A slow smile spread over Rene's face as his concerns about interstellar navigation and diplomacy slid into the back of his mind. There wasn't really a time limit to the task and they had already made more progress than the Kalderi had in their investigation. The fact they had sighted the Corsica meant the likelyhood of them finding the fugitives eventually was excellent.

"Well, while I have no doubt that the Kalderi are worthy of continued intense study... I was just about to ask a pretty girl to take a walk with me..."

_________________

"HK-421," Rene said with satisfaction. He spun on the console seat he had been sitting at. It was early afternoon the day after their visit to the trading quarter. The two humans had spent a pleasant evening strolling on the artificial strand before taking a meal at the one restaurant in the trading quarter. It hadn't been a great meal as such things went, but it had been spicy, filling and most of all human. Kalderi fare was edible but without much character. It was a marked improvement on anything Rene had eaten since he had enlisted, with the possible exception of what had been available while they were with Ten on Zatis, though truthfully, with the threat of imminent death approaching the PEA array Rene hadn't taken much joy of it. The wine had actually been fairly respectable and it had been the first decent meal they had enjoyed together in safety. All in all it had been a wonderful evening, a fond memory to be stored for hard times ahead.

"Are you sure?" Rosaria asked, looking up from whatever it was she had been reading. Rene wasn't sure what files she was accessing but he was fairly certain that it had nothing to do with the search for the missing Kalderi. That didn't mean she was wasting her time of course, far from it, she lacked the expertise to be of much use in such a search having had no astronav training and having an only academic appreciation of the universe beyond Zatis. He hoped she wasn't simply reading literature, though he didn't know what other activity would be of help at his point. They had gathered on the Bonaventure in order to have better access to Mia and, subconsciously, to continue the previous evening of 'humanness' as best they could. It also gave them some privacy from their Kalderi hosts, which probably wasn't necessary, but there was always the chance they would discover something that it might make sense to conceal from the Kalderi, at least for a time.

"Yes," Rene said with certainty, he waved his hand at his display, it was unidirectional but Mia, as always, picked up on the intent of the gesture and an omnidirectional holographic system. The hologram showed a composite star chart and sensor readings from their encounter with the derelict Corsica.  

"They abandoned the Corsica, probably intended to from the beginning," Rene explained, "I guess they could come back for the ship when the heat was off because they system they jumped to is rarely visited, we wouldn't have gone there except to throw off pursuit." The hologram shifted as Rene manipulated the controls changing a portion of it to a visual screen showing the Corsica hanging in space.

"They used an escape pod, a small one jumper I suppose, to light out of there. Under normal circumstances it would have been undetectable," Rene went on. The view zoomed in on a section of the hull that looked like an open airlock.

"Luckily the Corsica was leaky enough that there was some gas at the moment of launch," he told them. A red line extended from the image as Mia zoomed the view out, first to the stellar and then to the interstellar scale. The line touched dozens of systems as its uncertainty spread over time, but only one of those systems, the computer designated HK-421, both lay on the track and was among the list of worlds Solae had winowed from the assembled files of the human traders, all of whom had been eager to cooperate rather than risk losing their trading privileges.  

"Are there settlements there?" Yarue asked from his own console, the Syshin had been silent so long Rene had almost forgotten he was present.

"Nothing listed, just an astronomical survey that says there are planets," Rene admitted. Exploration this close to the Kalderi border was minimal, the risk of angering the alien race had been deemed too great, at least while there were still plenty of undeveloped worlds for the humans to exploit.

"But I think it is a fair bet that Bouradine knows something we don't..."