Then he managed to set up a bank account and tie it into his account on Sintar. Not that that did him any good; he'd mostly cleaned out that account in order to change his starliner tickets and come to Catalonia in Catalonia Sector instead of the pre-paid trip to Java in the Sunda Sector for his vacation. What was left had been burned on expenses while he found a job; there was only pocket change left, if that. Still, if any of Kershaw's people had survived and managed to make his reimbursement payment, he could transfer it to his Catalonia account and use it to get home to Sintar.
He considered the possibility of hiring onto a freighter long enough to reach Sintar, but that meant abandoning his vendetta against Ashton, and somehow, he felt like he was finishing off a job for Kershaw if he managed to off Ashton. Never mind his own feelings in the matter.
After that, he looked for someplace to live that he could afford, and still manage to put back sufficient funds to eventually get off Catalonia. He finally found a small room for a rental fee he thought he could manage, in an ancient house in one of the oldest barrios in Catalonia Ciudad. It wasn't much; a mildewy, rather decrepit bedroom on the third floor that didn't even have a kitchenette or bathroom of its own, just a hotplate on the corner of a tiny table.
His laundry was done in the tub in the common bathroom down the hall, then hung around his room to dry, which lent his room an atmosphere of continual slovenly disorder… especially given the fact that his coveralls very quickly developed grease stains that didn’t want to come out in what he termed the “tub scrub,” using the cheapest detergent he could find.
He shared that same bathroom with the four teen males of the household – he assumed they were all from the owner’s family, though he wasn’t sure – whose bedrooms were on that floor. They carried bright red bandannas all the time, and he suspected them of being gang members. They certainly eyed him like predators. He tended to watch his back in the house, and always locked door and window before going to bed.
He reached the room via a rusty old outside fire-escape stair, and climbed through the sole window to enter. The room accessed the upper hallway of the rambling old house, but since he wasn’t family, he wasn’t allowed on the other two floors. He idly wondered sometimes if the family was involved in illegalities, but didn’t much care.
He wasn't able to find a lot that he could afford to eat – especially given how much he was trying to save to get back to Sintar. The nature of the various original polities that made up human space was based on the original nation-states of Earth, and many kept a good bit of the culture from which they originated. The Catalonia Sector had once been the star nation of Catalonia before a huge interstellar war had broken out; many of those same star nations essentially collapsed in the wake of that conflict, and the Sintaran Empire had absorbed them. But Catalonia had been settled largely by those dubbed Hispanics on Earth, and much of the culture remained, even to a prevalence for Spanish in the local language and cuisine.
Unfortunately, while the basic cuisine tended to be inexpensive to acquire and prepare, most of it disagreed with Martin's belly rather violently. And the longer he ate it, the worse it seemed to get.
It didn't help that it was just one more chunk out of his paycheck to buy food, and one he did his best to minimize. He could stuff himself once he got back home. As a consequence, much of what he did consume was poor quality at best, and half-spoiled, at worst. He had never heard of ergotamine poisoning.
He walked several miles each day, to and from the mechanics shop from the barrio where he lived. He couldn't afford to take mass transit – which, in Catalonia Ciudad, unlike most of the other planets in the Empire, required payment… which went into the Sector Governor’s coffers.
And so week after week, Mark Martin grew thinner and thinner, and his health poorer and poorer. As this happened, his mental state, in turn, deteriorated severely.
Thus determination became obsession.
Ashton, meanwhile, worked with Walder to develop a functional investigatory division within the sector department. Walder tried to use Ashton in an administrative role as much as possible, since it tended to keep him off the streets and thus less of a target.
But occasionally Ashton got sent on cases here and there, usually with a forensic team of some sort, the members of which were always charged to watch out for their investigative lead.
When nothing else happened for a couple of weeks, both Walder and Ashton drew deep breaths of relief.
But the forensic teams were still instructed – by Walder personally – to keep an eye out for any attacks on Ashton, and prevent them if at all possible.
As the time for Emperor Trajan’s coronation neared, the media push against him in the Catalonia Sector ramped up in intensity. Finally the sector governor consented to an interview. When she was pressed by the reporter regarding the new ruler, she opened up at last.
“This just will not do,” Catalonia Sector Governor Renata Palomo de la Gallego said. “An Emperor, not an Empress? No, no, no. And he’s her brother! We all know that the Throne of Sintar is not hereditary! It has never been passed within a family –
