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.
