Things are looking up today... I think. I've found out some important things and made a few moves of my own, and I feel a bit more in control of the situation. That said, I'm still sleeping in my cargo hold.
The first thing I did this morning was to take some leave from the Navy and head to planet Manhattan in the Aedos. I told them I needed to get her transponder fixed, and that it shouldn't take long. I made the journey as quickly as I could: knowing that her every movement was probably being tracked has taken a lot of the joy out of flying her. I half expected to see a black ship appear out of nowhere and blast me into stardust. Fortunately, the trip was uneventful.
I landed on a public pad, then headed for a nearby shopping center. I needed a public access computer terminal to which I couldn't be traced. There were several in Universal Malls, I picked the nearest. After waiting in line for a few minutes, I entered a private booth and sat down. A quick check assured me that there were no cameras... good. This would do.
"Computer, where can I go to get my transponder repaired?"
"Too many results," an annoying electronic voice answered. "Listings displayed on-screen."
Checking the screen, I saw that there were several hundred places listed.
"Filter by location," I said. "Show only locations in the undercity." I figured that the undercity was more likely to have the kind of shops I was looking for: shops where questions would not be asked.
"Filtering..." the computer droned. The screen flickered, and now there were only a couple dozen results instead of hundreds. I saw one that looked just right... but what if someone was watching what I looked at?
"Computer, print results."
A translucent sheet shot out of the terminal. I picked it up, and verified that it had the information I wanted. If someone was watching me, they would know which shops I looked at. Only I would know which one of the entries on the sheet I had chosen...an entry for a shop with no name, no description, and no contact information except for the street address.
I paid my fee, left the terminal, and headed to find an air-taxi. This part would be tricky. Most of the taxis in the city are flown by robots, but robots can't be bribed. So, I waited several minutes until a dirty gray taxi floated into the pickup-dropoff zone. It was missing a spoiler, and was labeled in bright letters as Tom's Discount Taxi Service. Perfect. I casually walked up to the open passenger door, and leaned in.
"Hey there," I said. "How's business?"
The answer I got was halfway between a grunt and a sneer. The pilot was a surly man of indeterminate age, wearing a gaudy checkered yellow-and-black hat with a torn jacket that was probably once blue.
"Look, I need a ride to this address." I pointed at a certain entry on the sheet.
The taxi pilot rolled his eyes enough to glance at it, and grunted again. He held up his hand, four fingers extended.
"Four hundred?" I asked. An angry grunt. Apparently I was off by an order of magnitude. Discount service indeed.
I nodded, and showed him a thousand-credit bill.
"How about I give you ten of these, and you make sure that nobody follows us?"
Now, I was speaking his language: I think he almost smiled. He gave me a shrug that I could only interpret as "get in." I climbed aboard, the door shut, and we sped away.
The next 15 minutes were some of the most terrifying of my life. The driver could somehow see holes in traffic before they opened up: we would fly straight at a mass of aircars and they would part just in time, then immediately close up behind us. If anyone had been trying to follow us, there's no way they would have succeeded. That, at least was good. When the trip was done, I found myself standing on a street that was literally paved in trash. Whatever had fallen from above had simply been steamrolled into a more or less flat surface. I paid the taxi driver, and told him there'd be another ten thousand if he took me back when I was done. He grunted and parked his taxi in a dark corner nearby.
When I turned, I found a store in front of me with a flashing neon sign that said "Equipment." The door wasn't even automatic: I had to actually turn a handle to open it. Inside, it was dark, and there were ship pieces everywhere. Rusted half-wings served as tables to display equipment of all kinds and in all states of repair. At the other end of the shop, behind a counter, was a man who had obviously seen better days. The parts of him that weren't covered in wrinkles were usually covered in cybernetic implants. He turned to face me when I entered, and what I think was his one real eye rolled toward me and glared.
"Can I help you?" He growled.
I decided it would be best to get straight to the point. "I think my ship's been bugged," I said. "I need that bug removed."
He nodded, satisfied, and his demeanor lightened by several shades. "Yeah, I can do that for you." He said. "Thing is, I have to get to it. If it's bugged, you better not bring it here. So you better have a plan for getting me to it with all of my equipment."
I paused. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought of that.
The dealer grimaced... I think he was trying to smile, but those parts of his face responsible for smiling largely didn't exist anymore. "Or, I have another option." Probably an expensive one, I thought.
"I have a device," he continued, "that jams signals from tracking devices. It's even programmable: you can make it look like you are anywhere in Sirius."
Interesting, but I wasn't convinced, and I wasn't going to let him sell me easy. If nothing else, it would cost me twice as much that way.
"Look," I said. "I'm not even sure that I HAVE a bug."
He grimaced again. "Yes you are. If you weren't, you wouldn't be here." I paused.
"Look," he said. "Have you noticed anything strange in your comm system? Strange spikes and blackouts, random noise, things like that?"
Actually, now that he mentioned it, I had. I nodded.
"These devices all work in the same way. They piggyback on your comm system to call home and report your position. The device I have will intercept those calls, and if you want, it will rewrite them. Like I said, as far as whoever's watching you is concerned, you can make yourself appear to be anywhere in Sirius." He held up a black box about the size of my open hand.
I believed him this time. In my experience, people like this are usually quite honest in their own way... with the clients they usually have, they know what'll happen to them if they cheat them.
I nodded. "How much?"
"Two million," was the immediate response.
Ouch... that was steep. Instinct told me it was unwise, but I decided to try haggling anyway. "As simple as you make it sound," I replied, "I doubt that such a device could cost more than 1.5 million."
"Alright," he said with a shrug. That was too easy, I thought.
"By the way, " he said, "Don't you want to pick up something else as well? Say, a new transponder? It'll make your shopping trip look less suspicious."
"Yeah, that sounds good." I replied. Transponders usually went for a couple thousand credits at most. "How much?"
"Five hundred thousand credits," he replied with a grimace.
The taxi ride back was uneventful, and I installed my new transponder and my new "toy" myself. The dealer was right: I was bugged. The jamming device picked it up immediately, and even told me where it was sending homing signals to: Manhattan. Looks like someone in Liberty was tracking me after all. Well, from now on, I would only be tracked when I wanted to be tracked. I smiled, for the first time in days. I had my freedom back.
![[Image: aedos_mini.jpg]](http://students.cs.byu.edu/~sushi/aedos_mini.jpg)