Rogue Pursuit: A Space Opera Adventure (Shades of Starlight Book 1), page 6
He tightened his fist for a single second. He should’ve known that would be too easy. Finding Kel and saving his job were going to take more than sweet-talking a clerk.
Ignoring more questions from the manager, Tai returned to the heart of the station and found a quiet place where he’d pass as a relaxing vacationer.
To the right was a mini forest, thick with foliage and shrubs. Small mammals raced along the branches, and a herd of miniature uniprongs grazed on the bushes. To his left, stars twinkled in deep space.
Movement in his peripheral vision drew his attention from the window but when he turned, he saw nothing but a young man in the customary loose-fitting pants and tunic from the Lapida system, trailing behind a similarly dressed family with three kids. Bored father, tired mother.
Years of training helped his brain sort through images and body language, tones and movements. Catalog faces. He played a familiar game, one his mom had him play before he knew she was grooming him, noting clothing, jewelry, makeup, hand gestures, and determining which planet the people came from. The analysis came without thinking, leaving the rest of his brain to consider his options.
Official channels were closed. Now the guy was suspicious, which meant Tai couldn’t fake a warrant.
Which left unofficial channels. He could ask around, but odds were slim he’d find anyone who recognized his old partner.
Which left egregiously unofficial channels.
Agents were trained in a variety of intelligence collecting methods. The most useful were the human intelligence, turning assets and mining people. The ones Tai hated. But when those didn’t work, technological options came into play.
His mom hadn’t asked Tai to hand in his Agency-issued comp-pad with his badge and weapon. Unless this station had top-notch security—doubtful for a vacation spot—he could be in their system within minutes. But hacking the cameras on Ruby Prime was one thing. He was an agent of the law there, although a temporarily sidelined one. Here, he’d be an outright criminal.
The question was, how badly did he want to do this? He could go home now. Let his mom and the Agency handle it. But his hearing was in thirteen days. Did he really want to rely on someone else who had less to lose? If he intended to be boss one day, it was time to take charge. Defying orders left a bitter taste in his throat, but he might never have a better opportunity to prove his innocence—and his skill.
He pulled the comp-pad from his bag and set it on his lap. His thumb tapped quickly on the cover, his ring rattling. Checking the feeds wasn’t that bad, in the grand scale of lawbreaking. It was this or quit.
He opened the cover.
Watched a couple stroll past, holding hands.
Tapped it again.
Studied the trees to his right.
And spotted a familiar face. His brain ran through the people he’d seen. There. The man he’d spotted earlier, dressed as a tourist and walking with a family, now wearing a maintenance uniform. Interesting. He was the first out-of-place person Tai had seen.
Curiosity replaced hesitation. Tai implemented a basic hack he’d learned before he even entered training, but had never used outside his job. Within minutes, he gained access to the station’s live video feed, found the camera in this room, and isolated the man. He was making his way into the forest, face angled away from the cameras.
Tai reversed the video footage. Like Tai, the man hadn’t allowed his whole face to be captured by the cameras. But Tai knew what else to watch for—the way the man moved, sliding around people without touching them, without them realizing how close he’d come. The set of his shoulders, the constant alertness although his head remained fixed ahead. A thousand small details that screamed of training like Tai’s.
But not Confed. This man scanned the room in a different pattern, moved with less body control. Cobalt Republic?
He switched back to the live feed and followed the man on the screen as he joined the path into the trees. Definitely the same person.
The fact was alarming, but hardly surprising. Foreign espionage was alive and well within the Confed’s Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agency. Agents and assets inside the two rival governments kept his mom apprised of situations and information the Confed would find useful. Some Confed agents were long-term undercover. Some petty criminals had been given freedom in exchange for assistance. Some disillusioned citizens of the other worlds had been bribed into helping. Some were just plain open to the highest bidder. Cobalt likely had the same within the Confed, despite his mom’s best efforts.
Why would a Cobalt spy be undercover here? Was the man after Kel? If so, how had they learned about Kel so quickly?
Tai closed his comp-pad and waited until the man vanished into the trees. Then he slid from his chair and followed.
His target was dressed as a worker, allowing him to stride purposefully. To maintain his cover as a tourist in case someone watched him, Tai had to pretend to examine the giant ferns, be impressed by the towering trees and enchanted by the tiny rodents and twittering birds living in space, while still making his way quickly so he didn’t lose the man.
The exit led to a main walkway. Tai kept the man in sight, but remained far enough away not to be spotted. He joined a group of loud university students, shoving each other around and laughing, clearly from a planet where this was spring break. Knelt next to a girl who’d dropped a stuffed toy, thanking her for her perfect timing right as the Cobalt agent paused and glanced behind him.
His heart thudded steadily, his senses attuned to every detail. Jobs like this made him feel alive.
Tai continued his tail as the path led through a sandy room filled with flowering cactus and a water garden with artful jets of water, quiet pools, and small waterfalls where the sound of gentle splashing filled the air.
When he entered the hallway, he arrived in time to see his target slip through a door marked “Private.”
A quick review of station schematics showed the room was a monitoring station. From there, the man could easily access the archived video footage Tai hadn’t been able to obtain just by asking nicely.
Growing up the son of a law enforcement officer had ensured Tai was never tempted to do anything illegal. Sure, he excelled at thinking like a criminal. Had to, to catch them. But when it came time to make a decision, to cross that line himself, he hated doing it. Laws existed for a purpose, and he didn’t like to consider there might be a good reason to break them.
His other option was to lose, though. The trail, his partner, his job.
He retreated to the edge of the water garden and waited until the man left. Then Tai used his lock-pick device to enter the room. He recreated the man’s search and found that he’d applied a facial recognition tool similar to the one Tai had used on Ruby Prime. The software confirmed Cobalt origin. And the face confirmed the man was looking for Kel.
What in the shades had Kel found that was so important?
Tai still had a hard time believing his friend was a traitor. His mom didn’t trust anyone, but, despite her best efforts, Tai always had trouble defaulting to doubt. Now, though, his friend’s involvement in something big was becoming impossible to deny.
He needed to stop wasting time on scruples. Kel had none when he disappeared. The Cobalt agent would have none. And the agents Tai’s mom would surely send wouldn’t, either.
Time to commit.
He planted himself on the first bench he found and took out his comp-pad once more. Six minutes later, he had access to the station’s central system.
A squawk and a flutter of wings distracted him. He must’ve found the aviary Perrin mentioned. Birds of every shape and size lined the branches above, peeked from bushes, waded in ponds. The room smelled of damp earth and droppings. He kicked his foot toward a brave river gull to scare it away.
Tai downloaded passenger manifests from all ships in and out since the morning before. As expected, he found none of Kel’s known aliases. A search for unduplicated surnames to identify solo passengers resulted in hundreds of entries. The manifests weren’t going to work.
Next, he applied his facial recognition algorithm to the station’s stored video feeds, but didn’t find Kel on any of them. Not surprising. Tricking facial scanners was first-semester stuff.
This place had too many people and cameras, and he didn’t have time to watch everything.
He cracked his neck and absently watched a blue bird with red feathers around its face poke in the dirt with a long beak.
It had taken him hours to discover how Kel had left Ruby Prime, sifting through vid feeds until his eyes crossed. Tai didn’t have time to do that again.
The problem, like Perrin pointed out, was that several wormholes connected to this system. That meant private luxury cruisers, public transports, mid-level ships, a huge number of vessels coming and going. He needed a way to narrow his search.
A large black bird swooped low, wings nearly brushing Tai’s head. The beast landed nearby and screamed at him. Its curved orange beak looked sharp as a sword.
As he tried to shoo it away, he spotted a person scattering seeds in the grass. What did it take to maintain this place? How did they water the plants, feed the animals, clean up after them?
It would take a lot of work—
The workers. Supply ships. The station surely had another set of airlocks out of the public eye.
Perrin would know. But did he want to risk having her with him? The map had indicated the station’s lowest level contained service facilities, but was off-limits to the public. He entered a few commands into his comp-pad. The lower levels ran on a separate video feed he’d have to hack from there.
Returning to the ship for the janitor’s outfit would take too long, but there were other ways to look official. He watched the worker and spotted a key card hanging from the woman’s belt. Worth a shot.
Dodging the still-squawking monster, Tai pretended to watch small birds fluttering around flower bushes. He meandered toward the woman and stumbled into her.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, excuse me,” he said as he lifted the card from her belt.
He wasn’t stealing, he told himself. Just borrowing.
On his way to the employee lifts, he spotted a large, official-looking holo-pad and snagged that, too.
The key card granted him access to the lift, and he selected the lowest level. He marched out of the lift with purpose, earning polite nods from the people he passed. One prop and an air of authority, and people assumed you had power.
He located the hallway with airlocks for supply ships. No immediate sign of cameras, but they must’ve existed. Time to hack them and find out.
Before he could turn on his comp-pad, he heard voices. Including one that was familiar after a single day.
Somehow, Perrin had beat him there.
6
Perrin and Tai returned to the ship on a service elevator that bypassed the touristy parts of the station. She’d been hoping not to get caught on the lower levels. Her plan had been to find a ship to Naxus, suggest the idea to Tai, and let him do the rest, but his presence had eliminated that option.
On the bright side, this was faster.
“How’d you get down here, anyway?” he asked.
Was Tai studying her with suspicion? Had figuring things out before him been too much? How far could she push before he suspected she knew more than he did?
She tugged the hologram tags she wore around her neck. “Shipping credentials.”
His face relaxed.
“One of my contacts said someone matching your guy’s description took a job on a supply ship heading for Amber Central, by way of Naxus.”
Tai nodded. “Naxus. He wouldn’t have been able to obtain a pass to land on the Amber capital. But Naxus has several large cities and lots of ships, plenty of places to transfer. And he’d assume anyone following him in an official Confed vessel wouldn’t be dumb enough to attempt to enter the Alliance’s space.”
“Good thing you didn’t bring an official Confed vessel and I have these.” She waved the credentials again, which included a provisional pass for all Amber Alliance territories. “Now we just have to come up with a reason to be traveling there.”
“I assume from that look in your eye you already have an idea?”
“Naturally.”
“Normally cover stories are my job.”
She lifted a shoulder. “You really shouldn’t let other people do your job for you.”
“I get the sense I didn’t have a choice.”
“You didn’t.” She grinned.
They joined the short queue for the wormhole to Naxus, which was an hour from the station.
“How’d you like the Conservatory?” Better keep him busy so he didn’t think too hard about how she’d found Kel. Skirting the law had become second nature, but she’d never had to fool someone long-term.
“Thanks for the warning about the aviary. I almost got carried off by an eagletross the size of a hovercar.” He shuddered playfully. “But overall, not bad.”
The station guarding the wormhole hailed them. “Please be stating your name and your business on Naxus.” The man spoke in the Common Tongue, but with the clipped vowels, harsh consonants, and odd phrasing common on Amber Alliance worlds.
“Perrin Hightower, provisional merchant license number HK2724B.”
“One moment. This ship, it is not a ship registered to your name.”
She sat straighter. Good posture made her voice more confident. “My usual one’s undergoing repairs. My contact said a smaller ship would be sufficient for the merchandise, so I hired this one.”
“Who is this contact?”
“That’s privileged. My clients pay for anonymity.”
“My job, it is to protect the Amber Alliance from potential threats.”
“And I’m so glad you’re committed to that job,” she said. “Under Section Seven of the Intergalactic Trade Agreement, my license is enough to grant me access to this world. And under Section Three, any approved merchant is entitled to confidentiality unless you have reasonable cause to believe I’m breaking the law. I believe the exact wording is ‘shall not be required to submit to inspection upon admittance.’”
“I can be flagging your ship for inspection when you are exiting.”
“I’m happy to submit to any and all inspections you think necessary for the good of the Amber Alliance. When they’re legal. Which isn’t now.”
“Fine, fine. You will be next. Do not be proceeding until I am giving the signal.”
He cut the connection.
Tai raised his eyebrows. “That was risky.”
“I know his type. Gets a little power and uses it to mess with people. Stand up to him, show him his authority doesn’t intimidate you, and he loses interest.” She readied the deflectors. “Hope you don’t have illegal cargo on board, though. He really might flag us on the way out.”
Good thing they weren’t in her ship. Of course, she might not have dared the guy if she had been.
“You read people well. You’d make a good secret agent.”
She barely managed to swallow a snort. “How do you know I’m not one?”
He smirked.
“Horizon, you are cleared. Proceed.”
Perrin took them in.
This wormhole was new to her. She’d been to the Amber capital but not to Naxus, a secondary Amber world. The base color was butterscotch, with threads of lemon yellow and orange-bronze. She watched a bright yellow twine through the entire wormhole, a constant color and width. The darker orange spiral concerned her more, the secondary color constantly vanishing and reappearing, sometimes tiny threads and sometimes a thicker band. A pale yellow-green appeared.
The ship shuddered once and settled into a constant vibration.
She adjusted the shields, which stabilized the ship, though nothing would eliminate the shaking entirely.
Tai’s jaw clenched, making the line of his jaw sharper than usual. If he turned his head, it would slice open his shoulder.
If he thought this was bad, wait until they reached the tertiaries.
“What did that armrest ever do to you?”
Tai scowled and pried his hands off his chair.
She pointed to the view screen. “Stop freaking out. I’m trained at this. See that green thread? The one that comes and goes?”
He forced a quick glance at the screen.
“And the orange one?”
He nodded without checking again.
“That’s what makes this a secondary level. You saw the last one, from Ruby Prime? Red and orange. Two adjacent colors, very stable. Not quite as stable as a monochromatic, but unless your ship is from the Second Era, you’ll be fine every time. This one has three, which makes it fairly stable, since they’re still analogous, orange, yellow, green. But that third color adds the vibration. Your ship has a solid prism core, though, and all I had to do was adjust the variation in the shields. No problem.”
“Thanks for the lesson in color theory, Captain.” His rediscovered sarcasm was a good sign he’d loosened up.
“Anytime.”
She could’ve gone on for hours. Having a captive audience who didn’t appreciate the wonders of the wormholes made her itchy. If she explained the science, pointed out the unique color combinations, she could make him feel it, too. Not that she cared what a Confed cop thought. Just seemed a shame not to take the chance to fix his thinking.
She pulled out her comp-pad and entered the details in her journal—the exact shades she’d seen, the sizes of the bands, the time they lasted, the effects on the ship.
“What are you doing?”
“I keep a record of every wormhole,” she said without looking up. “Colors, patterns, how the ship reacts.”
“That’s—wow. Is that how you learned so much?”
She shrugged. “I guess. I love the colors, so I started trying to capture them, and then I realized that information could be helpful in navigating. When I was twelve, my dad and I began adding details to my notes beyond the colors. It helps me see patterns and common effects. Like when a complementary color takes up thirty percent of the surface area, it adds lateral vibration. Or if a primary is true versus when it’s a lighter or darker shade. Or how long the minor threads last.”
