Chapter 7:

Mancer was just about finished his background check on Elena and my father when we came in to dock at Lunar Point, and both of us had slept only an hour. When he heard my hypotheses, he became rather excited about the prospect of these people being interconnected with that project, and offered surprisingly little resistance when I asked him to confirm it. When I asked him why though, he only said that a friend of his would want to know. It had taken him a little over an hour to tap the log files on this particular shuttle, which had a partially deleted message from a compound at Nova D’larouge. He traced the messages back to their source, and after the remainder of the seven hour flight, had confirmed all I had said. I wasn’t as surprised at the confirmation as I thought I’d be. After all, my father had always been of the quiet sort, and if he hadn’t wanted me to know something, I had no doubt he could have kept me from knowing.

So my father was a scientist.

Why, then, was I a street urchin from ten years old on? Wouldn’t he have been fairly well off, if he had started a program like that? No. He may have been well off before that project, but that project made Professor Kale so outcast in the scientific community that he had, literally, disappeared. So, that meant that Judd somehow must have been supporting us until my old man died.

He was killed. According to Elena, he was killed. Perhaps this was true. If he was involved with that project, there was nothing keeping him from being involved in another. And two of his students had been kidnapped. I suddenly wondered whether Judd might have had anything to do with my father’s murder. That was a fairly weak link though. Judd was simply Elena’s employer. He wasn’t necessarily her kidnapper. If he had been, then the other student might have been within his organization as well, and Mancer hadn’t said anything about him at all.

I powered down my wrist and changed the battery. Mancer appeared to be getting his things together and strapping himself down for landing, so I followed his lead. Because it was an escape vessel originally, the straps took seconds to put on, but when I had completed it, I noticed to my dismay that it would take far longer to take the things off. I settled in for the landing.

If you can call it settled.

The pod bounced and shook as Elena attempted to slow our descent. We had been moving at a ridiculous rate towards the moon, and now that we were close enough, we had to slow down by said ridiculous rate so we wouldn’t smash ourselves across the port. I could feel myself being pressed against the restraints to the point that it was uncomfortable—not at all like a first class flight on American Airlines. In fact, I was willing to bet that anything down below looking up at us would know absolutely that we were not a normal ship. I looked towards the sealed hatch apprehensively.

Once again, I wished sincerely that I had not lost my gun so early in this mission. If Elena had done her job right, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about; Kelzo wouldn’t know we’d left TS.

And with the final shudder of the pod as it slammed down on its landing gear, I was relieved to find that she had. Nobody rushed into the pod as the hatch opened. It took me only a few moments to unstrap myself, and Mancer didn’t take much longer. Elena came out of the cockpit with slow, careful steps. When she had made it all the way to the door, someone outside shouted, “State your affiliation.” This wasn’t usual dock protocol. Usually the question was, “identify your vessel and pilot names,” if the vessel was not a usual passenger vessel.

“I am affiliated with Mr. J, my name is Harriet.”

“Stand down guys, it’s her.”

I slinked nearer to Elena. “Harriet?” I whispered.

“Code name. If I were male it would be Harry. Only the H – R – R are important. Stands for what mission I’m on for Judd.”

“And what’s that?”

“Not for you to know yet.”

Okay. She pushed Mancer through first, and I winced. Then she followed, and I tailed her closely. There was a group of three people waiting for us on the platform, in a rough delta formation. The man at point motioned us to him, and Elena obliged, prodding Mancer along.

“This him?” he inquired, but Elena shook her head and motioned to me. I stood up straighter and looked the man in the eye.

“Good. We’ll take the other one. You have to get moving. Kel’s been crawling this place recently, and it was hard enough to keep his guys from noticing your landing.” He then smirked at Elena and raised an eyebrow. “Admittedly, it could have been harder. You did well.”

Elena nodded, then turned her head to me and said, “Follow.”

But I wasn’t just going to leave that easily. “What’s going to happen to Mancer?”

Elena turned and spoke, but locked her eyes dead onto the pointman. “He will not be harmed. He will be detained until you reach Judd, and then he will be returned to Trinity Station.”

That satisfied me, because I didn’t feel that I would have very much of a say. Also, I had assumed that he would rather go back. I was wrong.

“Wait. I want to go on.” He paused for a moment, looking for all the world like a deer in headlights, but then added, “I know something you might like to know.”

Elena finally rested her eyes on him, as though she’d only just noticed his presence. “You will get us caught. You are a risk. You are not coming with us.”

As much as I felt I owed Mancer, she was right. Mancer couldn’t keep up with us, he couldn’t help me hide from Kelzo, and the only thing that he’d done so far that was useful was to verify information for me—and it had taken him the better part of the flight from TS to here to do that. Mar, a quarter of a million miles away from here, could have been as useful. But Mancer spoke again. “Are you listening to me? I know something you’d want to know.”

She looked at him, and for a moment I thought she was going to laugh. “What do you know?”

“I know where to find the other student.”

She froze. The two of them looked at each other for what seemed like ages. Then Elena moved her head to face the point-man, but her eyes were still on Mancer. “He comes with us,” she said softly.