“You were right. He was guilty of being a bad parent,” Deckland replied, “but I don’t think he had anything to do with her disappearance. He hid it, but he was racked with remorse. I think he felt he let Roseca down by not being there for her like he should have been.”
“So, we should no longer consider Talban Villem a person of interest?”
“No, we should not,” agreed Deckland. “Tell me you’ve had better luck on your end.”
“I’m having Wadsworth query the Imperial Space Force’s databases back on Barnholm to see if we can track the travel logs of all the licensed shipping vessels that had visited this station around the time of Roseca’s disappearance,” answered Berenger. “If they’re making supply runs, they have to upload their travel logs and flight plans each time they dock, so we may get lucky and find one that ties SC-8952 to Sarjana. While that search is running, I’ve been reviewing the station’s security logs.”
“Find anything?”
“It’s what I didn’t find that has my interest,” Berenger said. “Grumham was right. He’s got security feeds covering every inch of this station. I went through all the footage of the ships that
were docked here around the time of Roseca Villem’s disappearance, and I could not find a single shred of evidence that she was able to sneak aboard any of them.”
“So, she didn’t appear on any of the security footage?”
“Nope,” said Berenger.
“Her father mentioned the same thing that Chief Grumham did, about her being resourceful enough to sneak through the station’s infrastructure using maintenance tubes and ventilation ducts,” said Deckland. “Is it possible she was able to sneak onboard a ship without being seen by the station’s cameras?”
“Not on a station like SC-8952,” replied Berenger. “If this station had actual hangar bays where ships flew into the station to land, maybe that would be a possibility. But a station like this one requires ships to dock through berthing tubes while staying in space. That means none of the station’s infrastructure runs to the ships from the docking tubes that extend to latch on to them. So, unless Roseca Villem had a method of spacewalking that we don’t know about, the only way she’d be able to board one of these vessels would be through the docking tubes, all of which are monitored by the station’s security feed.”
“That means she’d need to have been smuggled aboard one of the ships,” Deckland said.
Berenger nodded. “And seeing as how all the station’s scans matched the manifests of all the ships, what does that tell you?”
“It tells me that if she’d stowed away in a cargo container, the scans would have registered her,” Deckland stated. “That means she didn’t run away. Someone smuggled her aboard a ship and knew how to hide her from the scans.”
“Gold star, Rook. Gold star.”
“So, we are dealing with a kidnapping.”
“That would seem the most likely scenario,” Berenger replied. “Now we just need to figure out who took her, and why.”
An alert beeped from the two dataservers on each side of the bridge’s bar. Wadsworth came hovering over to Berenger, holding a cold bottle of beer, which he handed to the Ranger.
“The results of your query to the Imperial Space Force database have just come in, Master Berenger,” Wadsworth said.
“Perfect timing,” Berenger responded as he took a swig from his beer bottle. “Put it on the screen, if’n you don’t mind, Wadsworth.”
“Right away, sir.”
The results of Berenger’s search appeared on the large viewscreen of the bridge. The left side contained a list of the vessels that had been docked with SC-8952 at the time of Roseca Villem’s disappearance, and the right side had a map of the Frontier highlighting the travel routes those ships registered with the space agency. There were six ships in total, their routes leading all throughout the quadrant.
“That’s a lot of ships to track down,” Deckland muttered. “It’ll take forever to catch up with all of them.”
“Wadsworth, can you filter out all the results that did not also travel to Sarjana?” asked Berenger.
“I’m afraid all the vessels in question visited Sarjana, Master Berenger,” Wadsworth replied. “It would seem that Stygaard Industries is a part of the New Frontier Conglomeration, which is responsible for chartering the supply deliveries to their various locations.”
Deckland and Berenger looked at one another. “There’s our connection between Sarjana and SC-8952,” Deckland said.
“So it would seem,” agreed Berenger.
“Still, it doesn’t help us figure out which one of these ships to go after,” said Deckland. “Any one of them could have taken Roseca, and they all follow similar routes. They’ve all been to Sarjana within the month since Roseca went missing, so they all could have conceivably taken her.”
“Indeed, they could have,” Berenger agreed. “But if this is in fact a kidnapping, you gotta ask yourself what the purpose of it was.”
“Kidnappings are usually done for ransoms,” Deckland said, “but we know that’s not the case here. Roseca was killed, but it was not done in a conventional manner, so I think it’s safe to rule out a thrill killing predator in this case. Could it have been for the purposes of child trafficking?”
“That’s the theory that fits best, in my estimation,” drawled Berenger. “And if that’s the case, then chances are…”
“…Roseca Villem was not the only child that’s gone missing,” said Deckland, finishing Berenger’s thought.
“Wadsworth, access the Initiative’s missing person database again,” Berenger said. “Call up all instances of missing children among the routes these six ships took for the past year. Cross-reference the times of any disappearances with the logged routes of these six ships. See if there is any correlation to be found.”
“Doing so now, Master Berenger,” replied Wadsworth as the bridge’s dataservers blinked while they accessed the ultrawave feed for the Galactic Ranger Initiative’s central database. “Query completed. There is one result.”
“Put it on the screen,” ordered Berenger.
What the two rangers saw, then, shocked them both. There were eleven instances of missing children, not counting Roseca Villem, all having occurred at space stations over the past year along the route of a single ship.
“Great Observer,” muttered Deckland, taken aback by what he was seeing. “Twelve? Twelve children have been kidnapped, and no one knows about it?”
“We know about it,” snarled Berenger as he moved to his control panel and tapped its keys to highlight the registration of the ship whose route matched the pattern of abductions.
The image of the vessel grew on the screen with its details listed to the left of it.
“The Long Haul,” Deckland said, reading the ship’s name off the viewscreen. “A Ferryman-class transport graded for large bulk shipping. Registered and captained by one Evarest Pyle.”
Berenger called up Evarest Pyle’s profile on the viewscreen. The picture associated with it showed an unsmiling, sandy-haired Regal. Berenger narrowed his eyes as he looked at the man’s face.
“The Long Haul’s registered flight plan shows it’s heading toward a trading depot on the edge of the Great Expanse called Waystation 4855,” Deckland noted. “If we leave now, we could intercept it there.”
“Buckle up, Rook,” Berenger said as he sent a request to SC-8952 for clearance to leave. “Time to catch ourselves a kidnapper.”
Chapter 10
During the journey from SC-8952 to waystation WS-4855, Deckland and Berenger continued their investigation by doing background checks into Evarest Pyle and his registered crew members. However, the journey through the hyperspace dimension while traveling at the speed of light made accessing the ultrawave network slower than it normally would be, but both Rangers felt getting to their destination quickly was of a higher priority than digging into their suspect’s history for the moment.
Deckland checked their ETA and was impressed to see they were making good time. The Leadbelly certainly didn’t look like much, but she was faster than an average ship. The hyperspace dimension was a mirror image of the prime dimension with only gravitational shadows existing in hyperspace. Unlike the prime dimension that was constantly expanding and growing ever bigger, hyperspace was constantly contracting and growing ever smaller.
By flying through a contracting mirror dimension like hyperspace at the speed of light, starships were able to cross lightyears of distances in a much more reasonable timeframe than if they had been making the exact same journey in the prime dimension. And when all ships were traveling at around 90% the speed of light through the hyperspace dimension, there was little one could usually do to decrease one’s travel time. After all, the closer one got to reaching actual “light speed,” the greater the danger of being converted into pure energy became, as well. However, Deckland suspected Berenger had implemented a number of special (and not exactly 100% safe) modifications to his ship to have The Leadbelly run closer to 93% the speed of light. Normally, Deckland would object to such a reckless pushing of safety boundaries, but he was willing to make an exception to catch
a man who abducted children. If they wanted to intercept The Long Haul and its crew, they’d need every bit of speed they could get.
Berenger was studying Evarest Pyle’s background intently at his console, having gone through it at least three times by then, as Deckland had moved on to study the rest of the crew. Despite their confidence that these men were, indeed, kidnapping children from the stations they docked with, one would never know it by looking at their profiles. None of them had any criminal records and none of their profiles with the Imperial Space Force had any infractions listed on them.
“They’re all clean,” Deckland said after reviewing the last of The Long Haul’s crew members. “Every single one of them.”
“Yep,” muttered Berenger. “Too clean. I ain’t never seen spacers that are this pristine. Their ship don’t even have any docking penalties in its history, unpaid or otherwise.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying there’s something fishy about these records,” answered Berenger.
“Are you suggesting these guys submitted forged data to the Imperial Space Force?”
“Either that, or someone scrubbed the dirty laundry that was already in the system.”
“Hacking an official Imperial database?” said Deckland, skeptically. “That’s a rather tall order, wouldn’t you say? Especially for a group of space jockeys.”
“And yet, their background data all seems legit,” Berenger said. “If these were forged identities, they most likely wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny. I could see someone getting away with that for unsanctioned trade, but the NFC is playing by the rules. They only seem to employ officially registered vessels for their supply runs, which means Pyle and his men had to have been vetted and approved by the ISF.”
“And if there were any red flags during the vetting process, Pyle and company would have never been cleared to operate by the Empire,” finished Deckland.
Berenger nodded at that. “They may have paid off some high-level hacker or some low-level bureaucrat to modify their official records so that they could pass the vetting process. If they’re abducting kids, chances are they’re smuggling other stuff on their trade routes, as well. It’s hard to get contraband on space stations and colonies whose starship traffic is regulated by the Imperial Space Force. Might be Pyle and his men thought the profit would be worth the trouble of scrubbing their profiles. Either way, these records are so clean I can practically smell the bleach coming off them.”
Lawmen- Rook and Berenger Page 11