Chapter Eleven: Of Promises Broken
The ship was quiet when they made their way back to it. The lights were on, but there was an odd tension in the air that made Alaran stop in his tracks. He was sore and the gash on his leg was bleeding freely, but he wasn't thinking about that at all.
"Something is wrong," he said.
Az and Temos came up behind him, and from the stiffness of their posture, he could tell that they could sense it, too.
This ship, Bertha now, had been their home for cycles. They could always tell when something wasn't right with her.
"Where is Natasha?" Az wanted to know, and a pit of dread opened up in Alaran's stomach.
Usually she would have already been here to greet them. Hugs and kisses for each, scolding them for getting into a scrape, offering to help clean their wounds.
It was a routine that Alaran had come to cherish, and he knew the other two felt the same.
But now there was no sign of her.
"She could be sleeping," Temos offered up, but neither of them responded to that because they knew that Temos knew that wasn't the case.
Alaran stepped in and within a few seconds, it was easy to see that something had happened here.
Tables were knocked over, and there were food packets scattered around. Natasha's door was open, and her nightstand was in the doorway, keeping it from sliding closed.
It looked like there had been a struggle here, and Alaran was terrified of what he already knew he was going to find.
"Nat!" Temos called. "Natasha!"
There was no response.
"This is bad," Az said. "This is very bad."
"Someone took her," Alaran replied, stating the obvious. "They came onto our ship, and they took her."
"And they're dead now," Temos said, cracking his knuckles. His eyes had bled to full dark, and the waves of anger coming off of him were palpable. "No one takes what is ours."
Az was nodding, already going to the weapons cabinet.
"How are we going to find her?" Alaran asked.
"If she has her comm device on her, then we can track it," Az said.
"And if she does not?"
None of them wanted to think about that.
"We will find her," Temos growled. "There is no other option."
For a moment, they were silent. It was the oddest thing. It had just been the three of them for so long, just traveling together with no one else on board. But now that felt viscerally wrong.
Natasha had worked her way into their lives and their hearts and she was a part of this now. A part of their voyage, their journey. Without her, it felt like they should just go back home.
"We will find her," Alaran repeated, convincing himself that Temos was right. He had to be right.
"I think I have an idea to make that a little easier," Az chimed in. "We can run a dna scan on the ship. If there is any hair or fingerprints or anything left behind from whoever took her, then that will give us somewhere to start."
"And tell us who we have to kill," Temos added.
Az and Alaran were silent, but definitely in agreement.
They didn't wait particularly patiently while Az ran the scan of the ship. Bertha was large, and it took a long time for the scanners to go over every nook and cranny of her. Az thought it best to scan the whole ship, just so they didn't miss anything.
Impatience could mean Natasha being in danger for longer.
"I bet it was the Sahaya," Temos said as he paced. His presence seemed to fill the room in his anger, and Alaran knew him well enough to know that this sitting and waiting was just making him even antsier to do something already. He had never been the most patient of them. "They were talking about making her a slave and then we killed one of them. This is their revenge."
"They wouldn't have come all the way out here on their own," Az opined. "Not without payment."
"They do not always need payment."
"No, and they were perfectly happy to start trouble on Catsella for free, but we are an entire system away from there now, and they wouldn't have followed us out here just for the honor of the one you killed. Someone has to be using them."
"Who, then?" Alaran wanted to know. "Who would care enough to come here and take her from us?"
Az hummed, seemingly lost in thought as he watched the progress of the scan on his screen. "It could be someone the Sahaya told. Or someone who found out and has a grudge against us. Someone who wanted to hurt us."
"Not as much as we'll hurt them," Temos muttered, and Az and Alaran ignored him.
Alaran was more concerned with getting Natasha back than dealing with the ones who had taken her, and Az was busy forcing his tech to solve the problem.
It was his specialty, after all.
The scan was running, and on another screen, he was sending out a beacon to look for the signal from Natasha's comm device.
They hadn't found it in her room or anywhere else on the ship, so if her captors hadn't taken it from her, there was a good chance they could find it and then find her.
Az made a noise of frustration as the beacon results came back. "Her comm is either off or dead because I am just getting a general area and not a precise location," he said. "And, to make it worse, the signal is moving. They are taking her somewhere."
"Where?" Temos demanded as he came over. "Where are they headed?"
"To the Cistvale Cluster it looks like," Az replied.
That didn't bode well. The Cistvale Cluster was a group of gutted and partially destroyed planets that had seen impacts with asteroids and rogue moons out of orbit over the cycles. They were uninhabitable, but they were often mined for resources since the collisions had broken open parts of the planets' crusts and made it easier to get at the minerals underneath.
It was outside of any government's' jurisdiction, and was one of the biggest projects manned by slave labor in the galaxy.
Alaran swore. "It has to be the Sahaya, then. They were the ones threatening to enslave her."
"Scan complete," the ship's AI announced, and Az's eyes snapped to the results.
"There is no Sahaya DNA on this ship," he said.
"Who was it, then?"
Az frowned. "The scan picked up traces of Collivan, Quix, and Jamoreen."
"Neither of those planets are anywhere near here," Alaran pointed out.
"I know. Scavengers, perhaps? This could all be a coincidence."
"It seems too neat to be a coincidence."
"It doesn't matter," Temos broke in. "The motives, the culprits? That does not matter. We have a general heading, and we know she is missing. That is all we need. Let's go."
"He has a point," Az agreed. "Alright then. Let's see if whatever piece of Void trash they're flying can out jump Bertha."