Tales from the Inbox: Criminally Inconvenient Timing

2953-10-22 – Tales from the Inbox: Criminally Inconvenient Timing 

Eddy Rothbauer scanned the lightly populated Rennecker’s dining space. Mari Robertson ducked her head down as if reading something on her wristcuff in her lap, but it was no use; he noticed her in moments, waved, and headed for her corner booth. 

Cursing under her breath, Mari set down her sandwich and waved back tepidly. Eddy couldn’t avoid noticing something was up if he stayed long enough. Mari’s only hope was that he knew to keep his trap shut in front of his unfortunate choice in friends. 

“I thought I might find you here.” Eddy slid into the booth across from Mari, while the two figures in the brown cloaks remained standing, arms folded and heads down. “This lot’s hiring, and it’s going to be more than I can handle on my own. You want in?” 

Normally, of course, Mari would have leapt at the prospect of a high-budget, semi-official gig funded by the deep pockets of alien diplomats. Today, however, she wanted nothing more than to beg off. She opened her mouth to offer the first excuse that came to mind, but hesitated. Would denying such an offer be considered suspicious, when the investigation over the missing data-pack started? “I’d sure consider it, Eddy, but I don't really want to talk business while my food gets cold. Have them send over the terms and I’ll let you know by the end of the shift, okay?” 

“Sure, sure.” Eddy looked up to one of the robed figures, who nodded without looking up. “This is, uh. Time sensitive.” 

Mari took a bite of her sandwich to make hiding a scowl less noticeable. “It... usually is.” She pointedly spoke with her mouth full, to remind him that she was supposed to be eating. The ersatz beef in the sandwich tasted fine, but as usual, she found herself wishing it was the real thing. The added need to eat as casually as possible when she was on edge didn’t help the experience, of course. 

Eddy, overly observant oaf that he was, noticed right away that something wasn’t to Mari’s liking. “Something wrong?” He gestured to the food. 

“Eh.” Mari shrugged and set the sandwich down. What could she do to give Eddy the hint without raising suspicions from his new friends? “How uh. How time sensitive are we talking?” 

“I was hoping to have an answer already. These guys want something moving right away.” Eddy shrugged apologetically. “It’s all right if you’d rather not. I can probably get Orrie to -” 

Mari winced. Orrie was competent, but she was also Eddy’s recently separated ex, and she knew he hadn’t recovered from that mess. But how could she go right to work for the Glitters while she was still carrying something she’d lifted from them? She’d have to stash it. “Okay, fine. What’s the job?” 

“It’s, ah. Apparently pretty delicate.” Eddy glanced up at the two figures standing over them, “These guys have some... let’s call it grey-market business they’ve been doing, and their partners up and vanished with a lot of money. They want us to find out what happened, and to try to get anything back we can.” 

Mari ate as Eddy talked, trying to ignore the two figures and attend only to him. She nodded along, then let the silence hang in the air when he finished for several seconds. “And they need this done fast?” 

“By this time tomorrow, more or less.” 

Mari sighed. She couldn’t really be herself if she let this pass her by, especially if it meant sending Eddy back into the clutches of the woman who’d only recently jilted him. It wouldn’t pay as much as the datapack, but it would pay out far more quickly. “Can you give me half an hour? I’ll run some queries and meet you over at the Songbird.” 

Eddy glanced up at his associates, one of whom nodded imperceptibly. “Okay.” He slid out of the booth. “Thanks, Mari.” 

The two aliens followed Eddy out of Rennecker’s, and only when they were gone did Mari breathe a sigh of relief. Half an hour wasn’t much time, but she knew plenty of places on the station to drop something like a datapack where it would still be there the next day.  

The easiest, of course, was right where she was sitting. The benches used in Rennecker’s booth seating were hollow rectangles of extruded metal tubing with a thin veneer of textured wood-grain polymer applied for decoration. It was a matter of only a moment to slip the datapack out of her pocket once more and into the gap where the bench had been pushed against the subtly curved bulkhead at the back of the diner compartment. 

The little device made a clunking noise as it landed inside the bench, but nobody nearby paid this any mind. Mari breathed a sigh of relief, then turned her attention to the rest of her meal. If Eddy was right about the time pressure, it might be the better part of a full day before she had time to sit down and eat again. 

For the same reason Strand spacers are regarded as disreputable, they are also often sought out for particular tasks, for which their (on average) relative willingness to do jobs of questionable legality. This is at least as true on the Sprawl station as anywhere else, despite the vast distance between this location and the nearest part of the Silver Strand. 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Perfect Crime

2953-10-15 – Tales from the Inbox: The Perfect Crime 

Obviously, the position of this embed team and Cosmic Background generally is anti-crime; that is, if you are so stupid as to victimize your fellow sapients, there should be a penalty for these actions. 

That being said, crime and fraud has become a way of life in some systems, especially those of the Silver Strand region. Spacers who hail from the Strand are notorious for having checkered backgrounds, and those from elsewhere who ply those lanes for too long often pick up a similar reputation. Culturally, crime just seems to be seen as another way of life in that region, one that needs to be guarded against, but whose participants one can hardly blame. 

Obviously, this reputation makes Strand-native spacers rather unpopular in some circles, but so many of them have made their way to this side of the Gap looking for wealth or meaning that it has led to a number of interesting altercations on the Sprawl and other habitats. 

Mari Robertson crept into Rennecker’s Diner, passed her usual table, and slid into a corner booth at the back, near the kitchen doors. The Sprawl had become a big place in recent years, but today, it felt small, cramped, and intimate. Anywhere she went, she could run into someone, but going somewhere she normally avoided would be no better; it would be obvious for anyone actually looking for her that something was up. 

Normally, Mari summoned one of the wait-staff using the call button and asked about specials before ordering, but this time, she punched in an unassuming order for the chef’s “famous” prime “rib” sandwich. Real beef was of course not an ingredient in this dish; the meat was actually that of a fish-like creature from one of the colonial target worlds nearby, prepared to mostly resemble tender beef. The creature had taken well to growing in captivity, and nearly a square kilometer of Sprawl deck had been converted over to producing this ready source of protein for both locals and spacers. Mari didn’t particularly like it. She’d actually had real Earth beef once, and nothing really compared to it. It was better than meat-textured food-fab slurry, but only a little bit. 

Because it was one of the most commonly ordered items on the menu, one of the kitchen staff darted out with the food and a bottle of cheap synthetic beer barely three minutes after she’d ordered. It was still so hot she couldn’t eat right away, so she cracked open the beer and took a drink, eyeing the trickle of patrons in and out of Rennecker’s main entrance. Fortunately, it was the slump in the middle of a shift; less than a third of the seats were occupied, and those mainly by people hunched over slates, distractedly sipping coffee or nibbling at fried finger-food. 

When none of the staff were in view, Mari slipped a hand into her pocket and pulled out the datapack she’d lifted a few hours before, looking down at it. She’d sworn off pickpocketing years ago when she’d been on the run out of Cardona’s, but when an alien diplomat left a datapack unattended for so long, it was simply impossible to pass up.  

She didn’t try to access it. Most likely it was encrypted, and even if it wasn’t, it might have read-logging. No, there was no point trying to get the data until she was ready to destroy the original immediately. It was the only way to be sure the theft was untraceable. 

There was of course some possibility the security feeds had seen her brush against the bag which the xeno diplomat had so casually tossed the datapack into, but she knew how to make sure there’d be nothing concrete from any angle. As long as nobody caught her before she’d destroyed the original, she’d get away clean, but she also needed to avoid doing any suspicious computer activity for a few hours. That way, anyone else who did any bulk data copying would be the first suspects, while she was on the feeds going out for an unassuming lunch, drinking a beer, and generally doing nothing indicative of a big score. 

Acting casual was, of course, nerve-wracking, and any of her associates would be able to tell something was up if they talked to her too long.  

She’d considered taking her little runabout out for a run to one of the mining installations, but this too might draw suspicion. No, the best thing would be to brazenly go about her business, but to avoid her usual crowd. Most of them would understand, if they knew. 

Fortunately, the datapack itself was a standard unit, nearly identical to two others she owned. She could hold up one of those if at any point someone did have her on record holding a datapack shortly after the theft – as long as the questions didn’t reach her before she’d actually stashed or destroyed this one. 

The food finally cooled enough for Mari to start eating. As she raised the ersatz beef sandwich to her mouth, though, she hesitated. The trio who’d just entered Rennecker’s made her blood run cold. One of them was Eddy Rothbauer, a fellow fugitive from the Strand region who she’d done a lot of work with on the Sprawl. The other two were slim, elfin figures in brown cloaks and hoods. The long-boned hands that showed at the cuffs of those robes were a distinct golden color. If these weren’t the diplomats she’d just stolen from, they were more of the same kind. 

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Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Undeniable Contract

2953-10-08 – Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Undeniable Contract 

“Well.” Kell rubbed his claw-like hands together. “This is a marvelous business proposal. Do send over the particulars, and we will talk it over.” 

Kel stood, seeming to think this would make Commander Daseta return to Cour-de-Lion. After an awkward pause, though, Sadek Sherburn realized the woman in the black uniform had no intention of going anywhere without a decision – the right decision, by Sovereign standards. 

“The contract was sent over the moment I stepped aboard.” Daseta looked at each of them, but she seemed to let her gaze linger on Sadek the longest. “Take all the time you need to read it. The particulars can be... adjusted, if necessary, but I read everything myself. You will find it quite generous.” 

With that, she sauntered over to the far end of the lounge, where the compartment abutted Traveler's transparent outer hull. Only an inner layer of transparency-adjusting smart-glass added during the refit protected the crew from the heat and radiation of nearby stars; Kel’s people hadn’t seemed to think this feature necessary. The view she framed herself in was quite spectacular as ever, with the ruddy twin stars of the nameless star system on whose outskirts they drifted glowing in the center of the thready haze which showed the paths of two concentric asteroid rings. 

Sadek watched the Sovereign officer for a few moments while his human shipmates pulled up the contract on their wristcuff screens and Kel did likewise on his slate. She stood uncannily still, hands clasped behind her back, and her wispy mane of hairlike plumage cascading past her shoulder blades. Again, he wondered at the extensive surgeries required to make an alien look and move that human. How much had all that cost? What had she agreed to it for? Could it possibly have been worth it? Surely her own kind no longer looked at her as one of their own, but no human would ever regard her without some uncanny discomfort, no matter how attractive the surgeries had made her. 

Sadek glanced to the others, then gestured with his head to Daseta. They would obviously be uncomfortable talking over the contract while she was within earshot. Sadek, who had never been even a strong recreational reader, would be of little help parsing through a predatory Sovereign contract, or devising a plan of escaping it if Kel desired. 

Kel and Elliott Deadman looked back at him blankly, but Alicia Powers seemed to understand. She smiled slyly and nodded her head encouragingly.  

Sadek stood up and cleared his throat. “Commander Daseta, while my boss goes over the contract, would you like a tour of the ship?” 

Daseta spun on her heel. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather read it for yourself?” 

“I trust my shipmates’ head for legal language more than my own.” Sadek shrugged. “It’s no trouble at all.” 

Daseta met Sadek’s eyes and smirked. She seemed almost to see through him and guess his intentions in that instant, but then she nodded and gestured toward the corridor. “Lead the way, Mr. Sherburn.” 

Sadek, wondering how inefficiently he could give a tour without the mercenary catching on, headed forward to the astrogation compartment. The view there was better than anywhere else except the bridge, though now it would be blocked in large part by the bulk of Cour-de-Lion alongside. It would also be the logical starting point for any tour of a ship whose compartment layout was vastly unintuitive to any human spacer. 

Daseta surveyed the compartment with a glance. “Very nice. I would have made this the bridge, on a ship like this.” She stepped into the center of its semicircular deck, which was sloped like half of a shallow bowl. 

“Auxiliary astrogation.” Sadek muttered, gesturing to the backup navcomputer console off to one side. “Kel says his people like to keep this space clear, but he never said why.” 

Daseta turned back toward Sadek. “He won't tell you because this is where the Iatarans put weapons. When they want them, anyway.” 

“Weapons?” Sadek frowned. “Inside the hull? How do you know that, anyway?” 

The red-skinned woman laughed. “Not much of a tech, I suppose. That’s all right. Truth is, we don’t know it for sure, but it’s obvious if you think about it a bit. Their hull material is almost totally transparent to visible light and some forms of radiation.” 

Sadek frowned. It took a moment for him to realize the implication of this. “They can mount their lasers inside the hull. Brilliant.” 

“Except it doesn’t protect them from return fire either.” Daseta shook her head. “Poor bastards, when they go to war, burning each other to cinders inside these hulls, then towing the glowing derelicts home for re-use.” 

Sadek, who hadn’t seen any warlike inclination of Kel or of the two or three others he’d met on their brief visit to Iataran space, shuddered at the notion of those glassy ships unpacking laser cannons from the cargo hold and setting them up on gimbals in every open space aboard. It would be a crude and inefficient way of waging large-scale war, but for sudden, sharp border squabbles between the mercantile factions that seemed to be the main power brokers of their society, it made perfect sense. 

Daseta, of course, didn’t fail to register the reaction. “Did you think dear Kel was as harmless as he prefers to let on?” She smiled coldly, and her broad mouth gave her face a momentarily shark-like aspect. "Or that the Iatarans were free of Incarnation control simply because they were too insignificant?” 

Sadek shrugged. “I never thought of it that way, Commander.” 

“That’s no surprise.” Daseta took a step towards Sadek. “What is a surprise is, what you were thinking about instead.” 

Sadek started at this, but then he shook his head and rolled his eyes. “With all due respect, you don’t know anything about what I’m thinking about.” He’d seen a few bargain-bin mentalists in his day; it was always part hyper-observation and part bluff, and it was almost a relief to find Sovereign officers trying to pull such simple tricks to put him off his guard. 

“I’ve seen your dossier. And it paints a pretty clear picture, if you know how to look.” Here she held up three fingers. “You knew Kel was more trouble than he let on, but here you are, even though you couldn’t see how.” She put one finger down. “You gave that little tech Deadman a chance, even over more experienced candidates.” The second finger dropped. “And you spent so much of my little presentation feeling sorry for me for no damned reason – yes, I could tell – that you haven’t even now realized we’re offering to make you lot rich, entirely legally and above board.” 

Sadek stared for a moment. “Feeling sorry for you?” Was that really what he had been doing? He supposed one could look at it that way. 

“The picture I get from your dossier is that you’re too conscientious for your own good, Mr. Sherburn.” Daseta held out her hands. “You do things because it’s good for other people, not because it’s good for you. Letting others get ahead before you put you on that hulk of a mining ship all those years, but it also got you in with Kel. My advice is: don’t change that.” 

Sadek coughed. “Did I ask for a psych eval? Commander Daseta, you just met me. I don’t need your advice.” 

Daseta smiled and ran one delicate, red-skinned hand through her hair. “Trust me; where we're going, you really do.” 

“If you say so.” Sadek turned away. “Wait. We?” 

Commander Daseta, according to Sadek’s account, was attached to Traveler’s crew more or less permanently. To my knowledge, she is still aboard now; at least, Sadek’s recent account of the circumstances of their falling in with Sovereign does not hint at her departure later. 

I have found this Daseta’s datasphere profile; she’s from an Atro’me enclave in the Herakles IV system and has academic credentials as a psychologist specializing in human-xeno social interactions. She seems to have worked for one of the passenger liner firms on screening mechanisms for both crew and prospective passengers before Sovereign hired her on. Why she has a military rank with them (Sovereign has parallel internal civilian and military hierarchies) is unclear.  

As with most Sovereign-affiliated spacers, her profile goes pretty dark after the date of her joining the company, but posts before that seem normal enough. 

[N.T.B. - Kel’s crew would be an interesting case study for someone with that specialization, though being part of the case study as a xeno on the crew rather spoils any research benefits.] 

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Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Secretive Friends

2953-09-24 – Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Secretive Friends 

As Traveler eased closer to the other ship on maneuvering thrusters only, Sadek Sherburn watched uneasily from his station on the command deck. Obviously, the craft’s control scheme was optimized for Kel’s use, but there had been enough space on the aft bulkhead for a small second console and crash-pad chair. It had been months since that set-up had been rigged, but still Sadek hadn’t quite gotten over his agoraphobia doing duty shifts under that great bubble of transparency. 

It was the perfect place to watch the docking procedure, of course; he could see along Traveler’s gracefully curving flank to the projection housing the airlock and docking machinery, and got a perfect view of how much larger that other ship was. Its sharp prow extended into the darkness far forward of Traveler’s curved nose, and the swell of its engine section didn’t begin until far aft of the aftmost antenna of Kel’s vessel. 

At least it was obviously a human-made vessel. For his first months aboard, that was a rarity; almost the moment they’d had a full crew, Kel had taken his ship deep into what was, theoretically, the un-surveyed Sagittarius Frontier. There, after some wrangling, they had taken aboard a cargo of translucent alien-tech strike hulls, built the same way as Traveler itself. The hope had been to ferry to Sagittarius Gate to sell them, but it hadn’t been that simple. Nothing profitable, in Sadek’s experience, ever was. 

A ship unknown to the computer had appeared out of the black in the outskirts of an anonymous star system, weapons hot and comms open. After a private conversation with its skipper, Kel had cheerily brought Traveler in to dock, apparently fearing nothing. 

The shock of docking reverberated through the ship. A moment later, Kel took his claw-like hands off the controls and activated the intercom. “Please report to port airlock.” He released the control with a double-jointed flourish and turned to Sadek. “I was not expecting my friends so far out from the Gate. But it is a good time to introduce you.” 

Just as Kel rose from his chair, innumerable lights on that great grim bulk they’d just docked to came to life. Sadek blinked, un-comprehending for a long moment. Those lights illuminated an eerily familiar insignia, a crown of gold set with black stars. Where had he seen it before? 

Unlike most vessels built by humans which used vertical lifts and stair-shafts to connect the decks, Traveler employed a revolving, diagonal chair-lift descending the aft dorsal midline. Kel took the first chair, and Sadek stared at the insignia a moment longer while the second one appeared for him. It meant trouble, he was certain. Almost everything about this ship did. 

Sadek rode the chair-lift down three decks, then got off and backtracked forward to the corridor that would take him to the airlock. Kel was already there when he arrived, along with the rest of the crew – the engineer Alicia Powers and the young tech Elliott Deadman. Deadman looked as if he had just rolled out of bed to answer the summons, and that was probably what had happened; he and Powers had long ago chosen to alter their sleep cycles so one technical spacer was awake at all times and one was on duty two shifts out of three. 

Kel rubbed his three-fingered hands together. “Friends. Shipmates. I ask you to be on your best behavior. The commander of the vessel that has come to meet us here tells me their masters have a business proposal for us from those who have done me kindness before. One that could not wait until we returned to the Gate.” 

“Who are they?” Alicia Powers had, of course, heard Kel refer to the obligations he’d satisfied before taking on the crew. Evidently sworn to secrecy, he’d not revealed much about this to anyone, not even Sadek, except to hint that the favor had been related to how well equipped his ship was, in its human-tech configuration.  

“We have docked with the vessel of war Cour-de-Lion.” Kel bowed his bulbous-eyed head briefly, as if in respect to the name, though it certainly meant nothing to him, being not even an Anglo-Terran word. 

Deadman, barely paying attention, suddenly stiffened. “You can’t be serious.” 

Sadek turned to the young man. “Is there a problem?” 

“The only ship I know by that name is Sovereign Security’s new light carrier.” 

Sadek winced. That was why that insignia had been so familiar. He turned to Kel. “So that’s how you got such a favorable deal when you got to the Gate with a crippled ship. You fell in with Sovereign.”  

“Why yes. They asked me very nicely not to publish this fact, of course. I have done so.” Kel turned his huge, milky eyes on every member of his crew. “I trust you will do also.” 

Sadek gritted his teeth. How could he begin to explain how much trouble that name meant, to one so alien to Reach customs? Sovereign Security Solutions was the largest and most notorious band of theoretically-legal hired guns in the Reach. They were on the right side in the War, but only because it was a rare chance to get big money contracts from the Confederated Navy. They were loyal to nothing but the bottom line, and were notorious for double-dealing. Here they were now, at the mercy of mercenaries who had none. 

Obviously, Sadek Sherburn did not keep the confidence of his employer, at least not forever. Sovereign’s interest in the dealings of Traveler and its crew are no longer a secret. Mr. Sherburn sent in an additional account to explain that yes, he and his mates had something to do with Sovereign’s new in-house-designed strike interceptor, a radical, translucent-hulled design they call the Blade Dancer, built mainly with licensed Savitri components. The Blade Dancer is supposedly as maneuverable as an Incarnation Coronach in the void despite being several times heavier (much of this weight being long-haul mission optimization features), and it incorporates an advanced metalens laser system for its main armament that theoretically can fire at almost any angle without the need for a turret. 

Within days of the public reveal, we had datasphere queries about the relationship of this craft to Kel’s people and their strange method of constructing starships. Evidently, those who knew Sadek’s contact information sent him similar queries. 

The events of this account are some months old by now. Sadek would probably not have dared to send this in closer to the actual events. 

 

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