Free Starship Conquistador (Conquest of Stars Book 1) by Sid Kar Page A

and swiped his card. The door
slowly opened inwards and the archives person pointed inside with his hand, “Do
you need help with accessing records?”
        “I used to be a detective, no help,
thank you,” Jag walked inside and the man closed the door behind him and walked
back to the reception.
        The computer room was empty but Jag
took a seat in the far corner, scanned his ID again and the computer started
up. He searched for all the spaceships that had left around the time of VC
Remus and was not surprised when his wasn’t displayed. Then he took out a
metallic card that Remus had given him with his own authorization codes and
entered them and searched again and this time he had the time and
identification of the ship and metadata of Remus’s departure. He pointed his
finger to the part of the screen with the option ‘Data Access: Authorized
Users’ and it displayed a list of eight names:
     
    1. Chancellor Augus Grave
    2. Vice-Chancellor Remus Torus
    3. General Bakus Ferran
    4. Capitan Jag Manus
    5. Major Tolus Gerum
    6. Pilot Roofus Bolfus
    7. Commander Nolfus Berrum
    8. Boutrous Golus
     
        The last two names surprised him. He
memorized the list but to be sure he took out a camera from his pocket and took
a picture. He did not want to download it or print it out for fear of leaving a
trace. He closed the search and shut down the computer and left the archives
room. The search was performed using Vice-Chancellor’s codes and thus would not
be visible in the computer history to anyone else.    
        When he walked out of the space traffic
tower the airship was waiting for him and flew him out of the base. This time
he let them fly all the way over to his spaceship behind the canyon and was
soon airborne and then spaceborne.
        After his spaceship had left the
planet’s gravity field and settled on a cruise speed, he flicked on the
auto-pilot, sat back in the chair with his legs up on the dashboard and looked
at the list on the camera. The culprit behind the assassination attempt had to
be either one of these individuals or someone who got the information through
them.
        He crossed VC Remus and himself off of
the list. Then he crossed Chancellor Augus and General Bakus of the list as
well. Remus trusted them as much as he trusted him and that was sufficient.
Major Tolus was the space tower’s commanding officer, but he was only one of
the four as it ran on continuous four shift schedule and his being on shift at
the time of Remus’ departure was random. Conspirators would not know it in
advance and could not have recruited him. Besides, while Beacon was closet to
Starfire space there were other planets for departure. He crossed Major Tolus
of the list. He also crossed Pilot Roofus off the list. Roofus was the pilot of
the fastest spaceship made in Nestorian Republic that was their premier spy
ship. Remus had personally requested it from Roofus and once again the
conspirators could not have known this.
        Commander Nolfus was the head of
Nestorian Republican Guard and his own boss. It was strange that he had the
permission to access this data. But he would have to tread carefully with
regards to Nolfus. He might have been assigned to VC Remus but Nolfus was his
permanent boss and after Remus’s term in Senate was over he could end up
patrolling some slummy area if he offended Nolfus.
        Jag had been a detective with Nestor
Police and had been happy with his life. He received a middle-class salary and
since Nestor was the richest planet in the republic, that meant a comfortable
life. But for his family he had applied to the Republican Guard. His salary had
not increased a lot but perks and privileges had that allowed him to save a
much larger part of his salary and upgrade his family’s lifestyle. He did not
want to risk it and hoped that the last person on the list was the lead to the
conspiracy.
        But who the hell is Boutrous Golus?  
     
        Jag was woken