“So what’s the problem with that then?”
“Well, for one, Petre still owes me half the money that he promised me from the weekly updates.”
“So just tell him that she’s dead and to pay you up, what’s so hard about that?”
“If that were the only problem I would do just that,” said Ninan and he took yet another longer and deeper drink from his mug.
“So what else is there?”
“I found out earlier this week that the woman he was having me report on not only died, but she left behind a four mesan old daughter.”
“Oh, I see what you mean by complication,” said Fordin with meaning as he raised his eyebrows and he too took a deep gulp of his bruskin as he considered the complicated circumstances.
“If it were any other person, I wouldn’t have a problem telling him that he’s a dad. But we’re talking about Petre MacVeen, man! Can you see him taking care of a little girl with the line of work that he does and the places he likes to stay?”
“Not at all,” Fordin spoke emphatically.
“The receptionist at the company where I work said that my manager and his wife are adopting the woman’s little girl. I think she’d have a much more normal life if she stayed with them, but isn’t it kind of mean of me not to tell Petre that he’s a father?”
“Like you said, if it were any other person, you would be able to tell him with a clear conscience. However, I would have no problem keeping that piece of information from Petre. I mean, what would he do with the girl while he is visiting all the brothels across the land? Knowing Petre, he probably put her to work in the brothel if it could make him some money. Besides, Bryon and Alena would have to petition an Elder if they wanted to make it legal. The Elder would ultimately be the person responsible in this matter, not you.”
Ninan shuddered at the thought. “I can’t wait to get this over with,” Ninan confessed to Fordin, “I really just want to get back to delivering that shipment from here to Beewa. Then I can go back to my new home and forget ever making a deal with Petre!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Petre was pleasantly surprised when he had arrived half an hour early to the Southside Town Deli. He found a booth near the front door and ordered a couple of bruskins so he could wait in comfort for Ninan to arrive. He had just taken a drink of his second bruskin when he saw Ninan enter the deli with someone else. Knowing he was planning on meeting with Ninan alone, he opted to wait to see what Ninan would talk about with the stranger. Petre leaned back into the shadow of the booth and was happy he was able to clearly hear their conversation.
While he was first glad to hear himself be defended to this stranger that his assignment was not all bad with Petre he was then angry to hear about Ninan’s assessment of Petre’s choice of staying at the brothel houses. What did Ninan care about whom he slept with? His ‘wife’ was not available so what was he supposed to do, be celibate? Not this man!
He pondered how he would use this new opinion of himself against Ninan until he overheard his next statement. Jesisca was dead. What the hell! He immediately thought to himself, Now what am I supposed to do to keep warm at night? Shock soon turned to anger. He did not need to be drug all the way across the country to hear this news in person, a letter would have sufficed. I guess I can’t blame him for worrying about getting his final payment for the information, he thought, I probably wouldn’t have paid him just as he suspected.
He started to make plans for getting out of the deli without being seen until he heard Ninan say there was something worse than finding out Jesisca had died. Petre could not imagine what could be worse so he leaned forward to make sure he heard the news correctly. A daughter?? Wow, really? A daughter? He could feel a growing wonder at the new idea.
Finally, someone who will have to do whatever I tell her to do! That girl is mine! Did I just hear Ninan say Bryon and his wife are legally adopting her with the Elder’s approval? No family or Elder’s decision will keep me from my child! I’m not going to lose another child on a technicality! I know for sure Bryon knew I was the father, what with him asking around about my whereabouts! As if he didn’t think I wouldn’t hear about it! This just confirms it! I’m going to make him pay! Ninan can pay too for even wondering whether or not to share that information with me. Ninan’s my employee, I’m paying him for information, after all!
With self-righteous indignation, Petre gathered his coat and slid out of the booth. With one last glance at Ninan, Petre marched through the entrance of the deli. He wished he could have confronted Ninan about his doubts over Petre’s ability to be a good parent, but he had other plans for Ninan. Knowing that nobody would ever talk that way about him and get away with it, Petre planned his next move.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ninan glanced at his timepiece yet again. He had waited for over an hour and yet Petre still had not shown. Having already eaten he could no longer wait, he had a delivery to make. As Ninan walked out of the deli, he turned around to make sure the name on the storefront was the one at which he had agreed to meet Petre.
As he stared up at the Southside Town Deli sign, there was no mistaking he was at the right place, he had to assume Petre either got held up, or he forgot. Whatever the case, Ninan had a schedule to keep and a delivery to make which hopefully would elevate his career path.
He hurriedly walked the few minutes back to the shipping yard and navigated his way between buildings to the waiting telepod. As he got near, he keyed the cargo door to open and lengthened his stride. He was anxious to get finished with this delivery and stepped through the opening into the dim interior.
Just as he was passing the personal telepod inside, he heard several quick footsteps echoing on the ramp behind him. He started to turn to investigate just as a heavy item struck him across the side of his head.
Chapter Nine
PETRE LAUGHED AT his luck. That was way too easy. He bent down and picked up the telepod’s key from Ninan’s slack hand. He dropped the crowbar as he hurriedly keyed the cargo door to shut so no one would catch him in the act of stealing the freighter. Moving Ninan seemed like too much work, so Petre rummaged through the cargo hold until he found some shipping tape and bound Ninan’s hands and feet right where he lay.
With the necessary task completed, Petre wandered across the cargo hold to the control station. He sat down at the operator’s seat and issued the standard start up commands. With his destination coordinates firmly in mind, Petre navigated the telepod out of the shipping yard.
Petre did not really have much of a plan beyond making Ninan pay for his unpleasant opinion of himself. Several seconds passed before Petre, and his stolen telepod, reappeared in the air at his chosen destination. He set the telepod down at an abandoned farmhouse near where Petre had grown up. Now that he was not in imminent danger of being discovered, Petre had some time to plan. After issuing all of the shutdown commands, Petre pocketed the telepod key in his overalls and stood up to survey his newest acquisitions.
The first thing that came to mind was if there was any profit to be made with his new inventory. Looking around the cargo hold, Petre wondered at the quality and variety of this shipment. He wandered over to the nearest set of boxes and tore open the top. He rummaged through the contents and smiled in satisfaction as he saw these were replacement parts for standard mining machinery. He went to the next stack and opened another box containing a variety of complex mining equipment. With his luck improving by the second, Petre realized this shipment would be easy to sell on the black market.
Now to handle the problem of getting rid of Ninan. He sauntered back across the cargo hold and looked down on his informant-turned-hostage. Petre nudged Ninan with his foot but met with no response. Bursting with unvented frustration, Petre expelled his anger by kicking Ninan as hard as he could, once, twice, and then a third time for good measure. Breathing hard, Petre realized he should have moved him while he was still unconscious, but the beating had roused him enough to start to moan.
Petre wa
s definitely not interested in having a hostage or having someone who could identify him as the thief. Recognizing he would have to remove Ninan not only from the cargo hold but from the general area as well, Petre speedily looked around to see what options he had at hand. Petre laughed out loud as he realized his best plan was right next to where Ninan lay: the personal telepod.
He trotted across the cargo hold to retrieve the operator key and spent several precious moments in a mad search for the key before remembering he had placed it in his own pocket. Shaking his head in disgust at the lost time, Petre returned to the personal telepod. After keying open the side door to the small telepod, Petre drug Ninan, with more than a little effort, into the personal telepod and left him lying in an uncomfortable heap on the floor behind the operator seat.
Petre palmed the sequence to open the main cargo hold door of the freighter to allow him to fly the personal telepod out into the open. Once in the operator seat of the personal telepod, Petre navigated the small telepod out the cargo hold door and into the open field. After a few moments of contemplation, he visualized coordinates for yet another safely isolated spot and within moments he was at his secondary location.
Once landed, Petre wasted little time and even less effort as he unceremoniously shoved Ninan out the door with the heel of his foot as he held onto the back of the seat for traction. Petre dusted his hands off and let out a loud sigh as he returned to the operator seat. Keying the door shut, Petre issued all the necessary commands and returned rapidly to the freighter telepod.
Petre sat slumped over at the control panel for a few minutes to control the shaking of his body. With so many teleportations in quick succession, Petre began to feel a queasy sensation all over inside his body. He was thankful he was not going to be going anywhere again for the next several hours as he needed to move the cargo out of the freighter.
Knowing the freighter had a locator beacon, Petre then had to hurriedly offload all of the cargo into the barn at the abandoned farmhouse. Wishing he had a partner to share the work or at least a couple of helpers, Petre took frequent breaks as he began the painstaking job of removing the cargo. He was sweating profusely and almost starting to regret taking such a large haul. Although he was unused to such manual labor, he could not help thinking about the amount of profit he would make by selling this cargo to the highest bidder. In some ways, he did not even mind having to manually work for this paycheck since he was getting even with both Ninan and Bryon for their parts in deceiving him about Jesisca.
If Jesisca had been returned to him, she would still be alive! He rationalized to himself with self-righteous indignation. Every person who had a part in keeping me from my Jesisca and my daughter is going to be held accountable. They are going to pay for letting her die!
Petre was going to have to figure out a plan of how he was going to get his daughter. Clearly, he would not be able to just walk up to Bryon’s house and demand to have his daughter. He would have to watch and wait for his opportunity to take his daughter which meant he had to go back to Kirma.
First thing first, Petre thought, I have to get rid of this telepod with its beacon before anyone notices this delivery is not going to happen. Where should I ditch this pile of metal? Really the last place anyone would have a freighter telepod would be near the ocean.
Petre wracked his brain for a location which would be both large enough to accommodate the telepod as well as remote enough so nobody would see him leave it behind. Petre suddenly remembered a location just outside of Ishal near the Lookout Tavern where that bitch Hashma had filed a ridiculous sexual assault claim against him over an anon ago.
He thought bitterly, After all, she was a whore, what could she have been expecting of him…a tender lovemaking session with a boyfriend? What a joke! Elder Debbon had forbidden him from going near Hashma or her place of business, so it seemed the perfect location to lead an investigation which would not point toward himself. It’s too bad I can’t figure out a way to make it look as though Hashma was involved in this theft. That would be just a perfect way of getting even with her!
Smiling with satisfaction Petre visualized the coordinates as well as the correct time of day to land the freighter in the cover of night. Timing the transfer made the teleportation take a few seconds longer which always unnerved Petre. He arrived almost at the desired location which required only a few minor adjustments and several minutes to land the large telepod and perform the shutdown procedures.
Petre ran across the cargo hold and entered the personal telepod before activating the large cargo doors to open. He wanted as little time in the open as possible. If he were skilled enough operator, he would have preferred to teleport directly from the cargo hold, but he was afraid of failing at this point in his plan. He hurriedly moved the personal telepod outside into the open, visualized his final set of coordinates, and disappeared into the evening.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Elder Debbon was once again thankful for the advancements created from the invention of the patil. No longer did he have to endure the days of slogging through stacks of paperwork from his petitioners, patrons, and citizens. While the paperwork was still received by his staff, the stacks were diligently scanned in immediately upon receipt. He was fairly sure the turnaround time for each document was at a maximum one day, which satisfied him very much.
He had already reviewed all of the disputes from his district and was more than ready to move on to a different subject. It seemed adoptions were the next topic to be addressed. While he was thankful to see every adoption go through smoothly, just the idea that the children were either unwanted or orphaned made him sad for his people.
Debbon was surprised to see this adoption was for a set of twins. Multiple births were relatively rare in Tuala so it was doubly sad that these two girls had lost their parents. He reviewed the document for the accounting of why the parents were unsuitable or unavailable. It appeared the mother was recently lost in a mudslide, and her remains were never recovered. The father was also presumed dead in a water craft accident from before the birth of the children. While the accounting of the birth parents’ demise was certainly interesting, it was not unheard of for these types of accidents to happen.
He read the rest of the application to find out more about the people proposing to adopt the children. One interesting item he noticed was there was only the signature of the wife on the application. He wondered why the spouse had not signed the document as well. Again thankful for the resources available on the patil, Debbon was easily able to retrieve the statistics for each parent without leaving the page he was currently reading. A window popped up on the screen which read:
Petitioner Name: Bryon Kesh
Birth Date: Heshvan 2, 3416
Occupation: Manager at Kirma Shipping and Receiving
Status: Married
Spouse: Alena Bellen
Marriage Date: Tishri 16, 3436
Children: 2 birth children, 1 first-daughter
Citizen Standing: Good
Petitioner Name: Alena Kesh, formerly Bellen
Birth Date: Ab 26, 3417
Occupation: Wise-woman
Status: Married
Spouse: Bryon Kesh
Marriage Date: Tishri 16, 3436
Children: 2 birth children, 1 first-daughter
Citizen Standing: Good
Debbon was surprised to see that a wise-woman wanted to take on the care of two more children when she already had three of her own. He knew the amount of time and effort it took to take care of the medical needs of the citizens as it was one of his own duties.
On the other hand, he was glad to see the twins would be well cared for with someone so skilled living in the same house. It also bode well that they had a betrothal agreement in place for their son. Only families in good standing would be able to have a betrothal petition be accepted.
This case seemed open and shut in Debbon’s mind. Without further consideration, he clicked on the button marked ‘Accepted
.’ He watched as his signature was electronically entered onto the document and was delivered back to the petitioners immediately.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Juila and Jena still surprised Alena with how easily they had adjusted to their mother’s absence. Of course, they were just infants, but she would have expected them to at least get fussy because Amanda was not around. They remained perfect angels whom Alena adored with as much affection as if they were her own daughters. She still held onto a small hope in the back of her mind, which she dared not share with Bryon, that Amanda would be found even though with every passing day the likelihood became slimmer.
Her husband, Bryon, on the other hand, was another matter entirely. Alena could see the guilt written on his face every time he saw the babies doing something new; the first smile, the first giggle, the first time rolling over, each first was a dagger in his guilty heart. No matter how many times Alena assured Bryon it was not his fault Amanda had died in the avalanche, he continued to blame himself since he had taken her to the fateful event. He began spending more time at work and avoiding contact with the twins when he was at home. Alena could not take his sulking any longer and decided an intervention was needed if she were to retain both her sanity and her marriage.
According to Tualan law, children could be adopted if family members could not be found within two mesans of the parents’ death. The two mesans had just passed, and Alena had petitioned the Elders for custody of the twins. Her idea was that Bryon would be forced to take a more active role in the children’s lives if they were legally his; he would have to give up his guilt when he discovered how endearing these girls were becoming. Alena was surprised at the quick affirmative decision of Elder Debbon in allowing the custodial change.
She carefully planned their dinner that night and as usual, Bryon arrived home just as she put the last dish on the dining room table. “Kids, get washed up for dinner! Your Papa just got home!” She smiled as she listened to the patter of three pairs of feet moving to the bathroom. She wished the kids were feeling better for the night’s occasion, they all seemed to be coming down with colds.
Ascension Discovery Page 37