Joules glanced at Bruce. She trusted him; she trusted him with her life and could even imagine trusting him with her future. But it wasn’t her secret she needed to protect right now, it was Gilmore’s and she knew you could never trust someone third person so when the other end picked up Joules played it like a captive in an enemy camp.

“Hi. It’ Joules.” Gilmore would know it was her without her saying so. She was one of four people he spent time with, but the formality of her tone, the use of her name would hopefully communicate to him that she wasn’t free to speak.

“Where are you?” Came the excited reply. Maybe he hadn’t picked up on it after all. Joules nodded, Gilmore would’ve expected her back within the day. He must have been worried sick.

“I’m okay. I’m with a friend in Buffalo Commons.”

Gilmore stopped. That didn’t make sense. According to the news the only people in the Commons were savages, unless…

“That Alex guy?” He hadn’t intended it but the question came out like an accusation.

Joules blushed and flushed with anger. She could hear the hurt in Gilmore’s voice and could see the question forming on Bruce’s face. ‘Who was she talking to?’

Joules decided to get right to business and fill in both at the same time, “They took my Starbus. Left me in the middle of nowhere. My fare, that Poddington bastard, shot me with a low yield ballistic and left me to die.”

It wasn’t the truth and she knew it, if Poddington/Podarkin had wanted her dead she’d be dead but he’d shown her a mercy that wouldn’t be returned.

“I’m with a good friend of mine from Calgary.”

Gilmore stopped and pulled off his make-shift headgear in one motion and instantly regretted not easing it past his ears. After shaking off the stinging that motion caused he returned to the call, “Where’s your Starbus?”

The speakers in his hovel weren’t the highest fidelity but the frenzy in Joules voice came through loud and clear, “That’s what I need you to tell me. Did they leave the Commons and if so where did they go?”

Gilmore moved to his panel interface and keyed in the query, well, more accurately he refreshed the query. He’d been trying to track the Starbus ever since he got worried.

“Negative. They haven’t left the area yet.”

Joules looked at Bruce with surprise, “Yet? How long have you been tracking?”

“Since ten, yesterday. They’re off the grid. Unless they disabled the Ident they haven’t left the Commons.”

Joules frowned, it wouldn’t have taken much to kill the Ident, particularly if they didn’t care what happened to the craft. She exhaled and then suggested, “What else is there?”

Gilmore looked at the headgear, “Are the rocks still on board?”

Joules stopped a moment perplexed, the rocks?

Gilmore continued, “They’re a composite material that I can trace. If they’re still on board I can find them.”

Joules grimaced. “No. They dumped them with me. Can you access Live Eye, there can’t be that much traffic in and out of the commons?”

What she was talking about was his pirated video feed from the passive scanning Network run Live Eye system. He might have the full time window and his record might have a high enough resolution to identify the Starbus at that distance, but he only had a low grade processor which wasn’t that fast, it would take a while. He triggered it anyway in case the other options failed to pan out.

With a perk up in her tone Joules suggested, “What about the beta transponder?”

The beta transponder was something they’d added six months after Joules had first let him at her ship. It was a sub-system he’d installed before Joules had paid off the craft.

He hadn’t known at the time Joules had wanted it in case the Credit Agency financing her purchase decided to repossess her craft. With a single code it would both signal the craft’s position and unlock all the hatches so she could get back inside, it also reset all the codes to her default.

“That’s risky,” he said to her, “It’ll reset the codes and interface. If they’re at a critical moment in flight that could be dangerous.”

It could pop a hatch and depressurize them and wouldn’t that be too bad. “If we continue the signal long enough doesn’t it reset the helm as well?”

Gilmore thought back to the install. The longer you ran the signal the more systems it would reset to the default but he didn’t know what that would do for the helm. “What would that do?”

Joules smiled an evil grin, “Override the controls and land the craft for a full power down. Without the reset code they’d be done.”

Gilmore nodded. It was quite an elegant anti-theft system. “Is that what you want?”

Joules looked at Bruce. Without knowing where the Starbus was they’d just be tooling around in a holding pattern over a territory that was under Network control and therefore restricted. But she wanted her ship and she wanted it fast.

“Do it.”