His denya vibrated with excitement while they waited, eyes trained on the surveillance program. Around them, the station wasn’t quiet, nothing in space ever was. The machinery needed to keep people alive always heaved and hummed the mechanical pulse of existence. Tav found it comforting. He lived most of his life in space now and when he made landfall, the natural sounds of any planet seemed strange and loud, too unpredictable for his ears.

The small room they’d stuffed themselves into grew warm with their presence and Tav had to clench his hands at his sides to keep from reaching out to touch his denya. She seemed receptive to him, but he would not let his lust come in the way of their mission. They had a thief to catch.

But it was taking a long time.

The first hour slipped by quickly, even though neither he nor Molly dared to speak more than a few words for worry of being overheard. The second hour went a little slower and Molly began to fidget, slumping in her seat. The third and fourth crawled by, but for some reason the fifth flew. Sitting in the sixth, Tavwondered if they should have trusted the tracker to do its work and relied on surveillance footage for the rest.

A fizz of electricity popped in the distance and both Molly and Tav sat up straighter. His mate gasped as the screen on the surveillance program went dark, tapping fervently to make sure it wasn’t a glitch on the part of the equipment. But the feed didn’t come back up and both of them could hear the muffled clang of piping being moved right outside.

“We have to go see.” Molly reached for the door.

Tav put a hand on her arm to stop her. “They’ll see us the second we get out there. Just wait.”

The light was dim in their closet, but it was bright enough to read her frustration clear as day. Still, Molly sat back, resigned. “Do you have the tracking program?”

Tav pulled out his own communicator which was linked to the tracker’s program. “It’s here.” He pulled up the tracker and saw that it hadn’t yet moved from the room where it had been placed. “Looks like it’s still working.”

“Good, I was worried they’d knocked out all of the electronics somehow.” Molly stood, but there wasn’t enough room to pace, so she mostly rolled back and forth on her feet, staring at the door as if it would magically open and release her to race after their quarry.

Some of that anticipation bled off onto him and Tav wanted to do the same, wanted to chase down their thief or thieves and apprehend them, save the day, get the girl, and be greeted as a hero. But he’d save the heroics for the security guards and hope the girl liked him well enough as it was. He’d never been much of a fighter or a warrior, despite the claws that lay hidden in his knuckles. He could hold his own for a minute, but against someone bigger, or someone who had training, he was doomed.

The electricity popped again and the surveillance footage came back to life, showing an empty space where their pile ofgoodies had once been. Molly spun in place, looking at him expectantly. “Is the tracker moving?”

Tav checked again. “Yes, quickly.”

She grabbed onto his sleeve and tugged. “Come on!”

“You want to follow them?” That hadn’t been part of the plan. They were supposed to report this to security and let them do the dangerous part.

But Molly’s eyes were bright with determination. “I just want to take a look at them, see if I recognize them. All we have is a tracker that’s moving, there’s no guarantee that security takes us seriously. We get close, snap some photos and vids of our own, and then we get out with none the wiser. It’ll work out perfectly, trust me.”

She sounded so confident that he wanted to, but Tav wasn’t certain. Still, he found himself moving quickly behind her as they eased out of their hiding place and into the darkened hallways of Honora Station at night. There was a faint metallic smell in the air, more pronounced than usual on a station like this. The air could never smell completely fresh, recycled as it was, but it was usually treated so it became unnoticeable after a while.

“No tracks,” Molly whispered, her voice almost lost under the hum of the air recyclers.

Tav looked and saw she was right. If he hadn’t know that the pile of bait had been there, he wouldn’t have realized that anything at all had been moved. Interesting.

They moved quickly down the hallways of Honora Station, strangely running into no one. Though space stations ran on a day to night schedule, it wasn’t like a planet which had natural time, and with all of the different aliens who relied on different sleep cycles, and the visitors coming from all reaches of space at all hours, time was relative. There was always someone awake, always someone around. But not here, not now.

Strange.

With no one around, it was tempting to move like they were sneaking, but that would only draw more attention, so Tav and Molly walked confidently, if silently, eating up the distance and faithfully following the tracking beacon to the heart of the station. Until they hit a wall. Literally.

Molly placed her hand against the surface as if something would trigger a door to open. The hallway ended abruptly and there were no doors, no branches shooting off in other directions. There was nowhere else to go.

“What does it say?” she asked, nodding towards his communicator.

Tav looked. “It’s still moving. It’s like it could just go through the wall.” He joined her and felt around, but there was no secret catch, nothing that suggested the wall was anything more than it appeared.

“Argh!” Molly pounded her hand against the wall and slumped down to the floor in frustration. “Really? Really! We were so close! But we never even saw who did it! What the hell?”

He slid down the wall beside her, bumping his shoulder gently against her own. “We can still tell security what happened. They’ll look into it. Surely they don’t want thieves on their station.”

“I’ve been here for a few weeks, and I’ve got to say, security hasn’t exactly instilled a lot of confidence in me, you know? There isn’t brawling, not that I’ve seen, so that’s good, but other than that, this place is kind of…” she trailed off on a sigh.

“Past its prime?”

“That’s one way to put it.” Molly cradled her head in her hands and let out another sound of frustration. “I just want this party to go right. It’s not even technically my stuff that they’re stealing, I probably shouldn’t care so much. But I really do!”