Chapter 12

"Themis, report to Minerva."

That terse command cut through her concentration. She was working a devilishly difficult FTL course calculation and math was not a favorite subject. She had studied long and hard for this exam, and any interruption was unwelcome. That this particular interruption meant she would have to leave the test half-finished caused her to let out a small groan.

"Can I finish the exam later" she asked, as she rose from the table and gathered her gear. "I am only half done!"

Dr. Laso, the teacher for this course, beckoned her close with a glare. "Please keep your voice down, others are still testing. As for your exam, John here tells me you will be tied up for the rest of the day, so we can discuss your retaking of the test when you are free to return."

Kat turned her eyes to John. Interestingly enough, he was one of the Meathead twins from the ship. As far as she knew he was a guard, or perhaps a bodyguard, for Minerva, not a messenger. For a second she wondered why Pan had not come to get her, it was usually he that showed up with bad news. Kat searched her memory and could not remember having seen or heard from Pan in more than two weeks. While it was not unusual for him to be gone for a while, he was a working Agent after all, this seemed a longer assignment than had been usual in the months she had been at the Citadel.

John's eyes stared right through her; he showed no signs of recognition and no impatience at her delay. In fact, his face held no expression at all. He could have been looking at a blank wall for the emotion she could read in his face and eyes. He stared right back at her and, seeing that she was ready, wordlessly pointed at the door.

Kat shrugged and shouldered her tote, leading the way out of the room and down the corridor.

Minerva's office looked much the same as it had when she had visited on her first day here. So did Minerva. Kat sat in the same chair and patiently waited for Minerva to acknowledge her. Her eyes, wandering over the photographs on the credenza behind the desk and the few knick-knacks on the desk itself, focused in on a pair of mirrored sunglasses. She may not have recognized them had she not been thinking about Pan just minutes ago. They were exactly like the pair he usually wore perched on the top of his head, restraining his unruly red locks.

Her gaze snapped back to Minerva and saw that the woman was watching her closely. Minerva nodded at the glasses and said, "He's missing. He was off-planet, running surveillance on a minor functionary who is suspected of fencing goods brought in by," here she paused, her lips pursed in a moue of distaste, "pirates. Despite what the Union tells the public, piracy is real and not just some holo drama plot cliché."

Minerva tapped a key on her desk and the center of the credenza behind the desk slid open, a large vidscreen dominating the space. On the screen was a sector of space that looked familiar, but she could not dredge up why.

"He was here, in the Delta sector. That entire sector has been reporting a major increase in attacks on shipping, even a few passenger liners have been boarded and stripped. Seven smaller vessels have disappeared altogether, but the larger transport ships are just scuttled. No survivors have been found and no ransom demands were sent. They just disappeared."

Minerva gestured at the screen with a small wand-shaped pointer and the view zoomed in on a double-star system with a dozen planets.

"The pattern of attacks seemed to be centered on this system, LeMare. An InterSys informer sent a message saying that there was a fence selling components that tracked back to one of the scuttled freighters. The closest active Agent was Pan, so we sent him in to investigate. His cover was as a small-time tech smuggler."

Minerva gestured again and the view zoomed out, reoriented itself and zoomed back in again, centered on a single star with 8 satellites. "This is the Pon-La system. Three passenger liners in this vicinity have been attacked, but the results were different. The crew and passengers were stripped and locked naked in a cargo hold while the pirates removed anything of value on the ship. They took all food stores, ransacked the cabins and crew space, even removed vital ship equipment and spare parts, and then disabled the Comms and drives. There were two deaths on one of the ships, when a vacationing pair of Peace Keepers tried to interfere, and a single death on another when a crew member objected. Otherwise, the crew and passengers were unhurt. We surmise that there are two different sets of pirates working in this sector. What we don't know is if they are in any way linked. It would seem to be a rather improbable coincidence if they just happened to start working the same sector at the same time. Scum like that tend to be territorial."

Turning off the vidscreen, Minerva turned back to Kat. "Pan went in two weeks ago. He was supposed to be making daily reports and had a fallback contact he would use if he couldn't contact us on schedule. If he missed more than three reports in a row, a pre-programmed message should have been sent to notify us that he was in trouble. He has missed ten now, and no emergency message was sent. What is more ominous is that communications with that sector have become spotty and frequent outages have been declared on the FTL Comm net. Something is going on there and we need to know what."

"The reason I am telling you all of this is not because he is your mentor or because you have become friends. We cannot allow those factors to influence our decisions. I am telling you this because you are uniquely placed to go there and do so without raising undo suspicion." Minerva handed an Ident disc to Kat before continuing.

"When we recruited you, we fully intended to kill off your old persona, as you know, and do it publicly. While we were still in transit from Barda to Caster Prime, one of your Comm accounts received an inquiry on a new contract. Our intelligence bureau got all excited because it nicely dove-tailed with a case we were working and it was too good an opportunity to pass up."

Kat nodded, not really surprised. She had never considered that they might keep her "alive" but, as she learned more and more about the history of the Agency, she found it easy to believe that having a ready-made cover for an assassin would be hard to pass up.

"You will be glad to know that you are still actively accepting contracts and that your fees have doubled in the months you have been here." Minerva's eyes twinkled with merriment at the shocked expression on Kat's face.

"Since your clients hire you by word-of-mouth and you made it your practice to never meet face to face with your clients, we just had to send shooters who matched your general physical description."