Star Law: A Marshal Cole Series

Chapter 26 (a)

Diaz moved through the corridors infrequently. He preferred to sit in areas where there was high traffic. He had a legitimate business in trade and had met a dozen people aboard the ship in that capacity. In the time that he parked himself in the Central Plaza, he'd seen Adisa and Adjani pass by. They didn't see him or even sense any reason to look his way.Many who possessed psi had abilities to block others from detecting them. The brothers were very good and if they even got a whiff of the scent as it were,they could track down relentlessly. The fact that they were still out on patrol was evidence that Orion Ruskovich was still free.

They were not the only ones on patrol. Ship security still swept over the ship at regular intervals. The passive surveillance that was set up by Singh more or less was still functioning but the active portion was destroyed when Strasser and Nguyen burned the cabin as well as the ship's security AI. Diaz no longer trusted anything that was being reported. It was without doubt that the marshal was avoiding ship's systems in his investigation. More troubling was that he had not seen him at all in the last hours.

A little thrum vibrated against his fingers as a message came through on his padd. He glanced down and a text message came through. Keeping his face a mask he read through. Security in Goroshenko's cabin had been breached. His place was under surveillance. A moment later there was acknowledgment in the form of a ping that the Russian knew his place was no longer secure. A second ping indicated he was not present in the cabin.

The bare hint of a smile passed over Diaz's face. The Russian had a knack for survival. How and when security got a lead on Goroshenko was unclear. What was clear now was that monitoring ship communications was no longer useful for determining what actions might be happening in regards to the investigation of Chen and Singh.

There were ways to compensate for the lack of electronic surveillance especially with Psi enabled people but Diaz felt that the Marshal might have a plan for that too. The story of the incident in the Central Plaza being the Adder Cloud was an obvious cover. Even some of the passengers questioned the logic of blaming a stellar event on what happened. However, in the absence of another explanation, it was accepted.

Many things were learned from just sitting and watching. One thing that was still unknown was where Orion Ruskovich was. To that end, Diaz started to put together the plans of a trap.