A look back by Lucy Fontaine; December, 2947 It took some time for the word to be carried back to Cassel, and for a change during that span, I was back home when the word finally arrived. Carried in on a Freelancer by the name of Anna’s Pride, the message rolled out through the Spectrum like a wave: Wyatt Kolde was gone. Not killed, at least no evidence of him being killed: just gone. He had left the Carnival on some deal, a secret one, apparently, and then never returned. The story grew stranger as none of the Enforcers were called along to join him, even the personal escorts Wyatt had procured over the years were left behind. The story was still fresh in my mind, and I was still playing over dreams of joining the Carnival. I wondered if the Carnival could survive without Wyatt, and I quickly loaded up the Bell and made for Baker, two jumps away. I headed through Tayak and arrived a day later, pushing the Bell to her limits, chasing the story. Following leads gathered from traders further in, I learned that much of the fleet had made for the outer system, there to decide what came next. Knowing that time was limited, and that there was no reason for the Carnival to stay in this system long, I headed out to the edge of the system to the dead rock that was Baker IV. I figured that the Carnival would gather around a well-known landmark and I was proven right. Unlike in Goss, where only a small measure of the fleet was present, while the rest was out in the system pursuing their own leads, nearly the entire Carnival was present this time. It was probably close to four or five hundred ships, although I wasn’t able to verify this: as I drew closer, I was immediately approached by Enforcers. These were no Buccs, no light fighters: they were Vanguards - and while not as fresh as those that served in the Navy, they were well-cared for. My HUD flared with missile lock warnings, so it seemed a good time to stop and look as unthreatening as possible. After a short, rather terse discussion, which involved forwarding my story over to them as proof of my credentials (apparently the story had made the rounds with the Carnival, with varying degrees of acceptance - I thankfully hadn’t gone heavy on the criticism in the short piece). What followed was a short intersection between my interests and the Carnival’s. While Wyatt would, on occasion, take the Snapdragon and go on his own, making trade alliances, procuring oddities, handing oddities off to collectors in the dark, and so on, these were short trips and rarely beyond hail of the Enforcers - Wyatt was neither stupid nor suicidal: he knew he had made enemies and he knew his position made him a target; one that could either be ransomed or removed. While Captain Kolde had sworn to the loyalty of the Carnival, and his crew in particular, it had become apparent to me that this was less loyalty and more convenience. Many the Carnival were open about this, and had apparently been open about that fact directly to Wyatt. Regardless, he had proceeded as if the was the central star in his own solar system. Even in my short time there, and the short time Captain Kolde had been missing (at this point, it was only the single month - the Carnival had not stayed long in Osiris), it was apparent that the Carnival was already breaking up to some degree. There were different factions, different loyalties, and people at the bottom of the hierarchy, now seeing the demise of the head, were debating going it their own way. Several of the Enforcers, experienced bounty hunters and investigators, were on Wyatt’s trail, but in this particular endeavor, he had been even more cagey than usual, keeping whatever game he had been up to a complete secret. Indeed, the running belief was that Wyatt had tired of life in the Carnival, of running it, and had decided to move on with his life in a typically dramatic fashion. While plausible, this didn’t seem to mesh with the short interview I had had with the man: his ego seemed utterly tied to what he had created, and while his name carried a little weight, it was the Carnival itself that he took true pride in. There was also a belief that he had been captured by pirates to be ransomed, but after a month, this scenario was proving less and less likely. So with a surprise retirement unlikely, and a kidnapping becoming a more and more fleeting possibility, it left the possibility that Captain Kolde had been killed, the Snapdragon destroyed. Speaking (very briefly) once again with Captain Ives, she also felt this was unlikely: while still a merchant vessel, the Snapdragon was also a formidable combat vessel. A former naval officer, Wyatt did not skimp on defenses, not in the Carnival itself and certainly not in his personal flagship. By the time most of the hunters returned (a few stalwarts stayed on the case and, to my knowledge, are still searching for their enigmatic leader today), empty handed, of course, the Carnival was already breaking down. Without Wyatt to hold them all together, there seemed to be little reason to keep it going; and that seemed to be Wyatt’s greatest failure - because he created the Carnival as an extension of himself, he never considered what would happen should he be ripped away. He didn’t develop the structure of the Carnival to hold together without him, and with him gone: it didn’t. The failure of a brilliant, but flawed, man. Even as the Carnival wilted away into its component parts, I was on a trail of my own: following leads of where Wyatt or, the easier target, the Snapdragon itself, could have disappeared to. Where the hunters were no doubts experts at what they did, their reputation and what they were kept some doors closed that would open to me. Or so I thought. While most people, at least those that would have information about kidnappers, ransomers, and other shadier characters, would frown at being responsible, even in part, in “bringing someone to justice,” they tended to act somewhat differently when it came to being the hero in a story, and it was here that my role as a reporter had often led me to stories that hunters couldn’t find. But in this case, whatever had happened to Captain Kolde had eluded even these sorts of inquiries. Whatever he had been pursuing, out there on his own in the Dark, had swallowed he and the Snapdragon whole. Hunters gave way to salvagers, seeking out what would no doubt be a treasure trove were the corpse of the huge ship to be found (not only the ship itself, but also information to the former members of the Carnival, should they be of mind to seek vengeance). But even a ship as large as the Snapdragon was only a dust mote in the expanse. With no clue as to where the Snapdragon was heading, or what its destination was, or what it had been seeking, there was no trail to follow, no line to figure out where it might have ended up. Much like the hunters, the scavengers set off on the path that the Snapdragon had left in, but in my experiences and research of the man, I believed that if Wyatt had meant for his destination to be a secret, he wouldn’t have done something as obvious as fly straight to his destination. Instead, he’d hide his path. With that in mind, and knowing at his heart Captain Kolde was a trader, I headed for the Xenia, the huge Covalex hub that sat just between the orbits of Baker III and IV: it seemed an obvious stop for a tradeship, even were it on another mission. Sure enough, I learned from longshoremen that traders from the Carnival had stopped in at the hub. That was hardly unusual or unexpected, but they recalled that the ship they had hailed from had been a Merchantman. I relayed this information back to the hunters, and learned that the fleet had three such vessels, including the Snapdragon. This information was nothing new, but as I studied the starmap, I quickly realized that, at the time of Wyatt’s disappearance, the jump point to Keil lay just inside its orbit: convenient if Wyatt had intended to slip away, perhaps to make a quick deal in the next system the Carnival would visit? It seemed as plausible an idea as any. I forwarded this information onto the hunters as well, this time for a slight premium as I began to suspect this story would start to cut into my own resources before long. With that accomplished, I piloted the Bell through the jump point to Keil. Keil is more developed than Baker, a system still growing into its potential, and was a natural system for the Carnival to visit, and it was a logical next stop for the Carnival. Had Wyatt come here? Perhaps to pave the way? Maybe to cut some deal before the arrival of his fleet? Maybe. Starting at the obvious point, the terrestrial planet of Severus, I found frustratingly little. Merchantmen had been spotted here and there, and while they’re a rare ship in human space, they’re by no means unique, and none were crewed by those wearing the patch of the Snapdragon. As I began to search outward, to the other points of interest in the system, the other places a trader like Wyatt might call to, my own resources began to dwindle, much like the leads: the trail had gone cold.