John didn't stop speaking as he walked Hortan down to the cubicle.
"I mean, how can you not know where you left two hundred million credits? I can understand ten credits, or even a hundred, but a cred stick worth millions? Where did you have it last, or rather who did you use it with last?"
"I told you John, I put it in my pocket and that is the last time I saw it. I used it when I docked the last Helio down in the cargo bay, but I specifically remember that I put it back in my pocket."
They arrived at Hortan's door and he opened with his thumbprint. The room was somewhat messy with a light grey flight suit and a bag of dirty laundry in a corner. Actually, the room was very neat and tidy compared to some of the other pilots, but Hortan was quite embarrassed about the dirty clothes.
"Uhm, sorry about the mess, let me just clear that up."
He started to move towards the clothes, but was stopped by John.
"Let me look here Hort, and you can go to the dock and make sure. Pas, can you help him with accessing the account and check if it has been used?"
"Sure, let's go Hort, I can do the checking from the dock mainframe, I know the foreman very well, so it shouldn't be a problem buddy."
Pasqual led Hortan down towards the cargo bay and John turned to the room. Ok, if he had dropped it, it would be somewhere on the floor. He dropped and checked under the bed. Clear, actually clean as well. John frowned, who cleans under the bed? He checked under the table but nothing as well. He took the laundry and checked its pockets, empty. Smelly, but empty. He frowned at the light blue uniform, but didn't check it out any further. So, no cred stick here. He took the laundry with him, he could just as well drop it off when he was handing his own in. He opened a link to Pasquel.
"Nothing here, page me when you find it. Tell Hort I took his laundry for washing."
Dammit, this was proving to be the worst day in like forever. He walked down to his own room and dropped the laundry in his already large pile. He would take care of that later after training. Now he needed badly to hurt something. He switched to his training fatigues and loped down to the centre, laundry bag over his shoulder.
Tufan dropped his ID card and his TGFT passkey into the incinerator. There, it was done. He was no longer Tufan, he was now himself again. He had shaved his head and removed the long thin beard. His accent had disappeared and he was now clad in a violet and red flight suit with a large KAOS guild badge. He watched his last four months of life twirl and burn away, and then walked to the launch bay. He was due for a meeting with his guild leader Ahriman in Latos, and he better not let the commander wait for too long. He was generally not known for his patience, maybe the reason he was no longer a member of the Serco Thought Police. Asteroth chuckled as he remembered the first time he had met the brooding hulk of a man. He had just been arrested upon docking in Geira Rutilus with the remains of his command following the catastrophic operation Zephyr, and the interrogator had introduced himself as the Master Inquisitor. Asteroth had been surprised that the Thought Police was interested in the mission, but apparently they had been exposed to some new Itani thought manipulation machine. Asteroth hadn't cared one bit, he was too angry about the losses his unit had taken under his command, but over the next three days Ahriman had slowly unlocked his doubts about his own capabilities and instead shown him how he and his entire 2nd Special Ops group had been sacrificed. When Ahriman called him after the farcical court martial, he was not in any doubts whatsoever. He had joined KAOS with this specific mission in thought, and he had never looked back. He had delivered what they wanted from him, and now it was reward time. He launched from the station in his EC-107 and set course for Latos B-6, a nondescript piece of real estate, just what they needed.
Azumi came out from the shower and was drying her hair when she saw the cred stick on the floor almost under the bed. She bent down to get it while she fixed the towel around her hair and fixed it in a bun. A TGTF cred stick, with no name on it. She frowned and put it into her terminal to see whom it belonged to and more interesting how much money they had previously had. She found some underwear while the terminal was crunching the data, and was just about to get a dress on when the amount available popped up on the screen, resulting in her falling back on the bed. Who in their right mind would keep 211 million credits on one cred stick? She got up from the bed and checked the name, Hortan. She sighed, yeah, who else. She looked at the other cred sticks she had swiped from him and thought about what to do. She eventually came to a conclusion and swore badly under her breath. She was a pirate, not some goddamned immoral thief. She would have to give it back to him, but she couldn't just barge into TGFT HQ unannounced. She took the dress off again and opted for the jump suit instead. She punched in the code to open the programme yoda had given her and sent the coded signal for retrieval to her contact. Time for a rendezvous with Sedina B-8
NP met with Tohasandra Chi in the launch bay. She had a stay-over bag over one shoulder and her helmet under the other.
"What took you so long, you said we had to leave right away."
He shrugged and smiled, turning his hands outwards to his front.
"Sorry Lieutenant, I received a message that I have to respond to. If I could get you to fly ahead and take contact to your usual sources initially, I shall be along shortly and we'll make it an official visit at that time."
"Well, I guess I can do that," she smiled, "I need some exercise anyway. Do you know how long time it will take?"
"Well, it depends on whether or not I am there to pick up a parcel or not. The days that I actually have to receive something tends to take quite a while longer."
"Are you sure you can handle it alone?"
NP grinned back at her, nodded and walked over to his Corvus Vulturius that was ready for launch. He was inbound for an extremely hot if somewhat hostile date in Sedina B-8.
