Episode 504: Ghosts of Jing Jing Bei, Part Three

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Joshua’s gut sinks. Gāisǐ. He had that feeling… It’s all over now but for the story.

Joshua: What happened to her? Tell me. Give me the information and I’ll walk away. I get the information and walk away and I won’t say anything. I don’t want to say anything. I’m trying to—

Matron: I think your business is done here. (to the doorman) Earl?

The man at the door delivers a dark look at Joshua.

Earl: Your business is done here.

Joshua subsides. It’s not worth a fight. He already knows what ultimately happened to Kelly. The girl is dead and there isn’t anything he can do to change that. Joshua meanders out. Nika however, is not included in the general eviction notice and she rises to go over to the cowboy nursing his drink. Joshua doesn’t stop for her but continues out the door, knowing Nika can handle herself. She’ll leave when she’s ready.

Nika takes her drink with her and pauses in front of the cowboy, saying quietly:

Nika: Mind a little company?
Cowboy: I’m not interested in company.
Nika: I’m not exactly interested in the general offerings at the bar, so I wouldn’t mind the extra … protection.

The cowboy regards her a moment. She’s lookin’ sincere. She’s an attractive leggy six foot blonde in a brothel. What man looking for some action wouldn’t come to the wrong conclusion about her. Some protection from the johns is something a woman in her position would want. Given that, what’s she doing here, anyway?

Cowboy: You not one’a Maven’s girls. What are you … ?
Nika: No. My shipmate wanted to come in.
Cowboy: (nodding to the door) That guy?
Nika: (grinning) Ye-aaahhh. That one.
Cowboy: (unimpressed) All right. Well, you might wanna— (hooks a thumb to the door)
Nika: Doesn’t mean I’ll leave my drink.
Cowboy: Have a seat.
Nika: Thanks.

She sits. She looks at him.

Nika: You don’t look like you’re terribly interested in bein’ here yourself.
Cowboy: Nope. Not much.
Nika: So why do you bother?
Cowboy: I’m not.
Nika: ’Kay, then.

A man of few words apparently. But Nika’s seen enough—there’s something about this guy, something he’s not telling. Maybe it’s the way he looks at the place. Or maybe it’s the line of his shoulders. Something is pinging her radar and danged if she’s going to walk away now. She sips her drink in friendly silence. Then:

Nika: Name’s Nika. Got a name?
Cowboy: Sandy.
Nika: Nice to meet’cha. Thanks for lendin’ a girl a hand.
Sandy: Yeah, you didn’t need it.
Nika: You lemme have a chair and you didn’t try to grab me when you did it. Seems an awful lot in here.
Sandy: (evenly) I’m not here to help you. You understand? My help ain’t no good.

Touched a nerve, have we?

Sandy: You best find someone else. A lotta boys here’d be interested.
Nika: (dry) Really. (a beat) Who are you trying to help?
Sandy: No one. No one a’tall.
Nika: ’Kay.

Since he doesn’t seem about to make her vacate the table, Nika’s perfectly willing to sit there and sip her beer in silence and not bug him. For ten, fifteen minutes or whatever. Sandy doesn’t break under the silence the way most folk do. He’s content to let the quiet go unfilled with small talk. Nika waits a bit more before saying more.

Nika: You lived here long?
Sandy: Uh, yeah. My whole life.
Nika: You know anything ’bout a bunch’a bastards, running by the name of Jing Jing Bei?
Sandy: what do you know about them?
Nika: Gettin’ the suspicion they were gettin’ into somethin’ I’m not real thrilled about.
Sandy: Whatsit matter to you?
Nika: I suppose not that much. Bought a ship. Found a book. Under a bulkhead. Had a list’a names in it. And I’m startin’ to think they were traffickin’ in kids.
Sandy: Pretty harsh ‘Verse. N’fact, that happens more often than you’d expect.
Nika: Kinda crappy. (a beat, a sip) My shipmate. He was kinda hopin’ to find some’a these people. Maybe they were lost.
Sandy: I reckon. Pretty much anybody’d be lost under those conditions, wouldn’t they?
Nika: Question is, would they wanna go home again? One’a the girls, we thought mighta turned up here.

Sandy stares at the room. Says nothing. His jaw is rigid. Then:

Sandy: Kelly. (slides a look at her) Right?
Nika: Yeah.
Sandy: That warn’t her name. Her name was Kelsey.
Nika: (carefully now…) Really?
Sandy: They jus’ called her Kelly. Cuz … S’little different.
Nika: Yeah, that would’ve been pretty easily identifiable, wouldn’t it?
Sandy: (quiet) I guess so. Well, she was from so far away. Somewhere out in Georgia, I think.
Nika: Who’s she to you?

Because the pain is written all over him. You’d have to be blind to miss it.

Sandy: Just a girl. She worked here.
Nika: Any idea what happened to her?
Sandy: Yeah. She died. She were killed.
Nika: How?

Sandy sighs, long and deep.

Sandy: She … She trusted the wrong people. Someone she thought was a friend wasn’t there when she needed her. And now she’s dead. So here I come. Every night.
Nika: You know that for sure?
Sandy: (very quiet) Yeah, I do. Held her body in my arms.

Oh dear God.

Nika: (whispers) … Shii … (a breath) … Well ….
Sandy: She was … a smart girl. She done could speak, like, four languages.
Nika: (steady on …) We were kinda hopin’ that the list was actually a place they’d moved her to.
Sandy: They moved her all right. They moved her here.
Nika: No, after here.
Sandy: Hnnh.
Nika: No chance, huh …?
Sandy: I can take you to her grave, if you wanna see that.
Nika: (deep breath) I think I’d like that a lot, if only to pay my respects. (a beat) Makes me pretty damn sad to have picked up a ship that has a history like that. Especially when in other regards prior to that service, it was well admired.
Sandy: Don’ know who would admire that kinda stuff.
Nika: Not that.

Sandy rises without warning and heads for the door. Nika leaves her beer and follows him. Joshua’s waiting for her outside and at first thought, he thinks that maybe Nika got lucky. Then he sees their expressions and knows something else is going on. Sandy doesn’t acknowledge Joshua on the porch but steps off and heads down the street. Joshua looks at Nika.

Joshua: Cap’n?
Nika: We need to take a walk.

They step off the porch and follow in Sandy’s wake. About a mile out, there’s the town graveyard and sure enough, there’s a gravemarker.

It says: Kelly Jones. Someone has scratched out Kelly and printed underneath is the name Kelsey. Sandy kneels and rubs it with his thumb.

Sandy: I think her last name was with a G. She didn’t like talkin’ about that.
Joshua: (from memory) Priam?
Nika: What?
Joshua: Priam. Trojan Horse?

It’s one of the name-city pairs off the list. Sandy looks up from the grave marker.

Sandy: Yeah, Priam. Yeah, she was from Priam. In Georgia system.
Joshua: (softly) Yeah. She’s on the list.

Joshua takes a deep breath, lets it out. This just makes him so sad. He stares at the marker.

Joshua: I don’t … (breathes) … Damn if I don’t hate this ’Verse sometimes. (a beat) Chews you up and spits you out. I really wish we could have done something for you. I really do.

Nobody speaks for a minute. There’s nothing really to say.

Sandy: I wasn’t strong enough to protect her. She was too little. She couldn’t protect herself.
Nika: How old was she?
Sandy: She said she was sixteen but I don’t know if that’s true.
Nika: Somehow I have the feelin’ that’s probably right. (sighing) … Crap. …

Beside her Joshua stifles a cry and his voice is tight with outrage when he speaks.

Joshua: Thirty-nine pairs of names, Nika. Thirty-nine. (a beat) Thirty-nine girls. (shaking now)
Nika: I’m sorry.
Joshua: It’s all right. (stiff arms the sympathy) No, it’s okay. Followin’ to the end.
Nika: Wanna keep tryin’ to find them?
Joshua: (sighs) Yeah.
Nika: Don’t know what the gorram hell it’s gonna do now, but …
Joshua: I don’t know either. I don’t know. But I feel like I…

He can’t say more. Nika looks at Sandy looking at them both, and she nods at the marker.

Nika: How long ago?
Sandy: I reckon it was ... four years ago? Three years ago? Something like that.

Nika hears her XO let loose a pent breath and she turns to him, grim.

Nika: Joshua. You know the way this goes.
Joshua: (fed up) I know it does. I know it. I know it. (jabs finger at his chest) I know it here. I—I’m not … gonna … put our ship in some sort of crazy crusade to … try and find…
Nika: It doesn’t mean we can’t look if we happen to be in places that—
Joshua: I know. (a breath) Yeah. If you got an urge to go looking, I’ll give you names. But it looks like … they’re out of… (to Sandy) I mean, you haven’t heard anything? They’re out of business, right? I mean, you haven’t heard anything?
Sandy: I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.
Joshua: Jing Jing Bei. The people who did this.
Sandy: I never heard of them.
Joshua: (angry) Well, it’s their list, with their—with the names on it.
Nika: It doesn’t mean that they were doing that business with that name at that time.
Sandy: You mean the people who took her? They weren’t here when I was here, so I don’t know what became of them. They just dropped her off.

Joshua tries to regroup.

Joshua: Well, we got their ship—or what was their ship.
Nika: Where was the other part of her name?
Joshua: Different line.
Nika: Is that her source?
Joshua: Yeah, I’m guessin’.
Nika: You said Priam like you knew.
Joshua: Yeah, there’s—one of the lines was Priam and on that line was Kelsey, Trojan Horse. Not the same line that… you know … (gestures to the name on the marker: Kelly) … I don’t know enough to figure out but the, um … This is a list of girls. Whether they were, you know—thirty-nine names. If one—if every one—if one—.

Joshua starts losing it again and Nika stops him with a hand on his arm. She turns to Sandy.

Nika: Sandy, I’m real sorry.
Sandy: (quiet) If you know how to find these people and you need help, you give me a call.
Joshua: Yes, please.
Nika: Here.

Nika pulls a scrap of paper from her pocket and a pen and they trade wave info on the spot.

Nika: If we come across anything I will get back to you.
Sandy: All right.

Nods are exchanged all around and we depart—Sandy for the brothel and Nika and Joshua for Equinox. And on the way back, Nika has Joshua give her a run down on how the list is organized.

Nika: Okay, you told me it was a planet, a name, a city, a name, a city. Was it this planet and Kelly on here and then …?
Joshua: And then another name. So this planet, Kelly, Copperhead. Emily, Ft. Jackson. And then there’s another line that was Priam, Marianne, Helena. Kelsey, Trojan Horse. So it’s all mixed up. So some of them may be where they dropped them off, some may be where they took them or picked them up from.
Nika: But there’s no way to keep track of which one’s which.
Joshua: (grudgingly) At least, not that I can … They weren’t exactly the most methodical or logical record keepers.
Nika: (sighing) He said he held her body. He said he knew for certain that she was gone.
Joshua: Yeah. And the Matron was … I Read her and she told me she was dead. It fits all of the story.

Nika and Joshua board Lagniappe and fly back to Equinox. Neither feels much like talking during the flight, lost in their own thoughts of what they’d seen and heard. When they dock with Equinox and gather the crew, they tell them what they’ve learned—leaving out how Joshua got some of the information, thanks.

Joshua: We found a guy who knew her. Who held her in his arms as she … (can’t say it.)
Rina: Question?
Joshua: Yeah.
Rina: If Kelsey and Kelly are the same girl but they’ve shown up on the list twice—
Joshua: Thirty-nine people.
Rina: Well, two of the people are actually the same people. One is the true name and one is the alias and where they got dropped off.
Joshua: Right. Thirty-nine pairs. Well, thirty-eight pairs and one half-pair.
Rina: Was Kelly paired with Kelsey?
Joshua: No.
Rina: Okay … so …
Joshua: This is the order in which I found—they basically kept them in terms of planet groupings, so you could maybe assume that it’s basically “we had a Girl, we dropped her off on Planet X in some town and while we were there we went over to some other place where we were Marshalling in and—”
Nika: That’s what I’m wondering, right there.
Joshua: “—and picked up Girl Y.”
Rina: So, nineteen girls listed twice.
Joshua: No. Thirty-nine girls. There were thirty-nine girls. Listed twice. Seventy-eight total people.
Rina: Okay. One or seventy-two, it’s one too many.
Joshua: Yeah. No kidding.
Rina: (sincerely) I’m so sorry to have been right.
Joshua: I know.

She’d voiced her suspicions of the list, given what it was found with, and had half-dismissed it as a paranoid rant. But sometimes even paranoids are right.

Arden: So … what does it—?
Joshua: What does it mean?
Arden: I know what it means. I mean, what can we do about it?
Joshua: I don’t know.
Arden: You think the slavers are still in business?
Joshua: I don’t—we got their ship, it seems, so—
Arden: No. We got the people-who-delivered-them’s ship. Someone paid for them to be.
Nika: There is that. I dislike the fact that our ship is known in some quarters as a slaver. That disturbs me.
Kiera: Poor ship. Went from blockade runner and hero to down to vile—
Nika: Yeah. That.

God. Another layer to this gāisǐ sandwich. Which is looking to be bottomless at the moment.

Arden: Can I see the list?
Joshua: Do you want me to write it down?
Arden: No, I just want to see the list.
Joshua: It’s not written down. I can write it down for you, though.
Nika: Ultimately I think we are … either going to have to follow down on each name, if that’s what you want to do—we can’t afford to take a lot of time to do it but—
Joshua: No. I-I’m … um … (a beat) … I’m happy that—I’d be happy just to find one story that, like, we can make a difference in. But while we’re traveling, if we stop on-planet and have time to look, then we have time to look. If not, I’m not sure I’m all that really interested in tryin’ to seek some sort of revenge on people. I’m not sure what that does for us. I mean, stop them if they’re still in business. That’s one thing and maybe that’s a thing worth doing.
Nika: Maybe as we travel perhaps you can—there’s gotta be a paper trail if they were in and out of business. Maybe we’ll be able to …

Yeah. Maybe. But maybes seldom are. Beglan speaks up.

Beglan: You’re gonna want to purify the ship too, won’t you?
Joshua: Yes. I do. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like it.
Nika: We can do that.

Arden asks how we connected Kelly in Copperhead to Kelsey in Priam. Because Sandy confirmed Kelly’s name was really Kelsey and he also confirmed that she was from Trojan Horse on Priam.

Joshua: So unless there are multiple Kelseys being thrown into the sex trade, which is possible, I suppose …
Kiera: (not amused) That would be really, really coincidental.
Arden: I understand how you got the connection. I don’t understand how we can use that to get more connections.
Joshua: All we know is that for each name on that list, they were either likely taken from there or left.
Nika: Left under another name. Possibly. Maybe not, but …
Beglan: Are there any duplicate names?

Good point. Joshua searches the list in his head, writes it out. There was Kelly and Kelsey. He starts looking for duplicates and patterns.

Joshua: There’s one Roland. Is Roland a female name? Can it be?

If Roland is a male name is there another male name to pair it with? But if there isn’t a male name to pair it with does this mean that the male was … ?

Joshua: Oh … (horrible thought) … Oh. No, no, no …
Nika: So it’s all women.
Joshua: Is Roland a woman’s name?
Kiera: It could be a city. Or a town.
Joshua: Yeah … Or Roland could be a boy’s name.
Nika: Or maybe they were taking special orders.

Oh please, no.

Kiera: Joshua are all those names in sequence or are they all back and forth and back and forth?
Arden: There’s two Sunnys. There’s a Sunny, Ezra, Yalta and a Sonny, Highgate, Lorngaard.
Nika: Are they in separate columns?
Arden: Mm-hm.

Nika wonders if there’s a time factor to the placement of the names on the list. Perhaps in the time involved in traveling from planet to planet. After all, you’d want to drop off the children far from their home planet. Arden finds another pair—two Lilys.

He turns back to Beglan.

Joshua: Yeah, I want purify the ship.

Before they can get into that subject, however, Kiera suggests circling the pairs, because people don’t normally write randomly. There has to be a pattern. Joshua demurs, saying if she’d read that notebook, she’d have a different opinion as to that.

Joshua: Kiera, sometimes he wrote left to right. Sometimes he wrote right to left and up and down. Sometimes he skipped pages, sometimes he went out of order. And I don’t think it was just one person writing in it. My sense is the only real connection is that whenever they stopped somewhere, they wrote down a sort of, just a casual record of “Hey, we picked up a girl here and dropped her off there. And we just want to record it just in case we might need it.”

Presumably so they don’t duplicate where they’re dropping them off, the better to scatter them. Rina quietly offers to compare notes with the Ion records she’s got tacked up to the machine shop wall. Joshua reminds her that as the Ion it was under different ownership than those who ran it under Jing Jing Bei. From what we can gather, Jing Jing Bei predated the Ion incarnation by about five years.

Joshua: This is not to say there might not be some kind of connection but they were running passengers, mystery passengers—well, who knows? Maybe they were running sex slaves to Blue Sun. Sex slaves all around for everybody.
Nika: The Ion? There’s no way the Ion was running sex slaves.
Kiera: Yeah.

Arden looks up from the list.

Arden: There’s an Anna and an Annie. Sunny. There’s a Sunny and a Solstice. You tell me that’s a coincidence. There’s also a Sunny and a Sunny. There’s a Sammy.

Is that Sunny like the sun? Solstice? Is that like the dawn? Are the names hidden meanings? There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or a reason, even with the duplicate names. And as for running down the names, they are scattered far and wide and we cannot afford to chase them down one by one. At best we can investigate those names as show up on the planets we make landfall on in the course of doing business. By that method, we could be doing this for years. From what we’ve already seen today, these girls don’t have years. Neither does Joshua’s sanity, if he and the ship cannot coexist.

Kiera: Beglan, how would we cleanse the ship?
Rina: (intoning) Salt. Lots and lots of salt.
Joshua: (appalled) No.
Kiera: We’re not walking widdershins, dear.
Beglan: I was just saying. If we can find some of these people and put them back where they belong.
Nika: We’re on the planet now.
Kiera: And we found one.
Beglan: A horrible injustice was done by this ship. I think we owe it to the ship to set things right.
Kiera: Yeah, it started off so bright.
Beglan: I’m not like your … your hairy friend Roskov, but I do believe sometimes that God drops things, gives things to people who can do something with them.
Rina: And I’m not disagreeing with that.
Kiera: And I feel a kindred. It’s a chance for rebirth. Let it have redemption.

Names. Ships. Power. Purposes. Crime and punishment. Remorse and redemption. All bundled together and dropped in our laps. What do we do with all that?

Do we want to play the matching game with the names list? Nika suggests that if nothing else, ultimately we should at least note the people we’ve found so far. Kelsey from Trojan Horse, Priam, can be marked as found, if not saved. Kiera seconds that notion. Arden says he doesn’t think the Sunny on one side of the list equals the Sunny on the other. Kiera suggests looking for a pattern in the names.

Joshua: To be honest, I’m not necessarily worried about the pattern. When we land somewhere, there’s really only two possibilities, right? They either dropped someone off to be sold into the … the thing … or they picked somebody up. If we stop in a town and we say we’re looking for the results of a bunch of rat bastards named Jing Jing Bei, you know, we’re looking for the person to see if they’re still alive … I think we’re going to get some answers one way or another about that.
Arden: Or it could be missile up our aft tubes.
Joshua: Or it could be that. It could be. But I don’t think—I think we make the connections when we can, but I don’t think there’s a point to spinning our wheels trying to find out what their godforsaken pattern was in the thing.

Arden isn’t deterred. Is it possible to look at old records to trace a pattern between stars and colonies using the list? With actual ships? With old records? Not much of a chance, really. See, on this one moon all those sorts of records were destroyed by terrorists …

The Colchester job. Where Rick and Zed died. Right.

Sighing, Nika suggests that as long as we’re here on Jiangyin, why not investigate the names listed for it? Joshua points out that we have cargo loaded and ready for transport—the argon destined for Rahmba, in Kalidasa. And that’s it. The matter is tabled for the nonce while we get back to making a living.

To that end, Kiera is hunting for passengers headed for Kalidasa. She finds a couple looking for passage to Verbena. A man and his wife. They aren’t interested in staying in our cabins, per se, since they are bringing their shuttle and they can stay inside it. Nika reminds Kiera that the cabins are available if they change their minds. In an aside to her XO, Nika notes that we’ve got a decent cargo already aboard, we can afford to be a little charitable. Joshua agrees and remarks that he’d love to have a repeat of the miners—in that he didn’t piss them off or try to kill them. His track record with the passengers has been iffy from the beginning of Equinox’s maiden voyage.

Kiera finds out that the couple is willing to pay a total of 500 for the two of them and the shuttle. She tells them that our Captain is willing to give them use of one of the passenger cabins. They decline, choosing to stay aboard their shuttle instead. Looking at their information on the Cortex, she recognizes the name Parker Duquesne. He’s a Core-based architect, one of those who does off-beat and extreme homes and installations. His wife, Morgan, is actually part of his business. He says they are out scouting unusual locations. Kiera smiles warmly and tells them that she’s seen their work in the online magazines and that it’s amazing, very impressive.

Parker Duquesne: Well, we would like to leave fairly soon. If that’s possible.
Kiera: (hand over mike) Nika? Are you okay with that?
Nika: Sure we can take off whenever you’re ready.

Kiera turns back to Duquesne.

Kiera: Day and a half? Day?
Parker Duquesne: If you could leave tomorrow that would be good.
Nika: We’re fueled up. Tell him we can get off the ground today.
Arden: So we can leave immediately.

Which suits us fine. Parker Duquesne approaches Kiera as things get underway for takeoff.

Parker Duquesne: Since we’re staying in our own shuttle, do you have to file our own flight plans for us? We’re trying to keep it on the low down. We’re kind of a deal in the Core and we’re trying to keep it quiet.
Kiera: I’ll go talk to the Captain about that.

Which she does, with Nika and Joshua on the bridge, where they are preflighting the ship. They listen. Nika looks askance.

Nika: They’re flying under the radar because they’re a big deal in the Core, but …?
Kiera: They’re basically saying that they’re famous. They don’t want to be noticed.
Nika: They’re staying on board their shuttle.
Kiera: Mm-hm, although we offered them second class. And they said they’d be quite happy to be on their shuttle.
Nika: (frowning) I’m not likin’ that. We’re headed for Kalidasa and not the Core, so why is this a big deal?

Then again, people from the Core are a little leery of venturing into the wilds of the Rim.

Nika: Okay, fair enough. Never mind.
Kiera: I just wanted to make sure you were okay with that. I don’t think it’s very bizarre. but I just didn’t want you thinking “Okay, this is another one of those Oh-my-God-what-has-Kiera-come-up-with moments”.
Nika: Joshua.
Joshua: Yes, Captain?
Nika: They’re going to stay aboard their shuttle. They’re just concerned that they’re famous.
Joshua: (really?) They’re going to stay onboard the shuttle?
Nika: That’s what she said.
Joshua: Then I’m fine with it. (off her look) What?
Nika: You’re a very angry man right now.
Joshua: Yeah, I know. But it’s fine. Keep’em on the shuttle. I’m not saying lock’em in the shuttle or anything.
Nika: No, of course not! But—!
Joshua: What?

There’s something bothering her XO and the nothing’s-wrong face he’s putting on it annoys the crap out of her. Nika stifles a growl.

Joshua: What? (off her look) If you’ve got something to say to me, Captain, say it. If you’ve got something to say to me, Nika, say it. Because you’re going to explode if you don’t say it.
Nika: Between Joshua and Nika, all right? It’s got nothing to do with Captain. Get your head out of your ass.
Joshua: Okay. Done.
Nika: No, not done.
Joshua: I said I was—
Nika: No.
Joshua: I said I was fine—
Nika: No. No, you’re giving me shit.
Joshua: I was not giving you sh—
Nika: You’re giving me cow manure every time I turn around. Stop playin’ head games. On yourself and everybody else. Quit it.

She glares at him. He stares at her.

Nika: I need you to figure out what the heck’s going on. In your own head.
Joshua: Yes, ma’am.
Nika: Or we’re gonna have to—.
Joshua: Dump me?

Is that a bring-it tone in his voice when he says that? Nika glares at him and he raises his hands.

Joshua: I’m joking, I’m joking—
Nika: NO. That’s not a joke. That’s not funny. Because I think that’s what you’re actually thinking.
Joshua: No, it was not what I was thinking. I promise. I got more respect for you and the crew than that.
Nika: (grudging) Go and tell Kiera about the passengers. We’re getting’ off the ground tonight.
Joshua: Yes, ma’am.

He leaves the bridge and Nika gusts a breath and slumps in the pilot’s seat. That man has a gorram burr up his butt and he won’t pull it out and he won’t admit it hurts and he’s driving her mad with it.

Joshua finds Kiera talking to the Duquesnes. Or rather, trying to convince them to vacate the shuttle. After all, she would hate for something to happen to them if something happened to the shuttle while we were in pulse. They would be much more comfortable in one of the cabins. Besides, she says as she spies Joshua approaching, it would make it easier for them to eat the fantastic food. Parker Duquesne says he can’t complain about that …

Joshua: Wait, wait, wait. What? What are you doing?
Kiera: You’re making dinner for them, dear.
Joshua: Oh. Okay …

They are paying us 300 for second class passage to Kalidasa—which would automatically rate them a cabin. And their reluctance to take it has Nika scratching her head. She’s heard tell of cheapskate tactics of the rich and famous, however, and though they make little sense, she’s willing to allow the Duquesnes might be of that ilk. Still and all, though, between their initial insistence not to leave their shuttle and Joshua’s anger over the Jing Jing Bei business, she’s got enough on her plate on top of flying the ship.

At least their ability to pay isn’t one of her worries. They gladly pay up front. In platinum when we say we prefer it.

We set our departure for the next morning on the 14th to allow Joshua a last minute trip to check the third name on the list. He assures Nika it won’t take him long. Meanwhile, Arden is making sure our cat doesn’t get inside our passengers’ shuttle and ruin anything in it. Jahn is a tom kitten and very much into everything. After all, it was through his kind offices we’ve stumbled onto the Ion and Jing Jing Bei records. Curiosity might not have killed this cat but it remains to be seen if it will kill us.

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