How I Got Here: "Alysianne"
11 Apr 2023Columbuss
Commander Justin Estok. Stardate 11-APR-3309."None of this seems suspicious to you?!"
I glance over my shoulder one last time before following Aly out into the street. Together we weave in and out of the hustle and bustle that makes up the crowded Whitworth Station road. Busy space port roads like this one, the kind that loop over your head and meet back where you started, are always jam packed with people. People are always coming and going, milling about their daily lives and weaving their webs of connections to the spinning metropolis around them, ever so briefly, before coming untangled again and disappearing as though they were never there to begin with.
Street merchants litter the concourse, flogging their wares to onlookers as more people dart around them, heading toward whatever destination awaits. Above our heads, the sounds of drones whizzing by can be heard. Looking up, I watch as a seamless stream of flying droids can be seen speeding through the empty space above us. One lane heading the direction we were walking while another races back, toward the diner we've left behind, and out of sight.
I try sticking tight to Aly's heels as she stays a step and a half in front of me. She moves through the crowd, almost gracefully, with much more confidence than me, anticipating the steps of the passerby's and moving through the small gaps in the endless tide of people like she was born to it. Clearly, she's much more accustomed to places like this than I am. For someone in her profession, it pays to be able to blend in and go unnoticed.
Caught off guard, I step to the side, avoiding a man drunkenly stumbling into the street and landing on his face. He groans as I step past him, watching as he lifts his head off of the faux pavement before tumbling back down again. To the side, a man wearing an apron stands in a doorway beneath a sign that says "AstroBar" yelling to the drunken man in the street.
"Come back when you have some credits!"
Aly turns her head back toward me as if to make sure I was still with her, before motioning for me to follow. She makes a slight turn, through yet another opening in the crowd, toward a small concourse with the words "Lift Service" in brightly lit letters above the entrance.
"Where are we going?!" I yell out, over the wall of people I'm trying to force my way through.
"If you want to see," she replies, looking back with a wry smile. "Then you'll just have to keep up."
All of this. Aly. The diner. The crowded Whitworth road. It all came after the attack on the Astral Projections mining site. It all came after we landed back on Whitworth and told Walt that, because of us, Lorencian Ardulo had just lost a significant amount of money. All of this, it happened after we found out Walt was dead.
Jump back twenty four hours as Brandson, Finn and I sit in the galley of the Chelsie Grinn, staring at a newly received message in the communications terminal which is projecting itself over the galley's central hub. Behind the main window is the list of previously received communications. Messages from the dock master's office, station maintenance and flight control all grayed out and marked as "read". All except this one. At the base of the window, a GalNet ticker scrolls by with headlines from system wide and regional news. Every so often coming back to the most recent, and relevant, headline.
"LIFE LONG FEDERAL SECURITY OFFICER MURDERED ON WHITWORTH. SUSPECT/S STILL AT LARGE."
As the headline scrolls past again, Finn turns to me, eyeing the message and taking in air as if he were about to speak, before failing to form a sentence. Brandson stands up, walking toward the digital readout suspended in midair and hanging, enormous, behind his meager frame, before stopping and turning back to us.
"Does anyone else think this is a little bit, I don't know... suspicious?" he asks.
"How do you mean," asks Finn with a slightly obvious tone.
"Oh, I don't know," Brandson continues with a not so slight air of sarcasm. "Maybe that our only contact in this system was brutally murdered just a few days after we destroyed a ship worth upwards of fifty million credits. All of it, belonging to a particularly vicious group of gangsters who want to chop our heads off at the neck and hurl them in to The Void and today, we receive THIS message. None of this seems suspicious to you?!"
"We get it kid," I say back. "But we either go along with this message or we go home."
"You mean 'get killed' or go home", he replies. "I don't exactly love either choice, but I know which one I prefer."
"No one's gonna die Brand," Finn chimes in. "Besides, the message was sent to us here, on The Chelsie Grinn. Tight beam. Which means whoever sent it knows where we are. If this person," he says gesturing toward the message, "wanted us dead, it seems to me that they already know where to find us."
Reaching over my chest, I finger at the keypad terminal next to the booth I'm sitting in. Eyeing the comm display and back down at the keys, I type in the coordinates attached to the bottom of the message. The terminal screen changes as the coordinates pull up the location.
"The station layout says the coordinates are at a restaurant." I say. "'Lucy's Deep Space Diner', it's called. Looks like a coffee shop. Mostly foot traffic and 'to go' orders for the offices nearby. Couple of booths inside by the look of the place. Not so busy that a conversation might be over heard but definitely too busy for a murder."
"I hope you're right," Brandson replies, before turning back toward the screen. All of us looking up and eyeing the words projected in the air above his head.
"Our friend is dead. We need to talk. Meet with me." -Alysianne