Document No.: 009
Subject: Missing person
Date: 12/12/2382
Location: Red Ridge outskirts,
New Sahara, Mars
The town of Red Ridge was by far the smallest collection of people Annie had ever encountered, the only exception being the collection of herself, Tati, and Jane as crew aboard The Black Cat. It was a town that existed primarily as a freight hub for the cattle and sheep farmers in the area, as well as providing the services that only a small town could, such as food, limited luxury goods supplies, and building products. It boggled Annie’s mind that if you stood at the zenith of the titular Red Ridge, you could easily see the entire town stretched out around you. A highway for wheeled vehicles – still common and popular for the ease with which they could be fixed by their owners – bypassed the town, providing the farmers with easy, basic, access to Kingstown, the next nearest community.
Across said highway from the town was the space port – little more than a fenced of patch of asphalt plopped opportunistically on a naturally flat stretch of land with a few portable cabins for shipyard staff. There were rarely more than a handful of space-going vessels there at any one time, and mostly freelancers at that. Large-scale freight was shipped directly out of Kingstown, while Red Ridge tended to be the go-to location for picking up odd jobs.
“What are we hoping to find?” asked Annie, striding along next to Skipper. She had grown taller in her fever dream, but she still needed to walk quickly to keep pace with the Viper Caste Disderian’s stroll.
“Work,” replied the reptile unhelpfully.
“Yes, I understand that,” replied Annie with admirable restraint, “but what kind specifically?”
Skipper cocked his head and looked down at her quizzically. His forked tongue flickered in and out, as if he could taste what Annie meant by the question.
“The kind that pays us.”
“Um … do you … specialise in any particular cargo?”
“No,” Skipper said drily. “Boxes are obviously easiest … but I would hardly call what is easy ‘specialising’.”
“Guh,” Annie grimaced. “So, what … it’s a lucky dip?”
Skipper thought about that for a moment. “More or less,” he allowed.
They crossed the generally deserted highway on foot – Skipper insisted on walking everywhere – and made their way into the town proper. The red dust was either packed into claypans or loose and almost powder-like, although the residents of the town had succeeded in growing lawns and getting gardens to take in their yards. It made for a bizarre splash of green on the otherwise red and bleached bone white of the Martian landscape.
“Do you have specific … places … you go? To find work?” Annie tried again.
Skipper looked as if he was in pain. “Can you not simply … follow and observe?”
“Is that how I’m supposed to learn everything?” Annie demanded.
Two pairs of shoulders shrugged. “Maybe,” Skipper ventured. “Or is that not something you are capable of?”
“What if I’m not capable of that?” Annie pressed insistently. “Are you going to ditch me here?”
A group of children ran past, laughing and shrieking at whatever game they were playing. They came from a variety of ethnicities, but all were caked in the same red dust that covered skin and hair and clothes alike after a full day playing in it. Annie wondered unhelpfully if she would be very different if she had grown up like that rather than stumbling through public events and private schools.
Skipper, meanwhile, had snorted and said nothing, as if that was how poorly he thought of her challenge.
“Will you?” Annie asked again, softer this time.
“A Viper does not so easily leave a Child he has marked,” Skipper hissed irritably. “Now follow and observe in silence for a time. You had a much quieter demeanour before you grew legs.”
Annie snorted, but couldn’t deny that. Something about the venom-induced fever she had endured for a full week had done things, not just to her body but to her mentality as well. That she was taller was indisputable. Beyond that, she found it easier to speak her mind now and stand up for herself … as if some sort of mental block had been released. And then there was her hair … Tati thought she dyed it, but that, too, had fully and – as far as she could tell, permanently – changed to an every-girl mousey brown. It was as if she had become everything she wanted to be, and in so doing, made it extraordinarily difficult for herself to ever go back to where she had come from.
Skipper looked down at her and seemed to relent somewhat.
“Do you think the Viper Caste wander around marking vagabonds and hoping to luck they are the right one?”
“I should hope not,” Annie said sourly.
“Well … we do not,” Skipper affirmed. “I have no doubt that, when the time comes to truly test your reflexes, these will be greatly improved as well.”
“Why did you pick me up?” Annie asked, suddenly morose, as if her prior sass had been a massive effort up until now.
“Providence,” Skipper said flatly. “No matter how many connections might have been truly required to save you from The Surface … at the end of the day, that the man keeping an eye on you had an acquaintance with me, and that I was in the area … these things can only be attributed to providence.”
“A man …” Annie blanched. “…keeping an eye on me?!” She whirled on the spot. “Who? Who was it?”
“You may meet him one day if you survive long enough,” Skipper shrugged, before batting her gently, if solidly, with one large, scaly hand to get her moving again.
Annie gave an angry squawk, but took the hint. “Why would one of your contacts be watching me?” she sulked as she continued on. Then again … I suppose … in hindsight … I was pretty bloody obvious.
“He’s not one of my contacts,” Skipper chuckled. “I am one of his. He pays well, but I certainly could not afford his rates. Now, hush. I will say no more on the matter.”
They walked on as the sun began to set slowly. The thought of the journey back to the ship in the darkness was already annoying Annie, but she did as she was told and trudged on. It was around the time when most people had dinner, and the streets were more or less deserted. Up ahead, along the main street, the night life was beginning to emerge as the town’s two taverns began to fill to overflowing. There was little else to do in this place, and so the majority of the night’s revelries were contained to the establishments’ immediate vicinities, although there was some overflow into the park across the road.
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“What have we here?” murmured Skipper then.
Annie was used to him picking up on things before she did. He was, after all, an alien with excellent eyesight and the extra-sensory abilities of a snake. Coupled together with his added height advantage, he was sure to notice things before she could. What did surprise Annie, however, was how quickly she noticed what he had called out.
“Oh! A … a girl? Where could she be going? She’s coming towards us … why would she be heading out of town at this hour? On foot?”
“Many good questions, none of which I know the answer to, as I am not a mind reader,” Skipper sighed with great sufferance.
The girl in question was small in frame, and struggling under an awkward burden that she carried, cradled in her leanly muscled arms. She was young, and at first Annie thought they might be the same age, but the empty sorrow in the girl’s eyes and her shell-shocked expression gave her the impression of a maturity beyond Annie’s experience. Her short black hair was mussed and matted, and she wore a baby blue lace dress that Annie thought would have once been worth a lot of money. And in her arms … Annie did a double take.
A pair of sheathed sabres were carried wearily in the girl’s arms, and even now, she stumbled a little. Her black button-up boots were long-since coated in the pervasive red dust of Mars, as was the once-blue dress. And now the girl looked exhausted, as if she were carrying about the weight of the entire planet, not just its dust.
"Is the shipyard this way?"
AI-rendering of original characters and narrative by T. Sharp
Those sabres, thought Annie uneasily. Even she knew that they were weapons that accompanied the parade uniform of military officers. What crest is that … She froze. She looked at Skipper, who was still studying the girl on her own merits, the same way he done with Annie.
“Where do you go, little one?” he asked simply.
The girl started, as if she had not even comprehended their existence until just now, despite being about to stagger past them. Her eyes flickered dully, as if she were no longer even capable of discerning threat from help … or did not care.
“Where?” she wondered with a dead voice. Her brow furrowed prettily. “Where indeed?” she wondered again, to herself. She cocked her head like an inquisitive zombie. “Is the shipyard this way?”
“It is,” Skipper confirmed. “What business do you have there?”
“I do not know,” the girl murmured wistfully, her eyes staring at something just beyond Skipper that only she could see.
The sabres, thought Annie, unnerved, and her speech … she’s no street kid … what on Terra have we stumbled on to?
“I suppose,” the girl continued in her pleasant, dreamy, drone, “that I simply needed a goal to aim for … and now that I am almost there … my strength … is …”
She pitched forward then, although even as her consciousness gave up on her, her arms remained locked with a fervent determination around the sabres. Skipper snatched her up, his face as expressionless as ever, and cradled her in his lower pair of arms. His tongue flicked slowly in and out with a deliberate attention to detail, while Annie just stood there in dumbfounded fascinated.
Are the worlds going mad? she wondered with an uneasy horror. That’s Natalie King! I’m sure of it! It would be even weirder if it was someone who looked just like her carrying … what has to be … her father and brother’s swords! What … what happened?!
“What an interesting turn of events,” Skipper murmured thoughtfully, staring down at the collapsed girl in his arms. “You have thoughts,” he stated, his words directed at Annie despite his eyes never leaving the girl.
“Do you know who that is?” Annie whispered, wary of being overheard even on the deserted street.
“No,” Skipper shrugged. “I take little interest in the pursuits of men except what is necessary for me to be paid by them.”
“But you spend a bit of time here, right?” Annie persisted. “In Red Ridge?”
“No more than any other isolated settlement on Mars,” Skipper shrugged. “One cannot afford to be too predictable when independent. Pirates prey on the isolated.”
“Oh,” Annie realised, Skipper’s statement actually making complete sense to her. “I see. Um … do you know who the Kings are?”
“Aah,” Skipper understood, intrigue flickering alight in his eyes. “I know of them, but not what they look like. So that explains the remaining hints of perfume and cleaning agents still clinging to her skin and dress. Are you saying she is of that household?”
“I’m practically certain,” Annie whispered, her eyes glued to the slumbering girl – Natalie – in her captain’s arms. “She’s the youngest child of the King family … and she’s carrying the sabres of her father and brother. We need to find out …”
“Do we?” wondered Skipper, finally turning slowly on his heel and beginning to walk back towards the shipyard.
“Huh?” Annie practically malfunctioned, half-tripping on her own legs as she whirled to follow Skipper. “I mean … Skipper? What do you …”
“What does it matter what happened to them?” Skipper asked bluntly. “Will it affect your or my life?”
“I mean … if you’re bringing her aboard, yes, it kind of will!” Annie exclaimed. “Do you know anything about that level of society?!”
Skipper turned a taciturn stare down at her. “No,” he said bluntly.
“Oh,” Annie squeaked, making some extra effort at respectful behaviour. “Well … um … people will be looking for her. If not her family … others … people who are invested in her family. I …” She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “I really think we need to at least find out what has happened to her family!”
A flashback of her brief introduction to Philip and Samuel King at her Presentation saddened her for a moment. What could have happened that the family’s youngest was wandering the streets of Red Ridge alone, clutching her father and brother’s swords? Not only that … but Kingstown was the closest town to the King’s estate of Manchester Park; even Annie knew that much about them.
And even Kingstown is 30 kays from the estate! This is Red Ridge, almost 100 kays from the estate! How did she get here?
“Do you wish for me to leave her here on the sidewalk?” asked Skipper in his usual matter-of-fact way. He continued his easy-going stroll.
“Well … no,” Annie blustered, feeling as if Skipper were missing the point. “But we should be prepared …”
“Is her situation any different to yours? Are not people of your level of society searching for you as well?”
Annie’s brain tripped over itself for a couple of moments as she tried to bring herself more in line with Skipper’s rationale. Honestly, she already knew this, but it was such a foreign concept to her after all of her father’s lectures on caution and planning that it was still a significant mental wall.
Skipper doesn’t think like that, she reminded herself. He just … does what he wants. He isn’t blind to consequence, but he has a very fatalistic idea of dealing with it. Either he can pay the cost or he can’t. But he doesn’t let the choices he makes influence how he lives his life. I … can’t even imagine living like that … could a human even survive like that? Should they?
“We will take her aboard,” Skipper said plainly. “She may go where she will once she wakes and is somewhat healthy again. There is no extra risk, for she is no more or less important a child than you are. If anything … for her to look like this and in Red Ridge … my instinct tells me her trail is very much cold, or she would have been taken in by now.” He looked down at Annie placidly. “I believe you are still the biggest problem aboard my ship,” he said drily.
“Well … maybe you should leave me behind!” Annie retorted petulantly.
Skipper stared at her until she went red and venomously kicked at a pebble in her path, continuing to follow him as he had no doubt known she would.
“You should know by now that I do not feel inconvenienced by you,” Skipper said at last with great reluctance. “If I am it has more to do with your teenage angst than your status as a runaway princess.”
“Hey!” Annie bristled.
Skipper just shrugged. “We will find our way,” he said easily. “And if someone comes for you, they must go through me first. That is my role as your captain. And that is something we will deal with when and if the time comes.”
Somewhat comforted, Annie fell into an easy silence. She looked at Natalie King again, her own heart a little torn by this strange addition to the ship, as well as what the girl must have experienced in between being separated from her family and collapsing into Skipper’s arms.
Was it as bad as what happened to me? Worse? Annie grit her teeth and tried not to think about it. And what about her family? What happened to them? Skipper doesn’t care, but … I … Samuel’s piercing, ice-blue stare unsettled her conscience a little, as if that brief introduction was enough to warrant her finding closure regarding his whereabouts. And what about Natalie? When she wakes up, she will want to know … or does she already know?
With her thoughts awhirl, Annie walked in silence at Skipper’s side back the way they had come. Finding work would evidently have to wait for now. And even as Annie wondered to herself about the fate of the Kings and what path Natalie would choose when she awoke, something else niggled at the back of her mind. Another way in which she differed from Skipper.
Is that what he means by providence? Because it doesn’t feel that way to me … but then, was what seemed like providence to me in that basement actually a hindrance to him? I don’t know … is the whole cosmic balance wrapped up in a convenience to inconvenience ratio? Is one man’s providence another man’s curse? Will she recognise me? What will happen if she does?
With her thoughts wrapped up in trying to calculate contingencies, Annie followed in Skipper’s footsteps, blissfully unaware of the irony inherent in approaching this problem with precisely the sort of caution that her father would have wholeheartedly approved of.
