Queen Natasha has promised us a reward for her rescue equivalent to another several hundred Rubilith sovereigns, but she is still in no position to command the necessary funds. We anticipate having to pay around Earth$8000 once we get to Arawne to hire engineers and mechanics to install our new engine in the Legacy. With any luck, currency markets on Arawne will still be trading Rubilith sovereigns, though it seems almost certain that the exchange rate will be extremely unfavourable.
Operations Officer Darneld: Legacy, huh? Let's see... Yes, here we go. Crew members Spacebourne and Song have not been contactable for the past six days. Docking fees for six days are overdue to the value of Earth$10 per day, plus 10% late fee.
Iki Piki: What? Do you have any idea where they are?
Darneld: Says here nobody's heard from them since they paid the last berthing fee a week ago. No forwarding address or messages. They paid for twenty days of fees in advance and then came in here to pay on a daily basis after that, up until last week.
Spanners: Well that makes sense. They expected us to be away only twenty days. They probably figured we got held up when the news of Queen Natasha's overthrow came through, and were keeping up daily payments until we got back.
Serron: But that doesn't explain where they went. They had the access codes to the Legacy... can we get into the ship?
Spanners: I know how to unlock it.
Iki Piki: I know how to breach the hull...
Darneld: Now hang on a minute. Your ship is effectively impounded until you pay the berthing fees. We can't allow you access to it until the overdue fees are paid.
Serron: Well that's not much of a choice... Here you go...
Queen Natasha and her guards have left us, being escorted into special accommodation arranged by the Government of Arawne. Having our own ship here and pressing matters to deal with, we declined to accompany her this time, but are assured of being able to contact her again if we wish to do so. By all accounts so far it seems Arawne is a much better place than Inverness for Queen Natasha to advance her requests for help in restoring the Government of her planet.
Serron has exchanged our 135,000 Rubilith sovereigns into more useful currency. The exchange rate has dropped from 0.61 to about 0.44 in the past two weeks, so we actually ended up making a loss of about Earth$1000 on the cargo of rare woods that we bought here to take to Rubilith.
It seems from the Legacy's log and internal security logs that Ogier and Sirene have not been aboard since a week ago. Their daily pattern of activity appears to have been sleeping in late, then either leisure activites aboard ship or going out for shopping or sightseeing during the day, followed by nightlife activity at the nearby casino. Ogier has apparently gambled away a significant fraction of the Earth$5000 we left them with to look after the ship while we were away, although there are no indications that they got into financial trouble.
Nobody has been into, or attempted to get into the ship since they vanished. Serron has been out scouting any spaceport workers in the vicinity who may have seen anything suspicious, or who were familiar with their daily movements and thus might shed some light on the situation. He found a cargo loader who seems to have seen them leaving the ship on their way to the casino on the evening they disappeared.
Meanwhile I have been searching hospital and police databases for any indications that they may have been injured, killed or arrested. There are no matches to either their names or descriptions. Starport records also don't list then on any outgoing passenger manifests.
We've decided the best thing to do may be to go have a look at the casino and see if any of the staff there recognise Ogier or Sirene and can tell us anything about their activities that night.
We have been fortunate to find Captain Paris Smith also here - apparently to enjoy herself as she says there is no better place to relax after a hard few weeks in space. We've told her of our missing friends and she is now helping us in our efforts to find out what happened to them.
Spanners has bought a cheap camera and is taking photographs of various gamblers and other people. Serron is trying to get friendly with some of the security guards and find out if they know anything.
Taksin is gambling on one of the high-roller tables. I tried to get a seat next to him, but the people currently in them don't seem to be moving. Paris has decided to try some of her human feminine wiles on the man in an effort to find out what he knows about Ogier and Sirene.
Iki Piki and I are heading out to a nearby bar where we can do some deeper hacking of DNAgency systems to see what else we can dig up. We don't want to try this in the casino, since there is video surveillance everywhere and armed security guards who could easily be contacted by any anti-intruder systems we might bump into.
A minute ago it looked like they were moving on to the next phase of whatever it is that humans do. They left the casino together, driving off in the back of Taksin's limousine. As they went towards the doors, I brushed past them and grabbed Taksin's wallet. Not much challenge really, since he was half-drunk at the time, but it may prove useful. I've memorised Taksin's address from the details in his wallet, taken the cash, and handed the wallet in to the casino's lost and found office. A few hundred Arawne dollars should see me through a nice evening of roulette...
I'm here in Taksin's home, and I've just done a quick search of the place. In his study I found some printed e-mail documents from some guy called Manfred. There was a photo of Ogier and Sirene and the three other crew members of the Legacy, with text saying, "If you see these people anywhere, apprehend them and send them to me." Taksin's computer was switched on and logged in, so I found the electronic copy of this mail and forwarded a copy to Spanners, since he can probably make sense of all the attached address information.
Now, it doesn't look like I can get out of here until morning, so I'm going to find a bed and get some sleep.
We also got a list of other companies with stock interests in The DNAgency. Looks like a few off-world bio-tech companies, mainly. Another important piece of information we found is that DNAgency operates a small fleet of starships, and one of them, the Drosophila, left Arawne for Acropolis the day after Ogier and Sirene disappeared.
We've radioed Serron, who seems to have been having fun at the casino, and we are all heading back to the Legacy for the night.
We presume this has been sent by Paris from Taksin's home - there doesn't seem to be any other reasonable explanation. The problem is that this can be traced very easily, and points directly to our involvement and the fact that we are around - which is clearly a bad thing where Taksin is concerned. The only solution is to hack back into the system and erase the traces of the message. I don't want to do this from the Legacy, so I'm going back out to find a public data terminal.
We presume he went out on his own, because there are no signs of anyone else coming near the ship, but we don't know where he's gone or when he'll be back.