Tilyn watched the woman walk out of the room. She wasn't what he'd expected. Why come here? The building was long abandoned with no sign of any clandestine meetings. And what had she meant by ghosts? She hadn't lied about that, which only puzzled him more. He looked down at the strands of brown hair tangled in his fingers. She hadn't been as clever as she thought. He had her DNA, which might help identify her. He unwound the strands carefully and tucked them in a small bag.
She had looked out the window, touching it. He might have her fingerprints. He used the red filter and found two smudged prints on the dirty glass.
It was confusing. She had been so thorough in the warehouse, no prints or other clues. And yet she'd been caught on the camera. Without that photo, they would never have suspected anyone had slipped in. And again, here, she had given little away with her answers and yet he'd had no trouble getting the evidence he needed to identify her. She couldn't be professional, a spy sent by the Patrol or anyone else. She made too many mistakes. They would never have sent such an agent.
So why was she really here? That question depended on who she really was. He had what he needed now to answer that question.
He walked out of the abandoned building. The sky overhead was gray with clouds. The brief moment of sun might have never been.
There was no sign of the woman on the street. He wasn't worried. Milaga had few places where she could possibly hope to hide. He looked forward to the challenge of finding her again. She was more resourceful than he anticipated, which only made the chase that much more satisfying.
It was raining again when he reached headquarters, a cold drizzle of late autumn rain. He hurried inside and went to his cramped corner. The window was misted again. The heater in the building only worked sporadically. He ignored it. He had a mystery to solve, one that promised to be more interesting than the last dozen.
He would try her prints first. He sat at his desk and downloaded the two smudged prints into the police datanet. He clicked the proper buttons on his desk comp. And then he waited. The system was old, an antique on most planets. It was the fastest system on Tivor, though.
He had to manually adjust the prints, trying to clarify them for the system. Once they were ready, he sat back, thinking. She was from offworld. He would have the best luck finding her in the Imperial files. If she was even listed. There were trillions of people in the Empire. Not even the Patrol could possibly have a file on all of them. He'd just have to trust his luck that the woman would be in the files he did have access to.
He decided to try the commercial files first. Anyone who traveled in space more than just once or twice would be there. He pushed the buttons and sat back to wait.
"You busy, Tilyn?"
He was very tempted to say he was very busy and would be for the next ten years, but it wouldn't matter to Vedkar. No one liked Vedkar. But no one could afford to offend him either. He had Kuran's ear and was well known as the government spy inside the police department. All loyalty to the leaders of our glorious world, Tilyn thought with more than a little sarcasm.
"I'm in the middle of something, yes," he told Vedkar.
It didn't stop Vedkar from weaseling his pudgy self into Tilyn's corner and perching his behind on the edge of Tilyn's desk. Tilyn looked away, back to his comp screen.
"I have something I think you want," Vedkar said.
Tilyn sat back, leaning in his chair. There was nothing Vedkar had that he could possibly want.
"It's about that woman Kuran wants you to find." Vedkar smiled. His eyes disappeared into his fat cheeks. "I got a copy of her id from the security station."
Tilyn waited for Vedkar to give him the information. Vedkar didn't move. He just sat on Tilyn's desk and smiled.
"May I have it, please?" Tilyn finally asked.
"Kuran wants her found," Vedkar said as he pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. "Within the day." He dropped the paper on the desk when he stood.
"I found her," Tilyn said, poking the wad of paper with his stylus. "She isn't a threat. Not an immediate one. I'm still working on identifying her."
"Her id is there," Vedkar said and pointed at the paper.
"And you think it has her real name and information?" Tilyn couldn't resist baiting him. Vedkar took incompetence at police work to a whole new level.
"Id's cannot be faked," Vedkar said pompously.
"Anything can be faked, if there is enough incentive," Tilyn said absently.
He was intrigued by the woman. Why was Kuran so insistent she be found and identified? Something big was up. He smoothed the paper flat so he could read it.
"Disia Uvanos." He leaned closer to study the face on the id. It was blurred, a bad copy, but it was definitely the woman.
"See? It is her," Vedkar said, pointing a fat finger at the paper.
"Her picture, yes. But if I ran this name, I doubt I'd get back real information."
"Then why don't you run the name?" Vedkar asked.
"Because I'm running her fingerprints right now," Tilyn said with false patience. "I'll run the name later." He wanted Vedkar to leave. Vedkar didn't take the hint.
"If you already found her, then where is she? Why didn't you arrest her?"
"Because she isn't a threat. And because she might lead us to more important people. I'm having her watched." It was a stretch of the truth, but Vedkar couldn't tell truth from lies if his life depended on it. Tilyn was confident he could find her, when he wanted to again.
He was hoping Vedkar would get bored and leave before he got a hit on her prints. He wasn't that lucky. His machine beeped all too soon. Vedkar leaned forward, squinting at the screen.
"Ludai McDavish," he read, mangling the pronunciation.
"Do you mind?" Tilyn asked, waiting for Vedkar to move back, out of the way. He finally nudged Vedkar with his elbow.
Vedkar stood back, rocking on his heels. "We got her."
Tilyn ignored Vedkar while he scrolled through the file. Ludai McDavish was a cargo handler, third class, who had worked a series of ships. Her file was dotted with incompetence ratings. And, according to the file, she had never come within two hundred light years of Tivor. She was also tall and very dark skinned. Her hair should have been flaming red. He shook his head, admiring the clever person who had planted this false lead.
"It isn't her," he said, forgetting Vedkar was still there.
"It isn't?" Vedkar said, radiating surprise.
"Not unless she's grown a foot and dyed her hair and skin."
"But you can't fake records like that."
"Apparently you can."
Tilyn dawdled, printing the entire file and reading it slowly. Vedkar finally puffed out a heavy sigh.
"Kuran wants her, soon," he said.
"He'll have her," Tilyn answered absently.
Vedkar left, strutting past the other desks and police officers.
Tilyn waited until Vedkar was gone from his space before cross referencing the file on Ludai McDavish. Everything checked out as it should, the file was legitimate. Except it was linked to someone else's fingerprints.
He tried running them through the Patrol database next, but the Patrol kept their files to themselves, only allowing a select few out to planetary police departments. He got an unknown designation, as he'd expected.
He leaned back in his chair, thinking. Someone had gone to the trouble of hiding her identity. Why?
Tilyn did what he usually did while he was thinking. He pulled up the backlog of news reports and idly scanned through them. It was one of the few things he enjoyed about being part of Potokos' police force. They were allowed some access to outside information. Things were unstable in the Empire. Whole sectors had defected to the Federation. He wondered how many Patrol ships had defected. The public news didn't carry that information. The defections had made Tivor important enough for the Emperor to send officials to negotiate with the Tivoran government for the first time in at least a hundred years. The woman had to be connected.
He scanned back, looking for the first hints that things were not well in the outer fringes of the Empire. The news stories were smaller the farther back in time he went. He slowed down, scanning each page more carefully, looking for the threads that led back.
He opened a new file, a report over a year old. The picture splashed front and center caught his attention immediately. The woman he was hunting was there, sitting at a table with high ranking Patrol officers though she wore a merchant's shipsuit. A man leaned over one shoulder. She was smiling into the camera, as if surprised into it.
Tilyn read the story next to the photo. The woman was Dace, no last name given, captain and part owner of a small trading ship. She was given credit for exposing the threat on the Kumadai Run that had trapped ships for hundreds of years. She was hailed as a hero.
Tilyn leaned back in his chair, frowning. Nothing in the article hinted at why she would be here, on Tivor. The article did make it clear she wasn't Patrol. He studied her picture on his screen. It was definitely the same woman.
He ran the name Dace through the Patrol database and got nothing. He ran it again through the Imperial files. He got a very short file. There was nothing more than her name and her ship ratings. No indication of where she was, what ship she worked, what had happened to the one she owned. Curious, he thought. Someone was hiding her.
The DNA sample would take until tomorrow at the earliest. On a whim he ran her fingerprints through the Tivoran datanet.
He got an answer back far sooner than he expected. He sat up straighter, reading through the file. The implications of what he read made his stomach clench.
She'd changed her name, when she'd left Tivor. But it was her, there was a picture of her, a file photo from the orphanage. It was definitely her. It explained why she'd been in the abandoned building. She'd grown up there.
It wasn't her childhood that made him nervous. It was her mother.
"Zeresthina Dasmuller," he said to himself. He shook his head.
Her mother had been Lirondalla Muberretton, the leader of the last almost successful rebellion on Tivor. Her mother had been directly responsible for the food riots. This woman, Zeresthina Dasmuller or Dace, had to be here for only one purpose—to start another rebellion. And she would have the resources to make it successful this time.
He printed out the files and gathered the pages. He had to tell Kuran. And then he had to mobilize as many men as he could to find her and catch her. Before it was too late.
Kuran was in his office, talking on the com. He kept Tilyn waiting for almost an hour. Tilyn was too controlled to pace, but each wasted moment grated on his nerves. The door to Kuran's office finally opened. Kuran waved him in.
"You've found her?" Kuran asked.
"I talked with her this morning. I got fingerprints and DNA."
"And?"
"I didn't see an immediate threat so I let her go. She should be easy to find again." He mentally crossed his fingers, hoping that would be true.
"Then why the rush? Who is she?" Kuran was already turning back to his com.
Tilyn put his papers on Kuran's desk. The photo of her from the old news clipping was on top. Kuran frowned and picked up the sheet.
"It's her, sir," Tilyn said. "I had a hard time tracking her down. Her prints in the Imperial file bring up someone entirely different. She has no Patrol record."
Kuran flipped the photo back onto the desk. "And?" He had an uncanny ability to sense trouble. He pinned Tilyn with a piercing stare.
"Her Imperial records show nothing to be concerned about, but her records here on Tivor do."
"Here?" Kuran's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "No one has records here."
"Unless they were born here." Tilyn pulled out the single sheet with the incriminating evidence.
"Summarize it for me," Kuran said.
"I think you'd better read it yourself," Tilyn answered, handing over the page. He wanted to see if Kuran would draw the same conclusions he had.
Kuran scanned the page quickly. He dropped the paper onto the pile, dismissing it. "Different person. There is a slight chance someone would have the same fingerprints. It has happened before."
Tilyn shook his head. "There was a picture. It's her." He slid the sheet back under Kuran's hand. "Look at her mother's name."
Kuran glanced back down at the paper. Then froze.
"I can guess where to look for her," Tilyn began.
"You let her go? Do you know what the resistance people will do when they realize who she is? It won't matter if she's here for that reason or not. I want her found."
"I'll mobilize—"
"No," Kuran stopped him. "I have a better idea. You say you talked with her?"
Tilyn nodded.
"And you felt she was no threat? Tell me about her. Everything. Any impression."
Tilyn stared past his superior, out the streaked window at yet another rainy afternoon, gathering his thoughts.
"She was in the old orphanage. I thought it was odd. I followed her in, watching her. She didn't go there to meet anyone. It's where she grew up." He paused, thinking back over that strange conversation. Kuran didn't interrupt. "She seemed sad. She said she was looking for ghosts. She said that was why she was here." He stopped, struck by a sudden idea. "Her mother is dead, isn't she?"
"For many years now."
"Ghosts. She's here to start a rebellion. She's here to take her mother's place. She has to be stopped."
"Yes, she does, but not before we use her first." Kuran's smile was hard and humorless. "You have a rapport with her, don't you?" It wasn't much of a question, Kuran could read the answer on Tilyn's face.
"She guessed I was police, sir."
"Then you will find her and convince her that you're switching sides. Convince her that you are dissatisfied with the current regime. Convince her you want to join the rebellion. Let her lead you to them."
"And then betray them all?"
"You have sympathies for the resistance movement?"
It was a very dangerous question. Tilyn didn't dare answer.
Kuran's smile softened. "Your leanings are known, but your work here has more than excused you. Hand us the resistance and your life will be much easier in the future. You like solving puzzles, Tilyn. Solve this one and you will be well rewarded."
"And do it quickly, sir?"
"Yes, before the Imperial negotiators arrive. We wouldn't want a messy demonstration to spoil their opinion of Tivor."
"Yes, sir."
"As of now, you are on leave, suspended without pay, for questioning orders. At least officially." Kuran leaned forward, shuffling the papers Tilyn had printed for him. "Find her and nullify any threat she may pose."
"Yes, sir," Tilyn answered again.
He left Kuran's office. The excitement of the puzzle had turned to ashes inside him. He didn't want to betray the resistance. He didn't want the woman, Dace or Zeresthina or Disia or whatever she called herself, to end up in the ruthless hands of those who ruled Tivor. She had a vulnerability about her, something almost innocent in her eyes. And Kuran's guess about Tilyn's sympathies had been closer than Tilyn could afford to admit.