Chapter 156 · Another Hour

The sixth day was worse at South Three.

Not dramatically worse. That would have at least provided novelty. It was simply the same problems multiplied by fatigue.

Eli spent most of the morning reorganizing arrival slots around another closure farther along the corridor, then lost nearly an hour correcting a cargo allocation performed by someone who had apparently believed refrigerated storage was a philosophical suggestion.

At some point around midday, his communicator vibrated. He checked it beneath the edge of the terminal. Fine. Working on yesterday’s lead.

Eli replied: Try not to fight the lead.

No answer.

Twenty minutes later: Noted.

Eli smiled despite himself.

Then someone called his alias from across the operations floor and the port swallowed him again.

He got back to the boarding house after twelve hours and nine minutes. Stent was not there. That was normal now.

He added another container to the shelf and lay down fully dressed. He intended to wait. He woke when the door opened. The corridor light briefly cut across the room before Stent stepped inside and closed it. Eli blinked at him. Then sat up.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing.”

“That answer has become meaningless.”

Stent looked considerably worse than the night before. Not injured, but dirty.

His clothes were streaked with gray dust, rust-colored grime and several dark smears that looked like grease. One knee was filthy. Something pale had dried across the sleeve of his jacket. His boots carried enough industrial dirt to make Eli reconsider allowing them anywhere near the bed.

Stent looked down at himself. “I have been in several junkyards.”

“That explains the smell.”

“There is nothing wrong with the smell.”

“You smell like an engine compartment that lost a war.”

Stent ignored that and began removing his boots beside the door.

Eli rubbed sleep from his face. “You found something?”

“No.”

That woke him more effectively than caff. “No?”

“I checked the yards connected to the names I obtained yesterday, along with several others that buy undocumented components.”

Stent peeled off the jacket and examined one of the stains with mild dissatisfaction. “None had anything I could identify as belonging to the Faded Glory.”

Eli sat very still. “The hyperdrive?”

“No.”

“Nav hardware?”

“No. Not even hull, or traces of the transponder.” Stent shook his head. “I also saw no recent inventory consistent with a ship of her type being broken locally.”

Eli processed that. It should have been good news.

Mostly. If nobody had stripped the Faded Glory, then the ship might still exist in one piece. But the thought refused to settle comfortably. “What about the places you couldn’t get into?”

“There are several.”

“So she could still be somewhere we haven’t checked.”

“Yes.”

Eli exhaled. There went the reassuring interpretation.

Stent sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed one hand over the back of his neck. He looked exhausted.

Eli pointed toward the shelf. “Food.”

“I ate earlier.”

“More food.”

Stent gave him a tired look.

Eli pointed again. “Cantina. Free. I’m exploiting the only part of this employment arrangement that works in my favor.”

That got the smallest shift at the corner of Stent’s mouth. He reached for the container.

Eli looked at the state of his clothes. “Give me those.”

Stent glanced down at himself. “Why?”

“Because they’re filthy.”

“I had noticed.”

“I’m taking them downstairs.”

Stent looked back at him.

“Eat,” Eli said. “I did mine this morning. The laundry here is actually surprisingly good.” That earned a faintly skeptical look. “I know. I was shocked too. You put everything in, pay almost nothing, and somehow it comes back clean in less than an hour. It may be the most efficient system on this entire planet.”

Stent looked at the food, then at his jacket. “You are going now?”

“While you eat.”

A brief pause. Then Stent started peeling off the filthy outer layers.

Eli held out a hand. “Shirt too.” Stent looked at him. “That sleeve has something on it I don’t want identified.”

Stent inspected the stain.

“Probably hydraulic fluid.”

“That did not improve it.”

Stent looked down at himself once, apparently reached the same conclusion, and started undressing. There was no hesitation and no attempt at modesty. He stripped off the jacket, shirt and trousers in quick succession and handed everything to Eli as though passing over a set of tools for maintenance.

Eli took the growing bundle without comment.

Stent removed the rest and added it on top.

A week earlier, perhaps Eli might have registered the absurdity of standing in a room barely large enough for the bed while Stent sat down completely naked to eat dinner. At this point, it barely qualified as an event.

Eli shifted the clothes under one arm. “Eat. I’ll take these downstairs.”

“How long?”

“Less than an hour.”

Stent considered that acceptable.

Eli headed for the door. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Stent looked down at himself. “That seems unlikely.”

Eli smiled. “Good. Built-in compliance.”

The door closed behind him before Stent could answer.

The laundry room was two levels below, tucked beside the shared refreshers and somehow better maintained than almost anything else in the building. He loaded everything into one of the machines, started the cycle and checked the timer.

Forty-three minutes. Good enough.

He went back upstairs.

When he opened the room, Stent had apparently made use of the interval. The towel they had been issued lay damp over one of the hooks by the door, and Stent’s hair was still wet. He had clearly gone down to the shared refresher, showered, returned and only just sat down on the edge of the bed with the food container in his hands.

“Better?”

Stent looked up. “Yes.”

“Good.”

Eli closed the door and sat beside him.

Stent opened the container and began eating.

Eli waited until he had taken several bites. “So what does this tell us?”

Stent looked down at the food for a moment before answering. “Less than I would like.”

“Useful.”

“If the ship was taken by the group I am investigating, there is no evidence they dismantled it here.”

“Which means they moved it.”

“Possibly.”

“Offworld?”

“Possibly.”

Eli gave him a tired look. “You’re doing that on purpose now.”

“I am being accurate.”

“Fine. So either they moved it offworld, sold it whole, stripped it somewhere else…”

“Or they have not done anything with it yet.”

That made Eli pause.

Stent took another bite before continuing. “A stolen vessel does not necessarily enter the market immediately. If the transponder has been flagged locally, moving components too quickly may attract attention.”

“So they sit on it.”

“For a time.”

“Let it cool.”

Stent glanced at him. “That is one way of describing it.”

Eli leaned back against the wall. It made sense. Too much sense, unfortunately.

A ship stolen from an active commercial port, with an unauthorized movement report attached to its registry, was hotter than a ship that had disappeared two weeks earlier and stopped generating questions.

“They could have her in a warehouse somewhere.”

“Or a private field. A maintenance compound. A yard not connected to the ones I checked.”

“Or they could have already moved her to another system.”

“Yes.”

Eli rubbed both hands over his face. “Excellent. So after six days we have expanded the search area from one port to potentially the rest of the planet and several neighboring systems.”

“We have also established that no recognizable components from the Faded Glory have entered the local yards I was able to access.”

“That is technically progress.”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t feel like progress.”

“No.”

Stent continued eating.

Eli looked at the bruising still visible along his face, and the tired set of his shoulders. “You still think the people from yesterday matter.”

“Yes.”

“Because they’re connected to ship thefts.”

“Because they are connected to people who are.”

“And you think they may know where stolen ships go.”

“I think they may know who moves them.”

That was enough to keep the thread alive. Not enough to make it useful yet.

Eli sighed. “So what now?”

“I continue following that connection.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

Eli pointed at him. “Preferably without another fight.”

“I cannot guarantee that.”

“I know. I was expressing a preference.”

“That is more reasonable.”

“Thank you.”

Stent kept eating.

Six days. No transponder. No wreckage. No components for sale. No Faded Glory in the local junkyards. Somewhere, she still existed. Probably. Whether intact, stripped elsewhere, hidden under a tarp in some private compound or already halfway to another system was another question entirely.

And tomorrow, apparently, Stent intended to keep asking it.

The seventh day had been bad before Stent appeared.

South Three had received another wave of diverted traffic shortly before midday, and by early afternoon Eli was managing four overlapping arrival schedules, two warehouse disputes and a cargo crew whose supervisor had apparently decided that answering his communicator was optional.

Someone had left a cup of caff beside his terminal. Eli had no idea who. He drank it anyway.

“Figg.”

He looked up. One of the coordinators from the front station was pointing toward the entrance. “You’ve got someone asking for you.” Eli followed her gesture.

Stent stood beyond the operations barrier.

For the first few seconds, Eli registered only the obvious things. Same clothes as that morning. No fresh blood. No visible injury. No immediate sign that anything had gone catastrophically wrong.

Then Stent saw him. And Eli was already moving. There was urgency in his face. Not panic. Stent did not panic. But the usual stillness was gone. His attention was fixed entirely on Eli, and he had the posture of someone who had crossed half the port without slowing down.

Eli abandoned the terminal. “Cover this,” he said to the nearest coordinator.

She looked at the board. “For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not helpful.”

“I know.”

He was through the barrier before she could complain further.

Stent did not greet him. “The ship wasn’t stolen. I found them.”

Eli stopped. The noise of South Three continued around them: cargo announcements, loading alarms, people shouting berth numbers across the operations floor. “What?”

“The men who attempted to take the Faded Glory.”

For a moment Eli simply stared at him. Then he caught Stent by the arm and steered him away from the entrance. “Not here.”

They found an empty service corridor one level below operations, narrow and ugly and occupied only by stacked cleaning equipment and a disabled vending unit.

Eli waited until the door closed behind them. “All right. Explain attempted.”

Stent had already taken out his communicator, although there was nothing displayed on it that Eli could see. “I finally reached someone who was directly involved.”

“You spoke to one of them?”

“Yes.”

Eli looked at the fading bruises on Stent’s face. “Did this require another fight?”

“No.” A beat. “Just showing him the charric. But I didn’t get to fire it.”

Eli decided that could wait. “Tell me.”

Stent leaned one shoulder against the wall. “They targeted the ship while we were in the commercial district. They had been watching several outer berths and selected ours because of the vessel type, age and location.” So far, that fitted everything they had assumed. “They approached after we left. One remained outside. Two attempted entry through the boarding ramp.”

Eli’s stomach tightened. “They hacked it?”

“They bypassed the exterior lock sufficiently to begin opening the ramp.”

“And then?”

Stent’s eyes held his. “The ship took off.”

Eli stared at him. For a second the sentence did not fit into anything. “What?”

“The Faded Glory launched while they were still attempting to board.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Eli shook his head once, almost automatically. “They stole it and launched.”

“No.”

Stent’s voice sharpened slightly. “They did not board successfully.” That silenced him. Stent continued. “One of the men had reached the ramp when the vessel began lifting. He lost his footing and fell.”

The blood. Eli saw it again immediately: the small drops beneath the place where the ramp had rested. Not enough for a shooting. Not enough for someone seriously injured aboard. Someone upright. Moving. “He was the blood.”

“Almost certainly. He struck the edge of the berth structure when he fell. The injury was minor.” Eli rubbed one hand over his mouth. “The service hose.”

“Disconnected immediately before launch. They did.”

Properly released. Not stowed. Hurried.

Eli looked at Stent. “Who launched her?”

“I have not finished.” That alone told him there was more. Stent shifted his weight. “The group had another vessel nearby. Their reinforcement craft.”

“The one that didn’t show in traffic records.”

“Yes. They were operating without an active transponder.”

Of course. That explained the absence in the registered outbound traffic. “They saw the Faded Glory lift and pursued.”

Eli felt something cold move through his chest. “How far?”

“Far enough to leave the immediate port zone. They expected to catch her quickly.”

“But they didn’t.”

“No.”

Stent’s expression had changed again. There was something almost incredulous beneath the concentration now. “The Faded Glory entered local traffic.”

Eli frowned. “What traffic?”

“One of the smaller commercial fields farther along the coast. There was a concentration of arrivals and departures around it. The pursuing ship followed until they lost visual contact and could no longer isolate her from the other traffic.”

Eli was already thinking. “Transponder.”

“They were still receiving it initially.”

“Until twenty klicks.”

“Yes.”

Then it went dark. Not because thieves wanted to disguise a stolen ship after leaving the port. Because someone aboard the Faded Glory had realized the transponder was helping the people behind them track her.

Eli stopped breathing for a moment. Stent watched him arrive at the same place.

“No one was aboard,” Eli said.

“No sapient was aboard.”

They looked at each other. The service corridor suddenly seemed extraordinarily quiet.

Eli thought of Marent Twelve. Tee refusing to leave the ship. Tee guarding cargo. Tee locking ramps. Tee becoming personally offended by unauthorized movement in his hold. Tee treating every component of the Faded Glory as territory under his direct jurisdiction.

He thought of the night they had walked back toward an empty berth. Of assuming the blood meant violence against whoever had taken the ship. Of assuming someone else had been at the controls.

There had been someone. Just not someone they had counted.

“Oh,” Eli said.

Stent said nothing. Eli stared at him. “No.”

A tiny movement of Stent’s eyebrows. “Yes.”

“Tee.”

The name came out almost as a laugh, except Eli was too stunned for it. “Tee flew the ship!”

“He appears to have.”

Eli pressed both hands against his face.

For one absurd second all he could see was Tee indignantly relocating Nemi’s cup because she had placed it somewhere he disapproved of.

Then the image rearranged itself. Two strangers forcing the ramp. The droid alone aboard. No Eli. No Stent. Ch’eth somewhere inside. A ship he considered his. “Of course it did!”

Stent’s mouth moved slightly. Not quite a smile. “We left Tee on watch, and you know how much it loves to do a good job.”

“We told it to watch the ship.”

“Yes.”

“We actually told it to watch the ship.”

“And it did!” Eli lowered his hands.

“He took off.”

“Yes.”

“He got chased.”

“Yes.”

“And then he lost them in traffic.”

“That is what they claim.”

Eli stared at the wall for a moment.

“He switched off the transponder.”

“Most likely after determining that it was assisting pursuit.”

“He has never piloted her by himself.”

“Not with us aboard.”

That was an important distinction. Tee was an astromech. Navigation, course calculation, flight control interfaces, automated docking procedures—none of it was beyond him in principle. They had simply never asked him to fly the Faded Glory alone. Apparently Tee had not considered that relevant.

Eli began to laugh. It came out once, short and disbelieving. Then again. Stent watched him. “This is funny.”

“Our ship is still missing.”

“I know.”

“We do not know where Tee took it.”

“I know.”

“We have spent almost a week searching stolen-parts markets while our astromech apparently stole our own ship from the people trying to steal it.”

Stent considered that.

“That is not an entirely accurate description.”

“It’s accurate enough.”

Eli leaned back against the opposite wall. The exhaustion of the last week had not disappeared, but it had changed shape so abruptly that he almost felt lightheaded. The Faded Glory had not been dragged into some criminal yard and stripped. Not that night, at least.

The thieves had never possessed her. Which meant everything they had been doing for the last week had started from the wrong premise.

“FIGG!” The shout carried faintly down from the operations level.

Eli ignored it.

Stent glanced toward the stairwell. “They are calling you.”

“I know.”

“Figg!”

This time accompanied by something about Dock Twelve.

Eli raised his voice. “Five minutes!”

He heard a response that probably contained several objections.

Then he looked back at Stent. “The smaller port.”

“Yes.”

“The one they lost her near.”

“I do not know which one. The man I spoke to was not aboard the pursuing craft. He only knows what the crew reported afterward.”

“But Davin mentioned several secondary fields when we first started looking.”

“Yes.”

Eli’s thoughts were moving faster now. A ship without a transponder could not simply approach a major commercial port and join the normal arrival sequence. Traffic control would stop it, identify it, possibly send somebody out to meet it.

But not every landing field worked that way. Not anymore. After nearly a week inside South Three, Eli knew considerably more about the ugly edges of the local port network than he had when the Faded Glory disappeared.

Overflow fields. Automated commercial strips. Old freight ports that still accepted manual arrival declarations when transponders failed. Facilities where a ship could land under visual control, occupy a berth and leave identification to be sorted out later.

Especially now, with traffic systems overloaded and half the region operating on temporary procedures.

“Tee had to land somewhere.”

“Probably.”

“And he couldn’t transmit our registration once he shut the transponder down.”

“No.”

“But somebody would still have logged the arrival.”

Stent’s attention sharpened. “Possibly as unidentified traffic.”

“Exactly.”

Another shout came from upstairs. “FIGG!”

Eli opened the service-corridor door. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“My terminal.”

They went back upstairs.

The coordinator who had been covering Eli’s station turned the moment she saw him. “Dock Twelve has been asking for you for six minutes.”

“I know.”

“You said five.”

“I lied.”

She stared at Stent, then back at Eli. “Is he your friend? He can’t be here.”

Eli slid into his chair. “Give me two more minutes.”

“That’s not how numbers work.”

“It is today.”

She muttered something and went back to the adjacent terminal.

Stent stopped behind Eli’s shoulder. Eli pulled up the freight operations interface. His temporary credential did not give him unrestricted traffic-control access. It did, however, give him something nearly as useful: the regional commercial berth exchange.

South Three used it constantly now. Whenever ships missed arrival windows, when one port became saturated, when cargo had to be diverted or a berth unexpectedly closed, the system showed available capacity across the smaller affiliated fields surrounding the main port.

Davin had mentioned them on the first day. Eli had barely cared then. Now he opened the regional arrival history. “Date.”

Stent supplied the night the Faded Glory disappeared.

Eli narrowed the interval to the hour after the ship had lifted from their berth. Then he filtered for nonstandard arrivals. The list shortened: Mechanical transponder failures. Emergency landings. Two ships diverted because of atmospheric-control warnings. A tug that had arrived transmitting an obsolete registry code.

Eli scrolled. “Come on.”

Stent leaned closer. “Can you search by vessel class?”

“Approximate class. If somebody entered it.”

He added light freighter. The list collapsed again. Seven results.

Eli opened the first. Registered ship. Wrong hull. Second. Transponder failure, but identification supplied by comm. Third. A courier whose engine had caught fire. Fourth. Nothing. Fifth. Eli stopped.

The entry was sparse:

UNIDENTIFIED LIGHT FREIGHTER
ARRIVAL: MANUAL / NO ACTIVE TRANSPONDER
FIELD: MERIDIAN AUXILIARY COMMERCIAL
BERTH ASSIGNMENT: OVERFLOW 46-C
CREW CONTACT: NONE

Eli stared.

Stent read over his shoulder. “When?”

Eli checked the timestamp. Around two hours after the thieves reported losing the Faded Glory in local traffic.

Neither of them spoke.

Eli opened the berth record. The system took a moment to retrieve it.

Then: STATUS: OCCUPIED

Eli’s pulse jumped.

“Still?”

He refreshed it.

OCCUPIED — 6 DAYS, 18 HOURS

Stent went completely still.

Eli clicked into the maintenance notes. There was almost nothing. One automated service query unanswered. A request from ground staff to confirm vessel registration. No response.

A note from the following day:

VESSEL SECURED. NO CREW OBSERVED. ACCESS NOT AUTHORIZED.

Eli slowly leaned back. “That’s him.”

Stent did not answer immediately. “It is consistent.”

“Stent.”

“It is highly consistent.”

Eli pointed at the screen. “Unidentified light freighter. No transponder. Arrives half an hour after they lose her. Nobody gets off. Nobody answers ground crews. And she’s been sitting there for almost seven days.”

“Yes.”

Eli laughed once. Not because anything was funny. Because after a week of stolen-ship reports, junkyards, bruises, fourteen-hour shifts and twenty-credit breakfasts, the answer might have been sitting forty minutes away the entire time.

“Meridian.”

Stent was already memorizing the field information. “How far?”

Eli pulled up the local transit map. “Forty-three minutes by port shuttle.”

Stent looked at him. Eli looked back.

Behind them someone shouted, “FIGG! DOCK TWELVE!”

Eli closed the berth record. Then opened it again and copied the field address to his communicator. “Forty-three minutes.”

Stent was already moving. “We should go.”

“Yes.”

Another voice carried across the operations floor. “Kriff, Figg! I need you at twelve now!”

Eli looked toward the terminal. For seven days, South Three had consumed whatever time he gave it and then asked for more. Nine paid hours had become eleven, twelve, once nearly fourteen. Every crisis had led directly into the next one because there was always another ship waiting, another warehouse full, another crew missing, another problem that could apparently become his if he stood still long enough.

He had stood still long enough. Eli pulled off the temporary work credential and set it beside the terminal.

The coordinator at the next station looked at him. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

“For how long?”

“Permanently. I’m quitting.”

She stared at him. “Figg, you’re in the middle of a shift.”

“I know.”

“Corlan’s going to lose his mind.”

“He’ll survive.”

“Dock Twelve won’t.”

Eli glanced at the board. Twelve was flashing red. So were Eight, Nine and Fifteen. Something was always flashing red. “Someone else can fix it.”

The words felt strangely good.

Corlan appeared from behind one of the freight stations at exactly the wrong moment. “Figg. Twelve. NOW.”

Eli picked up his jacket. “I quit.”

Corlan stopped. “What?”

“I quit.”

“You can’t quit in the middle of a cargo rotation.”

“I just did.”

Corlan stared at him as though Eli had violated a fundamental law of physics. “What the hell happened?”

Eli looked at Stent. “We found our ship.”

That silenced him. Not for long. “You don’t know that.”

“No.” Eli slipped the communicator into his pocket. “But I’m going to find out.”

Corlan glanced toward the operations board, then back at him. “At least finish Twelve.”

Eli almost laughed. “No.”

Corlan stared at him. “Figg, don’t give me that nerfshit. You’ve got a live berth, two loads waiting behind it and nobody free to take your board.”

“Then you need somebody else.”

“I need you for another hour.”

“You’ve needed me for another hour every day this week.”

Corlan’s jaw tightened. “Because you’re good at the kriffing job.”

“And you pay me for nine hours.”

That stopped him for half a beat. “You knew the arrangement.”

“I knew I was temporary. I didn’t know nine hours meant twelve.”

“This is port work.”

“No. This is you being understaffed.”

The coordinator at the next station suddenly found her terminal extremely interesting.

Corlan lowered his voice. “You walk out now, you’re done.”

Eli looked at him. “Yes.”

“No reference. No return shift. And if payroll hasn’t cleared yet, I’m not chasing Finance for you.”

There it was. Eli felt something in him settle. Seven days ago, that would have mattered. Right now, the Faded Glory might be sitting forty-three minutes away.

“Fine.”

Corlan’s expression sharpened. “You think I’m bluffing?”

“No.”

“Then what the kriff are you doing?”

Eli picked up his communicator. “Going to find my ship.”

Corlan looked at Stent, then back at Eli. “You don’t even know it’s yours.”

“No.”

“So you’re throwing away a paying job because there might be some unidentified freighter sitting at another field?”

“Yes.”

“That’s insane.”

“Probably.”

Corlan pointed toward the board. “Finish Twelve. Then go.”

Eli shook his head. “No.”

“Figg—”

“Corlan, there is always going to be a Twelve.” That silenced him. Eli gestured toward the operations floor. “If it isn’t Twelve, it’ll be Eight. Or Fifteen. Or some kriffing grain hauler that arrived six hours late and somehow became my problem. I stay another hour, there’ll be another one after that.” Corlan said nothing. “You’ll replace me.”

“Not today. I need the job done.”

“Then today is going to be unpleasant.”

“For everyone.”

“Yes.”

Eli looked around the operations floor. Most of the people working the boards had been there when he arrived. Some had been there longer. He had seen them eat at their terminals, miss breaks, trade shifts because somebody else had failed to turn up and stay hours past the point when the schedule said they were supposed to leave.

He looked back at Corlan. “You know what might help with that?” Corlan’s expression suggested he already disliked the answer. “Pay them more.”

“Figg—”

“Seriously.”

Corlan exhaled sharply. “You think I set payroll?”

“I think you’re the one asking people to stay.”

That landed.

Eli continued before he could answer. “If you can’t pay every extra hour, pay some of them. Or give people a bonus when you keep them half a shift past schedule. An extra someething. A transport voucher. A day off after a bad week. Anything.”

Corlan stared at him. “You’ve been here seven days and now you’re telling me how to run my floor?”

“I’ve been here seven days and I already know why you’re short on people.”

The coordinator at the next station made a tiny sound and immediately disguised it as a cough. Corlan looked toward her. She became very interested in her screen.

Eli folded his arms. “You’ve got good people here. You just keep asking them for more and acting like nine hours and thirteen are the same thing.”

“Welcome to port work.”

“That’s nerfshit and you know it.”

Corlan’s eyebrows went up.

Eli was too tired to care. “People will put up with a lot if they think somebody notices. You don’t even have to fix everything. Just stop pretending the extra hours don’t exist.”

Corlan glanced toward the board again. Twelve was still flashing red. So were several others. “You finished?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now finish Twelve.”

Eli almost smiled. “No.”

Corlan swore under his breath. “Kriffing stubborn bastard.”

“Probably.” Eli turned toward Stent. “Come on.”

They walked out of South Three together. Corlan called something after him that Eli chose not to hear. For the first time in a week, he left the operations floor while several problems were still flashing red behind him. Somehow, the port continued to exist.