Author's note: I apologize in advance for the blah-ness of this chapter but I couldn't think of a better way to do this. Unfortunately it's necessary fill-in for the next part of the plot and thus kind of unavoidable.

(p.s. VictoriaDream, it's "mon ami". Or, in the case of a female speaking of another female such as in our situation, "ma amie" or, colloquially, "m'amie." Not "mona ami". Maybe you're confusing the phrase with the Mona Lisa. Or something. I dunno. Well anyway, sorry, but I took two semesters of French in high school and that was kind of bugging me. I'm a bit OCD like that.)

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Tess was at her wits' end. The last month had turned up one dead end after another. Either they were constantly moving Erik around or they had him hidden very very well. She was almost to the point of just giving up, and likely would have, were it not for the guilt that Oro's poignant grief and humble pleading had instilled in her and the images her own fertile imagination conjured of Erik being subjected to God-knew-what at the hands of the Hari Anuma.

After receiving Endo's desperate entreaty, she'd gone to the coordinates he'd sent her and met with him briefly. The meeting had been difficult and rather unfruitful. The man would not make any confessions as to his involvement in Erik's abduction but in his manner and speech, it was clear he'd facilitated the act and was now regretting the fruits of his actions. She got the feeling that he did not really care one whit for Erik's wellbeing, but mostly just feared his father's wrath.

Indeed, she had decided within five minutes of meeting him that she did not like him in the slightest. His primary motive in nearly everything, it seemed, was fear, which made extracting information difficult. She should have put on her Ayana armor, she'd decided. Then maybe he would no longer be more afraid of the Hari Anuma then her. Ultimately, she'd had to resort to bodily threats with a blaster to wrench the name of the Hari Anuma agent who'd orchestrated the abduction from him. Afterwards, she almost wished she hadn't. The name of Sota Enaga was not well known among the general populace, but among those living on the periphery of polite society, it was a name that universally conjured images of extreme sadism and cruelty. The man was a high-ranking agent of the Hari Anuma and was reputed to be quite close to the Master Anuma himself. It was also common knowledge among Tess's peers that he was completely insane--a genius in the art of torture and brainwashing, sadistic, bloodthirsty and always on the edge of extreme violence. Many stories of him circulated the lawless outposts of the galaxy, most of them somewhat exaggerated by the time they reached Tess's ears, but the truth was such that they required little exaggeration to shock.

She'd pumped Endo for all the information she could get out of him (a process somewhat similar to pulling teeth), and then she'd left the shaking mass to the reluctant care of his wife and returned to the Eranae system. It took her several tries before she was able to get a hold of Oro and gain clearance to land on the second moon. She did not even have to explain herself when he finally showed up on the other end of the communications channel, he merely nodded at her and told her his people would be waiting. The same servants escorted her to the Ohtamacil household as before, but they no longer regarded her with the calculated perfunctory coolness of before. They all seemed distracted and worried, and it did not take a mind reader to guess why.

Oro greeted her formally, bowing deeply before her. Tess felt rather uncomfortable at the act, not liking the implication of the master of the house humbling himself before a minor guest in his own home. She found herself worried for the old man, taking in his haggard and drawn appearance. His yellow eyes were duller than usual and bloodshot and he wrung his hands nervously though he spoke to her calmly.

"Tess… I am pleased to see you again. I don't suppose there's any question as to why you are here. I am somewhat surprised that you have arrived so soon… News travels fast among Hunters, then?"

"Not really… at least not this time. I was contacted directly by your son Endo. He wants me to clean up his mess for him but has been rather reticent with information. I got the name of the Hari Anuma behind it, but that's all I could get him to tell me."

Oro looked cross at the mention of Endo. Tess did not blame him.

"I do not know if I can tell you any more than that. I did not recognize any of them, nor did I see the vessel in which they arrived and left."

"Did any of them have any unusual marks? Scars, body art, distinctive jewelry?"

"No, nothing…"

"And they left nothing behind?"

"No. Only the broken glass and the blood of one of them who attacked Erik and lost his life for it."

"I don't suppose you had the foresight to collect a sample for DNA analysis?"

"I did. I had one of my servants submit it to the local police after Endo left. It took them only a few minutes to have it compared it to the databases, but no match was found."

Oro walked over to her and put his hands on her upper arms, begging her both with his eyes and words for help.

"Please, child, find my grandson. You returned him to me once and for that I will ever be grateful, but once again I need your help. I will provide you with anything you need, any payment you desire."

Tess swallowed and dropped her gaze from his, squirming under the strong and formidable patriarch's pitiful desperation. She took a deep breath and faced him again.

"I'll get him back, master Ohtamacil. I can't make any promises, but I will do all that is in my power to see him returned safely to you."

Tears shined in Oro's eyes and his hands moved to the sides of her face. He bent and kissed her forehead in a strange benediction and thanked her profusely. She eventually extracted herself from him and beat a quick exit, heading back to the Stardust still docked on the moon.

Tess put the ship into orbit and considered the best way of approaching the problem. She sighed in frustration. She hated leadless cases like this. It was bad enough when tracking down foolish and clumsy criminals, who would inevitably drop more clues later, but she'd only very limited dealings with the Hari Anuma in the past. She, like most Hunters, tended to avoid getting caught up in their dealings. Doing so nearly always led to no good end. They, unlike your garden variety smuggler, were secretive and professional in their business and rarely could their dealings be traced. The underlings on the bottom of the hierarchy that were responsible for the manual labor and shipping were eventually caught and jailed more often than not, and often were used intentionally as patsies, but they were never privy to the secrets of the group, and generally useless for information.

Tess had a few contacts of her own, mostly associates owing her a favor, who were familiar with the upper echelons of the Hari Anuma, and while many of them had heard whisperings of a new secret 'weapon' being trained in some remote and unknown base, she could find no concrete evidence that they even had Erik in their possession. She investigated what weak leads she had, nearly got herself killed on several occasions, and had come close to arousing the suspicions of the Hari Anuma themselves. For her troubles, she had nothing to show.

And now a month had passed. No new rumors emerged and she was at a complete loss. Wherever they had Erik, and whatever they were doing with him, was a secret kept even from the highest ranking members of the crime syndicate. She took comfort only in the knowledge that the would eventually have to unveil their new 'weapon' if they wished to use him. He could not be kept hidden indefinitely. She only prayed that Erik would still be Erik when that day came.

She decided to take a 'break' from her frantic searching and spent some quiet time in the Hunter-frequented pubs around the edges of the governed systems. She hated having to play waiting games, but given the danger associated with sniffing around large powerful crime organizations, it was the most viable option at the moment. She kept her eyes plastered on the news reports floating across the holoscreens and her ears open to the gossip and stories floating around her, looking for any sort of pattern that might lead her to Erik.

It was scarcely a week later when she finally caught a hint of some new shift in the regional power scheme. A string of unusual disappearances and suicides cropped up in the headlines and, while seemingly unrelated incidents, their close timeframe caught Tess's attention. It wasn't difficult for her to gain access to some of the victim politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats' former offices to question secretaries and co-workers. Her efforts, for the first time in weeks, produced results.

The secretary she spoke to in her first investigation, a young female Eranae, was clearly shaken. Tess tried to be sympathetic with her, realizing from the start that intimidation would probably only serve to send her into hysterics, and slowly coaxed the provocative tale from her.

"Two men showed up asking to see master Reh. I told them they needed an appointment and should come back later, but they insisted. I asked them to leave several times but they would not go. When I would not let them through, they stepped aside and there was a boy behind them—No, not a boy. A man, actually, now that I think of it. He looked like a boy because he had no plates, but he was definitely quite tall, and very odd looking. He had some kind of fur around his forehead and ears and his eyes were dull and vacant, with strange pupils. He was very thin and had many nearly healed wounds and some fresh looking scars over his torso. I could see them because he was wearing nothing but a bit of brown cloth wrapped loosely about his loins. I didn't like the look of him and I was about to push the button under the desk for security when he spoke to me. He had the oddest voice, very musical, not at all what I would have expected from his appearance. I wanted to push the button still but I couldn't make myself do it, I just sort of froze up! I don't know what came over me, honestly, it was like something else was controlling my body. And then the two men and the one with the Voice went through the door to the office. I heard the strange one singing and blacked out. When I awoke, they were gone and master Reh was hanging dead by a thin animal-gut rope from the ventilation grill!"

Interviews with three other witness produced similar tales. So they had finally loosed Erik and his Voice of the Winds on the galaxy. The trick now would be to look for a pattern in their attacks and predict where they would show up next. She would have to be there first, if she were to get Erik back. For the trick to work, Erik's attendants, always two in number, would have to be killed before they saw her face. If one saw her and managed to get away, the Hari Anuma would haunt her until they managed to corner and kill her. She did not need enemies such as that. She was getting impatient, though, with the increasingly disturbing descriptions of Erik's behavior. Tess worried for his sanity. Would he even recognize her? He might try to kill her. As a non-Eranae and a complete stubborn ass, his voice was not as great a threat to her as some, but she could not bear the thought of that heavenly sound she'd heard only once being turned upon her as a weapon.

Tess spent the next week again watching the incidents on the newscasts. The main problem was that she simply did not have the time to follow up every one and there was the statistical fact that not all of them would be the work of the Hari Anuma. There were always a few white-collar suicides every month just as a matter of course. She would sit in the back corner of the pub with her feet propped up, a mug of whatever was on tap next to her boots and an old-fashioned notebook and pencil in hand. She garnered some strange glances from her peers but none of them had the gall to question the Ayana armor-clad girl.

By the end of the week, the only pattern she could discern was that they were hitting mostly older, well-established men and women who had been in their positions for a long time. It seemed that their plan was to disrupt the infrastructure and cause instability in Eranae business and government. Precisely what they were trying to make room for, Tess was not entirely certain, though they were no doubt busy placing their own puppets in the oh so conveniently now-vacant positions. The economy was already starting to bear the weight of their mischief with stock prices sliding downhill rapidly. If it continued, the entire quadrant was in for a long-term economic recession at the very least. Unrest and in-fighting within the government were also heating up and faint murmurs of revolution were being whispered in the shadows.

Tess began shadowing the corporate headquarters and the Eranae Senate, hoping to stumble upon them by sheer luck. She usually arrived on the scene after the attacks just in time to interrogate the unlucky witnesses, but for good or for ill, her luck was about to change.