The Disappeared

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  She hadn’t really told anyone her story, just different parts of it to different authorities who had contacted her. But she tried to stay as consistent as she could. She had been fortunate in one thing: the Rev generally did not believe in guilt by association. If her story were true, if the crew had truly been targeted by the Rev, the Rev would have left the passengers on board—maybe with a warning.

  The Rev would then tow the ship until they checked all the identification, to make certain no one was lying, then they would have let the passengers go. Saying she had gotten the ship out of there quickly added a convincing aspect to her story. If the Rev hadn’t had time to check her I.D., they might have come after her.

  But if someone who knew the Rev really took the time to think about her story, they would know that she was lying about something. The Rev would have checked her identity before continuing pursuit.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said the person before her. “Rules are rules.”

  “Isn’t there a place to decontaminate away from this dock? Please. Just get me out of here.”

  One of the HazMat crew held up a small device that Ekaterina didn’t recognize. It crackled as it ran over her.

  “Preliminary decontamination findings show no problems,” said the person with the device. “Take her to interstellar holding. There’s a decontam unit there that isn’t used often. It’ll get her out of the dock area.”

  “Thank you,” Ekaterina said.

  One of the HazMat crew handed her an environmental suit. “Put this on. You’re not going to contaminate the entire Terminal because you got yourself in trouble with the Rev.”

  “I didn’t—” Ekaterina started, and then stopped. She had. No matter which story she told, the end was the same. The Rev were after her.

  She unfolded the thin material that made up the full body suit. She would let them take her to decontamination. Sometimes HazMat teams let people alone in decontamination chambers. That would be her first chance to escape. She’d wait until the decon unit ran its cycle, and then she’d make a run for it. They wouldn’t go after her as a biohazard, maybe only as a fugitive, and maybe not even that. She had a hunch a lot of people got cleared and then bolted from the Port.

  If she played this correctly, she might even be able to find her way to one of the high-speed trains between domes. She could cash out a credit somewhere in the Port, and then no one would know where she had gone.

  She would vanish, just like she was supposed to do. Maybe she would be able to disappear—all on her own.

  * * *

  Flint was sitting at his desk, finishing the file on the three bodies from the yacht when DeRicci walked in the door. She looked as tired as he felt.

  “You’re here early,” he said.

  “So are you.” She pulled back the chair on the other side of his desk, sat down, and rubbed her eyes. “Problems?”

  “Depends on which case you’re talking about.”

  She stopped rubbing her eyes and peered at him. “Okay. Which one doesn’t have problems?”

  “The three dead from yesterday. They were legit Disty targets.”

  “You got the report?”

  “Finishing it now.” After he had done some fancy legitimate research to find the warrants. He had asked for the DNA scan, but he knew permission for it wouldn’t come in for weeks. When it did, he would use it to officially close the file. Until then, he made reference to the holes in the chip files, and how that had led him to the real names. Since this file probably wouldn’t see court, he really didn’t need an explanation of how he had gotten from A to K, but he provided an approximation of one, just in case.

  “What did they do?” she asked.

  “One of them killed a Disty security guard and the others helped her escape.”

  “Idiots.” DeRicci shook her head. “They had to know.”

  “It was fifteen years ago.”

  DeRicci stood, put her hands on her hips and sighed. “People seem to get complacent after a while. They must have let down their guard or something.”

  Flint frowned. He had no idea. He hadn’t been working on this type of case long enough to know. “Originally there were four of them. These three got out after the fourth got killed.”

  “So they had some resources.”

  He nodded. He didn’t tell her he still had a search going for the pilot and co-pilot. She would consider it a waste of time, since the case was officially closed.

  “Okay.” DeRicci rubbed her eyes. “This case is the good news, which means the bad news is with the kids, right? The baby’s parents are here. What about the eight-year-old’s?”

  “Jasper,” Flint said.

  “Don’t get attached.”

  Too late. Although Jasper wasn’t the one he was attached to. Flint folded his hands on top of his desk. “His folks are coming from Tycho Crater. They should be here later today.”

  “Tycho Crater.” DeRicci shook her head. “That kid’s been traveling some.”

  “Yeah,” Flint said.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Flint said.

  “You don’t know?” She let her hand drop and faced him.

  “I have a hunch.”

  She shook her head. “No proof, nothing concrete?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then I don’t want to hear it. Hunches are worthless, especially when I’m going toe-to-balls with the Wygnin.”

  Flint grinned. “They have balls? I thought that was part of the problem of gender-typing them.”

  “Don’t get goofy on me, Miles.” But DeRicci smiled too. She sat back down. “It’s tough right now. They seem to think we should just hand those kids over because they say so.”

  “No warrants yet?”

  “No warrants with the right information. The names don’t match and the things are old.”

  “Old seems to be the theme of the week, doesn’t it?” Flint said.

  “Yeah,” DeRicci said. “Things run in groups sometimes. You’ve been with me—how long?—and we’ve been dealing with normal stuff, thefts, murders, that kind of thing. Now we have two alien cases in a row, straight from the docks. Usually they aren’t even from the docks.”

  “That doesn’t concern you?”

  “It concerns me only when the pattern is a little clearer. If this were all Disty or all Wygnin, I’d be wondering what’s going on. But it’s not.”

  Flint nodded.

  Then the door to his office opened. Andrea Gumiela, the chief of the First Detective Unit, leaned in. She was tall woman, heavyset but muscular, with a long sad face and thin reddish hair.

  “Your locators said you were here.” Her voice was flat, businesslike. Flint had never heard her sound upset or excited. He wasn’t sure she could. “Surprised me. Isn’t it a little early?”

  “I’m still dealing with the Wygnin.” DeRicci sounded bitter.

  “I had the first set of parents arrive this morning,” Flint said.

  “Bad business that,” Gumiela said as if she didn’t care. “I got your file, Flint. Closed the Disty vengeance killing already.”

  He nodded.

  “Good work.”

  “Thanks.” He didn’t smile. Gumiela rarely gave compliments without trying to get something in return.

  “Since you two have had all the dock business in the last day or so, I figure you could handle one more, especially since you did such a quick and thorough job on the vengeance killing.”

  “The Wygnin are going to take a lot of time,” DeRicci said.

  “Naw.” Gumiela grinned. “They’re lawyered up. They tried to contact me before they called you. Why do you think I’m here this early?”

  “Sorry about that, sir,” DeRicci said.

  Gumiela waved her hand. “Not your problem, detective. Just get it resolved as best you can, when you can. I need you at the docks right now.”

  “What’s happening?” Flint asked.

  “Some touri
st says she had a run-in with the Rev outside of Moon Space. She’s afraid they’ll come after her. I want to know if this is fantasy or reality.”

  “What kind of run-in?” DeRicci asked.

  “Unclear,” Gumiela said. “But it’s the kind of thing we need to put to bed fast. We don’t need any panic from tourists, thinking the Rev or any other alien group are targeting innocents. I want you to get to her before the media does. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.” DeRicci sighed.

  “Where is she now?”

  “Decon One in interstellar holding. The HazMat crew locked the area down, afraid she’d bolt. They want someone fast.”

  “All right,” Flint said. “Fast is our business.”

  “I just came from the Port,” DeRicci said.

  “Looks like it’s your week for this kind of work,” Gumiela said. “If anything else comes in, I’ll make sure it goes to you.”

  She didn’t smile as she said that, and she closed the door sharply behind her.

  “You know,” Flint said, “if you didn’t complain so much, you wouldn’t get assignments you hate.”

  “Yes, I would,” DeRicci said. “Think about it, Flint. I’m not real popular around here.”

  “Did you ever ask why?”

  “I know why,” she said as she stood.

  “Care to share?”

  She shook her head. “You’ll learn soon enough.”

  * * *

  They locked it down. Damn. Ekaterina paced around the waiting area outside of the decontamination chamber. She had gone through the whole procedure, including having her purse scanned and her clothing chemically purified.

  Her clothes itched now, but there was nothing she could do about that. She had to wait until someone let her out.

  At least the Rev wouldn’t come in here. At least she was protected in that way. But if they arrived and asked for her, the Port was required by law to investigate their request. She would be stuck here for good.

  She had to get out before they arrived—and in a way that didn’t cause suspicion.

  She couldn’t claim claustrophobia. She’d arrived in a space yacht. But she could claim starvation. All she had to do was find the communications link inside here. There had to be one, and it probably wasn’t obvious. They didn’t want unauthorized use of it and besides, most people had their own communication devices.

  Hers were on Earth, in her wonderful house, by the lilacs that Simon had given her. By her ring.

  She blinked hard. She wasn’t going to think about that. She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to think about what she’d left behind until she built something new, and she was very far away from that.

  Her stomach rumbled, proving that she wouldn’t be lying when she said she needed food. She scanned the plain walls, looking for a line that didn’t belong, a misplaced bump or a speck of dirt. It had to be somewhere logical, maybe even by the door.

  But she didn’t see anything obvious. And she knew she was being monitored. If she looked too crafty, they wouldn’t trust her with anything. She sat on one of the benches and continued to scan. She’d find it.

  If she didn’t, she’d try the old-fashioned method. She’d pound on the door. That would get someone’s attention eventually. All she needed was the door to open once. Just once, and she had a good chance of getting free.

  * * *

  They were summoned to the main decontamination area in the interstellar holding section, but Flint insisted on stopping in the Port’s administrative center first.

  “Come on, Miles,” DeRicci said. “Let’s get this over with. We’ve got more important things to do that protect some tourist from the media.”

  He shook his head. “I think there’s more here. If it were that simple, Traffic could have handled it.”

  “You think Gumiela sent us on this to test us?”

  “No,” he said. “I think Gumiela got the call and didn’t understand why Traffic was asking for detectives.”

  DeRicci raised her eyebrows. “You think Gumiela’s dumb?”

  Flint gave her a sideways look. “I think she doesn’t pay attention sometimes.”

  DeRicci suppressed a smile.

  The Port’s Administrative Center was a large area off the main entrance. Flint led DeRicci through the familiar hallways until he got to Traffic’s Port Headquarters. It was a large room, with windows that opened into the hallway. A check-in desk was right up front. The desk sergeant, an elderly man named Murray, grinned at Flint.

  “The prodigal son returns.”

  Flint grinned back. “I don’t think the prodigal son was promoted.”

  Murray snorted. “Yeah, like more work, shit hours, and no overtime is promotion. Should’ve stayed here, kid, where life is good and cases don’t last forever.”

  DeRicci was looking at all the murals on the wall. Long before Flint arrived, someone had pained the history of space ships that had traveled to the Moon. If he tried, he could name the type of ship, the year it was commissioned, and in many cases, the year it was retired.

  It was a great skill to have when he was in Traffic, although it was mostly useless now.

  “I’m actually here on business,” Flint said.

  “And I thought it was because you missed me.” Murray leaned forward, his beefy arms resting on the desktop.

  “We got called in on that tourist who thinks she’s being chased by Rev.”

  Murray rolled his eyes. “The stolen space yacht. Yeah.”

  DeRicci turned away from the mural. “No. Nothing was said about a stolen yacht. It was a woman who had arrived alone, in a panic about the Rev. We understand she was in Decontamination.”

  “Yeah,” Murray said, assessing her, and, it seemed to Flint, not liking what he saw. “The stolen space yacht. That’s why you got called in.”

  “We were told it was to hear her story before the media got to her,” DeRicci said.

  “And who’s the idiot who said that?” Murray asked.

  “Our Unit Chief.” Flint smiled. “I take it you made the call?”

  “Always do. Told her there was a problem. Said the woman was in decon and didn’t know her ship’s registration. Said she claimed to have lost her crew to the Rev, and said the ship was in Terminal Five.”

  Which to any space cop would have been enough to know they were talking about theft. “My colleagues in the First Unit have no idea how the terminals are broken down,” Flint said. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to walk them through things next time.”

  “Is that what you came here to tell me?” Murray’s smile was gone.

  Flint shook his head. “I wanted to find out what you really said before I saw the woman. Figured I didn’t want to duplicate your work.”

  “Take a look at that yacht,” Murray said, “and tell me it’s not stolen.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  Murray shook his head. “No registration. No computerized I.D. When we accessed the communications system in orbit, we got nothing but a straight signal. Someone tampered with something. We should have gotten standard I.D. at minimum. She claims she don’t know it either.”

  “You don’t believe her.”

  “I didn’t see her. The cops who caught her think she’s scared. Something’s going on. We’ve had three messages from Decon One that she’s been banging on the door asking when she’s getting out. Most folks take longer to go through the system. We warn them that they might be carrying something microscopic and lethal, and they make sure every crevice is cleaned out. She scurried through it like a five-year-old who’s been told to wash his face.”

  Flint nodded. “So we need to get down there.”

  “I’d say. She’s annoying everyone.”

  “Why was she put in interstellar?” DeRicci asked. “Wasn’t there a closer decontamination center?”

  “Precaution,” Murray said. “If she is telling the truth, the Rev would ask to inspect all the areas of Terminal 5 and they’d be within their right
s if they have the proper documentation—or even something approximating it. This way she’s protected in the short term and we’re not open to lawsuits.”

  “Lawsuits.” DeRicci shook her head. “Ain’t life grand in Armstrong law enforcement.”

  “Tell me,” Murray said. “Half the shit I do is to avoid lawsuits.”

  Flint had heard this speech before. “Is there any way we can view the ship from here?”

  “Sure, but you’re gonna want to see it in person.”

  “Probably,” Flint said. “But it sounds like we need to get that woman into our custody before she calls too much attention to herself.”

  “Worried about the media, Miles?” DeRicci asked.

  “One of our jobs is to see if her story is true. If it is, then we need to protect her when she faces the Rev.”

  DeRicci nodded.

  “Come here,” Murray said, and beckoned them behind the desk. He tapped the screen before him and a tiny hologram of Terminal Five appeared on top of his desk. He moved the hologram, tweaking it until he found the dock he was looking for, then blew up the image to a meter.

  Flint stared at it for a moment. “Can you put this on the floor? Make it about five times that big?”

  “Sure,” Murray said.

  DeRicci was biting her lower lip. The hologram winked out and then reappeared just behind Flint. He walked around it. The yacht was black and scarred. He couldn’t tell from this distance if the scarring was new or old.

  It looked like escape pods were missing.

  “Is it intact?”

  “Pilot escape pod is gone,” Murray said. “We don’t know when. That’s for you to figure out if you have to.”

  “The registration’s gone?” DeRicci asked, all business now. “What about serial numbers?”

  “Nothing we could find. HazMat was instructed to look inside, and they didn’t see anything either. But again, that’s all stuff for you guys. We did a cursory examination. Our job was to get her out of there, clear the area, and bring you guys in.”