Waterstrider

5th District, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Thirdmonth, 1634 PTS

Kalthen sighed as he spoke to yet another random person he passed on the street. This line of inquiry was monotonous, time-consuming, and extremely unlikely to provide any useful information, and yet Akekha had decided that he needed to do it.

He had noted that he was the only one in the entire squad who had been given this duty, while the others had been ordered to much more plausibly successful methods. It was a train of thought his mind had returned to again and again, but one he knew would only bear negative fruit. He knew why.

Realizing that his attention had strayed again, he refocused on the middle-aged Korlove woman in front of him. She was droning on endlessly about the ‘exciting’ recent happenings in some Staiven-made television show Kalthen had no interest in. The moment she paused to take a breath he interrupted her.

“Apologies, but I meant happenings around the neighborhood,” he said.

She paused as if lost in thought before brightening up again.

“Oh, I see! Actually, yesterday afternoon I saw a Staiven businessman, I think it was. He had lots of guards. They had these intimidating uniforms on.”

“One of her spindly limbs lifted up to cover her mouth as she whispered conspiratorially to him.

“I almost thought he was part of the underworld, you know?”

She giggled as Kalthen considered her words. While the population in district five had a Celan majority, there were plenty of Staiven living and working there as well, so the presence of a Staiven in business attire was not particularly unusual. Guards in uniform, however, were.

He thought some more, his face instinctively frowning. A Staiven who had his own guards… that could either be a government official, a powerful corporate officer, or a member of an underworld organization such as the Drelistai. None of them had any business wandering around this unobtrusive small neighborhood in the fifth district. Even if it did have nothing to do with Riverfiend, he imagined there was definitely something going on. He met the woman’s gaze.

“Do you know which house they entered?” he asked.

A surprised expression filled her face, before a moment of enlightenment occurred, as if she had realized something.

“Ah, was he a friend of yours?”

Kalthen waited for her to continue, and there was a silent pause before he realized that she expected a response.

“Um… you could say that. More of a business partner, though. I was hoping to meet up with him to discuss something but it seems I missed him.”

She nodded sagely.

“I completely understand. It’s just like in Nights of Riendos when Turidr tried to meet up with Essand and events kept getting in their way.”

Kalthen started to question her sanity.

“So…?” he asked, annoyed by her absentminded rambling.

“Oh, right,” she said. The hairs on her legs laid down as she blushed. “Sorry, I’m told I can lose track of myself. Right, it was… unit number 3623, maybe? Something like that.”

Kalthen nodded to her, still annoyed but also thankful.

“Is there anything else you remember about it?”

She shook her torso vigorously.

“Apologies, I don’t think so. I wish you luck on your business! Oh, that reminds me! Have you heard of…”

It took several more minutes of listening to her ramblings before Kalthen was able to politely extricate himself from the conversation. If the information she had given him turned out to be worthless, he honestly believed he might feel the need to kill someone.

Finally free, Kalthen began navigating to the townhome that the woman had mentioned. He had considered informing his superior about it, but eventually decided it would be better to inspect it himself. If he told Akekha about it, she would either blame him for wasting her time if it turned out to be unimportant, or steal all credit if it was relevant. Neither would be a pleasant outcome.

He had used one of the contacts his mother had once introduced him to, a low-level employee of the Pantheonic Government to search the database for the unit’s owner. After half an hour, he had been given the result. It belonged to a man under the name of Kyer.

Though the Pantheonic Government was known to be lacking in proper information about their constituents a lot of the time, it was unusual for a property listing to not at least have the owner’s race listed. The Pantheonic Government was usually quite diligent about that, so they could grant special privileges to certain species such as Staiven and Escalos. However, Kyer was a Celan name, so between that and this being the fifth district, Kalthen could almost safely guess that the owner had been a Jobu or a Korlove.

From the outside, unit 3623 appeared just like any of the other townhomes along either side of the alley that its entrance was situated in. The only thing interesting about it by any metric was the total lack of adornment.

Because of how depressingly poor the aesthetic of the Staiven designed station was, it was the custom of most aliens living in Tseludia to decorate the exterior of their abode. For the Celans, who had already had similar cultural practices, it was highly unusual to not have such adornment. Kalthen would have assumed that the owner of this townhome would have to be a Staiven if he did not know better.

He approached the door, and chose to tap the side of it and see if anyone was inside of the unit at the moment. He could hear a faint ringing inside, but after a full minute there was no response.

Following that, Kalthen tapped to open the door, testing if it by chance remained unlocked. To his surprise, the hatch slid open easily.

The interior of the townhome was lit up, as if the place was currently occupied. It had a normal setup, but many physical books had been placed onto shelves in the living room, and some furniture had been shifted around. He inspected closely one of the books, and as expected, they were all written in Jobu. They were all books about science and nature, focusing on cutting edge Celan advancement from the past few years, as well as one about the final days of Opportunity.

He sighed, realizing that this was likely entirely unrelated to his mission, just an illicit deal between a Staiven businessman and some Celan scientist. Still, that in and of itself was potentially helpful for his situation. If there was anything he had learned from his mother, it was that all information had a potential value. He continued to inspect the townhome, careful not to touch anything and get his fingerprints on it.

It took him a couple minutes to explore all of the rooms, quickly determining several factors.

First, it seemed that two men had lived here, and judging by the sizes and shapes of their clothing, they could not be Jobu nor Korlove. Merris, then? That was unusual, if so. There were very few Merris aboard the Station.

Secondly, he had found that all slates within the townhome had all of their data wiped, set to factory reset modes. That was curious. He found it unlikely that the owners had recently purchased the devices and had yet to use them yet. Was this an attempt to destroy incriminating data? Perhaps the owners had decided to flee from the pursuit of that Staiven group and left these behind. If so, he imagined that one of the data recovery specialists working with his mother might still be able to regain access to at least some of it. Not everyone knew, but a significant amount of data that the machines claimed was destroyed could still be accessed if one was skilled enough.

Finally, Kalthen had noticed when he inspected the refrigerator, that it held some food edible to Celans, as well as some edible to Seiyal. This he found to be the most notable of all. It was possible that of the two inhabitants here, one was Merris and the other was a Seiyal. This was something extremely unusual, if so. Seiyal were uncommon in this district, and that combined with the presence of some important Staiven figure made Kalthen even more interested in who the inhabitants of this townhome could possibly have been.

He decided to finally report what he had found. However, as this was potentially very important, he chose to ignore the chain of command and report it directly to Triezal. He figured Triezal would cut him slack about the chain of command issue, and would be infinitely less likely to steal credit than Akekha would be.

His glyph slate shifted several times as the contact pinged Triezal, before the symbols finally resolved themselves into the other man’s face. Triezal looked at him curiously.

“Is something up, Kalthen? You don’t call me very often. If you’re wanting to get a drink again, I’ll be busy with work for the foreseeable future, sorry.”

Kalthen shook his head hurriedly.

“No, this is work related. I stumbled upon something I think you’ll find very interesting. I believe it’s either related to Riverfiend or something else that will be very important to us.”

Triezal raised an eyebrow.

“Why am I not hearing this from Squad Leader Akekha?”

Kalthen gave him a look, and Triezal’s face relaxed with a chuckle.

“In truth, I can’t blame you. She would do far better to overcome her prejudice. Her career will never progress unless she does. Anyway, what did you find?”

Kalthen nodded in agreement, before explaining everything. As he listened, Triezal nodded in silence, but at one point an expression of realization crossed his face. Kalthen paused his explanation in curiosity.

“Did something happen?”

“No, I just think I have an idea of who one of the owners might have been.”

“Oh?” Kalthen asked.

“For a few years I’ve been getting semi-regular alerts from my… superiors, about the fact that a fugitive is believed to be hiding out somewhere in the region. He was one of our scientists before he suddenly stole some research and fled the system.”

Kalthen’s eyes widened. A fugitive of the Epon? That was almost as big of a fish as Riverfiend himself. If they could capture him, the Heirs might even be able to partially assuage the courier’s anger. He smiled, expectantly.

“I’ll protect the scene until you send a team to investigate this place further.,” he said.

Triezal nodded in response.

“They should be there within the hour.”

The connection suddenly cut out, leaving Kalthen alone once more inside of the brightly lit space.

Drelistai: [The Drelistai are legally speaking a charity organization. In reality they are a Staiven group that is the sole remaining large organization which still worships Staive’s old gods, the ones who actually created the Staiven people. According to Pantheonic doctrine, those gods are long dead. The Drelistai are known to have ties to the Seer, and some say he is the true leader of the organization in secret. If nothing else, his influence is widely believed to be what shields the Drelistai from being wiped out by the six churches of the Pantheon. Still, the Drelistai largely lack public approval and are somewhat suppressed by corporations controlled by religious Staiven. As a result, there are rumors they have deep ties with organized crime.]