Free Kingdoms Away 1: Jorian Cluster Archives by S. V. Brown

another occasion, as a couple of
his fingers cracked, as well as the big, beaming smile.
    “How do you do today, Master Edrik?”
    “Good.”
    Had his father been there he would have been
told off. The curator continued to smile and turned back to Erianna
and after a brief discussion with his mother, he left them to
return to his duties. As Edrik walked alongside his mother, holding
hands, he was about to ask her a question when her mobile
beeped.
    She was frowning and looked at Ed. “This is
very sad, Eddie. A little girl, a bit younger than you, was
kidnapped. We have been asked to keep an eye out for her.”
    “What’s her name?” Ed asked, wide-eyed.
    “Serafina. She has brown hair and golden
eyes.”
    “Gold eyes!” he exclaimed. “I wish I had gold
eyes.”
    Erianna laughed. “She must be very important;
there are two crates and two space ships looking for her.”
    “From the Space Corpus?” That was exciting.
“I wish I could join and help find her. She must be very
scared.”
    “Yes, she must be …” his mother’s voice
drifted off quietly into deep thought.
    She showed Ed the picture of the girl. He
stared at the clear image on her phone.
    “She looks a lot younger and smaller than me.
She’s got lots of freckles. I wonder why she’s laughing. I wonder
why she got stolen? Can I tell Parax and Juner and Master
Trent?”
    “Yes to all. We have to make an announcement
in the Darcerus Eventus. I’m sorry, Ed. I will have to do this
now.”
    “Can I come, please, please …”
    “Let me think for a moment.”
    They left the building but returned home,
where Mum picked up some warm clothes for the trip. When she gave
him a nod after he gloomily stomped up the staircase he raced up in
excitement. They had to travel back into Darcerus but this time
they travelled in the silver Celer. The sleek lines of the vehicle
and the metallic surface reflected the bright moons. Ed loved
travelling at night; he would stare ahead as far as the lights
would illuminate the road. The internal lights on the vehicle were
almost magical in displaying their different readings of blue,
green and yellow.
    They went to the Eventus office where the
evening staff welcomed Mistress Varak and her son. She detailed the
report and together they extracted all the information from the
Joiran Database, which was linked to EO, which was the central
depot for information. One of the assistants set up Boomer with Ed
keenly looking on. The system was encoded with the EO designation
and the data was transferred back and forth via the string
dimension s-str-d-02. The layout of the paper was discussed next,
Erianna always had a clear vision of what she wanted but would
sometimes defer to the opinions of her creative team. The
information contained detailed accounts of the two main ships in
the search, the Pteraspis and the Drepanaspis, both Avarian class
crates. Graphics of the vessels were added and final touches
made.

The Search Begins

    {[JOIRAN CLUSTER] [Drepanaspis] [Orbiting Saxe]
    [914876/2577/41/space]}
     
    Captain Sorance Chen had finished briefing his crew
on the bridge. It was now time for a quick check of his office
messages, something to eat and then back to the bridge. He entered
his office and sealed off the door. This was always a clear sign to
anyone that he was not to be disturbed. His face relaxed and became
unguarded as he rubbed his tired eyes. The office, spacious but
serviceable, contained books, Blazers carefully categorized,
personal items and his many awards, which were all secured in a
display unit behind new, tough transparent material made by someone
on Apis. This material had become very popular in space travel.
    He glanced around the room, noting items in
place or if things had been moved. Everything seemed in order.
    He relaxed further and walked around to his
desks that had been placed to arrange an L shape; they were to the
right of the entrance facing the display unit. He turned his new
Desk Computer,