Furious

20

Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile found his team already hard at work as he walked into the squad bay. His boss was also waiting for him.

“What’s this all about?” she demanded.

“Princess Kristine Longknife has returned to Wardhaven, and the Prime Minister wants us to apprehend her,” he said curtly. “Rick, did you get that security coverage?”

“Yes, sir, and based on what you told me to tell Leslie, I’ve already scanned for the princess. No joy. If she’s up there, she’s still on the ship that brought her.”

“Or she’s evaded us,” Mahomet, always the dour one, put in.

“The Prime Minister is betting with you,” Foile said.

Leslie looked up from her computer screen. “The last reported location, no, make that last rumored location for the princess was on New Eden. Did we have a ship from there dock recently?”

“One,” Rick reported. “The Yellow Comet. I’ve got the coverage of it. Only some crew and two old ladies left it.”

“Two old ladies?” echoed everyone in the room.

“Here’s the take,” Rick said, bringing up the two putative old ladies and the analysis of the recognition system. “Neither one of them is six feet tall. The way both of them walk, neither of them is a Navy officer. And the several looks we got at their faces. Ugly. Way ugly.”

“Two steamer trunks,” Leslie said.

“What about the steamer trunks?”

“Maybe nothing, but when you read a color report on the princess, or her maid, the better ones talk about the steamer trunks that follow them when they’re off on a mission. The maid, Abby, can pull the darnedest things out of those trunks.”

“Follow those two,” Foile ordered. “Recognition program, estimate height of the tallest one if she wasn’t all hunched over.”

The response 5'11" to 6'1" appeared on the screen.

“Get a security team from the station to search that ship,” Foile ordered.

His boss made the arrangements immediately.

“Rick, where’d those two nice old ladies go?”

“The space-elevator station. They paid, ah, with gift credit chits.”

“Bought where?”

“Eden.”

“Show me them at the downside station.”

Rick did.

“They’ve still got the two big trunks,” Leslie pointed out. “They can’t be too hard to follow with those things.”

The camera showed them storing the luggage.

“Or not,” Leslie added.

“Have a team collect those trunks,” Foile said, and his boss made it so.

“They caught a cab,” Rick pointed out.

“Mahomet, get me a list of all fares taken from the beanstalk station within five minutes of that time.”

“On it, boss. Got it,” Mahomet, shouted a second later. “Two women, from station to a place called the Smuggler’s Roost. It’s in a bad part of town. Why would two old ladies go there?”

“We need a full response team at that location,” Foile said, heading for the door. His team was up and following him as his boss called in the world on that little dive.