Tales from the Inbox: The Criminal’s Preoccupation

2953-10-29 – Tales from the Inbox: The Criminal’s Preoccupation 

Mari Robertson arrived at the front of the Songbird’s Roost before her friend Eddy Rothbauer. Despite its whimsical name, the Songbird was one of the roughest bars in the entire Sprawl complex; the sign depicted not one of Earth’s many colorful singing avians, but a flightless xeno-specimen with a jagged beak and a predatory gleam in its eyes. No doubt the proprietor thought this amusing, but Mari had always thought the place would be more intimidating still if its advertisement was as whimsical as its name. 

Mari had of course already sent out the queries she’d promised Eddy. She knew most of the people on the station who supplied questionably moral but not officially illegal demand to the many visitors coming through Sagittarius Gate. Surely if one of them had vanished with a large sum of money, one of the others would have heard of it, and besides, anyone who didn’t respond within a few minutes to a vague query about high value business was probably a suspect anyway. 

As she loitered across from the Songbird’s door, Mari was thinking, however, of the datapack, not of Eddy, his friends, and their missing money. If she could bury herself in this problem, it would give her an excellent alibi for the theft whenever it was discovered, and in the mean time it was, while not precisely safe, stashed somewhere that didn’t trace back to her. If it were found by someone else, she’d be out a massive payout in a few weeks or months, but at least the chance of trouble was looking remote. 

Eddy appeared from the direction of the nearest public lift well, and Mari waited until he was about to enter the Songbird before darting across the concourse and sliding her arm into his. As they went in, the murmur of pedestrian traffic was drowned out by the crashing music that always filled the bar, making it impossible for anyone to overhear anyone even at the next table.  

The loud music was, Mari suspected, an anti-brawling measure more than anything else; if people couldn’t hear each other, they couldn’t take umbrage at snide comments made in nearby conversations. It certainly made the place convenient for any conversation one wanted to guarantee was held off the record; most recording technology simply couldn’t filter out the discordant music enough to make speech intelligible later. 

Mari slid into a booth along the left wall, and Eddy sat down next to her, leaving the seat opposite vacant. They’d be able to converse in low tones better this way, and it would make her being approached by libidinous patrons somewhat less likely.  

“Do we know who the Glitters were dealing with?” Mari poked the hard-button table interface to order a pair of drinks. 

“They gave me a name, but it’s an alias.” Eddy shook his head. “No records in the station system of a person by that name. It’s not one I’ve seen any of the usual suspects use either.” 

Mari nodded. “Someone scammed them. Aren’t they supposed to be nearly telepathic? Who scams a telepath anyway?” 

“They can't read minds.” Eddy shrugged. “They’re just really observant. At least that’s what they say.” 

“Even if they aren’t.” Mari waved her hand, suppressing a shudder at how close to home this conversation was. “Still sounds like a death wish.” 

“Sounds like a good way to be at their mercy.” Eddy nodded. “That might be worse than being dead. They’re basically all diplomats, and diplomat is just another word for politician.” 

He didn’t need to explain this; they had both escaped the mesh-network of interwoven petty dictatorships that was the Silver Strand. It was a fine line to walk, doing odd black work for the rich and influential, without being dragged into their orbit, and one scam gone bad would send the perpetrator spiraling down into such a gravity well from which there was rarely any escape. 

Mari opened her mouth to mention that her queries were still not conclusive, but a hard set to Eddy’s jaw gave her pause. She realized with a start that he’d spoken from far too personal experience – he was on that spiraling course already, prioritizing the needs of the Gilhedat councilors for a quick turnaround because the alternative was them letting the station authorities know about something they had caught him doing. In that moment, she soured on the idea of ever going back for that datapack. She felt bad for Eddy, but she couldn’t help him, she could only help herself. 

“I had worried it was you, actually.” Eddy looked hard at Mari. “You looked like you had seen a ghost when those Gilhedat followed me into Rennecker’s.” 

“Me?” Mari smiled. “If it was, I’d have cut you in already, and we’d both be on a transport to somewhere anonymous and remote.” She couldn’t help but wince; if Eddy was already snared, he couldn’t have accepted such generosity, but she couldn’t let on that she’d guessed his predicament. 

“Sure.” Eddy smiled back doubtfully. “We’ve got to move fast to make sure whoever did it, isn’t doing that right now. Who do you reckon we start with?” 

“My queries aren’t done, but based on the responses I’ve got and I haven’t got, I say we pay Schmelling a visit. This is something he’s dumb enough to try.” 

Eddy rolled his eyes. Albie Schmelling was a big, bluff Philadelphian who managed somehow to be one of the station’s most effective con-men. Neither of them liked him very much. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” 

Their drink bottles arrived from the delivery chute, and Eddy reached over to drop a few chits into the payment receptacle. “Drink up. I’ll look to see if he has any outbound bookings.” 

Mari’s fear of being pulled out of the grey trades and into being a semi-official agent for some flavor of officialdom is strange to most of us; it would seem this is an easy path to legitimacy for such a person who wanted out of their high risk lifestyle while still using all their existing skills. One should keep in mind however that personal autonomy (if only for the purposes of misusing one’s talents and time) is highly prized by those who find themselves drawn to this sort of lifestyle; they resent anything that smells like having a permanent boss. 

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Tales from the Inbox: Criminally Inconvenient Timing

2953-10-22 – Tales from the Inbox: Criminally Inconvenient Timing 

Eddy Rothbauer scanned the lightly populated Rennecker’s dining space. Mari Robertson ducked her head down as if reading something on her wristcuff in her lap, but it was no use; he noticed her in moments, waved, and headed for her corner booth. 

Cursing under her breath, Mari set down her sandwich and waved back tepidly. Eddy couldn’t avoid noticing something was up if he stayed long enough. Mari’s only hope was that he knew to keep his trap shut in front of his unfortunate choice in friends. 

“I thought I might find you here.” Eddy slid into the booth across from Mari, while the two figures in the brown cloaks remained standing, arms folded and heads down. “This lot’s hiring, and it’s going to be more than I can handle on my own. You want in?” 

Normally, of course, Mari would have leapt at the prospect of a high-budget, semi-official gig funded by the deep pockets of alien diplomats. Today, however, she wanted nothing more than to beg off. She opened her mouth to offer the first excuse that came to mind, but hesitated. Would denying such an offer be considered suspicious, when the investigation over the missing data-pack started? “I’d sure consider it, Eddy, but I don't really want to talk business while my food gets cold. Have them send over the terms and I’ll let you know by the end of the shift, okay?” 

“Sure, sure.” Eddy looked up to one of the robed figures, who nodded without looking up. “This is, uh. Time sensitive.” 

Mari took a bite of her sandwich to make hiding a scowl less noticeable. “It... usually is.” She pointedly spoke with her mouth full, to remind him that she was supposed to be eating. The ersatz beef in the sandwich tasted fine, but as usual, she found herself wishing it was the real thing. The added need to eat as casually as possible when she was on edge didn’t help the experience, of course. 

Eddy, overly observant oaf that he was, noticed right away that something wasn’t to Mari’s liking. “Something wrong?” He gestured to the food. 

“Eh.” Mari shrugged and set the sandwich down. What could she do to give Eddy the hint without raising suspicions from his new friends? “How uh. How time sensitive are we talking?” 

“I was hoping to have an answer already. These guys want something moving right away.” Eddy shrugged apologetically. “It’s all right if you’d rather not. I can probably get Orrie to -” 

Mari winced. Orrie was competent, but she was also Eddy’s recently separated ex, and she knew he hadn’t recovered from that mess. But how could she go right to work for the Glitters while she was still carrying something she’d lifted from them? She’d have to stash it. “Okay, fine. What’s the job?” 

“It’s, ah. Apparently pretty delicate.” Eddy glanced up at the two figures standing over them, “These guys have some... let’s call it grey-market business they’ve been doing, and their partners up and vanished with a lot of money. They want us to find out what happened, and to try to get anything back we can.” 

Mari ate as Eddy talked, trying to ignore the two figures and attend only to him. She nodded along, then let the silence hang in the air when he finished for several seconds. “And they need this done fast?” 

“By this time tomorrow, more or less.” 

Mari sighed. She couldn’t really be herself if she let this pass her by, especially if it meant sending Eddy back into the clutches of the woman who’d only recently jilted him. It wouldn’t pay as much as the datapack, but it would pay out far more quickly. “Can you give me half an hour? I’ll run some queries and meet you over at the Songbird.” 

Eddy glanced up at his associates, one of whom nodded imperceptibly. “Okay.” He slid out of the booth. “Thanks, Mari.” 

The two aliens followed Eddy out of Rennecker’s, and only when they were gone did Mari breathe a sigh of relief. Half an hour wasn’t much time, but she knew plenty of places on the station to drop something like a datapack where it would still be there the next day.  

The easiest, of course, was right where she was sitting. The benches used in Rennecker’s booth seating were hollow rectangles of extruded metal tubing with a thin veneer of textured wood-grain polymer applied for decoration. It was a matter of only a moment to slip the datapack out of her pocket once more and into the gap where the bench had been pushed against the subtly curved bulkhead at the back of the diner compartment. 

The little device made a clunking noise as it landed inside the bench, but nobody nearby paid this any mind. Mari breathed a sigh of relief, then turned her attention to the rest of her meal. If Eddy was right about the time pressure, it might be the better part of a full day before she had time to sit down and eat again. 

For the same reason Strand spacers are regarded as disreputable, they are also often sought out for particular tasks, for which their (on average) relative willingness to do jobs of questionable legality. This is at least as true on the Sprawl station as anywhere else, despite the vast distance between this location and the nearest part of the Silver Strand. 

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Tales from the Inbox: The Perfect Crime

2953-10-15 – Tales from the Inbox: The Perfect Crime 

Obviously, the position of this embed team and Cosmic Background generally is anti-crime; that is, if you are so stupid as to victimize your fellow sapients, there should be a penalty for these actions. 

That being said, crime and fraud has become a way of life in some systems, especially those of the Silver Strand region. Spacers who hail from the Strand are notorious for having checkered backgrounds, and those from elsewhere who ply those lanes for too long often pick up a similar reputation. Culturally, crime just seems to be seen as another way of life in that region, one that needs to be guarded against, but whose participants one can hardly blame. 

Obviously, this reputation makes Strand-native spacers rather unpopular in some circles, but so many of them have made their way to this side of the Gap looking for wealth or meaning that it has led to a number of interesting altercations on the Sprawl and other habitats. 

Mari Robertson crept into Rennecker’s Diner, passed her usual table, and slid into a corner booth at the back, near the kitchen doors. The Sprawl had become a big place in recent years, but today, it felt small, cramped, and intimate. Anywhere she went, she could run into someone, but going somewhere she normally avoided would be no better; it would be obvious for anyone actually looking for her that something was up. 

Normally, Mari summoned one of the wait-staff using the call button and asked about specials before ordering, but this time, she punched in an unassuming order for the chef’s “famous” prime “rib” sandwich. Real beef was of course not an ingredient in this dish; the meat was actually that of a fish-like creature from one of the colonial target worlds nearby, prepared to mostly resemble tender beef. The creature had taken well to growing in captivity, and nearly a square kilometer of Sprawl deck had been converted over to producing this ready source of protein for both locals and spacers. Mari didn’t particularly like it. She’d actually had real Earth beef once, and nothing really compared to it. It was better than meat-textured food-fab slurry, but only a little bit. 

Because it was one of the most commonly ordered items on the menu, one of the kitchen staff darted out with the food and a bottle of cheap synthetic beer barely three minutes after she’d ordered. It was still so hot she couldn’t eat right away, so she cracked open the beer and took a drink, eyeing the trickle of patrons in and out of Rennecker’s main entrance. Fortunately, it was the slump in the middle of a shift; less than a third of the seats were occupied, and those mainly by people hunched over slates, distractedly sipping coffee or nibbling at fried finger-food. 

When none of the staff were in view, Mari slipped a hand into her pocket and pulled out the datapack she’d lifted a few hours before, looking down at it. She’d sworn off pickpocketing years ago when she’d been on the run out of Cardona’s, but when an alien diplomat left a datapack unattended for so long, it was simply impossible to pass up.  

She didn’t try to access it. Most likely it was encrypted, and even if it wasn’t, it might have read-logging. No, there was no point trying to get the data until she was ready to destroy the original immediately. It was the only way to be sure the theft was untraceable. 

There was of course some possibility the security feeds had seen her brush against the bag which the xeno diplomat had so casually tossed the datapack into, but she knew how to make sure there’d be nothing concrete from any angle. As long as nobody caught her before she’d destroyed the original, she’d get away clean, but she also needed to avoid doing any suspicious computer activity for a few hours. That way, anyone else who did any bulk data copying would be the first suspects, while she was on the feeds going out for an unassuming lunch, drinking a beer, and generally doing nothing indicative of a big score. 

Acting casual was, of course, nerve-wracking, and any of her associates would be able to tell something was up if they talked to her too long.  

She’d considered taking her little runabout out for a run to one of the mining installations, but this too might draw suspicion. No, the best thing would be to brazenly go about her business, but to avoid her usual crowd. Most of them would understand, if they knew. 

Fortunately, the datapack itself was a standard unit, nearly identical to two others she owned. She could hold up one of those if at any point someone did have her on record holding a datapack shortly after the theft – as long as the questions didn’t reach her before she’d actually stashed or destroyed this one. 

The food finally cooled enough for Mari to start eating. As she raised the ersatz beef sandwich to her mouth, though, she hesitated. The trio who’d just entered Rennecker’s made her blood run cold. One of them was Eddy Rothbauer, a fellow fugitive from the Strand region who she’d done a lot of work with on the Sprawl. The other two were slim, elfin figures in brown cloaks and hoods. The long-boned hands that showed at the cuffs of those robes were a distinct golden color. If these weren’t the diplomats she’d just stolen from, they were more of the same kind. 

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Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Undeniable Contract

2953-10-08 – Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Undeniable Contract 

“Well.” Kell rubbed his claw-like hands together. “This is a marvelous business proposal. Do send over the particulars, and we will talk it over.” 

Kel stood, seeming to think this would make Commander Daseta return to Cour-de-Lion. After an awkward pause, though, Sadek Sherburn realized the woman in the black uniform had no intention of going anywhere without a decision – the right decision, by Sovereign standards. 

“The contract was sent over the moment I stepped aboard.” Daseta looked at each of them, but she seemed to let her gaze linger on Sadek the longest. “Take all the time you need to read it. The particulars can be... adjusted, if necessary, but I read everything myself. You will find it quite generous.” 

With that, she sauntered over to the far end of the lounge, where the compartment abutted Traveler's transparent outer hull. Only an inner layer of transparency-adjusting smart-glass added during the refit protected the crew from the heat and radiation of nearby stars; Kel’s people hadn’t seemed to think this feature necessary. The view she framed herself in was quite spectacular as ever, with the ruddy twin stars of the nameless star system on whose outskirts they drifted glowing in the center of the thready haze which showed the paths of two concentric asteroid rings. 

Sadek watched the Sovereign officer for a few moments while his human shipmates pulled up the contract on their wristcuff screens and Kel did likewise on his slate. She stood uncannily still, hands clasped behind her back, and her wispy mane of hairlike plumage cascading past her shoulder blades. Again, he wondered at the extensive surgeries required to make an alien look and move that human. How much had all that cost? What had she agreed to it for? Could it possibly have been worth it? Surely her own kind no longer looked at her as one of their own, but no human would ever regard her without some uncanny discomfort, no matter how attractive the surgeries had made her. 

Sadek glanced to the others, then gestured with his head to Daseta. They would obviously be uncomfortable talking over the contract while she was within earshot. Sadek, who had never been even a strong recreational reader, would be of little help parsing through a predatory Sovereign contract, or devising a plan of escaping it if Kel desired. 

Kel and Elliott Deadman looked back at him blankly, but Alicia Powers seemed to understand. She smiled slyly and nodded her head encouragingly.  

Sadek stood up and cleared his throat. “Commander Daseta, while my boss goes over the contract, would you like a tour of the ship?” 

Daseta spun on her heel. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather read it for yourself?” 

“I trust my shipmates’ head for legal language more than my own.” Sadek shrugged. “It’s no trouble at all.” 

Daseta met Sadek’s eyes and smirked. She seemed almost to see through him and guess his intentions in that instant, but then she nodded and gestured toward the corridor. “Lead the way, Mr. Sherburn.” 

Sadek, wondering how inefficiently he could give a tour without the mercenary catching on, headed forward to the astrogation compartment. The view there was better than anywhere else except the bridge, though now it would be blocked in large part by the bulk of Cour-de-Lion alongside. It would also be the logical starting point for any tour of a ship whose compartment layout was vastly unintuitive to any human spacer. 

Daseta surveyed the compartment with a glance. “Very nice. I would have made this the bridge, on a ship like this.” She stepped into the center of its semicircular deck, which was sloped like half of a shallow bowl. 

“Auxiliary astrogation.” Sadek muttered, gesturing to the backup navcomputer console off to one side. “Kel says his people like to keep this space clear, but he never said why.” 

Daseta turned back toward Sadek. “He won't tell you because this is where the Iatarans put weapons. When they want them, anyway.” 

“Weapons?” Sadek frowned. “Inside the hull? How do you know that, anyway?” 

The red-skinned woman laughed. “Not much of a tech, I suppose. That’s all right. Truth is, we don’t know it for sure, but it’s obvious if you think about it a bit. Their hull material is almost totally transparent to visible light and some forms of radiation.” 

Sadek frowned. It took a moment for him to realize the implication of this. “They can mount their lasers inside the hull. Brilliant.” 

“Except it doesn’t protect them from return fire either.” Daseta shook her head. “Poor bastards, when they go to war, burning each other to cinders inside these hulls, then towing the glowing derelicts home for re-use.” 

Sadek, who hadn’t seen any warlike inclination of Kel or of the two or three others he’d met on their brief visit to Iataran space, shuddered at the notion of those glassy ships unpacking laser cannons from the cargo hold and setting them up on gimbals in every open space aboard. It would be a crude and inefficient way of waging large-scale war, but for sudden, sharp border squabbles between the mercantile factions that seemed to be the main power brokers of their society, it made perfect sense. 

Daseta, of course, didn’t fail to register the reaction. “Did you think dear Kel was as harmless as he prefers to let on?” She smiled coldly, and her broad mouth gave her face a momentarily shark-like aspect. "Or that the Iatarans were free of Incarnation control simply because they were too insignificant?” 

Sadek shrugged. “I never thought of it that way, Commander.” 

“That’s no surprise.” Daseta took a step towards Sadek. “What is a surprise is, what you were thinking about instead.” 

Sadek started at this, but then he shook his head and rolled his eyes. “With all due respect, you don’t know anything about what I’m thinking about.” He’d seen a few bargain-bin mentalists in his day; it was always part hyper-observation and part bluff, and it was almost a relief to find Sovereign officers trying to pull such simple tricks to put him off his guard. 

“I’ve seen your dossier. And it paints a pretty clear picture, if you know how to look.” Here she held up three fingers. “You knew Kel was more trouble than he let on, but here you are, even though you couldn’t see how.” She put one finger down. “You gave that little tech Deadman a chance, even over more experienced candidates.” The second finger dropped. “And you spent so much of my little presentation feeling sorry for me for no damned reason – yes, I could tell – that you haven’t even now realized we’re offering to make you lot rich, entirely legally and above board.” 

Sadek stared for a moment. “Feeling sorry for you?” Was that really what he had been doing? He supposed one could look at it that way. 

“The picture I get from your dossier is that you’re too conscientious for your own good, Mr. Sherburn.” Daseta held out her hands. “You do things because it’s good for other people, not because it’s good for you. Letting others get ahead before you put you on that hulk of a mining ship all those years, but it also got you in with Kel. My advice is: don’t change that.” 

Sadek coughed. “Did I ask for a psych eval? Commander Daseta, you just met me. I don’t need your advice.” 

Daseta smiled and ran one delicate, red-skinned hand through her hair. “Trust me; where we're going, you really do.” 

“If you say so.” Sadek turned away. “Wait. We?” 

Commander Daseta, according to Sadek’s account, was attached to Traveler’s crew more or less permanently. To my knowledge, she is still aboard now; at least, Sadek’s recent account of the circumstances of their falling in with Sovereign does not hint at her departure later. 

I have found this Daseta’s datasphere profile; she’s from an Atro’me enclave in the Herakles IV system and has academic credentials as a psychologist specializing in human-xeno social interactions. She seems to have worked for one of the passenger liner firms on screening mechanisms for both crew and prospective passengers before Sovereign hired her on. Why she has a military rank with them (Sovereign has parallel internal civilian and military hierarchies) is unclear.  

As with most Sovereign-affiliated spacers, her profile goes pretty dark after the date of her joining the company, but posts before that seem normal enough. 

[N.T.B. - Kel’s crew would be an interesting case study for someone with that specialization, though being part of the case study as a xeno on the crew rather spoils any research benefits.] 

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