Chapter 152 · The Empty Berth

Eli looked at the number beside the hatch.

Again. Their number. He looked back along the corridor. Then forward.

“No.”

Stent was already moving. Eli followed. The berth itself offered very little information.

The ground-power lead had been disconnected and returned to its housing. The small service panel beside the pad still showed a green rental indicator, but the actual payment terminal was in the next bay over.

The Faded Glory was simply gone.

Eli walked farther onto the pad. For several seconds his mind continued trying to correct what he was seeing. The ship should have filled most of the space in front of him. Her landing gear should have been planted on the marked positions. Her ramp should have come down almost exactly here. Instead there was open duracrete beneath the port lights and, beyond the edge of the berth, the distant movement of ships and cargo vehicles across the field.

“Tee,” Eli called. Nothing answered. He knew nothing would. Still, the silence made his stomach tighten. “Stent.”

“I know.”

Something in his voice had changed. All the easy routine of the evening was gone. Stent had stopped near the place where the bottom of the ramp would have rested.

Then he crouched.

Eli followed his gaze. At first he saw only dirt and the usual stains left by years of landing gear, hydraulic fluid and cargo handling.

Then he saw the dark marks. Several drops. A short smear across the duracrete.

Blood.

Eli’s stomach dropped.

Stent leaned closer without touching it. “That wasn’t here before. It’s fresh.”

“No.”

They had walked across this exact spot carrying groceries only a few hours earlier. Eli would have remembered blood.

Stent rose and looked around the berth. The service access. The lane leading back toward the rest of the port. The old security camera mounted high on a light standard near the entrance to the spur.

Nothing else appeared disturbed.

Eli pulled out his communicator almost without thinking.

It was a compact short-range unit he carried mostly from habit, linked to Stent’s and little else. The Faded Glory’s contact code was stored in it as well, useful around a landing field or dock when they needed to call Tee or send a simple instruction without walking back to the ship.

He selected it. The communicator searched.

Nothing.

Eli tried again. Still nothing.

Stent had already taken out his own unit. He checked the local channel, then the ship code. “No response.”

“She could be out of range.”

That was worse.

The communicators were not designed for interplanetary contact. They were useful across a port, across a city if conditions were good, perhaps somewhat farther with a strong relay. If the Faded Glory had merely been moved somewhere else on the field, they should have been able to reach her.

Eli watched the connection attempt fail a third time.

“Tee’s aboard, with Ch’eth.”

Their clothes. Their equipment. Their route data. The navigation package from Sembla. Eli’s glucose reader. Most of their money.

Everything they had accumulated over months of turning the Faded Glory from a battered means of transportation into something dangerously close to a home.

The Rebel case was aboard too.

Everything except what they had happened to carry out for dinner.

Eli lowered the communicator.

“We need the camera.”

The automated kiosk in the next berth confirmed the part they already knew.

HORATIO FIGG
FADED GLORY
BERTH PAID THROUGH 0900

Eli opened the service history. Arrival registered. Ground-power connection registered. Rental payment registered.

No recorded departure. He refreshed it. Nothing changed.

“That’s impossible.”

“No,” Stent said. “It means she did not leave through the normal departure procedure.”

Eli looked back toward their berth. “That distinction is not currently making me feel better.”

The kiosk offered a security assistance link. Eli opened it.

A bored port employee appeared on the screen several seconds later, apparently working somewhere much busier than their abandoned outer spur.

Eli gave him the berth number and ship registration. The man checked. Then checked again. “You’re still registered as occupying the berth.”

“I can assure you we aren’t.”

The employee frowned at something offscreen. “No departure filed.”

“We noticed.”

“Did you authorize anyone else to move the vessel?”

“No.”

That finally got more of his attention.

Eli glanced toward the old camera overlooking the access spur. “Can you see what happened here? The camera here is… BG3..” he squinted, trying to read the numbers painted on the side of the case.

“BG345” Stent provided.

“Not from this terminal.” the clerk said.

“You have cameras.”

“We have cameras. I don’t have unrestricted archive access.” The distinction sounded bureaucratic enough to be genuine. The employee tapped through something else. “I can see the activity log for the main access lane. There’s been normal traffic through this section all evening. Cargo workers, service personnel, a couple of delivery carts. Nothing flagged.”

“Anyone entering our berth?”

“Not something this log will tell me.”

Stent stepped closer. “Can the recording be reviewed?”

“Yes. In person. Port security office.”

Eli closed his eyes briefly. “Of course.”

“You’ll need to file an unauthorized vessel movement report first. Bring identification, proof of commercial registration and the berth contract. Security can authorize access to the relevant footage after that.”

“How long does that take?”

The employee gave him the look of a man who had learned never to answer that question. “It depends.”

Naturally.

Stent gestured toward the dark marks near where the ramp had been. “Was any security incident reported in this area during the last two hours? Medical assistance, weapons discharge, disturbance?”

The employee searched. “No.”

Eli looked at the blood. “Someone was hurt.”

The man didn’t follow his gaze through the kiosk camera, from that angle he could not possibly see what Eli was looking at. “Then nobody reported it.”

That was all they were going to get tonight without going through the proper channels.

They returned to the berth. Nothing had changed. Eli had known nothing would.

Some irrational part of him had still expected to turn the corner and find the Faded Glory sitting there again, as though this had all been some ridiculous administrative error.

Instead there was only the empty landing pad.

Stent returned to the blood. A few drops. One smear. Not enough to tell them what had happened. Too much to dismiss.

“She was here when we came back from the market,” Eli said. “We unloaded everything. Tee was fine. Ch’eth was asleep. Nothing was wrong.”

Stent nodded.

They had put away the food, topped up Ch’eth’s water, discussed noodles and walked straight back out.

Eli rubbed both hands over his face. “Someone stole our ship.” Stent did not answer immediately. That made Eli look at him.

“You don’t think so?”

“I think the Faded Glory is gone. I do not yet know why.”

“That generally qualifies as stolen.”

“Not necessarily.”

Eli looked at the empty berth.

Stent gestured toward the marks near the ramp position. “We know there was blood here. We know the ship left without using the normal departure procedure. We know our communicators cannot reach her, which means she is no longer close to the port, and the available surveillance does not show us how she left. Everything beyond that is inference.”

Eli hated that he was right. He looked around again.

The cheapest berth they could find. Far from the main terminal. No attendant. One badly positioned camera serving an entire access spur. Exactly what they had wanted.

“We should have paid for the better one,” he complained.

“No.” Eli turned toward him. “We chose this berth because it met our requirements at a reasonable cost. Nothing we knew at the time indicated that leaving the ship here was unsafe.”

“Our ship is missing.”

“That does not make the original decision irrational.”

Under any other circumstances Eli would have argued with him. Tonight he did not have the energy.

He shoved his hands into his pockets instead. His fingers encountered a few folded notes and loose credit coins. Not much.

Dinner had been cheap. The Traders’ Lounge had cost a little more. They had never intended to need money for anything else before returning to the ship.

Eli took it out and counted. Stent watched. “Sixteen.” A pause. Eli looked at him. “You have cash?”

“A small amount.”

“How small?”

Stent reached into one pocket and produced four credits.

“That is impressively unhelpful.”

“We did not expect to require more.”

“No, we expected to walk fifteen minutes, open our ramp and go to bed.”

Stent’s hand moved briefly toward the side of his jacket. Eli noticed the shape beneath it. He frowned.

“Is that a blaster?”

“No, it’s a pocket charric.”

Eli stared at him. It was compact enough to disappear almost entirely beneath the jacket, little more than a holdout weapon. “Since when do you carry that?”

Stent looked genuinely puzzled by the question. “I always carry it.”

“You went grocery shopping with a charric.”

“Yes. You have a knife,” Stent replied.

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“It’s in my boot.”

Stent regarded him.

Eli sighed. “Fine. It isn’t different.”

At least they were not completely defenseless.

That was something. It was not much.

Beyond the outer berths, the spaceport carried on.

A freighter lifted somewhere across the field, engines rising to a low thunder before fading into the night. Cargo vehicles moved between pools of floodlight. Farther toward the terminal, illuminated signs still marked restaurants and service counters that would remain open until morning.

The noodle stall was probably still serving. The Traders’ Lounge certainly was, it never closed.

Two hours earlier, they had been sitting there discussing bad beacon data with other pilots.

Now Eli stood on an empty landing pad with twenty credits, a short-range communicator that could not reach his ship and a knife in his boot. Stent had much the same.

Everything else was gone.