Pillar 99 was either on the border of the city’s darker sectors, or actually within it. The matter wasn’t exactly as precise as all that.
Vanaka and Losan found the place with twenty minutes to spare before the time she’d been given, and so they simply lingered on one of the platforms that encircled Pillar 98 and waited. There was some foot traffic, but only that; foot. Gorono’s quaint choice of personal transports was nowhere to be seen, and so each person who passed by had a face and a pair of eyes to go with it. Each one spared the two of them a glance, probably on account of their clothes standing out at least a little, but no one spared them any words or further attention. The area had the feel of a place where strangers were avoided.
Over to the west stood Pillar 101, visible only due to a light-strewn building of some sort behind it. The top of it was broken and jagged, probably a memento of orbital bombardment, and most definitely a sign of what kind of neighbourhood it stood in.
“It is time,” Losan finally said, and he was right.
They walked across the bridge that linked the two pillars and entered a carved doorway that took them to an interior that didn’t seem all that well planned-out. Perhaps this excavation had been done early in the city’s history of turning pillars into houses.
Apartment 6 was hidden among its siblings, an entirely unremarkable door save for the woman standing next to it. The hood hid the golden skin until Vanaka was an arm’s length away.
“Ah, hello again,” Vanaka said to Kiris.
“Hello,” the Chanei said back, and spared Losan a quick nod. “You are the last to arrive.”
“You are on guard duty?”
“I have an eye for trouble.”
She knocked on the door twice, then twice again. It was opened by a Veroki woman, with their distinctly pale yellow skin, and rather gangly.
“They’re good,” Kiris said. “We can get started.”
“Good,” the Veroki said, and let them in.
The apartment’s interior didn’t really have the look of being anyone’s actual home. Simple sleeping cots had been folded and placed against a wall, some travelling furniture had been set up, and cases and bags lay on the floor. Aside from lighting fixtures that was pretty much it for furniture.
The meeting seemed to have started, or at least its preliminary, as Vanaka followed the sound of soft conversation between a group of people. The first one she saw at the end of a short hallway was Unta, the ex-cop Kapadian local. As she rounded the corner she saw the other three individuals.
With her back turned to Vanaka was a woman. Tightly hugging an athletic figure was a glossy black suit with a handful of red stripes. At her hip hung a slightly curved sword, as well as a shorter companion. And her hair was a seemingly impossible shade of ruby red, done in a braid.
“I told you we had a black card,” Unta said with a grin as he saw her coming.
“Saketa??” Vanaka exclaimed.
The woman turned around, but had the face of a stranger.
“No, I am Warden Nara,” she said in that trilling accent Vanaka remembered from three years before.
“Oh,” Vanaka said. “I... met another Warden once.”
“This is Vanaka,” Unta said to the woman. “The one I told you about.”
“The information-getter,” the Warden said, and her gaze lingered on Vanaka.
“That I am,” Vanaka replied, and felt a touch uncomfortable. “It is good to meet you. Why have I not heard of a Warden being planetside? It seems that would be big news.”
“Gangs tend to go to ground when a Warden is in town,” Nara said.
She touched the red, four-pointed star in the centre of her chest.
“We never discard the suit, but the pragmatic of us wear something over it, as needed.”
Unta pointed to a man in an all-green ensemble, with a face marked by many small scars.
“This is Hemut.”
The man spoke some greeting in a voice every bit as rough as his features. Unta then pointed to a red-faced man with a shaved head and a moustache.
“And this is Reylo.”
“Greetings,” the bald man said in just about the thickest accent Vanaka had ever heard. “From light and dark.”
“And I am Klenna,” the Veroki woman said as she finished joining everyone else in the room. “So that’s everyone.”
“Hello, everyone,” Vanaka said and gave each person a polite glance. “With me is Losan, but I will be doing most of the talking.”
“We have been told about you two,” Klenna said with an air of impatience. “So shall we get right to business?”
“Certainly,” Unta said.
He walked up to the middle of the longer wall in the room and put his back up against it. Everyone else gathered before him in a line.
“We have a confirmed trafficking outfit in the city,” he said with the voice of a leader. “Fifty-two disappearances have been reported, and as always I will remind you that this is only what has been reported. We also know that they will be shipping the victims off-world.”
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“Fifty-two?” Vanaka said. “Is that really going to be profitable for them?”
“For a small outfit, sure,” Unta replied. “Maybe the container will be sent to some forlorn space station off in the colon of space. Or maybe it will be picked up by a larger outfit, and added to a larger shipment, and then THAT outfit will get the big payout. Let’s all be clear on something: We are not exactly up against the Devil Star Cartel here... but they are still dangerous. These are the kinds of people who get garrotted in prison by the other inmates, out of disgust. They’ll do anything to protect themselves.”
The scarred man, Hemut, said something that Reylo translated as ‘What do we do?’
“We don’t have a location, and we don’t have a lot of names,” Unta said, and fished something out of his pocket. “But we do have a name with a face.”
He pressed a button on his little device and projected an image onto the wall. It was a baseline woman with short, dark hair, and perhaps fifty years of age on her. It had been taken out in the streets of Gorono, seemingly without her knowledge. She was giving someone out of sight a friendly smile.
“This is Para Thassa,” Unta said. “Or at least that’s the name she’s using now. From what we’ve been able to gather she is a... procurer, for the outfit. It seems she approaches young women and lures them into being grabbed and disappeared.”
Vanaka stared intently at the image. Had she passed this woman in the street she would not have given her a second glance. It was an unnerving thought.
“It seems a safe assumption that she can tell us where the captures are being held,” Unta said. “Or at the very least tell us who can tell us.”
“I took part in an op that started much like this,” Reylo, the red man, said. “We grabbed a disgusting, smarmy little man who did the finding while others did the violence. We got a location out of him, and walked into an ambush. I suppose it was posthumous revenge on his part.”
“That is a risk,” Unta said. “The problem with squeezing information out of people is that it only really works when it can be put to the test then and there. Hmm.”
He turned to Vanaka.
“Which is why I find our new Helper interesting.”
She became the centre of attention, and for a moment Vanaka reflected that it was precisely what a Vylak was not supposed to do.
“Your delightfully mysterious talent for getting information... do you think you can put it to use?” he asked.
“If I can get her alone,” Vanaka said carefully. “And... do we know what languages she speaks?”
“She has been overheard speaking Bakiso,” Klenna the Veroki said. “And apparently a little Gyvo.”
“That works for me,” Vanaka said. This particular kind of attention was very different from being on stage. This was much more intimate, and she couldn’t help but feel that the Warden in particular was sizing her up.
“So you really can get people to talk?” the red man asked. “Reliably?”
“If I can get them alone, as I said,” Vanaka said.
“Magic?” he asked in response.
He took in the faces of everyone else.
“Oh, do not look at me that way,” he said. “I’ve travelled near the Outer Fringe. I’ve seen some crazy things. And we have an actual Kalero Warden in the room, for goodness‘ sake!”
“I can get people to talk to me,” Vanaka said in an even tone. “Let us leave it at that. Just tell me how I may get to her.”
“We do not have a home address,” Unta said. “Para Thassa probably rents under a fake name, if she even actually lives on Gorono and isn’t simply staying in whatever hideout the outfit is using. But we do know of two places she has been known to ‘recruit’ from: A homeless shelter and a dust school.”
“Dust school?” Vanaka repeated.
“Local euphemism,” he explained. “It is a type of school for poor children. The kind with no prospects.”
“Ideal hunting ground,” Kiris said softly.
“Then there’s that lounge,” Unta added.
“Lounge?” Vanaka said.
“She has repeatedly been spotted, supposedly, in a lounge.”
“Is it one of the Nuhuna Lounges?”
“It is,” he told her.
“Oh.”
Vanaka tried not to grin, given the subject matter, but she did feel a bit of a thrill. She took out the schedule the lounge regional manager had printed out for her.
“I perform in those lounges,” she told the assembled. “So I have an excellent excuse for staying there.”
“A lot of young women dance there,” Klenna said. “It is not one of the bigger outlets. I mean, it’s not some dive, but girls do tryouts there in hopes of performing their way into a bit of money.”
“So... it is another hunting ground for our target,” Vanaka said.
“That seems likely.”
“Then.... then I want to suggest that I dance there every evening, starting tomorrow, until either I spot her or one of you folks find her somewhere else.”
“Every evening?” Reylo repeated. “Isn’t performance dancing pretty exhausting?”
“I may be tougher than I look,” Vanaka said. “But what do you say? I mean, I will need to talk to the outlet manager, but what do you say?”
“It sounds like a decent job for you,” Unta said. He looked at the other gathered faces for confirmation, then went on. “But we can’t rely on it.”
Vanaka got the feeling he wanted to sigh, but he didn’t.
“Our biggest problem is that we are simply understaffed, given the population we’re surrounded by. Once we actually find these bastards, our friend here,” he indicated the Warden, “can fix the odds in our favour, but we just don’t have enough information.”
Hemut said something that Unta nodded to.
“I will need to dig up some old contacts,” he went on. “It’s... I think it is a risk, but I don’t think we have much choice. Fifty-two people. That we know of.”
A sombre silence ruled the apartment for a few breaths.
“The rest of you will have to do your own digging,” Unta then added. “But be careful. This outfit doesn’t seem to be big, but it isn’t hard to hire one of the petty gangs for a bit of mercenary work. Let’s not put the idea in their head.”
Now he did sigh.
“And let’s not attract the police’s attention, either. I don’t know that they’re getting kickbacks from this outfit, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”
With a general plan in place the talks turned to details of coordination and communication and backup plans, the kind of talk Vanaka was becoming familiar with on this venture of hers. Finally the atmosphere gradually came to relax as the dialogue turned to more friendly, casual things. Klenna brought out a bag of local snacks: some small, local ocean creature, dried and spiced. Vanaka was unsure how to feel about it at first, but the taste grew on her as she nibbled away on her second piece.
Unta, Hemut, Reylo and Klenna began chatting among themselves. They threw the odd comment Vanaka’s way, but she gave short, simple answers and generally distanced herself little by little. The Warden was still watching her, and turned a rather meaningful look towards the balcony door.
Feeling nervous, Vanaka walked towards it with Losan on her heels. The balcony was a plain affair; essentially the bottom half of a metal cage, bolted around a hole carved into the pillar exterior. There was next to no exterior lighting and any other balconies were hidden by the curvature. Losan took up position next to the door and Vanaka leaned against the balcony itself, in what she hoped seemed like a casual fashion. The Warden stepped out to join them.