The floor of the city core had a minor circulatory system of roads intended for actual vehicles rather than pedestrians, but cars clearly got away with going through the rest of the available spaces as long as one wasn’t uppity. A combination of the two quickly delivered them to a set of safety deposit boxes, one of whom Gaylen rented to dump a stash of backup guns inside. He then left with the key.

Their main guns, and Bers’s huge, lunatic axe, stayed in the car.

“Alright,” Ayna said, as Jaquan started the acceleration again. “We’re armed with anonymity, plans, backup plans, armour and… well, weapons. Let’s do this thing.”

“Yes,” Gaylen replied. “Let’s.”

There were many ways to be clever about finding someone. There were all sorts of elaborate social games one could play, mixing spying, tech and socialising in varying proportions. But one could also simply drive around in a car with one-way windows and keep an eye on the foot traffic.

There were pragmatic reasons why so many gangs chose to wear uniforms of some kind, but it could occasionally turn into a weakness. So it was that due to the fairly small amount of road space within the city car, it took them less than an hour to spot the green jackets again.

“Those aren’t from yesterday,” Gaylen said to Jaquan’s benefit. “One is too tall, and the other is too long-haired.”

“Rats…” Bers mumbled.

The two of them were heading in the opposite direction to the group, and so soon their faces were in clear enough sight to rule out all doubt. This wasn’t the scummiest part of the ground streets, but other pedestrians clearly had some familiarity with the green jackets, and gave them a modest berth in passing.

“Ayna, what do you think?” Gaylen asked.

She had already been scanning the street and its traffic, and consulting a digital map of the surrounding area.

“I’ll do it,” she stated firmly. “Just take the right up ahead, then turn right again. I’ll take that tunnel and catch up with you.”

She was wearing a hoodie, and a scarf from neck to eyes. She made sure both were properly in place, almost entirely hiding her chalky skin, and then slipped a hand into her belt.

“Keep your channel open,” Gaylen reminded her. “Just in case of trouble.”

“I remember, boss-man.”

Jaquan started that turn, and Ayna opened a side door and smoothly slipped out. Herdis closed the door behind her as the girl joined the foot traffic.

“I still see them,” Ayna whispered.

They slow-drove a short distance, around the row of relatively short towers, then turned right again to drive down the opposite direction. It led them to a narrower street, even more haunted by the gloom of the ground, due to lack of light fixtures. Everyone kept their seatbelts on, ready to act, ready for trouble.

There was an extended silence from Ayna, as it damn well should have been, given what she was trying to do. The first hint of anything at all was a soft beep on a pad that Gaylen had attached to the dashboard.

“She did it,” Kiris said.

Gaylen accessed the pad, and found a red dot moving along a barebones street map. Jaquan slowed the car further as that tunnel neared. Ayna emerged, moving with a casual air that put Gaylen somewhat at ease, although he continued to scan the surrounding streets.

The Dwyyk walked to the car, Herdis opened the door, and Ayna slipped back inside.

“Yeah, I’m great,” the girl said. “I’m really, really great. Er…”

She peeked over Bers’s broad shoulder.

“I did it right, right?”

“You did,” Gaylen said, and rewarded her with a small smile. “We have our little insider.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Fredrak had sent them off with a small gift: Up-do-date, bleeding edge tracking devices. The sort that operated to a large degree on the target’s own movements and radiant heat, disguised itself to fit in with any article of clothing it was placed on, and also allowed for audio.

Gaylen had already inserted certain keywords that the software would pay particular attention to, such as ‘Hegemony’, ‘meeting’, ‘Axu Lanes’, ‘agent’, ‘prisoner’, and so on. But they would of course have to pay direct attention too. And so Gaylen activated the audio, and let it play.

“Now let’s see about hedging our bets,” he said.

Jaquan continued around the city core. He repeated streets as little as possible, for the sake of not rousing suspicion. While there wasn’t a huge amount of vehicle traffic, there was a fair amount of identical cars, so that helped too.

It again wasn’t that long before they spotted two more green jackets, going down one of the longer streets, near to the core’s core. Ayna did the finger-cracking motion, except that her joints of course made no sound; just bent further than on any other human type. Then she dipped out again and let herself disappear.

Again, everyone else simply waited, and soon enough they had a second blip on their screens, and a new audio. They met back up with Ayna, and she got back in.

“Got them too. Because of course I did.”

“Of course you did,” Herdis said, and gave her a pat on the head.

“Really, how did you guys ever survive without me?”

“There was a lot of shooting and punching,” Gaylen replied. “This one is transmitting just fine too,” he added to everyone. “So, with two ears active, we ought to pick up something.”

“Yeah,” Ayna replied.

“But what?” Kiris asked. “There’s something niggling away at you, isn’t there?”

“Oh, those eyes,” Ayna complained, but then grew more serious. “I…”

Gaylen ignored the chatter from the green jackets. His full attention was on Ayna, as her eyebrows moved in different directions.

“I saw a familiar face, I think,” she then said. “Well, not a face, exactly. When I followed the green jackets to that hideout in the suburb, the general area was pretty empty. But not completely. There were a handful of scattered souls around, and one of them might have been a priest, or something.”

“A priest?” Jaquan echoed.

“Well, who else wears a big hooded robe when it’s neither raining nor shining? Aside from Dwyyk?”

Gaylen’s eyes narrowed.

“Hooded robe? Was it a sort of maroon colour?”

Ayna’s expression told him he’d guessed correctly.

“That man you saw,” Kiris said to him.

“Man?” Ayna said. “Well, anyway, I wouldn’t have paid him any heed, except I think he was shadowing the green jackets too. He was a pretty good distance away, but that’s the impression I got.”

“Was anyone with him?” Gaylen asked.

“Not that I could tell.”

“Jaquan, swing back,” Gaylen said. “Let’s pass by that long street again. I want to confirm this with my own eyes.”

“What are you thinking?” Herdis asked, as Jaquan gradually turned their rent-car around. “An ally who is watching their backs? Another operative? Part of some rival gang? Enemy of our enemy?”

“I don’t know,” Gaylen said. “But let’s not get too hopeful. I don’t…”

He trailed off as his thoughts tried to make sense of his feelings. Or rather, the feeling he’d had during that brief conversation.

“I don’t like the guy,” he settled for, though it felt inadequate.

Jaquan brought them back to that long street, now going the opposite way. They spotted the green jackets, and Ayna scanned the sidewalk.

“By now he should be… around… ah, there he is.”

Gaylen followed her little white index finger, and did indeed spot the man. He was matching pace with the green jackets, quite precisely, maintaining just the right kind of distance to follow them without being noticed.

As before, Gaylen picked out that offworlders generally paid him little more heed than they did any other pedestrians, but the locals were a different matter. The effect was subtle, but undeniable.

“Fear,” Kiris said, as the man and the people who avoided him were a few metres away. “Not respect, but fear.”

“Yeah,” Gaylen replied, and his eyes remained on the man as Jaquan continued a slow crawl along the street and its lethargic traffic. He watched him through the one-way window, trying hard to guess at what this meant for the overall situation.

“Maybe I could tag him too?” Ayna suggested. “I could slip out again, and-”

Just as the car passed him by, from a few steps away, the robed man turned his head, and seemed to stare Gaylen right in the face.

No one spoke. Jaquan just kept the car moving at the same pace, and the robed man stayed focused on the one-way window, from behind which Gaylen in turn watched him. Eventually, as they left him behind, the man did focus back on his task. Whatever that was.

“That was… weird,” Herdis said. “Are you guys sure about those sheets?”

“The sheets work just fine,” Jaquan said. “It must have been a coincidence.”

“Maybe…” Ayna said, but looked distracted as she said it.

“Bers?” Kiris asked, and Gaylen noticed the dark, contemplative look on the man’s face. That is, what of his face could be seen through all that hair.

After a couple of seconds the Fringer looked back at Gaylen, seemed about to say something, and then shrugged.

“Don’t like him.”

The man vanished from sight, as the flow of pedestrians continued unabated.