Lance sat leaning back into his office chair with his feet up on his desk, turning the events of his investigation  into the missing cryo-pod over in his mind.

"Noah, open a private link to my audio log, maximum security. Oh and muffle sound in the room and lock the door, wouldja?"

[code]Done and done, Captain Lawrence.[/code]

Lance had always found that talking his problems out tended to help sort them, after all.

[i]"Lance's Log, Entry 4476-A

"This investigation into the cryo-pod theft was just like the 3D jigsaws I used to play with as a kid. I could see all the angles, but none of them fit together right no matter how I turned them around. Doctor Riadne was definitely hiding something, she's got a mind like a razor, cold, sharp and dangerous. but I didn't like her for this case. The blood samples I ran by the lab said we were looking for someone with an iron deficiency and if Loretta Riadne had any more iron in her, her hips'd clang together when she walked. Besides, the suspect, whoever they were, came from the Nagasaki Conglomerate." 

"The knife was another troubling aspect to all this. It'd have to belong to either military personnel or Ark-Sec, but what did that mean? If it was one of my own behind it, who could I trust? It was funny, but it was starting to seem like life was simpler and more honest back when I was a spy. I was suddenly looking around me and wondering which one of my own squad of fifty field agents might be a criminal. Which one of them was just wearing a costume instead of a uniform? The thought kept running around and around in my head so much it was starting to wear holes through my skull. If the knife was stolen instead, maybe the owner reported it to the Quartermaster's office, but that would only make the search worse." 

"Either way, I had a headache burning like a quasar behind my eyes and nothing to quench it with, not like in the old days, when I could just down a shot of that awful mix of rum and engine fuel the pirates drank to burn away the excess thoughts. I was drier than a Martian Barchan and whenever I reachrd out for answers, it was like I was trying to see through a sandstorm. I got nothing for my trouble but empty dust to choke on. If my mother could've seen me then, maybe she'd laugh, knowing I was finally learning to appreciate the kind of stress she was under. I wished she was here, then. I wished for it even with all of our...issues. The old gal always did know just what to do. Until I could say the same, I...decided I was gonna walk the beat until I got to the Quartermaster, to see if my feet could think better than my brain."

Lance's Log, Entry 4476-A, End."[/i]

Lance slipped his feet off of his desk and stretched as he planted them down on the floor. "Noah, lock up my office after me, usual protocols. I'm going on patrol."

He walked out and ignored the electronic chirp of reply, but not before strapping two guns, a pair of stun batons and his knife onto himself and making sure he had his badge. Lance didn't particularly like the A.I., but he found it was easier if he treated it like it was just a sort of odd, omnipresent person. To do otherwise gave his martian sensibilities all sorts of uncomfortable feelings, for all that he'd spent plenty of time away from Mars. He walked out of his Quad's base with the sort of polite-but-busy smile he'd been perfecting ever since he got the job, though it brightened a bit towards the Lieutenant Péloquin, the bubbly, hyper-competent desk officer that managed his ever-growing inbox full of paperless paperwork. It wouldn't do to upset the most powerful person in the office and besides, he liked her well enough.

"Out for a drink, Boss?"

How was it that she managed to read his mind whenever he didn't want her to read it? As a matter of fact, why could almost all the women in his life manage that?

"Not at all, Lieutenant. I'm going on patrol duty, so that my feet can still walk the corridors by memory."

She gave him a sort of lopsided smirk, part understanding and part fake lecture

"As long as they 'remember' to actually take you someplace where you can eat and sleep eventually, Captain." 

He gave her half a grin and change then walked out and into the ship proper. 

It was time to get back to work.