2: The Skip Trace

(1)

Solara was barely through the door to Director Rale Moth's office when he spoke to her. "We have a default on a small cargo vessel out of Astrid. I've already sent the file to you. This is fresh and should be easy."

"I have other plans. Can't this wait? Or maybe someone else can take the job?"

"You are the only one with a ship large enough to bring in the cargo hauler. And no, it can't wait. You'll just have to put your plans on hold."

Solara sighed loudly. "Fine." She turned and stormed out the door. Returning to the Banshee, she broke the bad news to her new co-pilot, Hippolyta Jens. Solara liked Jens. She wasn’t afraid to express an opinion or make a suggestion. She also wasn’t afraid of Solara popping up suddenly out of thin air.

"The Eldritch Cartel isn't going anywhere. Let's earn our pay." Hippolyta wasn't in a rush to return to Eldritch space anyway. She had recently escaped from the Cartel, and it nearly got her killed. The Harbinger had saved her and given her a job after returning the other escapees to their homes. Her home was long gone, destroyed by the Cartel. But she felt at home on the deck of the Banshee

Solara opened the file on the skip and sent it to the big screen. The cargo ship was little more than a glorified moving van, small enough to fit into the Banshee’s main cargo hold. The owner had rather pretentiously named it Laissez-Faire. “Heh,” Hippolyta remarked, “that name alone should have been a warning that the owner would default.”

“Our job is to recover the cargo. Failing that we impound the ship. Trans-Galactic Indemnities insured the cargo for thirty million standard credits.”

“Not exactly chump change. Where do we start?”

“We start with the client. We should arrive at Astrid in an hour. Memorize the manifest. We’ll be out of the ship for a while. The less we carry, the better. Stunners only.”

(2)

Astrid was an Earthlike planet roughly the size of Mars with two major cities. A private collector had contracted the Laissez-Faire to move several works of art from his personal mansion outside of Bergen to a museum in Odessa. The shipment never arrived. Their first stop would be the client’s mansion to verify that the objects in question were missing from his premises. Phillipe Lucian was waiting for Solara’s arrival in his private office. “I hoped that our next meeting would be under better circumstances. Remy didn’t give us a moment alone the last time we met.”

“Remy was trying to keep me out of trouble. He said that you collected exotic artifacts and feared that I would end up locked away in one of your vaults.” allow me to introduce my assistant,” Solara nodded to the red-haired woman standing next to her. “Hippolyta Jens, meet Phillipe Lucian, our client.”

Hippolyta extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mister Lucian.” Phillipe glanced down at her long fingernails and submitted a weak handshake in response.

Phillipe had gathered together all the necessary paperwork regarding the arrangements made with the Sunshine Museum in Odessa for a showing of selected works of art from his private collection. “I’m more interested in the arrangements with the shipper. Did you oversee the loading of the art onto the Laissez-Faire?”

“Yes. I crated the items myself and oversaw the loading of every crate into the ship’s hold. I have a copy of the manifest signed by the shipper.”

Solara sat down at the desk and shuffled through the paperwork making mental notes as she examined each one. There was nothing on the manifest that she hadn’t seen during an earlier visit, and she had already spotted a few empty spaces that the objects had once occupied. “Everything appears to be in order.” Solara smiled, “Let’s go, Hippolyta. It’s time to check out the shipper.”

(3)

The office of Laissez-Faire Shipping lay on the outskirts of the city near the local rail hub. The locked office was empty when the two women arrived. Except for a lone vehicle parked at the far end of the hangar, the place looked abandoned. Solara transported the two inside the cluttered room. While searching the desk, Solara noticed that there were multiple unanswered messages on his desktop. Solara played them while Hippolyta searched through the file cabinet. Most of the messages were from the Sunshine Museum and Phillipe Lucian asking about the shipment. The most recent message was from a debt collector. “Listen, Mister Bobby Jones,” the message stated, “your payment is way overdue. You promised to repay it soon. Well, it’s soon and we are coming to collect.” Solara added the debt collector to the list of people to interview.

Hippolyta found corresponding paperwork for the shipment in the files and had just placed them on the desk when the message started to play. She recognized the voice as someone from her past. Someone that she hadn’t told Solara about.

Solara opened the interior door leading to the hanger. Before she could step through, a man with more teeth than hair appeared in the doorway and forced her to back up. “Where’s Bobby?” the grinning gunman demanded.

“He’s not here, Moose,” Hippolyta replied. “And put that toy away before you hurt yourself.”

“Hippo?” he lowered his weapon. “I thought you was a goner. Word was the Cartel offed you.”

“Well, I’m back now. And my friend and I are looking for Bob Jones and his ship.”

“His ship ain’t here. He owes a lot of credits on some bets he made that didn’t go his way. Boss said to take the ship if he didn’t pay.”

(4)

Back on board the Banshee, Solara entered the flight plan filed by Bob Jones for the Laissez-Faire into the navigational computer. The anti-planetary rotation sub-orbital arc would pull some serious gravitational forces requiring both women to strap into their seats. It was essential to follow all standard safety protocols during the flight. As an added precaution, Solara linked her flight recorder to the nearest Trans-Galactic satellite. The Banshee completed the hop without incident. Noticing that the Banshee had flown close to the TGI satellite, Solara requested a download of all observations made by the satellite in the past forty-eight hours. She planned to review the footage after her visit to the Sunshine Museum.

The Special Exhibit Curator, Edvard Munich, was waiting for Solara and Hippolyta at the Sunshine Museum main lobby. He walked them back to his office to discuss the missed delivery of the loaned artifacts. “We should be opening the exhibit by now but, as you know, it never arrived.” He gestured to two guest chairs. “Please, have a seat,” he said before sitting at his desk. “I understand that the artworks were insured with Trans-Galactic by Phillipe Lucian. Our museum also has a policy indemnifying us against loss. If we cancel the show, the museum stands to lose a great deal of money.”

“And our job is to see that no one loses,” Solara asserted. “We would like to inspect your paperwork as well as the preparations made to secure the gallery against theft.”

(5)

Upon returning to the Banshee, Solara started her review of the data from the satellite with Hippolyta acting as a second set of eyes. She started with the radio intercept between the Laissez-Faire and Astrid Space Traffic Control. Bob Jones made the usual clearances and narrated his ascent until transmission abruptly ceased. A short conversation with a records clerk at Astrid STC confirmed that it was Jones who broke the transmission.

The optical data was next on her agenda. Both women watched as the ship changed from being a small dot to suddenly disappearing. The clerk at Astrid STC had been kind enough to relay the optical data gathered from six other satellites. “Boss,” Hippolyta suggested, “how about we run all seven together? Maybe we’ll see something we’re missing.” Solara had the Banshee’s computer synchronize the video streams. After a few run throughs, she rearranged the satellite views on the big screen. Hippolyta used the visual data to construct a three-dimensional representation of the images. Both women watched as something unseen swallowed the small cargo hauler.

Solara made another request of the clerk. She asked for all available radar and infrared data from any satellites watching that area of space. The clerk sent her four sets of each type. An hour later, they had a rough visual of the ship that swallowed the Laissez-Faire. All that they had to do was track it down and recover the stolen articles.

It was time to take the case to the Constable Corps. Tracking the mystery ship was going to require accessing data from both civilian satellites and Constable Corps monitoring stations. That also meant bringing a Constable on board the Banshee.

(6)

The trail led the Banshee into Eldritch Cartel space. The Eldritch carrier appeared to be adrift, but the Eldritch had shown that they were not above subterfuge. And it wasn’t easy to fool Solara. But the situation had piqued her curiosity. She slipped off her boots and grabbed a few weapons, just in case, before translocating to the damaged vessel. A foul odor informed her that something had damaged life support. Hippolyta informed her that a scan of the ship showed no life signs except for a single faint heat signature in the cargo hold. A quick check confirmed that its crew had abandoned the ship with the Laissez-Faire still contained in its hold.

Solara found Bob Jones holed up in a compartment not far from the bridge of the Laissez-Faire. Despite his weakened state, he still managed to point a weapon at her. She approached him slowly, giving him a chance to see that he was in no danger. Bob stared at the approaching mallow-skinned being. Her voice was surprisingly human as she spoke to him. “Mister Jones, I’m here to rescue you from the cold. My ship is nearby. I can take you there.”

“But what about my cargo?” he asked.

“I’ll also recover your ship and its cargo. Trans-Galactic doesn’t like to pay out on large claims. That’s why they sent me to find you and your shipment.”

“Trans-Galactic?” He stared into her hazel eyes. “You’re her, aren’t you? The Harbinger.”

“I prefer to think of myself as the galaxy’s best skip tracer, but yes.” Solara reached down to help him to his feet before jumping back to the Banshee. Once back, she handed Jones over to the constable.

Freeing the Laissez-Faire from the alien carrier was not going to be easy. The ship had lost power and that meant that opening the doors would be a challenge. The Laissez-Faire was also without power, but the Banshee could easily winch it out of the carrier and into her own hold. Except the carrier doors wouldn’t open without power. Solara needed to know more than she had gleaned from her first physical contact with Jones, which was next to nothing because he was so focused on her. She grabbed his arm. “Tell me everything you know about the carrier.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Jones lied.

“Tell me everything you know about the attack that led to it being abandoned,” she tightened her grip on his arm. “I guarantee that lying to me again will be a painful experience.”

Jones winced. “I don’t know much. They chatted about a strange ship appearing. It fired something at them, then the power went out. I tried to restart my engines, but I couldn’t. Everything was frozen.”

Solara smiled and released Jones. While Jones massaged his sore arm, Solara grabbed a weapon from her armory and disappeared. Hippolyta noticed Jones interest in the armory, “Don’t bother. You’ll be out for days.”

“Do you read minds too?” Jones backed away from her.

“No,” the Constable laughed, “she’s speaking from experience.”

Solara waited inside the carrier’s cargo bay, lying prone on top of the Laissez-Faire, looking down at the bay floor, anticipating the bump that would raise the ship off the deck. Once the Laissez-Faire was free of contact with the carrier, she would jump the ship into the Banshee. It was a risk to transfer that much mass, but it was what Trans-Galactic paid her for. Hippolyta maneuvered the Banshee into position parallel to the carrier’s cargo decking. A short burst of the thrusters would result in a hull bump. She took a deep breath before tapping the screen. “Here goes everything.” Although Solara completed the transfer is under a minute, the interval felt like hours to Hippolyta while she waited for Solara to return to the Banshee’s bridge. Just before she lost consciousness, Solara was able to return to the bridge of the Banshee.