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He’s stunned.
“Hey, I wanted to check in,” I say. “Did it come across your desk yet that my records were changed from missing to found?”
He nods slowly, rubbing the tired creases under his eyes.
“I saw it this morning but could hardly believe it. I was in the process of getting verification and finding your whereabouts. This says you were dropped at Lungfish Station.”
“I was.” I avoid giving him concrete information.
“Where are you now?” he demands. “You’re calling from an unlisted comm line.”
“Okay. My current companion hates scam calls,” I say with a shrug.
His handsome mouth forms a grim line.
“This tells me you’re either with criminals or the extremely wealthy, and with your track record, I have an educated guess.”
“I’m going to ignore the fact that you’ve been reading my files.”
“How could I not? You’ve been gone. I’ve been searching for you.”
“Here I am. I’m alive. Now tell me about the others. Kaye and Frankie are still in trouble, but I’m working on finding them.”
“Jones,” he warns, just as I expected. “You need to come home and process this. Any statements you make could help the investigation, but do I need to remind you that you’re not actually an investigator?”
“You said you’ve been reading my files,” I say. My records are no doubt filled with notes about abusive foster parents, druggie exes, constant truancy. But files never tell the true story.
“Yes, an—”
“So you know I’ve had my fair share of standing on the sidelines while there’s an ongoing investigation into shit that had directly affected me.”
“This isn’t Earth. The same rules don’t apply.”
“No, thankfully they don’t. And I’m done waiting for phone calls. I’m not going home until I find Frankie and Kaye. So you can drop it. What about the others?”
He heaves a deep sigh. He knows my bull-headed attitude isn’t worth arguing with further.
“Alice and Reza have been brought home and reunited with their families. Tonya and Wendy were recently recovered by the Rathe system authorities, and they should be arriving within the month. Unfortunately, Tracey Moony won’t be so lucky. Her remains were identified among some cargo discarded by smugglers. As far as we can tell, they tried to dose her unconscious, but the drug they used reacted poorly in her system.”
I take a deep breath, devastated by the news of Tracey. She was trying to get pregnant last I saw her, excited at the prospect of raising her family in the colony with her husband. Now she’ll never get that chance, and her husband must be inconsolable. I could have easily shared her fate, considering the number of times I was dosed unconscious by captors.
“There were two others,” I point out.
DJ reports that those two are still unaccounted for and flagged as missing persons throughout the civilized galaxies. I didn’t know them well. They were new arrivals to our community, and I never saw them after the initial attack.
“People are on the lookout because of the circumstances and their relation to the Sector 5 War,” the sheriff assures me. “Humans are still something of an oddity out here.”
When I hazard a glance at Niko, he’s leaning forward in his seat, eyes blazing with sudden interest.
“What does it have to do with the war?” I ask.
“They say that the Azza are only interested in human women because of their compatibility or biological similarities with their enemies, the Kar’Kali. More recent reports are stating they’ve dropped the offer to bounty hunters for humans, so that could mean the danger for women traveling outside the Alliance has passed for now.”
My heart starts to stammer.
Compatibility.
“Weird,” is all I say.
