The message left us speechless... for many reasons.
"Kidnapping? Who kidnaps people on Titan?" I said.
Yeah, we'd all heard of kidnapping. It was a common enough plot device in the Earth dramas we watched. But Titan Colony isn't Earth. In Titan Colony there aren't any lonely forests with little cabins in the center of them, and there aren't enough abandoned warehouses in the city that the police couldn't search all of them in one day. Plus, there's a mentality difference: no one on Titan fucks over a buddy with a kidnapping, we have other ways.
So... Who could do this? Who was desperate enough, knew enough, and thought like an Earth person? The rest of us were just starting to mull on this when Hansley quietly and calmly said, "It's Jabe."
"I don't understand, Jabe is what?" I said.
"Jabe is the kidnapper. He's the one that has sufficient information." replied Hansley. I guess that's what makes a good science officer. He had come up with a solution fast. Whether it was right, or not, remained to be seen, but it sure fit the facts we knew.
"Bullshit!" the rest of us said simultaneously, then we all shut up. None of us could think of why it was bullshit.
"... If he is, what do we do?" asked Korliss
"Our next most reliable contact is Dr. Langhorn. If I remember correctly, Kalanov and Langhorn's largest mutual interest is investing in our ship. It's not likely they are buddy-buddy in skullduggery." said Hansley.
"Lets get on the horn to him." said Korliss
"We should, but lets think about what we are going to say, and do."
For the next two hours we played some more "what if" games. It was only two hours because there wasn't much data to play around with. We decided the best approach was to play dumb: we would message Dr. Langhorn that we hadn't been able to contact Jason, and let him report back to us what he could find out. Playing dumb would slow our response to this crisis, but... we really had no response -- this whole business was so off the charts! Playing dumb was the only way we had of finding out where Langhorn stood. We hoped we would be able to tell from his response how involved he was in this. After we sent the message, we had hours and hours to decide how we would react to the next message.
"If he's in up to his eyeballs. We should hang them both by their thumbs." said Cracker.
It was then that I had my terrible thought, and said, "Gentlemen, we have to go back."
"Go back where?"
"To Neptune. Go back and bring out some more Ruby."
The others looked at me like I was crazy. I don't blame them for that.
"Jabe is going to ask for ten pounds of Ruby. We may or may not give that to him. We may or may not hide the Ruby. But no matter what happens to Jabe and Jason, the word will be out that ten extra pounds are ready to hit the streets. We need an element of surprise in this crisis, and the element of surprise that we can bring to this party is more Ruby."
"We put the base in mothballs. It'll take us days to turn around and get back. We didn't plan on this at all."
"We have our safety margin. We got out on time, which means we have our full safety margin to play with. Plus, we know what we are doing now."
"Well... we think we know what we are doing." it was Hansley, "You don't think that after just one journey there, Neptune can't surprise us? Still, these are not normal times. And I agree, having some more Ruby does give us an ace-in-the-hole, and we badly need one."
"What about Cracker-Hensley?" asked Jack.
"It'll still be there."