Page 11

This was progress. ‘Does she use a charge card?’Something traceable.

The keeper shook his head. ‘Only schill notes and coins.’

Riv nodded his thanks and moved away, dejected.

Mirage, can you hack the station cameras to look out for her? You may need to go a few months back.

Sure.

Sante. I’ll work on tracing the deliveries to see if I can find anything about the ship the stall owner said his bots delivered to.

Riv continued his search, moving with panther-like grace from one stand and shop to the next.

Exiting one outlet, he paused when three hulking creatures crept past.

They stood out, their looming height towering above the other punters on the street.

Their long, flowing robes hid most of their form, but he glimpsed silver and chrome eyes, aquiline-beaked nostrils, skin as crimson as cinnabar, and the hint of predatory power under their hoods.

Something about them rankled him, and he noted the locals gave them space, so he, too, shied away from them and their companion, a shifty-looking Falasian.

Seen those kinais?he comm’d Mirage.

The oversized hooded variety?

Naam. Are they any danger to us?

Nada. But I recorded their arrival not so long ago. In a giant bird-like ship, one I’ve never tracked before. It’s armed to the teeth and homicidal in design. In battle, it’d probably match us like for like.

Few crafts compared to The Sable Group’s, and Riv was intrigued.Any idea about their origin?

Nada, they’re not coming up on the station’s registry. Or the Galaxy-wide one. It’s as if they’ve ghosted into town.

Sounds like we need to avoid them.

That would be wise. I’ll make a note of them and keep a close eye in case they interfere with our business.

A ping alarm rang in his neural node. The metanoids he’d spread at the food stall had found something on the owner’s POS system.

They’d retrieved data from one of the bot deliveries that had not been wiped.

His node connected to the evidence, which revealed a ship code.

Score,Riv smirked.

He went to the docks and chanced on a bored port attendant.

He initiated an innocuous conversation about the goods they’d been trading and even shared a few yarns from his mining treasure trove of stories.

All the while, his metanoids crawled the station system’s software.

Finally, they found something and sent a security holo video to him.

Laughing with the porter, he tapped his node to study the details of the ship where the bot delivered the food cargo.

There was no image of the vessel, but its logged destination appeared.

His eyes widened as he over garments the same storm-like nebulae caught in roiling flares into which Ankis was alleged to have disappeared.