[center][h2]Salvage[/h2][/center]


Hekubah was fuming.  He had them.  He had them dead to rights, with a dozen slaves purposefully concealed.  Even with the permits delivered by that fanciful witch…Cassidy, Quill, the ident log read…he had enough criminal intent to finesse a twenty-four hour landlock on the boat.  [i]But no,[/i] the detective inwardly raged.  [i]Gorram Kondo was just itching to get his troops back to barracks![/i]  He’d file a complaint about the captain’s conduct.  He’d also spend some time looking into Quill Cassidy.

The military staff car had dropped him at his precinct, leaving him to scowl at his brother officers all the way back to his desk.  The paperwork for this debacle was going to take hours, probably a night full of painstaking narrative and verbal misdirection to avoid a sizeable blemish on his performance record.  So, after his work to provide Murphy with a plum crop of slaves while taking Sister Lyen Giu down to boot, Detective Hekubah found himself with no coin and a job preservation scramble on his hands.  It was enough to make him spit.

The buzzing in his breast pocket distracted him from darkening thoughts.  “Hekubah,” he responded crisply as he pressed the little cortex reader to his ear.

“It’s Kwan.  That Firefly you had me watching just picked up and hightailed it.”

“Did you see which way?”

“Looked to be Northwest,” the informant answered.  “In a hurry.”

“Thanks,” Hekubah said.

Kwan, the dockyard worker turned C.I., was not finished.  “You gonna get me my drops?” he asked.  “Took my last hit this morning, and my head’s already….”  The desperate request went unfinished as the detective disconnected to make a much more urgent call.

“Wrong number.”

“Murphy,” he cut in, “it’s Hekubah.  Tell me you rounded up the rest of those Anabaptists.”

“Working on it,” came the brusque reply.  “You got any for me?”

“No,” Hekubah turned his back, his voice hushed.  “China Doll had a permit, but they also only had a dozen.  Shouldn’t be hard to find the rest.”

“Well, you fucked this up for us,” Murphy growled.  “But if there’s any left, my boys will find ‘em…not that you’re gonna see any coin by our sweat.”

The detective thought furiously, then answered the retort.  “I’ve got news,” he said.  “China Doll just lifted off.  She’s headed for the Blackout Zone…I conjure to pick up her captain, that gorram nun, and some willing bodies who swapped places with your property.”  Silence from the line told him that the slave trader was even now calculating a recoup of his losses.  “You could take them all, and then some,” he suggested.  “Plus their boat.”

“I’ll let you know,” the distant voice replied.

“Just make sure that when you scoop ‘em all up,” Hekubah’s wicked grin began to appear, “you’ve got Sister Lyen Giu and that captain…Calvin Strand…chained up in your hold.”  

The realization that this score might work yet fresh in his mind, Detective Hekubah felt his spirits lift as he went to disconnect the line.  No sooner had he done so than his cortex chirped again.  “I wasn’t finished,” Murphy’s voice carried his anger.  “We need you for a ride along on this one.  Get to the BZ, with your badge and gun.  We’ll meet you in the brickyard.”