Interstellar Flight (Mr. M & missedstations)

Taggart raised an eyebrow. "That wouldn't happen to have been Mohammed McGinty's, would it?" That was certainly in the running for the cheapest bar on that particular moon, and it would have been his own nominee.

He'd been talking more arranged marriages, business mergers in the guise of romance. Those were still practiced, particularly among the Aristos, and certain cultures-of-origin were more prone to it than others. But clearly, that's not what had happened here, and he had married into the family, taking the Kostukova name. This was also fairly common; in areas where it mattered, the spouse with lesser status would take the name of the spouse with greater status. Taggart never ran in those circles, of course; his peers usually either followed some ancient tradition, usually patriarchal, or simply kept their own names.

Still, he found her more interesting by her admission that she'd fallen for a tramp trader type, an independent shipper. Clearly, she could occasionally look past the barriers of class and status, even if she didn't quite put herself in the other person's shoes, and this made her... well, more useful, in Taggart's eyes. Less useless. He was, at heart, a pragmatic man, and the frippery of formality (outside of basic politeness) and style and social status, it all struck him as a waste of energy. Therefore, those who habitually concerned themselves with hardly anything but that (which include most of the Aristos out there, particularly concentrated in the young and foolish) were of limited value, by his standards. Those who had the capability to look past their own concerns, however, also theoretically had the capability to know when those concerns weren't applicable or valid. And this, in itself, made them potentially whole people, he thought.

And he was glad Ilena was capable of this. He had no doubts as to her business acumen, she was never one of those trust-fund dolts who wrangled themselves a holo series about their vapid lives, but the fact that she could see value enough in a person "below her station" to actually marry them, that was a serious mark in her favor. So he listened with interest as she continued.

'I think it was.' Ilena frowned at the name. Mohammed McGinty's. She would never set foot in there again. 'The drinks were vile and the whole thing was filthy. Including the glasses.' She considered herself lucky that she had a boosted immune system and that she picked up no diseases. After that, she learned not to let anyone else pick venues for dates, and James had liked spending her money in entertaining and amusing ways. She'd let him. Without children, her ridiculous balances in savings accounts were utterly pointless.

'He used my name to get some better deals.' She paused, and then admitted, 'But probably also to get past port authorities without getting his cargo inspected quite as thoroughly.' She drummed her fingers on the table. Why was this all occurring to her now, not when she actually had him around? How sad to have fallen in that age old trap. She was finally being able to think more rationally about the relationship. At least, she didn't feel at all used. He had spent her money, she'd used him for sex. And there was a large amount of affection on both sides.

'I would prefer to find him alive, but it has been three months when his ship was last seen. I want to know why.' It would be foolish to have high hopes with this type of venture. Virtually everyone had advised her to hold a funeral and move on, but she refused to do so without proof.

'A little about you, now. I guess you don't have anyone in your life?'

Taggart took a meditative sip of his water before responding. "Well, I have had people in my life. I have friends, and they include women, and sometimes that includes a bit of sex, because I don't believe in random emotionless hook-ups, whether paid for or not. I was engaged for a goodly while, actually, but..." he shrugged. "It's the life. She could not deal with the idea that I might not come back from a mission at some point. That's always a risk, and I accept it, but it's hard for the people you care about."

"Plus," and he got a little bashful about this part, although he couldn't really say why, if he had been asked. "I don't know. It started interfering with my job. I had difficulty spending long periods apart from her. I was in love, I didn't want to leave her to go out on missions, and she wouldn't come with to act as support; she had a touch of space-phobia, couldn't bear to be on anything smaller than a starliner, or she'd start to hyperventilate. So she couldn't come with me, and I couldn't..."

He shrugged. "This kind of thing is all I've really been good at. Oh, I'm a fine pilot, a good technician, I've learned a lot about a lot, but my particular genius, as my old drill instructor used to comment, is in the military operation itself. And that's the only way I could really see to make my fortune -- er, so to speak." He had to remind himself that "fortune" was a relative term, as this woman probably spent as much as his entire retirement fund on shoes in a year. "So it's not like I could just give that up and go work at the terraforming plant."

"So," he finally sighed. "We broke up. And since then I've kind of poured myself into my work. I'll still look up old friends if I take some leave on the right planetside, but I haven't been motivated to do more than just socialize." He pushed away from the counter. "Oh, are you done?" He took her empty plate and bulb and sealed them up inside the dishwasher, along with his own; to conserve ship's resources, he didn't run it quite yet.

"Well, perhaps that's too much information," he chuckled. He gestured to the space on the other side of the game board. "May I? As long as we're still talking..." His hand hovered over the tap-plate to unfold the opposing seat.

All her lovers had to accept was that eventually she might get bored of paying for everything. Or that she might lose a lot of money on the stock market and then want to smash things for a day or two. Her job had never really had a risk of death, even if she had secretly felt a little thrill of fear when she and her bodyguards had sometimes entered the lairs of underworld kings. But she was Ilena Kostukova, and she had never faced her mortality.

'I understand, I think.'

A sad story, but then again so many were. Space was harsh – it didn't take good care of lovers or families. It was littered with stories of lost loves, betrayals. His story was typical of those who could not settle, who had to keep travelling the emptiness of space for their living. It was hard to be the one to sit and wait for one's lover to return after month long trips. Ships were fast, but messages were still slow and did not transmit well, and to hear from loved ones was difficult.

She could imagine how hard it would be to change a career to something that she didn't love, or wasn't good at. It would be like living in black and white after spending her whole life in full colour. However much she loved someone, she could not surrender to live in that way.

'Thank you,' Ilena said as he put away her cutlery. 'Of course, sit down! It is your ship, after all.' She would only imagine to dictate who stood and who sat in her own house. Unlike some egomaniacs, Ilena knew the limits of her powers and made no attempts to command people away from her own ground.

“Yes, it is my ship, but you are the paying guest, it's your job we're on, so you get to have a preference.” He smiled at her as he sat down and crossed one leg over his opposite knee. “Though I'm glad you aren't trying to exert that authority at every turn. We may be in close quarters for a long while, and that sort of thing can get old fairly quickly.”

He sighed, relaxing. There really wasn't much of anything left to do until the Long Jump was over, so he was pleased to chat and get to know his client a little bit better. “Well, that's enough about my sob story, and your heartbreak is why we're even here. So let's turn to somewhat more pleasant conversation, shall we? Do you have any hobbies, ma'am, or do you find your work is your pleasure? I, myself... I get satisfaction from my work, and I'm good at it, but it's not my passion, really, just my gift. What's yours, if you don't mind me asking?”

'But am I not a guest in your home?' Ilena countered. She had not been able to find a permanent address for Taggart, so she simply assumed that like many such men he lived on his ship.

'Ah, work is all good, but it is work after all.' Work she did by choice, but nevertheless she could not live just working. 'I enjoy gardening, actually. It is very difficult to get plants from different planets to grow together... There are so many different soil conditions, and often I have to spend a long time in the lab, but it is worth it to see the harmony and beauty in the end. Let me show you.'

She unclipped her other bracer and laid it flat on the table between them, then with a few taps brought up images of her habitat. It was a chaos of greens and purples, carefully planned to look like jungle. There were plants from virtually every inhabited planet there, carefully chosen for their looks, engineered to grow in the conditions of her habitat on Ekkar's Jewel. It was almost impossible to think that something like that could exist on a dust world that the moon was.

'I do like carnivorous plants as well, but they are harder to keep... I have to keep my collection elsewhere. Maybe I should show you around sometime if we are both ever on Iras.' Plenty of space explorers had fallen victims to such plants before they were catalogued, recognised, and finally ended up in someone's menagerie. It was hard for her to keep the sense of pride out of her voice.

Taggart bent over the image displayed on the bracer. "Oh, that's gorgeous! You did all that yourself?" He whistled appreciatively. At her mention of carnivorous plants he chuckled. "I would enjoy that, but I would be concerned about flashbacks. Have you heard of the ikki vine? That's what the natives on Arrasii call it. Got these hollow, saw-toothed thorns on prehensile vines, which it uses like a vampire. I was working there, locating the jungle camp of this bandit tribe, and they'd seeded the whole area with the things." He rolled up his sleeve and showed a ring of short straight scars around his forearm, like someone had drawn a dotted line all the way around with a bayonet. "This is what it did through scout armor bracers. Oh, but it was painful! I needed a whole unit of plasma to replace what it drank. Though I understand human biochemistry gives the things indigetsion: we smell tasty, but don't agree with them." He rolled his sleeve back down. "I'm sure you know how that works. I recall there were pretty flowers on it, though; that's one thing that distracted me while it took hold."

"My hobby's got to be more portable, because I do live on the ship, as you observed. So I collect music and movies. Music's great because I can listen to it while I'm doing something routine, like cooking or maintenance, and movies are just the whole package, aren't they? Audio and visual and emotion and action and everything. I used to read a lot when I was a kid, and I have probably an average text library on the computer, but it just never seized me like the others do. I suppose, as passions go, it's pretty passive, but it's the collecting, the seeking out and sampling that interests me almost as much as the enjoying of it when I've located it. When I have free time, that is."

He leaned forward a bit conspiratorially. "Sometimes? On long trips much like this? I'll just have the computer pick something at random. Oh, I'll say 'something with comedy' or 'something not from Old Earth' or 'something starring so-and-so', put some conditions on the selection, but beyond that? Utterly random. And the strange thing? There's usually something in the result that suits my mood, in some way. I don't know if that's just my psychology, or if fate works in mysterious movie-watching ways, but that's the result." He shrugged and smiled and leaned back, still gazing at the lovely images of her garden. That was really something impressive and beautiful; he couldn't tell by looking if they were native species or not, he kind of didn't think so, given the garden was on the Jewel, but even if it was something of a status-symbol expensive luxury, it was still an achievement.

'Oh, I do have one. Very hard to grow though, and only really flowers if it is fed well... It is hard to keep it outside its natural environment. I had to give up and build a glasshouse specially for it. All the pruning needs to be done in full body armour.' She really did enjoy that part, and she was fascinated by his scar. Her hand twitched, almost as if she wanted to reach out and touch it.

'Have you ever seen the Iryaan Tree? It is like a far bigger version of a Venus fly-trap.' She showed him another image, of a grey barked and massive plant, whose branches snaked both across the ground and into the air. 'The thorns leak paralysing poison, and the branches are sensitive to pressure. Once they feel it, they pull in the prey towards the trunk. This specimen is two hundred years old, it cost me ridiculous amount of money to transport.' Ridiculous for her, not for him. 'I think it is the only one existing off its native planet,' she said proudly. 'Though I am not entirely sure if it is plant or animal... It seems to have some capacity to feel pain.' The subject fascinated her: Ilena could go on for hours. She was planning to perform further experiments at some point.

She understood the passion of the collector. 'I do not read much either. Only biological journals and business news... I enjoy the ownership, and well, there is nothing quite like watching a plant digest.' There was her little twisted Aristo streak. She probably had fantasies about feeding her enemies to her plants. 'When I am not on Jewel, the garden there is open to the public.' Though of course not everyone could afford the trip. 'When I am there, I live in it... I am modified to withstand extreme weather, so it is really quite comfortable.' She wasn't sure how he would react to that. While many people were happy with the addition of implants, biological modifications were still frowned upon in some circles.

'Maybe the ship knows you better than you think,' she said with a smile.

He could tell by her reactions, getting more animated, getting into the description of the plants, she was really warming to the subject. Which was fine, but after thinking about his one close call, he suspected he'd shudder if she got too detailed about more of her plants, so he moved past it as adroitly as he was able, though perhaps he might be more interested another time.


"Modified? Wow, that must be convenient!" He'd learned enough in his work not to begrudge any advantage, as long as it didn't sacrifice too much else that was important. That's why he didn't begrudge anyone their implants or mods, whether surgical or genetic. He had been surprised she didn't use any sort of HALO display, choosing the bracers instead, but he somehow wasn't surprised that she had the much more expensive biological modifications. He knew those kinds of things were frowned upon by some, but he wasn't of that crowd.


As she mentioned the ship, he tilted his head. "Well, if the computer was picking for me, perhaps. But it was supposed to be a random selection." He considered for a moment. "I would normally put better stock into the idea that the human mind can extract patterns of meaning from any sufficiently complex source, but now you've made me wonder if the computer is, indeed, spoofing the results."

"You know, now I have to test it. Do you care to join me in a movie-selection experiment?"

Ilena was a little disappointed that Taggart seemed to have a distaste for her favourite subject, but then again he had met an ikki vine... She was tactful enough not to push the subject. She wouldn't really want to meet one in a jungle either.

'It is useful... I have less need for protective suits, and better tolerances for temperatures.' She had, at some point, everything done. She had even tried the Jewel's atmosphere without a suit for five minutes. It had been an interesting experiment, but she wouldn't really care to repeat it. Even in calm weather, the dust was horrific.

'Well, I suppose it depends on the algorithm that makes the decision... I do not think that anything is truly 'random' if the decision making process is programmed. But it is not my area of knowledge.' she replied. 'Why not? I'd like to see some of your collection.'

"Excellent! This will be a good chance to see if something useful comes up. No, no -- stay right there. The Tears can project the relevant audio and images anywhere inside herself, so we can stay where we're comfortable... right here next to the galley!"

He began to talk a bit faster, more excitedly. He so rarely got to share his passion, after all. "All right, well, we can watch anything you like, but if you're doing a random selection, there's rules. We can, if you desire, set up to 3 conditions on the selection. If it's something you've seen before and don't care to see again, we can do a retry. But once selected, it's not fair to give up on the movie entirely. Pausing for snacks or necessity is allowable, long as you come back and finish. Call it a game I play with myself on those long trips."

He turned to address the ceiling, but then paused and looked back at her. "Any suggestions of other games I play with myself will be met with a strenuous 'no comment.'" He winked and grinned, then turned his face up.

"Access computer..."

~~~~~

When the Tears finally burst out of shiftspace, dropping back into realspace with barely a quiver, Taggart was back at the controls, already getting a bearing on their target planet.

It had been a pleasant trip, in general; he was feeling more comfortable around Ilena, at least in the privacy of the ship. He wasn't sure how they'd work when in the field, but they seemed to be coexisting just fine during travel. Of course, they'd kept the conversation light, and hadn't delved very deeply into each other's philosophies and habits. He was still a little bit thrown whenever her Aristo assumptions about the world came out, which had not been often, but he was willing to let it slide, and he did his best not to be obtrusive about his own beliefs. They hadn't had a direct conversation about it, so he was pleased it had not come up.

"We'll be making planetfall in about twenty minutes," he said over his shoulder. "If you want to make any calls, we're well within reasonable time delay, so you can feel free."

Ilena settled back into the chair more comfortably. This game was far better than worrying about what she would find or spending time on her own, with her thoughts. When she decided to leave all her business in the hands of agents, she had not quite realised how much time she would have waste in between ports. She should have taken more things to do with her. But this was good. She could relax, enjoy the movie.

And he had a sense of humour! How lovely. She suppressed a snort at the 'other games'. She could not have expected otherwise, all men were the same to some extent. 'I see, I see,' she told him, and if she was less well bred, she would have winked at him.

Ilena enjoyed the film and at the end, she was so comfortable she left her gloves on the table, almost as if she felt at home and that her things could not possibly intrude.

~

She had counted down the minutes to their first stop, so at least half an hour before she had already dressed and was ready. She had gone for black that day: tight fitting trousers and a vest, with a pseudo-militaristic coat and black leather gloves and boots. Her wardrobe so far was small, but she was sure she was going to make it bigger along the way. This task was unpleasant, she realised now, so she might as well enjoy the parts she could.

Ilena made her way to the cockpit to watch, settling down in the co-pilots seat, but touching nothing.

'No need,' she said, with the Aristo self importance. She could have arranged appointments, but she knew that with her importance, people would rearrange schedules around hers. Whether it was out of respect for her money, respect of her person or fear of retribution she didn't care too much to know.

"As you wish, ma'am," he said genially, and double-checked his flightpath with starport control. He requested landing space on the field; they didn't need refueling or resupply, so there was no need to pay for extra facilities. And the walk to the spaceport would do them good.

Yurna had a single developed city, and a wide variety of outlying farms and ranches. It exported a lot of food and raw materials, and traded a great deal, so the city had all the problems of any port city that moved a lot of money and goods -- bureaucracy and organized crime. But that wasn't always a problem for independent traders; the two could be played off each other. Taggart, however, did not usually have those skills; he usually let his employers handle those sorts of details. This particular one, however, had little interest in doing so. For all she wanted to be anonymous, though, she certainly seemed to be intending to rely upon her personal influence. It was a conundrum.

Still, from what he recalled, outside of the rainy season, Yurna was a fairly pleasant world. Smelled rather like cinnamon all the time, if he remembered correctly.

She wasn't going to rely on personal influence, but the influence of pure money with no strings attached. Ilena knew that she did not know how to pass like a commoner, so she would just pass like any Aristo who did not want their name to be exactly known: throwing money at every problem. She had set away a considerable fund for this endeavour.

Ilena had never been to Yurna before, and knew only what came up in the news about it. Quiet worlds like that one came up rarely though. 'What is it like, down there?' she asked, while watching the world grow bigger. She supposed that on a small world like that, the shopping won't be great, but that was as far as she could suppose.

"Outside of the rainy season, it's very pleasant around Portway. That's the only city on the planet; everything else is ranches and farms and some factories. Portway's the only avenue of goods on- and off-planet. As such, if it can be found anywhere on the world, it'll be found somewhere in Portway." He glanced behind him. "Depending on how long you want to stay here, you might find diversion that suits your taste."

"That works on a number of levels, actually, because there's a whole segment of commerce that caters to idle spacers and other sundry low-lifes. But that's true in any port city, it's just there's no competition on Yurna."

He sighed as wisps of cloud began to flicker past the canopy, and he flickered on the anti-grav to kill some velocity and ease the thermal load on the heat plates. "I've booked us an open-ended berth on the field. We can leave as soon as you've made your inquiries, or we can take some time here, whatever you feel would be best." He paused. "Yurna frowns on concealed weaponry, but I've got free rein for any openly carried pieces. How armed do you want me to go, this time around?"

'Sounds a little dull, really,' she replied. 'I suppose we shall have to make do.' A one city world was rarely rich enough to ever need or be able to afford the luxuries that she was used to. There would simply not be enough demand to make trade in rare goods or nanotech profitable. She had read of no interesting plants on Yurna either, which was a shame. It all looked rather ordinary.

'I will leave it to you to judge how much you should be armed, you are the professional.' Ilena smiled at Taggart. 'My intent is to visit the port authorities and have them dredge up the records of my husband's last stay. I wish to know what cargo he took, and what he sold. It should be easy enough. Then I suppose we can have a little look around, and then move on.'

The view from the cockpit really was something while descending into a planet's atmosphere. She felt as if she could touch the clouds, and she could see the hull glowing with the heat it had accumulated. Spectacular. Why had she never done this before? Big ships were nowhere near this elegant in their landings, nor as interesting.

He did note how enthralled she seemed to be by the view, so he did his best to give her a good show, angling the Tears slightly askew as they approached the city, giving her a panoramic view of the city, such as it was. There were a few tall buildings, some sprawling complexes; Yurna had been settled for long enough, it was well beyond a simple utilitarian settlement, there were parks and entertainment complexes, all fairly pedestrian by Ilena's standards, no doubt, but what few majestic views he could offer, he would, and the brilliantly-colored mountains behind the city, wreathed in cloud and the local blue-purple foliage, were majestic enough even despite the non-impressiveness of the city.

Once the ship landed, the rest of the warm-down was anticlimactic. As Ilena gathered what little she would need for her expedition, Taggart went back to his armory and cast a critical eye over what he had available. He had some energy weapons, but very little had been invented that was as all-around effective as simple varieties of explosion-propelled lead, so that was the majority of his collection. Artillery: no. Long-arms: no. Assault pistols: possible, but not necessary, not here. No, nothing more than a sidearm pistol would be necessary.

He selected a larger one, for simple intimidation purposes, and loaded a magazine. All his cartridges were caseless, electrically triggered, and self-contained, able to be fired under any environmental conditions. He got the appropriate holster and a couple of spare magazines and affixed them to his gear webbing. As the armory was on the way out of the Tears, he just waited for Ilena to come by on her way out, standing at parade rest.

Ilena appeared at the exit soon enough, covering virtually all of her skin again. She carried no ID, wore nothing that would link her family and carried a card linked to an anonymous account. If the port authorities were clever they might put two and two together, but why would they care? Who would ever want to actually look for such a useless man? And as far as she knew, the most illicit trade on Yurna was some psychedelic drugs: no one could get into too much trouble there.

It was remarkably nice to breathe in the air of a world that she had never tasted before. All planets had their own smell: Jewel was always dry and musty, like an old wardrobe, her home planet smelled of brine and sea weed. Here the air was a little spicy, smelling of distant warmths. Like cinnamon, perhaps? She wasn't too sure.

Ilena took Taggart's arm when she joined him. 'Business first, I think. Then we can see what there is to see around here.'

He walked with her on his arm as if he'd been doing that sort of thing his entire life. He did feel comfortable with a woman on his arm, even a beautiful woman. He tried not to put too much thought into the fact that she was an Aristo among Aristos; sometimes being mindful of a complication made it more complex than it had to be. Instead, he framed it in his head like it was one of his movies, and it worked better that way. He stuck to lighthearted comedies with his mental interpretation: it wasn't an action situation, he hoped it wasn't a thriller, and a romance would be... complicated, given they were looking for her lost husband.

"Business it is. Portmaster Control, then? It's been a couple of years, but they don't change the layout of the starports much..."

They were literally parked out in a grassy field, with neat rows of starships next to them, in lines radiating away from the edge of the city and the port control, there. Oh, the city had repair bays, it had cargo offloading points, and all that sort of thing, but they didn't need any of that, and neither did the other ships near them, so it was out on the field they went. All the better to get a feel for the environment of the world as they walked up to the actual port. It was just as he'd remembered; he was always put to mind of a bakery specializing in those sugary breakfast rolls whenever he came here.

Portway Spaceport was unremarkable, a thoroughly modern, standard starport, same as any million starports throughout the settled realms of human space. Of course, when you realized it was the only starport on the planet, and therefore this was as luxurious and high-tech as you were going to get, it rather lost a bit of its luster. However, it was laid out the same as would be expected, so they found their way to the administrative offices easily enough.

As with most modern organizations, computers took care of most of the work. Satisfactory Intelligences handled most of the interaction, including screening visitors for the organic Portmaster. But repeated insistence that they had to talk to some actual body in charge eventually got a flustered but expansive man with a jovial waistline and improbable mustache. "Yes, yes, so you needed to speak to the portmaster? That's me."

The portmaster allowed himself to be bulled into accessing the records with only some display of attitude and a minor bribe, showing nothing unusual; the Lanterna had arrived, conducted its business and departed on a declared course for the next world on the itinerary. Voice-stress analyzers in Ilena's bracers confirmed the story was true to the best of the portmaster's knowledge.

So that was it for Yurna, but for a brief shopping trip through the (somewhat surprisingly) decently equipped shopping sector. Oh, there was nothing particularly noteworthy, but numerous options that were not completely embarrassing, in Ilena's opinion, and that was surprising in itself for a world this small. Taggart accompanied her, keeping a watchful eye on everything but what she was shopping for, although he did get dragged into giving opinions, and had to finally accede to allowing her to buy him something; as there was no weapons shop in an area of town that he wanted to take her to, he settled for a new outfit, a smart shipsuit-style monochrome black outfit made of dirt and dust resistant cloth, suitable attire to match with her general wardrobe and bearing, and yet simple and practical enough to suit his tastes. This became his uniform when they were performing their formal investigations. He hoped that would be the end of his forced participation, so he could spend more time actually watching out for possible threats.

The situation was largely the same on Heaven's Fall, but with crystalline trees humming somewhat discordantly in the ever-present mountain wind. Shopping was available, but it was far too cold for much more than securing some of the local delicacies before they took off for the next stop.

Ilena tried her hand at cooking, but after the automatic systems put out the first fire, Taggart volunteered to be her "assistant," and walked her through the various steps of some simple grilling, pointing out how to tell if the meat was at least safe to eat, and what constituted the different grades of done-ness. He also prepared most, but not all, of the side dish, and he smiled fondly as she enjoyed possibly the first meal she'd prepared with her own hands in memory.

It wasn't until Qilthop, the airless planetoid that served as the capital of the asteroid belt mining operations in the system TX-424850 (unofficially nicknamed Devil's Eye for the unusual combination of a gravitationally-hollowed-out red giant shell around a white dwarf that had somehow gotten inside), that they ran into real difficulty getting cooperation from the local port authority. It had become somewhat worrying how little impressed the local officials were with Ilena's Aristo bearing. Taggart had pointed out that not only were Aristos not as feared out here, where local power held vastly more influence than anything in the CW, but what "Aristos" there were out here were more than likely con artists. However, Qilthop was the first place where her account card was refused. The portmaster flatly stated he couldn't use electronic accounts for his bribe. They eventually settled on her purchase of some valuable goods from a local merchant who did accept her account card and then handing the goods over directly. Taggart was able to explain, as they ranged about the domes that were so similar and yet so different from the Jewel's habs, that larger account transfers were more difficult to explain on a world that handled very few account transfers in the first place, and as they got to smaller and smaller locations, some planets wouldn't even have electronic transfer capability.

On Panthoss, they were able to lay in a stock of precious metals and jewels, which gave them hard goods to bribe with, at the trade-off of a limited supply. They could always take a side-trip to re-stock if they needed to, but any time away from the hunt was giving the Lanterna ground, and they appeared to be gaining.

During this time, on short Jumps and long (though they were all technically Long Jumps, despite their duration), Ilena expanded her repertoire of songs and movies she'd experienced. She often looked over at Taggart, taking in his genial satisfaction, his simple joy at the unfolding of the plot or the evolution of the melody. And he was never at a loss to talk intelligently about what they'd just seen or heard, for the most part without accessing his HALO for more than referencing specific dates or recalling the name of an actor or musician. And he didn't hesitate to indulge in his easy wit, though he clearly avoided the bawdier references out of politeness; the few times he delved toward blue humor was enough of a hint that there was more out there, but he didn't want to overstep his bounds.

There was only once, on the hot, dry planet of Murron Dur, that he broke his self-imposed rule of avoiding discussion of politics and class issues. He had been watching a little girl help her mother in a general goods tent at the bazaar, and he pointed her out to Ilena when they were ready to leave. "See that girl? She's quick, and smart. She could run this place right now, and she's not even ten Standard years. You know, she was probably born with the same potential IQ, the same learning capacity, the same innate business smarts of any child in the Central Worlds, any child. But because of where she's born, she can't have a trust fund, she can't get the equipment and training and education, the connections and favors. She'll be doing well to inherit her mother's business, rather than build her own multi-billion credit empire." He shook his head and smiled at Ilena. "That doesn't mean she won't have a happy, successful life, but the scales are different. I agree with some folks that breeding matters, but not as far as individual potential. If she had different parents, if she came from different stock, that would open up different opportunities, is all. It's not about her, at all, it's about what her family's got. Switch her at birth with a CW kid, and she could do as well as..." He almost finished with a gesture at Ilena, but stopped himself, and shook his head. "I'm sorry ma'am, it's not really my place to comment. It was just an observation that occurred to me. Besides, you folks are compulsive about your genetic screening, right? So a switch wouldn't hold up, anyway." He smiled gently and offered his arm. "Shall we?"

It wasn't until Pyrrhia that they ran into real trouble.

Ilena had frowned at his political moment, but had not disapproved too much. He had the right to hold it. 'It is down to luck,' she told him at that time, and that was the only response she had. She knew that she would never had the opportunities she did if she had been born elsewhere. Good luck, bad luck. She had no moral justification for the standing of her family, but she saw no reason at all to deny the power and influence that was given to her because others were less fortunate.

She rather felt like Ann in the Roman Holiday, a princess suddenly discovering the pleasures of a simpler life, of the freedom of being normal, not being surrounded by entourages and guards. To have only a single man as her company... It was liberating. Taggart was a nice man, a man she would like to know far better. As they went along though, she was less and less sure that she would ever find her husband, or that she even wanted to.

She did not share all of the findings with Taggart, of course. It did not surprise her at all that besides rarer foods and ores her husband had run drugs with the Lanterna, but it profoundly shocked and disturbed her to find that her husband had picked up 'passengers' that may not have been entirely consenting. She was quite certain that the Lanterna had no space for passengers, but plenty to lock up prisoners. Ilena was little surprised to find that the size of bribes required went up as they went along. No one actually wanted to admit to human trafficking. She was admittedly far less enamoured after that.

There was the darkness of her discoveries, and then the enjoyment of the company she spent with Taggart. It was silly how quickly she could call him 'friend' inside her head. It was a complicated contrast, one that seemed to make the journey still worthwhile.

But even with her knowledge she had not expected that their landing on Pyrrhia was expected. Especially not that their welcoming committee would consist of well armed mercenaries, come to inform her that her enquiries were not welcome.

They were strolling up from the rock landing field, as was their wont when they had no need for resupply, and Pyrrhia's trace atmospheric gasses, though noxious to smell, made the sunset spectacularly colorful. He was in uniform, she was in one of her "business" outfits, and, as the colonies and way stations had gotten more Rimward, his armament had gotten more obvious; he carried two of his large pistols in belt holsters, and a sleek assault carbine in the crook of his dominant arm, the arm Ilena was not holding.

On the more frontier planets, seeing people go armed was not noteworthy, but there shouldn't be too many people out on the landing field, much less a knot of five guys brandishing obvious long-arms and bad attitudes. And they certainly ought not to be focusing in on Ilena. Well, not beyond an appreciation for her beauty, at least, and these stares were definitely other than simply admiring.

"Ilena," he said softly as they continued to walk, although he kept his gaze locked on the oncoming enemies, "if trouble starts, I want you to duck over behind the landing struts of that ship right there." He indicated what he was talking about with a twist of his wrist, knowing she'd feel the motion with her hand on his arm. She'd also feel him tensing up, in general. "Now, if you'll excuse me a moment..."

He let her arm drop, as he muttered "Tactical" to his HALO, shifting his mind, body, and equipment into combat-ready status. Targeting and sensor data shot into his field of vision, painting targets on the various body parts of the approaching men, and pulling in aiming data from the sight telemetry of his weapons. That only mattered with regard to the carbine at the moment, which he brought to his shoulder in a flash, going from rest position to ready-to-fire in a split second, his heads-up display painting a targeting dot into his vision, constantly adjusted for range and local environmental conditions (wind, gravity, etc.). It was sudden enough to make the approaching thugs pause, and he took advantage of this by stepping forward faster, moving in front of Ilena. If it came to a firefight, his body and his body armor (he had his new suit cut a little larger than necessary to accommodate his personal protection, when it was necessary) could soak up a round or two and allow her to get to cover.

He swept his aim across the heads of all five. They were a motley bunch, not one of them seeming particularly disciplined. Mercenaries, to be sure, but of the thug variety, not professionals. One favored a large shotgun, clearly his weapon of fetishized choice; another chomped on a cigar and rested his hands on his holstered pistols, which were as large as Taggart's own. The lone woman of the group had ritual scars on her cheeks, possibly to mask other scars, judging by the number and size of the knives she carried, even though she held a rifle. The squat, round guy on the far end was clearly a heavy-worlder, and consequently carried the largest and heaviest of the weapons of the group, and the leader in the center... Broad and pale and braided like a Viking, he was the only one that didn't flinch at Taggart's sudden move, and he looked familiar. Taggart narrowed his eyes and searched his memory until he dredged up a name, just as the two groups stopped with about four meters between them.

"It's Ngumbe, isn't it? Thorvald Ngumbe? It's been a few years. Frankly, I'm surprised. You used to hire on with a better class of gun." Taggart kept his tone guardedly disdainful. He was outgunned, but not necessarily outclassed, so it wasn't worth acting too defensive; there was a good chance he could bluff their way through.

Ngumbe grinned, showing the gap between his front teeth. The smudges and flickers of holographic displays moved in front of his face, barely perceptible; he was accessing his HALO unit as they spoke. "I was expecting a simple bodyguard. I think I remember you now. Taggart, isn't it? What are you doing running an escort mission?"

"That's my business. Let's talk about yours. You're not here for assassination, or you wouldn't have walked up so obviously. I doubt you even have sniper cover. So you're here to deliver a message, and you wanted to have some muscle along for backup, to drive home the point. So, let's hear it."

Ngumbe dropped the grin, and gazed steadily at Taggart. In Taggart's view, the other man's eyes glowered through a holographic crosshair centered on the middle of his face. "Your boss," he growled, looking past the merc to lock eyes with Ilena, "is sticking her nose where she shouldn't be. Person goes poking their heads in aarvit burrows, one of these days an aarvit's gonna bite it off."

Oh, so she's making someone uncomfortable, hm? Taggart hadn't pushed to find out what other data Ilena had been extracting from the portmasters and trade agents they visited. She'd conform arrival and departure and then she'd start talking cargo manifests and boarding records, things like that. It was her business, literally, and he didn't pry. But clearly, something about it was shady (a factor he'd always suspected) and dangerous enough that someone was employing hired goons to deliver a message. There were elements to this job that had clearly developed since the initial contract, and although it was her right to keep them confidential, they were beginning to have a direct effect on her safety. He and she were going to have to have a talk about the new developments. Assuming, of course, they survived.

"Fine. You've delivered your cryptic message. Mission accomplished. Now take the kiddies and toddle on back to the zoo and let us go about our day, hm?" Ngumbe smiled broadly again at that, and the other mercenaries bristled, but Taggart couldn't afford to look weak at this point. He was entertaining about a half dozen or so tactical plans, places he could take cover, order of targets, etc. All of them started with taking down Ngumbe; he was the most disciplined and trained of the lot, and therefore the biggest all-around threat. The others may or may not be worth the arrogance they were slinging about, and frankly, he didn't care to find out. But Ngumbe was first target, anyway. After all, it was an old tried-and-true tactic: kill the leaders first, and the rest of the troops will be easier to defeat or drive off.

Ilena had tried to have a new outfit per planet, but it was hard with her limited wardrobe. She had, of course, bought plenty of things and hoped that Taggart would not notice that she was beginning to turn one of the storage cabinets into a wardrobe. Today she was back in grey and red though, looking far more competent than she actually was. She had started to regret that she had never done any weapon training: it was looking as if there would be, at some point, very useful. Ilena had never thought that way before. It was the place of other people to ensure her safety. She had never needed to think like that when she had been always surrounded by state of the art security.

She let go of Taggart's arm, staying behind him. One thing she did know very well was to not get in the way of her bodyguards. She knew how to duck, and to give men like Taggart the space to work. So she simply stopped, letting him go ahead to deal with the threat. She was close enough to the the struts to hide behind them should it come to chaos, but she also knew that if Taggart died, she would be screwed. She was damn glad that Taggart had come with such a good reputation, but she hoped that he was quite that good.

The mercenaries were certainly dressed to intimidate, probably hoping that she and Taggert would turn around and go home nicely rather than actually looking for a fight. Nor did they have any sense of style... She was sure that if she was dressing her own band of mercenaries, she would be able to do far better, and far more impressive. Was she meant to be scared of a bunch who looked like they'd rather have sex with their guns than use them? But she was, and it annoyed her.

Ilena stared back with all the coldness and arrogance she could muster. He didn't seem to know who she was, which was a good thing – she didn't want her family name dragged through the mud. But the bad side was that if someone was going to send goons to threaten her, they might send some to kill her too. That would be decidedly unpleasant.

She covered her face with her fan to hide her expression of distaste. Hiding her more human emotions behind an elegant façade. How annoying they were talking about her so indirectly. Could he have not addressed her properly, at least? Only a flick of her fan showed her irritation, and on the inside she called up available data on Ngumbe. How very annoying. She wondered who had hired him, but she thought that there would be little point in doing something so simple as asking.

'Well, this is all so very cheery. Could you not do things in a more sensible and civilised fashion? Surely you boss could have sent a letter?'

Maybe the tone of contempt in her voice was not entirely helpful to the exchange, but that could be damned. She trusted in Taggart's abilities, and she was deeply irritated.

Taggart's eyes widened, but he resisted rolling them. It wouldn't do to lose eyeline with any of his targets.

Ngumbe stared at Ilena, as did the other thugs. Then someone snickered, and Ngumbe's face split into a wide grin. While the thugs laughed and started to back up, Ngume flicked his eyes between the two of them. "Warning is delivered. That's the important thing. Why don't you do the 'civilized' thing and push off. You're not going to find who you're looking for." He backed away a few steps, and before he turned, he smiled wider. "If you're lucky."

Taggart kept his carbine trained on the group as they walked back into the spaceport, and then he swept it along the roof of the building, keying the carbine's sensor feed through the HALO to look for snipers or observers or camera emplacements or sensor drones. When nobody was in sight, he relaxed slightly, letting the carbine down from his shoulder. He heaved a large sigh, and then glanced over at Ilena once before his gaze swept around them again, keeping on constant watch on their surroundings.

"Okay, clearly your husband was mixed up with something unsavory. I think you'd better let me in on some of your findings; I may have insights. But first: do we want to continue? Do you feel you need to check with the portmaster here, or do we go to the next stop and see whether he arrived there?" He sighed again, pivoting. "I think they've done what they meant to: tried to scare us, delivered a message. But I'm not certain enough to be comfortable. If you still think this place is going to give you any answers, we'll proceed cautiously, but I'm doubtful we'll find anything useful, if whoever it is has a strong enough presence here to warrant a warning like that."

Okay, she really should have taken some torture and intimidation lessons from her uncle. It was a long standing family joke that being terrifying ran in the blood, but she felt distinctly as if she had somehow missed out on those genes. Damnit. The best threat she could come up with was feeding them to her dryads – massive, mobile and carnivorous trees – but that didn't much help if those were a couple of thousand light years away.

She relaxed a little as they left. No firing and explosions this time, but her mouth was in a grim line. 'I am sorry, Malachi, but I believe I have made an error of judgement. Perhaps we should take somewhere more private...?'

As perverse as this was, the threats had done little to actually dissuade her. Ilena actually wanted to know more about what had happened to her husband now, rather than to politely go home and forget about it. And she supposed she really needed Taggart's advice on this: he would probably know far more on the messier sides to life.