I slumped down in an abandoned doorway to catch my breath and try to control my racing thoughts. I was stuck on a backwater moon, trapped in a desolate city controlled by hostile forces. My friend—more than a friend—had been captured. Her parents had been captured. And I had nothing. No resources. No weapons. No team. Nothing, except a little utility bot with a line of credit.
“We should keep moving,” TenSix said.
“I know…but where…?”
“We need some more local knowledge.”
He was right. Talking to that taxi driver for five minutes filled in a lot of gaps. An idea popped into my head.
“Kira send you back for more moxa?” Lhiana said, looking me up and down.
“The Mayir got her.”
“What?”
I looked around the empty café. “Is this place secure?”
“Follow me.”
She led me back behind the curtain that served as the rear wall of the café. We passed through a cramped space filled with rows of comm terminals, each partitioned off in its own sound-proof booth. At the end of the room stood a double-sized booth snaked with cables. An array of electronics was jury-rigged to its outer wall, and inside was a console and some ratty-looking chairs.
Lhiana motioned for us to enter. “Give me a sec to power up.” She moved to the terminal and activated the datapad. I watched as she keyed on various scanner baffle circuits and then ran diagnostic checks. After a few minutes she said, “We’re good.”
I slumped down in a chair.
“You best start at the beginning, Jannigan Beck.”
How the hell? “You know who I am?”
“Yeah, I didn’t quite buy that story about your parents being fans of Sean Beck. So when you guys left, I ran a search on you. I was looking after my girl, you know?”
“I thought there was no H-mesh here.”
“There isn’t. We got our own local net. Dataset’s blocked in and updated every couple of months. At least it used to be. Fine for my purposes. Turns out you kind of fell off the grid after your father retired. What was that, seven years ago?”
Interesting. I was wondering how Beck Salvage would manage in my absence. After all, for a long time, I was the face of the company. Even though it was my father’s face. But I didn’t have time to worry about that now.
“This isn’t about me,” I said. “Kira needs our help.”
“She probably does, but I can’t do shit until you tell me what the hell is going on. The truth.”
I stared into Lhiana’s deep brown eyes, torn. I didn’t know her. I didn’t really know her relationship with Kira. All I knew was that Kira said she trusted Lhiana Jowe.
And that had to be good enough for me.
Because I didn’t have anything else.
I ended up telling Lhiana everything. Well, almost everything.
I left out the fact that I was most recently in the Fountain where I had lost seven years of my life via an ancient alien jump gate.
Instead, I told her that I was here on confidential Beck Salvage business, but had become stranded in the Rhinobo Basin. I explained that Kira had saved me from hostile Bondril and that she and her family were going to take me to Ganga Kos so I could arrange to be picked up. But then the Mayir had attacked the Larks’ camp and abducted Biella and Thastus Lark. I also told Lhiana that we suspected that the Mayir had also apprehended the Marlington University research team.
“That’s some story,” she said.
“It’s all true. I’ve got proof.”
Before returning to the café I had stopped at our hotel and gathered our things—including Biella Lark’s Aura. I took it out of Kira’s bag and played Biella’s message for Lhiana.
“This is Biella Lark of Oeri-USV. We are being taken by the Mayir. Against our will. I’m not sure where they are taking us or why, but we—”
“Holy shit,” she said. “Is there more?”
“No, it just ends abruptly like that. Kira thought if she got the message to the Imperial State Department, they might be able to help.”
“We have to get it to someone.”
“Do you have a slicer?” I asked.
“An old clickdog. Will that work?”
“Yeah.”
“Be right back.”
“Bring some datadots, as well.”
When Lhiana returned with the gear, I set about extracting the message in Biella’s Aura and cloning it onto the dots. If the Aura had been locked, it would have been a near impossible task. At least without the help of my friend Blieggs who had a ton of black-market slicing equipment that could hack into nearly anything.
“I want this message backed up in case anything happens to me,” I said.
“You expecting to be captured as well?”
“Let’s just say I’m not supposed to be on this moon, and I’ve messed with the Mayir in the past.”
“Damn, you’re just like your father!” Lhiana smiled at me with newfound respect.
A month ago I would have taken that comment as the worst insult imaginable. Now, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
“Tell me about the detention center,” I said. “Specifically, how we get Kira out of there.”
“You got me,” Lhiana said. “I haven’t heard about anyone getting out. Mostly there’s non-humans locked up in there. Those dumb enough not to leave immediately after we all heard that the Mayir were taking over a couple of years ago.”
“The taxi driver told me that the Mayir have been snatching up offworlders too.”
“I haven’t heard that at all. In fact there’s a big group from Jaalbar in town right now. Rich folk invited by the Mayir for big game hunting.”
I remembered the rowdy group at the bar when we first came into town. They definitely could have been Jaalbarians.
“What are they hunting?”
“Rumor has it that they’re hunting Naba-Sa’im.”
I immediately pictured the pile of Naba-Sa’im bodies we had seen and wondered if they had been killed by big game hunters. “That’s against the Galactic Convention.”
Lhiana gave me a look. “Mayir pulled out of the GC years
