The Disappeared

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Palmer’s mouth was closed. Her eyes seemed bigger than they had a moment before.

  “I find it hard to believe, given that you’re from Mars.”

  “The Disty—”

  “Aren’t the Rev. In fact, the Disty and the Rev avoid each other, don’t they? What better place to hide from the Rev than on Mars?” DeRicci’s words hung in the room. “You want to try this conversation again, Ms. Palmer, and tell us the truth this time?”

  Palmer looked at Flint, as if waiting for him to bail her out. But he didn’t say anything. He wanted to hear her explanation.

  “Why is she doing this?” Palmer asked. “I issued a mayday as I came into Moon space. I asked for help.”

  “And we’d give it to you,” Flint said, “except for one thing.”

  Palmer froze again. She had this way of not moving that suggested a lot was going on behind her eyes. “What’s that?”

  He met her gaze and dropped the good cop mask. He said, “We have reason to believe that yacht was stolen.”

  * * *

  She knew she had lost then, that there were no allies here. When the detectives had come in, she had thought the man would be willing to help her. She knew he found her attractive. He got that look that men got around her sometimes, the one that indicated that he would have trouble looking past her features to the personality behind.

  At first, she had even attributed the hostility of the female detective, DeRicci, to those same features. And to her partner’s reaction to those features.

  But Ekaterina hadn’t been thinking clearly. She had forgotten that law enforcement was never trustworthy, especially when it had someone in custody. It was a rookie mistake, something she would have chided one of her clients about.

  She shut up after the comment about the yacht, not that it mattered. The detectives gave each other a knowing look that communicated a lot without words. Then DeRicci said to Ekaterina, “You’re coming with me.”

  Ekaterina’s heart pounded. She felt that same anticipatory nervousness she had felt earlier. DeRicci thought she was tough. If she took Ekaterina somewhere alone, Ekaterina could get away. She knew it. The woman’s arrogance would make it easy.

  Flint stood and looked down at Ekaterina. She wondered how she could ever have thought him sympathetic. Those blue eyes that had seemed so warm were cool now. She thought she saw contempt in them.

  He wasn’t a bad looking man. He had once had a cherubic face, and she would wager he looked younger than he was. But he was almost too thin, and there were lines forming in the center of his cheeks, accenting that thinness. It made him look harsh.

  There was no evidence of the attraction now. Had she imagined it?

  “Come on,” he said in that same gentle voice.

  She stood, a little more certain on her feet this time than she had been earlier. The food had helped, and she did appreciate it. It would keep her going for a while.

  She picked up the tray and her purse at the same time, making the movement with the purse seem like an unconscious gesture. The last thing she wanted to do was call attention to it. She didn’t want anyone to find that pistol.

  “I’ll worry about the tray,” Flint said, taking it from her.

  DeRicci hadn’t moved away from the door. “Believe it or not,” she said, “I have other cases that I’d like to get to. So let’s move.”

  Ekaterina nodded. She had played this entire interview wrong. She had forgotten her new self, forgotten that she was supposed to be a textile worker, not a lawyer. She should have paid attention to the questions they didn’t ask, the way they were evaluating her, to see if her comments jibed with her personal history. Of course they didn’t. The discussion of the orbitals proved that. If she didn’t get away, she was going to have to come up with a way to unify everything she said.

  Flint set the tray back on the bench. He came up behind her, not allowing her to go anywhere but with DeRicci. As long as he stayed with them, her plan to use the pistol wouldn’t work. He was too observant. She saw him look at her hand.

  She knew he couldn’t see the areas where the security enhancements had been removed—she’d used a cream that promoted healing—but he stared at her left hand. He saw that thin line where Simon’s ring had been.

  DeRicci opened the door. Ekaterina felt herself tense. She couldn’t make a break for it in here; there would be space cops and officials everywhere. She had to wait until they were outside the Port.

  Two guards stepped forward. They had been standing to the side of the door. Ekaterina bit back a curse.

  “You’re coming with us,” DeRicci said to them.

  They nodded, and flanked Ekaterina, leading her through the same corridor she had come through. It felt like she had been in that decontamination chamber forever, but the hallway was a reminder that she hadn’t, that she had passed through just a short time ago.

  She wondered if the Rev had arrived yet. They wouldn’t let her go, no matter what was happening. They would find her if she was still in police custody. And if she was still in police custody, she would be forced to go.

  She had to get away somehow. She just wasn’t sure how.

  Flint still walked behind her. She could feel him. He was too close, probably on purpose. She hated that. She wanted to turn and tell him to get back, but she had called too much attention to her difficult personality already. If she seemed meeker, resigned, they all might relax their guard, and she might have a chance to get away.

  What she needed was a plan. But there was no way to have a plan when she didn’t know what was going to happen next.

  She had to be flexible.

  She had to be creative.

  And she had to be fast.

  Thirteen

  Because the police required him and Dylani to stay in Armstrong Dome, they had offered to pay for a hotel nearby. The hotel was old, near the City Complex, and had some of the poorest security Jamal ever seen. It was almost as if they wanted the Wygnin to come for Ennis again, as if they would do nothing to stop it.

  Fortunately, the Wygnin were still in custody.

  The room was tiny, like all of the old hotel rooms were. When this place had been built, Armstrong had been a small colony with a modest dome—one they didn’t think they could expand. Technology changed that, but these tiny hotels stayed as a part of the historic preservation movement that had been sweeping the Moon for the last fifty years.

  No police officers followed him here. They made it clear that he and his family were on their own recognizance. But Detective Flint hadn’t been the only one to warn them that they would be in trouble if they ran. Jamal had heard that from every single officer he’d spoken too.

  Even the social workers who had taken care of Ennis had warned him. It was almost as if they knew what Jamal had done in the past and they expected him to do it again.

  If he fled again, he would have to take his family. Or split them up. Or send Ennis into exile alone, which was precisely the situation he wanted to avoid.

  He had a small break, as Flint had said. The Wygnin did not have the proper warrants, and Jamal might be able to fight that on some kind of technicality. He didn’t know enough about multicultural law to know whether or not he would have a chance.

  Dylani sat near the window, its plastic surface pitted from years of poor filtration in the old dome. She held Ennis tightly, rocking him back and forth and crooning to him. To Jamal’s surprise, the boy didn’t seem to mind.

  Jamal used the cheap system built into the wall by the only other chair to search for attorneys. He knew this wasn’t the best way to go about such a search, but he felt he had no other choice. His own links were minimal—he and Dylani had conserved money by refusing to buy services—and he didn’t have access to the most basic information, like directories of other communities. The hotel system also had records of a variety of professionals—doctors, financial consultants, and of course, lawyers. Apparently people who stayed here often needed consultation.


  The records contained complaints and citations of merit, recognition in any way, and a history of each professional’s mention in various media.

  It would take him weeks to sort through all the information on the attorneys in Armstrong alone.

  But he needed someone and, worst of all, he had to hire someone he could afford. Even if he and Dylani sold the house and he went back to work full-time, he wouldn’t be able to afford most of these multicultural attorneys.

  If Jamal wanted to go that big, he needed to ask someone to take him on as a charity case. There had to be someone who was willing to take a risk, someone who was willing to see if the law would bend.

  Jamal just had to find him.

  * * *

  When they reached the entrance to interstellar holding, Flint left them. DeRicci seemed to have the matter well in hand, and the guards kept a close eye on Palmer. Flint still wasn’t sure what to make of her. She seemed too educated for her work, but a lot of people chose jobs that didn’t use their education.

  She also seemed skittish, in a way that didn’t entirely make sense. Usually, criminals were cocky or terrified. Rarely did they display this combination of controlled panic and instinctual combativeness.

  Somehow he felt that was the key to her; that and the missing ring on her left hand. Had she been married or was she one of those women who wore rings on that finger? And why had she stopped?

  When he caught up with Palmer again, he would ask her those questions. But first he had to inspect the yacht.

  It took him a while to get to Terminal 5 and even longer to reach the yacht. Space Traffic Control had docked it at the farthest reaches of the terminal, probably because Palmer’s piloting had been wild. It would have been better to keep her as far from other ships as possible, to minimize any potential disaster.

  As Flint approached the ship, he touched the chip on his sleeve that allowed him to record. Palmer’s inexpert landing was obvious just from the way the yacht was parked. It was facing the wrong direction and the tunnel that usually allowed easy access had been turned almost sideways so that it could come close to the main entrance.

  It bothered him that this yacht was so similar to the one used in the Disty vengeance killings. He wasn’t sure what the connection was, but he had a hunch that Palmer was involved in something more than simple theft.

  As he had the last time, he decided to explore the outside of the ship first. The ship’s identification had been removed, as had its name and its secondary identification, just like on the previous yacht.

  The difference here was that this yacht had no recent scorching and scarring. All of the damage to its exterior was several months old.

  Still, he recorded it, getting the imagery exactly. It didn’t look like similar weaponry had been used on this ship. So if it had been in a battle, it had been of a different type.

  He would have thought, given the story that Palmer told, that the Rev would have attacked the ship, then boarded it, but no matter how hard he looked, he saw no evidence of attack.

  He didn’t even find evidence of boarding, like he had found on the other yacht. No scrapes outside the entrance, nothing to show that another ship’s grappling equipment had attempted to pull the door open.

  One escape pod was missing, just like Palmer said it would be and, he judged from the placement, it was the pod from the cockpit. The other escape pods were in place.

  The exterior was telling him a lot, but not in any fashion he could use, at least not yet. He finished pacing around it and finally decided to go inside.

  He had to use a sliding staircase that was stowed in each dock to climb to the main door. The dock’s tunnel hadn’t gone that far. The staircase worked like a bridge between them.

  He pulled open the door, and stepped into the airlock. No signs of violence, nothing out of place. Not even handprints from panicked people being dragged away from the safety of their ship.

  If he hadn’t heard Palmer’s story, he would have no suspicion whatsoever of Rev involvement, of a crisis on the ship, of people dragged away against their will.

  A shiver ran through him. The sense he had had from the beginning that she was lying came back. Something had happened, but what?

  He stepped through the airlock into the crew area of the yacht. It was amazingly neat. The people who were dragged through here hadn’t pulled on emergency switches or reached for makeshift weapons. The computer panels didn’t even flash Warning or announce an illegal entry.

  The disquiet he felt in the airlock grew. The door to the passenger section stood open, the only thing that seemed out of order. He stepped inside.

  The seats were neat, as if they had been vacuumed clean. None of them looked as if they’d been sat in, and there was no evidence of a hasty evacuation. Nothing had been left on the seats or in the seat pockets. None of the reclining seats had been left down and the seats that turned into cots were in their upright positions.

  He stepped toward the back and peered into the suites. The beds were made with military precision. No clothing hung in the closets and no personal belongings sat on the dressing tables.

  In fact this yacht, like the previous one, was incredibly impersonal. It seemed to follow factory specs. The rugs were the same; the seats were the same; even the linens on the bed were the same.

  He liked that less than he liked Palmer’s story.

  Carefully, he made his way back to the crew area. If this yacht had carried four passengers, as Palmer had said, there was no evidence of it. There wasn’t even lint on the floor of the passenger cabin.

  He stepped through the crew area into the cockpit. The cockpit was the only new area to him. He hadn’t been able to inspect the Disty vengeance killing cockpit because of the way the body had been draped. Maybe he should go back now that forensics was done and see what he could find.

  It might provide the link between the two ships.

  This cockpit looked lived in. There were jackets hung in the closet behind the door, and equipment that did not look like regulation. The door to the escape pod was still open—something any good pilot would not let happen. That probably caused some of the problems that Palmer had handling the ship. If the yacht was like others of its class, it was designed to be flown with the pod’s exterior and interior doors closed.

  He recorded the entire cockpit, noting that three of the chairs looked like they’d been used. There was even a covered drinking cup stashed in its secure holder near the co-pilot’s station. He might have to get forensics in here after all.

  According to the computer, the ship’s logs were intact. He hadn’t expected that. It made this case even more bizarre. Anyone involved in criminal activity would have wiped the logs clean.

  Flint scanned them in text first, noting that the encounter with the Rev was logged in, just like it was supposed to be. That surprised him even more. When had the pilot time to log in his encounter with the Rev? According to Palmer, they had boarded and then taken the crew away, while the passengers were in a state of panic.

  “Computer,” Flint said. “I’m Armstrong Dome Law Enforcement investigating a possible crime. My identification is being pressed to the screen at the pilot’s station.”

  He put his finger on the screen.

  “You are required by law to answer my questions. I want audio answers, although I may download information later.”

  “Understood.” The androgynous computer voice signaled that the yacht was of Earth Alliance make.

  “What’s your ship log default?” he asked.

  “I am to record destinations, changes in course, and any incoming or outgoing messages.”

  “Do you usually operate in default mode or does your pilot control the log?”

  “My pilot has added to the log in the past. It has not been touched on this trip.”

  “So you were in default mode on this trip.”

  “Yes,” the computer said.

  “Where did this flight originate?” Flint asked.
r />   “San Francisco.”

  “Where was it supposed to terminate?”

  “San Francisco.”

  “Not Mars?”

  “San Francisco.”

  He felt frustration build. Questioning a computer was not like questioning a person. He wasn’t going to get answers this way.

  Instead, he hacked into the system.

  There wasn’t a lot of useful information about the ship’s registry. Either it hadn’t been entered into the computer or it had been deleted. He did find evidence that the ship’s computer system was not original to the design. It had been added shortly after the ship became operational.

  The computer was a sophisticated self-contained unit that did not link to any outside nets. It did not answer any more than the most rudimentary questions and, it seemed, it either purged previous missions or had not recorded them.

  “Hmm,” he said, resting an elbow on the hard plastic console beside the computer screen. The computer’s memory seemed remarkably clean, given the condition of the ship’s exterior. Search as he might, he couldn’t even find ghosts of past information. This system had been thoroughly purged.

  Which made him even more suspicious. It was not logical for Palmer to bring a ship here and abandon it so easily when the ship itself so clearly cried out criminal activity. Flint searched the specs for some hidden cargo area, but unless the ship was carrying micro-cargo, he didn’t find anything.

  Still, he wasn’t going to rule out smuggling. He wasn’t going to rule out anything.

  He scanned the text version of the logs. They confirmed a San Francisco departure, with a turn-around point midway between the Earth and the Moon. Short trip, then. The mission of the trip was not outlined. Neither was the name of the pilot or any member of the crew. And of course he didn’t find a passenger list.

  Flint hit audio for communications playback. He leaned back in the pilot’s chair and listened to routine space traffic commands for a private ship. Nothing out of the ordinary there. The ship had a designation, given to it by San Francisco Space Traffic, and he made certain that he got that information in two separate places.