After a couple of hours of reading about mostly inconsequential encounters he came across a statement that sounded a little more interesting. A police patrol had noticed two ships on long-range scanners, both moving erratically as if in combat. The distance had been too great to determine the nature of the vessels and it was all over before the patrol made it into range. The report noted that the slower vessel had vanished from scanners first, followed a few seconds later by the other one. When they reached the site they found the wreckage of a Cobra MkI and the particle residue of a hyperspace jump. The hull IR signature of the victim had been partially destroyed and no definite identification was ever made. Just another pirate incident, and GalCop hadn't made any more than a cursory look into it. Murder was a serious crime but unfortunately far too common to be fully investigated due to the tiny chance of success. Unless you were rich, famous or influential the officials were unlikely to pay your death too much attention if it didn't happen in front of everyone's eyes, and the best you could hope for was an "Offender" tag on your killer.
The interesting thing in this case was the remnants of the IR signature. There was about a one in three chance that they were the remains of the unfortunate trader who had found the Constrictor's remains, and the police had accepted that conclusion. The scrap from the Cobra had been collected and sold off, leaving only a few samples for the record. Routine analysis of these remnants suggested that the weapon used against the unfortunate Cobra was a beam laser, probably a powerful one. As might be found on a Fer-de-Lance. But so what? It all fitted the speculation, but provided no clue as to what to look for next.
Kirrik was somewhat more doubtful if that was all there was to it. "If they wanted the cargo that badly, I can't see them destroying the holding vessel," he stated. "There wasn't time to scoop up all the debris from the Cobra, and there was no trace of anything unusual in what GalCop discovered. And a Fer-de-Lance hardly has enough cargo capacity to carry what the Cobra was holding."
"So what do you suggest happened?" asked Kalangu. "That the Cobra had already offloaded its cargo?"
"Probably bullied into jettisoning it, and then destroyed anyway. There must have been other ships in the area to take the cargo."
"I don't think so," Barbeth said. "The Fer-de-Lance followed the Cobra here, and certainly left on its own. There wouldn't have been any time for it to call for other forces to meet it here."
"That doesn't matter," replied Kirrik. "It could easily have sent a cargo ship to collect the junk when it reached wherever it was going. That works out quite well, actually. The pick-up ship would probably have arrived fairly soon after before the debris dispersed, so it must have come from somewhere fairly close."
"The original debris had had plenty of time to drift, and that was picked up," Barbeth pointed out.
"That was found by chance. We aren't talking about people who leave much to chance."
"There's no record of Tebay appearing in any registered settlement, or the Fer-de-Lance."
What this meant was almost certainly a deep space outpost. System space was too well-monitored around civilised stars for a hidden base to remain so for long. In the immediate vicinity of Tiriusri the least stable system was Esgebi, but there an even greater watch was kept on every planet, asteroid and comet as the various powers there watched each other.
Finding a deep space location was no easy job, which was exactly why they sometimes existed. Safely hidden in the vastness of space such a base was all but undetectable. The time taken for any careless radio transmissions to reach civilisation would provide ample time to move the base. Transmission via Witchspace would certainly not be made as it would very likely be picked up by relay probes sitting in the hyperspace channels. The Fer-de-Lance had probably not sun-skimmed at Tiriusri, otherwise it would have lost its prey. The distance between Orarra and Tiriusri was 2.7 lightyears. That left nearly six lightyears worth of fuel in an unmodified Fer-de-Lance. An impossibly large volume of space in which to find anything. The proverbial needle in a haystack was simplicity itself compared to space.
Unless it survived in complete isolation, though, contact must be made with civilised space occasionally. That was the weak link.
"I think it's time to investigate the affairs of this mysterious Jersisallam again," Jalsa said. "He used to have ships going to and from all over the place. A good candidate for supplying a hidden base."
"More sifting through countless records. Wonderful," sighed Kalangu.
"OK, we're leaving back for Orarra straight away," Williams announced.