“True. I kinda wondered about Bentley,” he said. “The clowns don’t always make the best impressions on strangers.”
I felt my eyebrows climbing up my head.
He turned back to the lock. “Yeah. Personal experience.”
I followed him into the ship and we got on with the business of re-integrating with operations in CPJCT space.
Chapter 30
Siren Orbital: 2375, August 25
Approach and docking went by the book and we latched on just before lunch mess. After that, things got weird, starting with the scrum of black coveralls meeting us at the lock. Even the inspection agent looked nervous and rushed through the formality of checking our embargo locker and accepting our documentation. Pip met me at the brow and we followed the inspector out to meet the TIC agents on the dock.
One of them—a stocky woman with close cropped hair and warm golden-brown skin—stepped forward. She looked back and forth between us once then focused on me. “Captain Wang?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Special Field Agent Roberta MacElroy. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
I glanced over her shoulder at her squad. About half of them stood with their backs to us, directing curious bystanders to move along by the simple expedient of standing there like a fence of crows. Meeting MacElroy’s gaze, I asked, “Do I have a choice?”
She smiled slightly, a real smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. “Everybody asks that. Yes. Actually, you do. We can have a nice quiet chat here while your crew gets ready for liberty or I can arrest you and we can have a nice quiet chat on the oh-six deck.” She lowered her voice. “Jim Waters asked me to check in with you.”
“This is kinda high profile isn’t it?” Pip asked with a nod at the agents gathered around the lock.
“It will turn out to be a mix-up over the provenance of some cargo,” she said, giving a small shrug. “The couple holding hands across the dock are actually newsies assigned to cover the authoritarian abuses of the Trade Investigation Commission.”
“So you’re giving them a story?” he asked.
She smiled. “It’s much easier to control the narrative when we drive it.”
Pip’s snort sounded suspiciously like a suppressed laugh. “I’ll remember that,” he said.
“So, would you like to come aboard, Special Field Agent MacElroy?” I asked. “The wardroom would be more comfortable than freezing on this dock.”
She gave a short laugh and nodded. “Thank you, Captain. We’ll do our best not to take up too much of your time.”
I climbed the ramp back into the ship. Al and the chief stood on the brow. Bentley had the brow watch. He stood behind the watch station, his eyes practically bugging out of his head. “My compliments to Ms. Sharps, and could she set up refreshments in the wardroom, Mr. Bentley?”
He started at his name. “Aye, aye, sar,” he said and started slapping keys.
I looked to Agent MacElroy. “Should I log you aboard?”
“Of course,” she said and stepped up to the watch station. She gave her particulars and those of her backup officer for Bentley to log.
I glanced out and saw the remaining agents had settled into a cordon around the lock, all looking outward and apparently paying the couple across the dock no mind at all.
Formalities served, I introduced Al and the chief. “Will you want to talk with them?” I asked. “Perhaps anybody else on my crew?”
MacElroy shook hands with each of them. “Not necessary, Captain. I’m sure they have other duties.”
“How long before we can declare liberty?” Al asked.
I looked at MacElroy. “A stan. No longer,” she said. “By the time the orbital clears you, we’ll be out of your hair.”
“Pass the word that we’ll be here for a full four days,” I said. “Set up so everybody gets a good break.”
“A good break, aye, sar,” Al said and stepped back to clear the passage.
I glanced back in time to see the chief giving MacElroy a faint frown. “Problem, Chief?” I asked.
She paused for a moment before shaking her head. “None, Captain. Four days will give me enough time to get a good stores inventory update.”
I shot MacElroy a glance out of the corner of my eyes and raised an eyebrow at the chief.
The chief gave her head just the faintest of shakes.
“In that case, the wardroom is this way, Agent MacElroy.” I led the two TIC agents into the ship, with Pip bringing up the rear.
We found Franklin putting the final touches on a coffee service with some small cakes.
“Thank you, Mr. Franklin,” I said.
He nodded. “You’re welcome, Captain. Is there anything else?”
I looked at MacElroy.
She smiled at Franklin. “A cup of tea, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Of course, sar. Anything in particular? Ms. Sharps has quite a collection.”
“A lapsang?”
“I’ll check, sar.” He scurried off into the pantry.
I grabbed a mug, skipped the cakes, and took my seat at the head of the table. Pip waved the second agent ahead. By the time they’d gotten coffee and snacks, Ms. Sharps brought the tea herself.
MacElroy, settled into Al’s chair, raised a hand. “Thank you.”
Sharps smiled and placed the cup in front of the agent. “My pleasure. Please let us know if there’s anything else.” She looked at me, eyebrows raised.
“Thank you, Ms. Sharps. I think we’re good for now,” I said.
She nodded and slipped into the pantry, closing the door behind her.
MacElroy dunked her teabag a couple of times, staring into the cup as if admiring the color. Her backup sipped his coffee without appearing to pay any attention to us.
Apparently satisfied with her tea, MacElroy glanced at her agent.
“We’re clear,” he said without looking up.
MacElroy gave a short nod. “Never thought otherwise,” she said then looked at Pip. “So, about Brilliantine Smith.”
Pip straightened in his chair. “What about her?”
“That’s what we’d like to know, Mr. Carstairs. Why are you trying to find her?”
“Something wrong with looking up an old shipmate?” he asked. His lips curved into a smile that might have been amusement on anybody besides Pip.
MacElroy shook her head and sipped her tea. “You’re not particularly close to Ms. Smith, I take it?”
“We haven’t seen her since she graduated the academy,” I said.
“You were at the academy together?” MacElroy said, her eyebrows lowering. “You were both class of ’58, unless my data gathering was badly flawed.”
“We all left the Lois McKendrick in ’53,” Pip said. “Ms. Smith entered the master’s program and graduated in ’55.”
MacElroy nodded. “Of course. Sorry. I should have made that connection.” She gave a small shrug and looked into her mug again for a few heartbeats, as if trying to find her next question in it. “You haven’t heard from her since?”
“She said she was coming back to Siren. She has family here,” Pip said.
MacElroy looked at me.
I shrugged. “That’s my understanding.”
“What’s TIC’s interest in this?” Pip asked.
“In the spring of 2355 she came back to Siren, visited with her father for a couple of weeks, and then dropped off the map.”
“That’s hardly unusual,” Pip said, as he leaned back in his seat and crossed one leg over the other. “People do it every day.”
“True.” She gave a half shrug. “The Toe-Holds can be a powerful draw.”
“Or a last chance,” Pip said, his voice low. “Why do you care what happened to Ms. Smith if she’s been missing for almost two decades?”
“Because we believe she’s been working on the Manchester Yards skunk works in the Toe-Holds and we’d like to know where that is.” MacElroy looked back and forth between us a couple o
f times.
“What makes you think we know?” Pip asked.
She blew out a soft breath. “Honestly, we don’t but you’ve been trying to contact her for weeks. Jim Waters tells me you’re looking for the same thing we are. When he found out you were coming to Siren, he asked me to pay a call. See if you’d found out anything.”
“And to see if we had any idea where Brill is?”
She nodded. “That, too.”
“What’s her family say?” I asked.
MacElroy looked at me, cocking her head to one side. “How do you mean?”
“You said she came back to visit her father before dropping off the grid.”
“Ah, yes. The reports say she got a big job offer and was heading off to the Diurnia sector to take it.”
“He hasn’t heard from her?” Pip asked.
“He got a few messages but nothing since ’56.”
“He didn’t think that was unusual?” Pip asked. “His daughter disappearing?”
“Her last message was from Dree. She got the job and was heading off to the site to take over environmental on a station.” MacElroy shrugged. “Her message said she’d signed an NDA and would be going dark. He didn’t give it another thought until we contacted him in ’62.”
“She’s been ‘dark’ for two decades and he’s not ripping the Annex apart looking for her?” Pip asked.
“He died in ’67. Heart attack. Her mother’s shuttle went missing on a run to the belts in ’69. As far as we know, she has no other close ties.”
“Until we started looking for her,” Pip said.
She nodded.
“Any reason to suspect foul play?” he asked.
“Her father had a chronic heart condition. I wasn’t here then but his medical records are damning. The shuttle?” She shrugged. “Space is a dangerous place for humans. She’d made that run a thousand times.” She shrugged again. “People get careless with the familiar, no matter how dangerous.”
I sighed. Her words rang true to me and I wondered how much carelessness had never caught up with me.
MacElroy took another sip and continued. “We managed to trace her to Dree where she booked a vacation trip with one of the outfitters there.”
“Plunkett’s,” I said.
Pip looked at me with a frown, but MacElroy’s eyes widened. “Yes. How did you know?”
“Lucky guess. I’ve run into them a few times. I flew out of Diurnia for a long time.”
“Of course. DST. I didn’t know DST and Plunkett crossed paths that much.”
“Normally we don’t, but I helped out one of their captains once.”
MacElroy glanced at her agent who gave his head a little shake.
“Does it matter?” Pip asked.
MacElroy took a slow sip of her tea. “When was this?”
“I was on the Agamemnon, so ’71? ’72?” I shrugged. “I rendered aid to one of their ships with scrubber troubles.”
Pip gave me an odd look but didn’t ask any awkward questions.
“What’s TIC’s interest?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Just what I said. We want the skunk works and Smith is the best lead we’ve got.”
“Besides the Chernyakova,” Pip said.
She gave him a small smile and sipped her tea.
“Is there anything else?” I asked. “My crew is looking forward to liberty and I’ve got reports to file.”
She shook her head. “I got what I came for.”
I stood and everybody else followed suit. “Let me show you out,” I said.
“No need, Captain. I know my way around Barbells. As you say. You’re a busy man.”
I nodded and watched as her agent opened the door and led the way out of the wardroom. She left the door open.
I sat back down and helped myself to a cake.
“That was interesting,” Pip said, refilling his mug from the carafe.
“Did we learn anything?”
Pip spun his coffee mug around and around on desk using the tips of his fingers. The ceramic base made a quiet grinding sound. “Maybe,” he said after a while. “We might ask Ms. Sharps to join us.”
“Ms. Sharps?”
He nodded and pointed to MacElroy’s tea cup. “See anything odd?”
I looked but couldn’t spot anything unusual. I shook my head.
Pip rose and tapped on the pantry door. Mr. Franklin opened it after a few moments.
“Yes, sar? Shall I clear?” he asked.
“Not just this moment, Mr. Franklin. If you’d ask Ms. Sharps to bring me a cup of lapsang? I’ve a hankering to try it.”
He nodded and slipped away down the passage toward the galley.
“What’s this in service of, Pip?” I asked.
He frowned and took his seat. “Maybe nothing. We’ll know in a tick.”
I eyed him over my coffee mug.
Ms. Sharps appeared at the pantry door holding a cup. “You wanted some lapsang, Mr. Carstairs?”
“Thank you, Ms. Sharps. I do.” He sat back a bit so she could place the cup in front of him. “Is this the same tea you served Agent MacElroy?” he asked.
“The very same. I quite like it as an end of day pick-me-up.”
He leaned over and took a snootful of the aroma above the cup. “Sharp smell. Astringent. Something else.” He looked at Ms. Sharps. “Almost like tar.”
She smiled. “Very strong flavors. Artificial these days but back on Earth, it was smoked over pine wood.”
Pip looked down at his cup and then over at MacElroy’s. He pursed his lips for a few moments, considering the two.
I was ready to smack him by the time he got around to speaking again.
“So, tell Ms. Sharps. Is it just a coincidence that Agent MacElroy took the tag from her teabag when she left?”
I saw Sharps look at MacElroy’s cup and back at Pip’s. “What an odd thing to do, sar,” she said.
Pip grinned. “They do like their cloak and dagger, don’t they.”
“I’m sure I don’t understand, sar.”
“How long have you been employed by TIC?” he asked, sitting back from the table. “And please, have a seat.” He waved a hand to the empty chair beside him.
Sharps glanced at me then took the indicated chair.
Pip leaned in. “You’re not in any trouble with us,” he said.
Sharps looked at me, as if for confirmation.
“No problem with me. I hope they’re paying you well,” I said.
She took a deep breath and looked at her hands, fingers fidgeting with each other in her lap. “Somebody—a man—older. Athletic. Contacted me on Breakall. Told me that they’d pay off my mother’s debts with the station if I’d get the job cooking for you.”
“Did you want the job?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Actually, yes. I would have applied anyway because I wanted to get back into space. Sitting in the station watching my mother come apart—” she stopped, sucking in a breath. “She won’t get the help she needs and just hides in her apartment.” She shrugged. “I tried to help her but she just won’t listen. Kicked me out. Told me to leave her alone. Never bother her again.” She wouldn’t look up. Just kept her focus on her fingers.
Pip pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out to Sharps. “Hurts, doesn’t it,” he said.
She nodded. “Life on the orbital is hard for people who can’t work and can’t leave.”
“True anywhere,” Pip said. “Not just on the orbital.”
Sharps sniffed and rubbed the handkerchief under her nose and then wiped her eyes. “Sorry, sar.” She sniffed again.
“So your instructions were what?” he asked.
“Buy some lapsang. Keep it in the galley. I keep a running report of where we’ve been, what we did. Encode it on a datadot whenever we dock somewhere. If a TIC agent comes aboard and asks for lapsang, I put the dot on the tag.” She glanced at the teabag. “I didn’t realize she was going to take the whole tag.”
/>
“That was bad craft,” Pip said. “I don’t think she was in the loop all the way.”
“Bad craft?” Sharps asked.
“She could have downloaded the dot without taking the tag. Reader in the tip of her glove would have been easy to do.”
Sharps blinked at Pip and then stared at the cup again. “That does seem odd,” she said. She stiffened her spine and sat up straighter, eyes downcast. “What would you like me to do, sar?”
Pip smiled and sat back. “I think the logical thing would be get lunch served.” He nodded at the chrono on the bulkhead. “It’s nearly time. I think the captain will call for liberty after lunch.” He looked around her at me.
“Probably,” I said.
“What about TIC?” she asked. “Was it really TIC?”
“Sandy-colored hair? About this tall?” Pip held up a hand. “Did he tell you his name?”
“Yes, sandy hair. Might have been a little taller than that.” She looked down. “Rather nice looking in an older-man kind of way. He said his name was Legion.”
“Yes, he was with TIC,” Pip said.
“But do you want me to leave the ship?” she asked, still looking down at her hands.
“Whatever for?” I asked. “You think you’re the only TIC informant aboard?”
She looked up at me, eyes reddened but wide. “I’m not?”
I shook my head. “Highly unlikely from what I’ve seen so far.”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Pip said. “We don’t care and maybe it’ll help in the long run. At the very least maybe your mother can get the help she needs.”
“She needs to get off that orbital,” Sharps said with some vehemence. “It’s sucking the life out of her.”
“Who knows? Maybe something will break her way,” Pip said.
“Are we done, sar?” Sharps asked. She glanced at Pip and then at me.
“You’ve got a galley to run, Ms. Sharps,” I said. “I suggest you get to it.”
She nodded and rose, stopping at the door to the pantry. “I’m sorry, Captain. I feel like I’ve betrayed you.”
I thought about it for about two heartbeats. “You’re crew, Ms. Sharps. It’s my job to take care of all my crew. I’m sorry you were put in the position. Just keep doing the job you’re doing.”
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