Page 147 of Trove’s Purpose

“That I can do,” Alred said.

It didn’t take long. Within moments, Alred had a list forming in the air beside the 3D hologram – that was getting more and more detailed the longer he had it up. The ship roster for the day was longer than she expected. He separated it into two columns, docking and undocking she imagined. The undocking list was the longer of the two. For all that this station wasn’t very large, it saw a lot of traffic for starships coming in and leaving. Since it was so small, no ship had any reason to linger, so the docking was never longer than the time it took to load or unload whatever they were bringing.

“Nothing looks very familiar,” Alred said.

“What does very mean?” Chee asked, clinging to that word. Almost with hope.

But he shook his head apologetically, dashing it already. “There are two on this list that we’ve crossed paths with before, but that’s not uncommon given that we’re in the same business. We don’t have any relationship to their crews, and we don’t service the same customer base, so there’s no real overlap or competition. They’re irrelevant.”

“Remove any that undocked before Trove went to the center,” Tanin said.

A few of the names were erased.

“Have any ships been here longer than a day?”

“None.”

“How many docks can you see through the cameras?”

“All of them.”

“How many have loaded something big enough to hide Trove’s body inside?”

“All of them.”

Chee shuddered. There was just something so cold and definitive about the way he said that. He was just pragmatic, she knew. He wasn’t going to let something like affections make him refuse to see the worst case scenario.

But it still hurt to hear.

“Look into each ship. Find who owns them, where they’re from, any connection they might have to us at all.”

Alred nodded and, though he wasn’t moving, Chee knew that he was already hard at work.

There was nothing else they could really do. Alred and the twins needed time to gather information. It wasn’t like she could just go into the station and start looking. And it wouldn’t matter even if she did. Alred had already done that, was actively doing it even now. If it was just a matter of looking around, Trove would have been located already.

She couldn’t help. She couldn’t do anything for them. And it was the most helpless, worthless feeling she had ever experienced. Akin to sitting, forcibly silenced, in the court room, watching as a cut throat lawyer ripped her dad’s character apart and painted him as a murderer while she could say absolutely nothing in his defense.

She hated it. She hated being useless. Being weak. Being helpless.

But there was nothing else to do in this situation but sit and wait.

And wait.

And wait…

It seemed to take hours – though she knew it couldn’t be that long – for the twins to return to the ship. She didn’t know where they had been on the little 3D model Alred made, there was too much going on for her to spot them amongst all the movement until she saw their familiar shapes already walking up the loading ramp of the ship.

The inside of the Vainglory wasn’t depicted – neither were the insides of any of the other ships. So, she lost track of them until they were stepping onto the bridge. Her belly twisted up in knots as they approached. The doors opened for them automatically.

Naturally, it was Sorbet who spoke-

“He left the healing center almost a mark ago. The healing was completed successfully. He did not make it back to the main thoroughfare. He was lost somewhere between this hall and this one here.” As he spoke, he pointed to two different halls in the diagram. The one right outside the healing center, and the short one that let out into the main loading bay. But then he pointed to another hall on the other side, where the other, identical loading bay was, mirroring the first. “He could also have been taken out here. There’s also a maintenance tunnel that goes down here, but it’s a long ladder tunnel, it would be difficult to maneuver a limp body through there; it would be impossible to do it with a conscious, fighting one. That’s a possible but least likely escape route.”

“What would you two do?” Tanin asked.

“Best ambush spot is here.” Sorbet pointed to a short hall just outside the healing center. “It’s a blind turn from the center and can’t be seen from either loading docks. This place isn’t highly traveled, as the only thing here is the healing center. If someone was quick, they could take out a person, hide them in a crate, and rejoin either loading dock without anyone noticing. We weren’t able to determine which way he might have gone, however.”

Tanin nodded once, acknowledging their report. “Go back down. Get the others. Make sure we’re ready to take off in an instant.”