Forsaken Skies by D. Nolan Clark

train pulled into its next stop, Lanoe jumped out with Valk right behind him. He stared around the platform as if Maggs would just reappear as easily as he’d vanished, perhaps with a taunting wave before he jumped on the back of a passing elephant or something even more impossible.
    â€œIf we split up, we can cover more ground,” Lanoe pointed out.
    Valk laughed. “You don’t give up, do you?”
    Lanoe shook his head. He might say the same to the damned traffic controller. “Right now, the only thing I care about is catching this guy,” he said.
    â€œOkay,” Valk replied. “Why?”
    â€œWhy what?”
    Valk leaned forward, his hands on his knees. It was a passable impersonation of a man trying to catch his breath. “You set off after this bastard almost before I had his location. What are you trying to prove?”
    â€œHe stole the Nirayans’ money,” Lanoe answered. “If we catch him in time we can get it back.”
    â€œThat simple, huh? Seemed like you wanted something from them. You could have stayed behind while I ran off in hot pursuit, talked to them where I couldn’t hear.”
    Lanoe supposed that was true. The Nirayans had information that might be useful to him. He hadn’t stopped to think about that, though. He supposed he’d thought they would be more forthcoming if he’d done them a good turn.
    Maybe.
    â€œSometimes I outsmart even myself,” he said. “What about you, then? You’re a traffic controller. Not a policeman, even if you act like one. Why not just let the local constabulary take over?”
    â€œHave you seen this place?” Valk asked. “There are cops, yeah. They’re what you might call risk averse. If they actually investigate a disturbance, they might get hurt in the process, and that means lawsuits, and Centrocor hates lawsuits. No, the local cops are more interested in assigning fines and penalties after the dust settles.” He shook his head from side to side. “You want something like this done right, you do it yourself. My job’s on the line here. I’ve got an actual reason to chase Maggs down.”
    â€œAny thoughts on how we do that, then?”
    Valk stood up straight again, glanced around for a second, perhaps to orient himself. “Come on. This way.”
    He set off through a flock of pigeons that wheeled up around his legs and almost immediately settled down again. Lanoe followed, getting even less of a reaction. “Did you get another fix on Maggs?” he asked.
    â€œNo,” Valk said. “Just a hunch about where he’s headed.”

    Maggs bought a packet of sealant foam from the hostelry before the pedicab arrived, a quick-setting resin meant for patching holes in space suits. He worked the sticky goo over his cryptab until it was completely obscured. No point getting to the docks only to have some passive scanner ping him and log his identity. He didn’t know if the authorities had put out an alert for his particulars yet, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
    At his request the three-wheeled drone took him down side streets and through a cramped alley behind a row of shops. It felt like the machine just crawled along. He wished he knew Vairside better but in the end he had to trust the drone’s limited brainpower. It took far longer to reach the docks than he’d hoped, but he got there without, to his best knowledge, being spotted.
    When he arrived at the portal to the big spin lock he stepped out and—thoughtlessly—directly onto his sprained ankle. The pain was worse this time, but at least once the spin lock ground down to zero he didn’t need to walk anymore. He floated through into the busy docks, dodging fuel and maintenance drones and the occasional human worker.
    The six arms of the Hexus met at six vertices, each of which comprised a spacious docking facility. Autonomic freighters and dismantling