The Edge

Adoette: Part Three

It was wild watching everything and everyone fall back into place. All her belongings fit neatly in her room, despite the new stuff she'd bought since leaving; the room felt like her own within the hour; everyone fell into their old places around the ship almost immediately, performing their tasks as if they'd never left. Adoette didn't even jump when Arian skulked out unexpectedly from around a corner. The awareness that he could appear from anywhere at any time hadn't faded at all. "How have things been going with you, Casper the Mischievous Ghost?" she asked. "Settle down? Start dating? White picket fence and a dog?"

"Hah, as if." Arian shrugged and kept walking. "I've been up to this and that. You know me. I like to keep my secrets."

Adoette wasn't sure how worried that should make her. Arian was the most prone of all of them to getting into trouble, but he also liked to exaggerate the quantity and quality of said trouble. He was a street kid before they took him in; some of his old habits hadn't died, including his desire for cred. Just one problem: he sometimes forgot that Adoette was very good at finding people via their digital footprint and that, while he was very good at the nonsense he liked to get involved in, he was less good at hiding said digital footprint. Especially when she knew all his tricks.

All of this to say: he could try to keep things from her, but she could figure out his secrets very easily. She just had bigger things to worry about the moment. But if she did get too worried, she could always do her own check-in later.

The ship slipped into one of the inter-system lanes and entered faster-than-light travel. The ETA was around two days—pretty standard time to get to a nearby system. Good thing she was used to hanging out on this ship and around all these losers, or the time would've seen oppressively long. Things were pretty easygoing for the rest of the day, until the clocks and computer system helpfully informed them that it was time for dinner. It was as they were getting ready—some people helping with the cooking, others getting the table set up—that Matteo brought up the subject of Cassandra again. "I don't know if anyone wants to talk about what's happening with Cass, but..." Matteo put down some napkins and pulled out a notepad. "I was able to notice a few things...I don't know if anyone else has any input, because I've been banging my head against the wall with this and I could use a new set of eyes."

Almost immediately, everyone was either looking at Matteo expectantly or had moved right up into his personal space. Adoette was part of the latter group. "Well?" she demanded. "What's up?"

Matteo looked taken aback by the sudden extra attention, but soldiered on. "Uhm...well, I didn't notice any identifying markers on the suit, so that's out. They look like the kind of emergency suits you can buy anywhere for any ship. Pretty sure we've got the same brand here. So, unless anyone has any way of figuring out who might have bought that specific suit, that's a dead end?" He glanced at Adoette for confirmation; she replied with a myehh sort of face. It was technically possible, but only if she had the exact production number for that exact suit, and even then, that was a pretty big maybe. "Yeah, that's what I thought. So I thought I'd look at the reflections of the stars on her helmet visor. I tried my best to remember what they looked like..." He held the notepad out to Adoette. "Does this look right to you?"

Adoette examined the sketches he'd drawn, all of them of Cassandra's helmet from different angles with the stars mapped out on them. She cross-referenced those pictures with her memory of the scene; he was close, but not quite accurate. Adoette held out her hand for a pen. Once Matteo passed one over, she added a few he'd missed before handing it back. "That's how I remember it," she said. "Think you can figure out where she is based on those star arrangements?"

"I might be able to narrow it down, but that's only a handful of stars, and besides that..." Matteo drummed the pen against his notepad. "...the helmet and the window probably distorted their placement. I can try to use it to narrow things down if you guys think it's worth the effort?"