The Hunt

	Sawyer's ears perked up as a chime from the console pierced the sound of her shower. The I-cops had issued a bounty, a "redball", one that wouldn't wait a dozen kilocycles for the next batch update. Still, Sawyer forced herself to relax and she finished the shower in due time. She hadn't needed to jump for redballs in megacycles. She could remove that autosearch, but sometimes she was ready to go when a redball hit…
	By the time she was ready to sit at her little starship's console in a pair of towels, "the twins" — HG-36KSUL and HG-36KSUM — had logged a spotter's preclaim on the redball. Most likely, they'd been loitering in Chiaki Starport, waiting to jump for a redball there. They were young and hungry enough for shit like that.
	More importantly, Silk Snow had come back with answers and bids on 2 of the 3 skiptraces she'd requested from him. Both bids were under 50 ch, so she paid both out of hand and settled in to read them with a fresh-sequenced cup of tea.
	Mx. Rothnar had gone to ground in Lejurell, but a few calls beforehand to his father's insecure number were enough for Silk Snow to trace him. He'd stolen a Fed interstellar courier pod for one leg of the journey, and Silk Snow was enterprising enough to include the form to report that to the I-cops — but they were filled out for an officer's report, using Sawyer's old badge ID number. Cute. She filled out a fresh copy for a citizen's report, included her HG ID number in the public memo field, and fired that off; a tracer's preclaim was only 70 ch to log, but with an opportunity like that, getting her HG ID number in the thanks was free.
	The trace on Mx. Niallar wasn't as interesting. She'd joined an anarch group in the inner asteroid belt of Ashros, so while she was technically more available, getting her out would be nasty work. All for 30k ch? No.
	Sawyer returned to the sequencer stall to de-sequence her towels and the cup, but rather than sequence up house clothes, she got her softsuit from its locker and donned it. Skintight, designed to be worn under her power armor, and to help interface with it. The safety orange contrasting sharply against her cobalt-blue skin was a testament to function over form. At the back of her neck she jacked into her softsuit, gaining little for the time being, but getting ready for her armor.
	Breakfast was halfway sequenced when a console chime heralded a video from Silk Snow. He worked in text reports, but was excitable enough to prefer video when something interesting came up. Sawyer raised an eyebrow when she saw it came with a bid… for 275ch. She waited for the stall to finish her cup of curried oat pasta with meatballs, paid the bid, and sat with her feet flopped onto the copilot's seat to eat while she watched the message.
	"Thanks, Sawyer, this was a fun one." A wink that would be flirty from anyone else, but Silk Snow was just a tease like that. "Mx. Thilseed has solid records going back 34 megacycles, and generally seems to exist. However, for most of the past four megacycles, she hasn't really existed much." He gestured and a record analysis replaced him. Each dot was a logged interaction, from bill payments to social media posts. A wave of color-coding washed over it; Sawyer was somewhat familiar with skiptrace work, and recognized the colors as representing how much each interaction was "worth". Paying a regular bill was a cool blue, since it was easy to automate. Some social media interactions were the hottest of reds, depending on who they were interacting with. Sure enough, the last tenth or so of the analysis rather abruptly dropped into blues and medium greens, then slowly faded to mostly blues with a dusting of greens. "We aren't looking at a created identity, we're looking at a bought identity." Sawyer nodded along as she slurped noodles. "It looks like the original Isla Thilseed became Isla Jutsal, an identity created about that time. However, every charge the pigs have on Mx. Thilseed is from the past few dozen kilocycles, when life was breathed back in. So the skip is the identity buyer, not the identity seller." The view zoomed in on the end of the analysis, where the cool colors suddenly vanished, replaced with hot colors. Hot without cool usually meant someone on the move, someone who pulled up their cool blue roots and made lots of red-hot appearances in starports.
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