With part of the garage closed down for cleaning, parking is tight at CIA headquarters, but Luis manages to find a spot for the fleet SUV. Arketta's sitting in the passenger seat, and Kadiatu is seated behind Luis, and as everyone exits the vehicle, you're met by a smiling pair of a Asian man and white woman, both dressed in business casual and wearing CIA ID badges.
The man steps forward and takes Luis' hand before he offers it to shake. "Agent Stanhill! It's an honor to meet you," he gushes, shaking Luis' hand with both hands. His badge reads "Kevin Ihara".
"Nice to meet you too," Luis says, despite the air of disquiet the double-handed politician handshake creates.
"Sorry about Kevin," the woman says, and extends a more traditional lone hand to shake. "Candice Epps, CIA technical services. And this must be Arketta Quis. Welcome to the CIA, Miss Quis," she adds in Imperial.
"Thank you for the warm welcome," Arketta replies, and shakes her hand.
"And I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with who you are," Epps says, offering Kadi her hand.
"Warrant Officer Kadiatu Aaronovich," she returns the gesture. "Newest member of the 815, courtesy of the special relationship."
"Congratulations," Epps says, "I know there's more than a few people around here that would give up their right arm for a chance to join 815."
"Or my eyes!" Ihara says, laughing for a moment as his own joke, which earns a quizzical look from Luis.
"I'll remember they're available the next time someone needs a body part," Kadi answers, offering Epps a wink.
Epps gives the group a sympathetic look. "Come on, the Sheen shell is waiting in the lab." She motions for the group to follow her.
As the group walks down the halls, Arketta leans over to Luis. "This is a much nicer welcome than I thought we would get," she says in English. "I think that man likes your eyes a lot." She gives Luis a playful elbow bump.
"Yeah. Reminds me a bit of Andy Tupolev from Mesa Negras," Luis responds.
Arketta laughs. "He was so jealous when he found out, yes."
The last set of security doors requires a key card swipe and a retinal scan, but Ihara holds the door open for the group, revealing a decently-sized lab room, complete with sturdy work tables covered with all sorts of electronic gear and experiments. On the far side of the room, surrounded by a crowd of curious technical geeks, sits a deactivated Sheen shell, the same one that jumped on Luis' head back on Diego Garcia. It's sitting half-out of a large FedEx box, apparently having been shipped overnight from the island to the CIA. A sticky note is attached to its back, written in pen, but with machine-precise lettering. Vox in and let me know when to jump over.
"We were told that you'd know what to do," Epps says, taking her position as the mother hen for the nerd herd.
Luis nods, "Yeah, I do. Might want to have your people take a step or two back."
Epps looks over at the shell, concern on her face. "Why, is it dangerous?" Contrary to her concerns, some of the techs actually step closer.
"No," Luis says, "But it'll probably be doing its best headcrab impression at me once I let it know I'm ready, and I don't want to find out one of you has crowbar reflexes after the fact."
Epps nods, and starts waving some of the more curious techs back. Once a decent space has been cleared around it, she nods to Luis. "All right, make the call."
Luis nods and his face contorts briefly as he activates his vox and acquires a connection with the Sheen back in Diego Garcia. "Hey, someone sent me a shell-in-a-box?"
"You ready over there, Stanhill? Getting bored with waiting over here." Luis recognizes the synthesized voice as the same Sheen that scanned his head the last time.
"Yeah, ready on this end," Luis says.
"All right, be there in 7.48 seconds."
The vox connection ends, and 7 and a half seconds later (according to Luis' internal vox), the shell's sensors light up and it climbs to its feet. The whole crowd of CIA technicians takes a surprised step back, and then two curious steps forward as the Sheen shakes the remaining packing material off the shell. It hops around to look at the rest of the crowd, all studying its every move with fascination, even Epps. "Okay, that's just fuckin' creepy," the Sheen says, and turns towards Luis. "So, making the paranoid morons happy, right? Not like I didn't just do this scan."
Luis shrugs. "Sure, let's get on with it."
Much to Luis and Arketta's relief, instead of pouncing onto his head from the rafters, this time the Sheen simply jumps onto his shoulder and climbs up the back of his head. Luis moves his hair aside with his hand to reveal the jack in the base of his skull, which the Sheen shell's tail bends over and under into and connects to with a click. Luis' vision fills with the augmented reality overlay again, as the Sheen blows through all the options in rapid succession. His vision flickers on and off a couple times, and a few of the fascinated lab techs gasp as, unbeknownst to Luis, his eyes flash a couple of different colors.
A few seconds later, the scan finishes, but the Sheen stays plugged into Luis' head. "You want anything else done while I'm in here? Clean your cache, maybe spruce up the UI a bit?"
"Can you make a call from inside the Sergeant's head while you're jacked in there that would authenticate as coming from him?" Kadi asks simply.
"Yeah, if I crack his vox setup, but then he could just hang up the call or shut down the vox program entirely," the Sheen says. Helpfully, the Sheen brings up the haptic commands to just that for Luis as it talks. "It's not like I can make the puppet dance, lady, it's just a computer that's crammed in his skull."
"What would it take to make him part of a bot network or otherwise lose superuser access to the box in his head?"
The Sheen sighs, and crawls forward to look down at Luis' eyes. "What is her problem?" It crawls back up and looks back at Kadi. "First, they'd have to write a program for Imperial hardware, something that might be a bit of an issue on this technological wasteland of a planet. Second, it'd have to get through two different software checks, two hardware checks, and a verified boot hash. And finally, the system is base-coded to respond first and foremost to the haptic interface. All Stanhill has to do is do his Tourette's act and the offending program is shut down." The Sheen manages to give Kadi a sarcastic look, despite only having two red sensors on a flat body for a face. "It's almost like they designed it so you couldn't do that."
"You've trawled through the mire of our minds and souls that comprises the Internet," Kadi answers indifferently. "Humans take that sort of thing as an invitation to prove the assumption wrong, and given the Imperium is more or less human and interested in basically exterminating us, I wouldn't bet against them doing the same thing. What if Sergeant Stanhill can't voluntarily move his face or otherwise physically interact with the wetware, like if he was paralysed or asleep when the intrusion attempt takes place?"
Arketta looks visibly nervous with the current line of questioning, but the Sheen answers the question. "Well, first, the interface works off of nerve impulses from the brain, not the muscles on his face. If Stanhill was a bit more practiced, he'd look less like he's having a stroke every time he makes a phone call. As for making the call while he's knocked out or asleep, sure, if the attacker has managed to penetrate every single layer of security and dynamically avoid the sub-millisecond security scans to so thoroughly own his box that it can disconnect his aural outputs so he doesn't hear you making a vox connection inside his own head? Then yeah, you could make your phone call. Of course, by that point, it'd be easier to just record his voice and spoof the vox." The Sheen's tone of annoyance has gone from "put pickles on his burger" to "parent being asked 'why?' for the twentieth time".
"Could you do it?" she asks him, her voice and manner still icily calm. "If we gave you an Imperial cyborg, could you crack his mind open to give us access to his intel and his secure vox connections? This technology is new to us, we need to know its limitations."
"Sure, if we have a couple of months and a bunch of dedicated Sheen on the job," the Sheen says. "Standard Imperial augmentations run a 20-qbit encryption scheme, babe." The whole group of CIA technicians titters with excitement at that. "That's one hell of a hash to break, and that's just to gain unauthorized root. Cracking the encryption on the secure data and then the vox codes is an entirely different ball of wax, and that's if they're not running extra security, which your theoretical Imp spy probably is. There's a reason why the Imperials feel comfortable with this tech, and it's because they've hardened the shit out of it."
"What if you had the entire Sheen homeworld working on the hack?"
"Well, they're not all as sexy as I am when it comes to hacking," the Sheen says, blinking one sensor on and off in a machine copy of a wink. "Most of them don't even have the subroutines to handle a job like this. Breaking quantum encryption requires specialised libraries and hardware that most of us just aren't compiled with, straight up. But sure, let's say you got all the capable Sheen on it. It'd knock it down to, say, maybe a day or two, in this fantasy land where such a thing was possible, which it isn't. We're not all at your species' beck and call, lady."
"I'm not indicating it should be otherwise," she answers. "But as the Sheen would benefit just as much from that sort of supposedly impossible access to the enemy comms net, yes?"
"Wasting our entire collective time, just to crack one spy's vox, and allowing us to make prank phone calls as this one guy? Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." The Sheen looks seriously annoyed now. "It's not like tapping into a phone line, it's just one guy's vox unit."
"I never mentioned a spy. The security features of the systems that Sergeant Stanhil is equipped with is deemed so secure, people high up the chain of command would think nothing of being similarly equipped, yes? If we could authenticate and spoof the right signals, we could misdirect entire armies, yes, at that one critical moment?"
"Yeah, you're going to raid Napai, kidnap one of them without the entire fucking planet noticing, spend weeks cracking his skull box open, just for that. It's not. Fucking. Possible. They're not that stupid. We fought an entire war with the fuckers, if it was that fucking easy, we would have won in a few weeks, not a few dozen years." The Sheen looks down at Kadi from the top of Luis' head. "Any other dumb questions?"
"How easy is it to spoof the sensory data to these eyes?"
"You can't. Next?"
"Why not? They're just -"
The Sheen cuts her off. "Same reasons as before. Not that stupid, already tried it."
"Can you access the A/V systems here and show us why not?" she challenges. "After all, the whole point of this is to allow us poor technologically illiterate humans to understand how all this works. Especially me, given I'll be the one who has to fix any damage they suffer in the field."
The Sheen looks over at Epps. "Got a problem with that?" Epps shakes her head. "Well then!" A second later, a ceiling-mounted projector clicks on, and it displays "BECAUSE IT'S HARDWIRED, IDIOT" in big bold font, with a picture of Luis' head below and an arrow pointed at his eyes, labeled "His eyes are inside his head, duhh". The Sheen looks back at Kadi. "What else you got?"
"Do me a favour and look up Mythbusters, motion sensor and bed sheet," she answers with indifferent calm. "Just because a sensor is hard wired doesn't mean it can't be fooled."
"Oh, so you're talking about putting up some kind of...some would say, camouflage, maybe a disguise of some kind, possibly even a cloak, that would trick him into seeing something he's not? Like, say, what would happen with a real fucking eye?" The Sheen is almost quaking with rage at this point. "It's an eye! Light hits it, tells you what you see! It's not that fucking complicated!"
Kadi despite her impassive expression is smiling inwardly. "I'm thinking more along the lines of the way stealth jets minimise their radar signature?"
"I'm thinking more along the lines of 'why don't you shut the fuck up'," the Sheen says. "It's a Goddamn eye, it sees by picking up light bouncing off it like any other fucking eye, the scan is done, I'm out." The Sheen unplugs, jumps off Luis onto the table, and the shell instantly shuts down as the Sheen leaves it and transfers out, presumably back to Diego Garcia.
Kadi shrugs at the temper tantrum, even though getting a rise out of the machine had been part of the day's order of business. "I was just asking."
"If you're done asking, and he's done answering, then are we ready to finish this up?" Luis asks.
The CIA techs look disappointed. "We were hoping to get a chance to talk to the Sheen for a while, but I guess we'll have to figure something out for another time," Epps says. "As soon as the report is sent, we're done here."
Kadi spares a glance to the security camera in the corner that's been recording everything taking place.
"All right, then," Luis says. "Thanks for letting us use your lab."
"No problem," Epps says. "And if you have a chance to talk to the Sheen, could you maybe try to convince them to come back? We'll try to be more accomidating the next time." She gives Kadi a sharp look.
"I'll see about it," Luis says.
Arketta just seems relieved the whole thing is over, from having a Sheen plugged into Luis' head to the argument between the Sheen and Kadi. "Thank your for your time," she says in Imperial.
Epps nods. "It was not a problem."
---
Down in the parking garage, after everyone's climbed back into the SUV for the return trip back to the hotel, Kadi pulls something out of her pocket.
She puts her fingers to her lips as she slips a sealed envelope to Luis. Inside is a message addressed to the Sheen ambassador:
Dear Ambassador
My apologies for any unsettled feelings that will be created today, but I assure you the necessity for them is genuine. As you are aware, 815's existence within the command hierarchy is under threat from factional interests looking to fight the Imperium without external help. Human psychology means that the assessment to be made of the cybernetic augmentation of Sergeant Stanhill is far less likely to be accepted by these people from a non-terrestrial source if it appears to be done so in collusion with 815 members. Provoking a hostile response is more likely to persuade their advisers that the information your technician provides is genuine.
Unfortunately, this requires there be no actual collusion, so perforce this apology must be delivered clandestinely and after the fact.
She Whirr-signs that Luis should pass it to Arketta when he's done, followed by Sorry, couldn't tell you. Had to be genuine.
Luis reads over the letter and raises an eyebrow, then passes it to Arketta. I see. he signs.
Arketta doesn't even look at the letter, or acknowledge Kadi. "Are we done speaking languages we're not supposed to use, and can we go?" she pointedly asks in English.
Kadi shrugs.
Hugh and Swims-the-Black were released by the police after giving their statements and being warned about leaving town (a proclamation that amused both Swims-the-Black and Hugh), and returned to report back about what they found and relax after their ambush, which at Hugh’s suggestion, meant an early-morning steak. While Luis and Arketta wait in their hotel room for a reply from the Sheen, Davis and Ngawai leave the hotel for their pre-arranged meeting with Davis’ old boss, Bob Russell. The meeting was originally arranged to ostensibly be an opportunity for Davis and Russell to touch bases, talk shop and pretend to be friendly while Davis probed Russell for any chance of him being involved in the plot against the GRHDI, but given the events of the day so far, the odds are that he’s not going to be in the best of moods. Still, intel has to be gathered, so Davis and Ngawai drive across the river.
Someone of Bob Russell’s position in the CIA warrants a better position than Simmons’ office off the bullpen downstairs, and so two floors above, Davis and Ngawai walk down a hallway leading to altogether nicer offices. One of the nameplates reads “Off-World Affairs - Bob Russell”, and they let themselves in. Russell’s assistant, a pleasant woman in her 40’s named Donna, is at her desk.
Ngawai smiles and nods to Donna. “Hello, Donna.” She had always been nice to Ngawai.
Donna smiles at Davis and Ngawai as they walk in. “Hello, Garrett. Bob’s in his office, but just so you know, he’s really tee’d off about Captain Verrill having to shoot Corporal Byer after Byer and Stecker attacked him and your Wherren friend in the garage.”
Davis nods and returns her smile. “Thanks, Donna. Did he say what happened?”
“Byer and Stecker had some sort of problem with 815 or off-worlders, and went after your friends, that’s about all I could gather.” Donna connects to Russell’s phone in his office. “Mr. Russell? Garrett Davis and Ngawai Holoni are here to see you.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Yeah, I’m ready for them.”
Bob Russell has his arms crossed as he leans back in his desk chair as Davis and Ngawai take a seat opposite him. His office is pretty standard for the CIA: file cabinets, a prefab wooden desk with computer and files on top, and various souvenirs and mementos commemorating operations that never officially happened, hanging on light blue painted drywall and over industrial carpet. His expression is decidedly sour as the two of them take a seat, glaring across his desk at them.
Davis doesn’t attempt his usual disarming levity, and sticks to his accented English. “I’m very sorry about your men, Bob. Donna told me that it was some sort of anti-off-worlder hate crime?”
Russell’s glower darkens into something more akin to the view through a Needleship viewport. “Something like that.” He leans forward. “So, what do you want, Garrett?”
“Well, I’m here to check up with my old boss, see what the CIA is planning these days for off-world ops and what the GRHDI can do as far as mission support,” Davis says.
“You mean after you brought Stanhill in for about 30 seconds, and then both ran off,” Bob grouses. “You two were our off-world agents.”
“We’ve got a lot of contacts,” Ngawai says, her Imperial accent matched with Davis’, “and the Bashakra’i are more than willing to work together on a spy group project.”
“So they can poach more of my best men?” Russell shakes his head. “No, the current plan is to work with contacts on Boranai to establish our own network, independent of the Bashakrans."
Ngawai gives Russell a skeptical look. "And how do you plan to do that?" she asks. "It took the Bashakra'i decades to set up their network."
"And less than a week for 815 to do the same on Hedion," Russell shoots back. "If you people can do something like that, then so can we. And aside from that, that's all I can tell you." Russell gives them both a smug smile. "Intel sharing with aliens and those with alien loyalties is restricted."
Davis throws his hands up in the air. "Bob, you know me. I damn near gave my life for you and this country in Afghanistan, and no one has worked harder for Narsai - Earth's interests out there than Ngawai and me. We've come closer to bringing down the Imperium than anyone has managed to do in their entire history! The Sheen, the Bashakra'i, the Groi, none of them have even come close to what we've accomplished."
"None of which has done the first damn thing to save Earth!" Russell shouts across his desk. His face turns dark as he leans back in his chair. "That's how we know you've turned, Garrett. All you care about is doing what the aliens want, save the Bashakrans, liberate the Imperium, all that bullshit. You know that you always have to make a choice. You save the people, or get the mission done, and you have always picked the wrong side. It was that choice that got you shacked up with that Sahar broad back in Afghanistan, which I tolerated because you turned her to our side and kept your head in the game, but you've let your dick make the same bad choice for you again, and this time, you've decided to get completely turned around and save the natives instead of save your country. And this time, we're not going to let your bleeding heart make the same mistake for all of us that you made with that Hadji bitch."
Ngawai grips her chair with one hand and her other shoots to where she carries her sidearm as Russell's tirade turns towards attacking Davis' choices in women, the thought of zipping a line down Russell's head with her Stinger suddenly very attractive. Davis can barely restrain himself from leaping over Russell's desk and beating him unconscious. "You..." he growls, "do not get to talk about Hadiya or Ngawai that way. Ever." He jumps to his feet and Ngawai follows him. "They're both twice as loyal and effective as your or your bitter bunch of bigoted pals will ever be. I get results, Bob, that's what you can't stand, someone stealing your Goddamn spotlight. As far as I can tell, all your men are good for is insulting my wife and ambushing my team."
Russell turns bright red and jumps out of his own chair, now that Davis has finally hit his rage on the head. "Byer and Stecker are good men, twice as skilled and twice as loyal as your alien-loving friends! There was no reason for Verrill to kill Byer, and I'm going make damn sure that him and that hairy freak get the fucking firing squad for what they did! You think you've got all the cards, Garrett, well, we're the fucking house, you smug son of a bitch, and we are going to finish off your team and GRHDI, and then we'll see who's so fucking clever."
Davis and Russell, both having exhausted their vitriol for each other, simply stare at each other across Russell's desk. Ngawai releases her hold on her sidearm and puts a hand on Davis' shoulder. "Garrett, I think it's clear that we are not welcome here," she says, the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice conveying that under different circumstances, Russell would have much more immediate problems than some far-off Imperial invasion. "There are other things we need to do here, yes?"
Davis shoves his hand in his pocket and nods. "Yes. Right." He takes his hand back out of his pocket and extends it across the desk to shake. "Good seeing you, Bob."
Russell looks at his hand like it's about to jump off and crawl over his desk. "Get the fuck out, Garrett. Tell your friends to keep the fuck out of my piece, clear?"
Davis shakes his hand and sticks it back in his pocket. "Crystal." He puts his arm around Ngawai's shoulders, and partly to thank her, partly to calm her down, and partly because he knows it will infuriate Russell, gives her a kiss on the cheek as they leave.
Davis paces in the hall a few doors down from Russell's office while Ngawai sits in a chair in front of him. "I knew he was pissed about how things went down with 815, but I had no idea it was that bad," Davis says in Imperial. "And then Hugh shoots one of his men..."
"Garrett, remember where we are..." Ngawai says in English, and points to a nearby camera.
Davis shakes his head and continues in English. "Right, sorry, thank you, babe." He bends over and gives Ngawai another peck on the cheek.
"Did you leave the bugs?" Ngawai whispers as Davis blocks the camera. Davis nods. "Well, we still need to leave our gift," she says. Davis reaches down into Ngawai's bag, but she grabs his hand and pulls it back out. "I've got it, lahna." She gives Davis a mischievous smile. "You just wait here, it's probably best that you stay away from Bob's office."
"Right," Davis says and takes a seat. "I'll just wait here, then." He puts a hand on her bulge and gives her one more peck on the cheek.
Ngawai pulls a small black box out of her bag and flicks a small switch on it. "You just listen to how a real pro gets the job done."
----
Ngawai opens the door and gives Donna an bashful smile through the door, one hand supporting her bulge. "Excuse me, but - pardon me, this is so embarrassing - I have to go to the restroom, and they need a card, and mine isn't working, so..."
"Oh dear, please, come on in," Donna says, holding the door open the rest of the way. "I remember how that feels, please sit, I just need to find my pass."
Ngawai takes a seat. "If it's a problem, I can get a security guard -"
"No, they'll take minutes to get here, and you don't have that kind of time, I remember!" Donna hands Ngawai her key card. "Here you go!"
"Thank you, I will be right back," Ngawai says, and leaves.
A few minutes later (the pass card excuse might have been fake, but her need to go was not), Ngawai returns. "Thank you very much, Donna," she says with a smile, and motions to one of the chairs in front of Donna's desk. "Do you mind?"
Donna smiles. "No, of course not. Bob might be on edge as of late, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him."
Ngawai gives Donna a big smile as she sits. "No, I guess not."
"So, how far along are you?" Donna asks.
"Just over a month to go," Ngawai says, patting her stomach. "We can't wait. Garrett is even more on edge than usual, he keeps on saying that the wait seems to take longer the less there is left."
"Well, ain't that the truth," Donna laughs. "And she's nice and strong? Everything look all right?"
Ngawai smiles, a genuine smile this time. "Genetic screens and imaging says that Naloni will be happy, healthy and more than able to raise trouble for a good long time," she says. Her hand snakes down to her bag and slides the bug repeater under her dress.
"Oh, is this your...Imperial? Off-world?" Donna asks. "I never know whether it's polite to call your people Imperial or not, just your technology. What does it tell you?"
"Whatever you want to call me is fine," Ngawai replies. "And yes, it is. They showed us a full holo scan of Naloni moving and kicking, did growth scans to make sure she's growing all right, and checked for a bunch of genetic conditions." Her hidden hand peels the plastic strips covering the adhesive off of the device.
"Sounds thorough to me," Donna says. "Naloni, that's such a lovely name. How did you choose it?"
"Well, Imperial names were given to us when the Groi took us from Earth, they were a way for them to keep track of us," Ngawai replies. "So, there's a family component common to the parents, but that aside, we were forced to name our children something other than our ancestors, so we could be more easily tracked."
Donna shakes her head. "That's just terrible, is what that is."
Ngawai smiles again. "Well, it's not so bad, we've got our own spin on the tradition. It is thought that naming your children after yourself or your ancestors is a way of saying that you expect your children to live the same life that you did, instead of hoping that they find their own way through the galaxy. Giving a child a unique name is a way of saying that you will support them, no matter what they choose to become." As she speaks, Ngawai slides the black box up behind and into the cable run suspended underneath Donna's desk. Discrete and silent, it functions as a EM field reader and vox repeater for the nanobugs Davis had left behind on Russell's desk.
"Now, that, I like," Donna says. "Hope for the future, and a better life."
"Exactly," Ngawai replies, and stands up. "Well, I think Garrett might be going stir-crazy out in the hall. Thank you again."
Donna waves Ngawai off. "It's no problem, Ngawai. Good luck, with everything."
----
As Davis drives the SUV back towards DC, Ngawai has her vox holodisplay on and is fiddling with the signal coming from the repeater. The bug audio is working fine and is on loudspeaker, but the EM field reader is still producing nothing but static.
"Are you sure the depth to Bob's monitor is correct?" Davis asks, having switched back to Imperial now that they are away from prying eyes and ears.
"Yes, again, I'm sure," Ngawai replies. "It's just being difficult, is all. I think it's the orientation, the polarity of the signal is off."
Davis quickly looks away from the road in an empty moment, then back. "Maybe try looking a couple of frequency ranges down -"
"Garrett, this is not the first time I have read a flat display with a EM field scanner, I was an Apprehender for a decade or so before I met you," Ngawai says, sounding a bit testy.
Davis raises one hand in mock surrender. "All right, good, just let me know."
There's a squeaking and crackling over the bugs as Russell sits back down behind his desk, and then the sound of plastic moving, and a dial tone.
"Ah! Finally, some action, I thought he had gone home," Davis says. Ngawai slaps him on the shoulder with the back of her hand to be quiet and keeps working at her vox.
Someone picks up on the other end of Russell's line. "Yeah, it's Bob. Garrett was just here, raising stink, pushing to see what he can find out. No, I didn't say anything, do you think I'm stupid? I knew what he was here to do, it's his MO, rattle your cage and see what falls out. I fucking taught him that, I'm not going to be stupid enough to fall for it." Both Davis and Ngawai snicker at that. Papers rustle on the other end of the line. "No, I haven't gotten that report. Okuna and Ward seen that? Interfering with Verrill, Riviera and Quis are more their department. Yes, I'm looking in my inbox now."
Davis snaps his fingers. "Yes! How close are we to getting the screen?"
Ngawai's fingers waggle through the holodisplay. "Almost...got it!" The display suddenly projects a flat image, a slightly distorted recreation of the image on Bob Russell's screen. Right now, he's looking at an email forwarded from someone else.
Russell continues his phone call. "Look, 815 is up to something, I know Barnes and Garrett, and they would never take something like this lying down if they knew about it, and considering all the Hell they've been raising here today, I'm pretty fucking sure they know something is up. Right now, all we know is that they're planning on burning Walter as a anti-alien radical, but with Garrett making an appointment to show up at my office just to rattle my cage, they have to know this goes way beyond him. I know, secrecy is priority one, don't think I know what kind of shit storm we'd wind up in if we're caught trying to torpedo the White House's precious pet agency before we prove how much they've been turned by the aliens. Right. Bye." Russell hangs up and closes his email program, taking the image of the email with it.
"I hate it when intel is just enough to be interesting, and not enough to actually prove anything," Davis says. "Any luck with the image?"
"Nothing, just a blank message with a signature and an attachment," Ngawai says. "Wait, there's an address in the signature. New Horizon Group?"
"Sounds like any one of a hundred consultant groups in DC," Davis says. "Still, Okuna and Ward are two of our names on that target list, so I think it's worth checking out, what do you say?"
"Two cons in one day?" Ngawai gives Davis her trademark sly smile. "Barely even a workout."
----
Back in the hotel room, Arketta is watching TV while alternating between bunk-side exercises and breaking down her beam rifle and polishing the contacts as you both wait for the Sheen to get back to you after the tech Sheen jumped out of the shell in a huff.
A repeating beep comes on in Luis' ear, and his vox HUD slides out from the left of his vision, telling him that the Sheen are calling.
Luis answers, "Hello?"
Luis recognizes the "voice" of the Sheen from this morning. "*Stanhill! What the fuck was that chick's problem?*"
"You want to narrow it down to just one?," he shuffles through his papers for the note he was given by Kadi, "She left a note for the ambassador, though. If I give the message to you, can you get it passed along?"
"*Yeah, sure, scan it on over.*"
"Will do." Luis activates the recording feature and lets his eyes scan over the note. Once the recording's done, he attatches it to the vox stream, "Here."
"*Oh, that's fucking funny. CYA, huh. Whatever, fuck her. So! Report's gonna take longer than we though, we're expanding it more since you've apparently got the slow class running the show, explaining in really small words how your gear is safe. Anything else you need? How about the nerd herd over there? They seemed like cool folks.*"
"They'd appreciate if you'd be willing to drop back in, I think. They looked very down when you dropped out," Luis says.
"*Yeah, sorry about that. My stress subroutine data logs revealed I'm allergic to annoying bitch.*"
Luis looks over to where Arketta's working, "You aren't the only one experiencing that. I'd find it a lot easier myself if I knew what her deal was."
Arketta shakes her head. "Her 'deal' is that she has what Samal Quis would have called 'head-up-her-cunt-itis'."
"*So, pop on by the lab and talk to the fanboys, gotcha. Report'll be done in a few hours, Stanhill. Got anything else?*"
"Nope, that's it," Luis says. "Thanks for the head examination."
"*Let me know when you're ready for a real upgrade,*" the Sheen replies, and disconnects.
Arketta sees Luis blink as the connection drops. "So, what did the robots say?"
"He's going to drop back by the techie's office if they don't invite Kadi this time," Luis says. "And the report will be a while while they re-write it in Paranoid Bureaucratese."
Arketta chuckles as she clicks the barrel shroud on her beam rifle back into place. "Sounds like a good idea to me."
The granite-facade office building doesn’t look particularly sinister in the afternoon sun. Positioned amongst the dozens of other similar buildings in downtown DC, it probably houses at least a dozen businesses with ties to the government, but as Ngawai waits in the SUV across the street, she knows that somewhere in there is very likely a big piece of the puzzle of what’s going on. Davis is in there too, at the moment, sweet-talking the receptionist at the front desk to find out what floor the offices might be on.
A few minutes later, Davis jogs back across the street and hops into the driver’s seat. “Second floor, but the building security looks pretty tight. I saw cameras and swipecard locks on the elevators and all the doors but the bathrooms.”
“Interesting,” Ngawai says. “Anything in Brinai’s bag of tricks for that?”
Davis smiles. “A few things, yeah. But I don’t think this is a job that you and I can just walk in and handle.”
“Even with my all-access sympathy pass?” Ngawai smiles and pats her stomach.
“Even with that.”
----
All Angel and Zaef know is that it’s late, well past 1 AM by Angel’s watch, and that Davis asked to meet with the both of you in his room. The door’s unlocked when you get there, and Davis and Swims-the-Black are sitting on chairs at the room’s table, while Ngawai sits up against the wall, pillows supporting her back.
The scout, who had been largely idling while all the various politicking and cloak-and-dagger nonsense took place, raises an eyebrow. He smiles at Ngawai. “The lady notwithstanding, this is much less appealing than my average 1 AM summons to a random hotel room.”
Zaef takes a sip of his Coke. “Is this some bizarre Narsai’i tradition I don’t know about, or did you just call me in here for the hell of it?”
“Yes, we call this the ‘planning a serious felony meeting’,” Davis says with a smile. “Ngawai and I found out that Bob and at least one other of our conspirator friends are a part of this think tank group in DC. We scouted the building earlier today, and the security there is too great for us to just bluff our way in, so, we were hoping that you’d be up for a little late night breaking and entering.”
Angel doesn’t look terribly surprised. “Just so we’re clear, that is an out-and-out, land folks in prison felony.”
Zaef snorts. “Because they don’t have enough on us already.” He takes a longer sip this time and swishes the Coke around in his mouth a bit.
“I’d have thought you’d be relieved, usually getting caught means torture and execution,” Ngawai cracks from the bed.
“Have you been to a Federal prison recently?” Angel shrugs. “But I’m in too, assuming it’s not even worse than your usual plans Davis.”
Zaef snorts again. It seems to be his version of a sardonic chuckle. “I might actually keep my dignity that way. Here on Narsai they’d be sure to parade me about like a circus animal to show the kids how evil the...what’s the word for us,‘aliens’ are.” He rubs his eyes a bit. “Best not let them catch me then. What’ve you got?”
“Actually, it’s not so much my plan, as it is Swims-the-Black’s plan,” Davis says, pointing to his left. “He volunteered to lead this mission.” ”It’s not the first time I’ve had to break into a secure location for one reason or another,” Swims says. ”Although, usually it is to break someone else back out again.”
Swims waves on the holodisplay with the uploaded schematic of the building, and points out the various locations as he narrates his plan. ”The main entrance is here, and on the side of the building is an emergency exit which was next to a refuse container earlier today. The entrances are locked, but the doors can be opened with this vox program.” Both of your voxes ping, showing that Davis just sent you both a short recording. ”Once you are inside, the offices are across the second floor, here.” He indicates a corner office area. ”More likely than not, there will be guards inside, patrolling the floors. Once inside the office, search for any papers you can find that look useful, and we have a device from the Sheen that should allow you to copy their data files.” He hands Zaef a black box with a Narsai’i computer cable sticking out of it. ”Make your way back to the exit, and then we will depart. Are there any questions?”
“Who’s keeping the getaway vehicle warm in case we need to beat it?” Zaef asks.
“And do we know how this Sheen device works? It’s not exactly out of character for them to have their hacking tool leave a big middle finger spray painted directly on the drive or some such.” Angel’s tone suggests a certain amount of affection for the robotic race - and a dislike of surprises when he’s knee deep in high level industrial espionage. ”I will be in the van, providing whatever guidance I can,” Swims-the-Black says. ”If there is some opportunity, leave one of these discs the corridor, they are motion sensors and will let me know when a guard is approaching.”
“Plus, the device wasn’t made by one of the technical Sheen,” Davis says. “The Ambassador had one of the more espionage-minded Sheen code the device, he assured me it’s quiet.” He kicks a black bag over to Angel. “And Brinai left a gift for you in there, Angel.”
Inside the bag, Angel finds a soft handgun case. Unzipping it reveals a pistol-shaped weapon that Zaef recognizes, and after a moment of observation, Angel sees as being scavenged and cobbled together from an Imperial scrambler, an EMP weapon designed for use against the Sheen.
“It’s a stunner, according to her,” Davis says. “Five or six shots, but each one will knock a man out for a good long time.” He tosses two metal rods to Zaef. “And these are from me. Batons, just press the button and they’ll spring to the full length of about a foot and a half.”
“According to her.” Angel gives the pistol a thoughtful glance, his conversation with Brinai still lurking in the back of her mind, and he wondered just how careful she’d be with making sure a kitbashed EMP pistol would ‘just’ knock a man out for a good long time. “Lets hope it doesn’t need a field test.”
“Same here. I’m not used to holding back,” Zaef says as he weighs the rods in his hands. They’re heavier than he thought they’d be, considering their size, but he should be able to use them just fine.
”Hopefully, you both won’t have to find out,” Swims says, and stands up. ”Are there any questions or changes to the plan you want to make before we go?”
Angel shakes his head. “It’s a good plan.”
Swims looks over at Zaef. ”And are you ready, Zaef?”
Zaef nods and heads out the door.
Swims looks at Angel. ”I guess he is ready.”
----
A half-hour later, Swims-the-Black is dressed in a rather comedic-looking oversized jumpsuit. The unfortunate wherren had to turn the AC in the van on full-blast into his face to keep cool, but he managed, and if you didn’t look too closely, you could confuse him with a very hairy human with a very prominent jawline. Once he parked down the street, he turned back to Angel and Zaef.
Angel spends most of the ride in the van doing his best to keep a straight face, looking at Swims-the-Black’s...particular ensemble. Dressed in somewhat sensible black fatigues, he keeps looking at the rebel stun gun with a skeptical look. Zaef is simply dressed in black jeans and a black t-shirt. ”We are here.” Swims slides his vox into his ear. “Keep your voxes on, and remember to place the motion sensors. Good luck.”
Angel slides the door to the van open, hugging the shadows as he heads toward the door, his eyes searching for obvious - or non-obvious - security cameras. Zaef follows closely behind, almost a shadow himself. His eyes flow towards nooks and crannies and even dumpsters-potential hiding places.
Both Angel and Zaef spot the security camera in the alley, a simple camera in a box swivelling back and forth on a motor. It’s easy enough to sneak past it and up to the door. The plastic pad with the red light must be the sensor for the swipe cards, which is triggered by Davis’ vox recording.
“Well, time to find out if any of this works at all.” Angel slips forward up to the door, hugging the wall, a cautious eye on the camera, extending his hand and thumbing down on Davis’ recorder. It emits what should be an inaudible flood of digital ‘Let me in, for fucks sake, I work here’ noise, and sure enough, the light turns to a welcoming green. It also emits a noisy squelch across the vox channel in everyone’s ear.
“That was not good to hear.” Swims has switched to his pidgin Imperial over the voxes. It sounds like someone who not only smokes but eats cigarettes is speaking over the link, but you can both understand him well enough. “Are you in?”
“We are.” Angel eases his way inside, holding the door open with his boot for Zaef. “Clear shot so far.”
Zaef slips inside quickly and quietly. His eyes are still hopping from place to place like a jackrabbit on speed, always looking for something. The way he grimaces at Angel’s ‘clear’ suggests that he either hates the word or believes it’s jinxed, one of the two.
Angel looks down at the heavy surveillance discs resting on one of his myriad pockets. “Any requests for where the sensors go?”
“One nearby here. We’ll deal with the rest as we need.” Zaef whispers in reply.
Nodding as he places one of the motion sensors on the bottom of a conveniently positioned fire alarm pull, Angel nods. “Lets get this done.”
The stairway entrance is right by the emergency exit (mark one up for safe building design), and sneaking into and up the stairs was simple. Angel hears the soft sounds of hard-soled shoes on carpet, the classic sound of the security guard. He’s walking away from the door, and a few seconds later, Angel hears him round the corner and walk deeper into the building.
Opening the door reveals a long, white-painted nondescript hallway. Doors line each side, all alike and all unmarked. It’s hard to tell if it’s an office building or a scene from a science-fiction movie, and there is no indication of which door is the correct one.
“Oh, this’ll be fun. No handy ‘This way to the data center’ signs.” Angel looks around for slightly more subtle indicators - handy Ethernet wires running on the ceiling, the gentle hum of a server room - or the air conditioning that usually comes along with it.
Zaef places a motion sensor on the knob of the door they just came through, so that the sensor is on the side facing the stairwell. After he shuts the door behind them, he too looks around for signs-light spilling out from under doors, or the clicking and tapping of someone working overtime.
Despite both attempts to find some exterior sign of the offices, there are none to be found. The hallways are kept scrupulously barren, possibly as some sort of statement on the banality of office work, possibly as a statement of the uniformity required by the federal machine, or possibly out of a crippling case of OCD by the building manager.
“Are you at office?” Swims asks over the vox.
Angel growls into the vox. “There isn’t a goddamn office. This is the most sterile bloody building I’ve ever been in. Any hints as to what we’re looking for?”
“One moment,” Swims replies. A few seconds go by. “On map, past hall, five doors, left side.”
Keeping an ear out for the patrolling guards, Angel heads toward the office Swims mentions, counting off the doors as he does. Reaching the door, he checks it over for alarm wires or sensor leads. He finds nothing, but he does hear the guard approaching their hallway from behind him. Here goes nothing... he presses on the door handle, hoping to get inside the office before the guard reaches them, pressing down on Davis’s vox-gizmo as he does.
Zaef pulls out his batons and gets ready to extend them, hoping Angel opens the door before he has to beat the living shit out of the guard.
The vox channel fills with noise for an instant, and the door clicks open. Angel and Zaef manage to slip inside just before the guard rounds the corner, closing the door behind them. The two intruders turn around and look over the office in the darkness, and see...a desk. It’s obviously a secretary’s desk, from the phone headset to the potted flower, but no logo adorns the wall behind it. To the right is a frosted glass door, which opens without a keycard. Beyond that door lies a row of offices.
Swims comes on the vox, panic in his voice. “I see guard light in hall, are you in?”
“Little late on the warning,” Zaef growls. He motions for Angel to keep looking around; while Angel does his thing, he watches the door for a bit in case the guard heard them after all and investigates.
Never underestimate the secretary. Angel tests the drawer on her desk, looking for files, memos, schedule books. Once he’s checked her desk, he moves past the glass door, working his way through the offices, checking doors and popping inside, hoping at least someone is sloppy - or has a file cabinet.
The secretary’s desk is empty, save a fairly impressive candy stash, and the first few offices Angel checks aren’t much better. The single file cabinet in each office is padlocked shut, and the desks are clear. Some of them even have a slight layer of dust on them, indicating that their owners rarely come around. Others show more signs of use, but are careful enough to not leave files on the desk, or at least what Angel can see from the door of each office.
Jesus Christ, do any of you actually work? Picking one of the used offices at random, Angel starts digging through desks carefully, hooking up the Sheen data gizmo up to one of the PCs and powering the machine on, turning the brightness on the monitor down as far as he could. The Sheen device does nothing, but the computer starts clicking wildly and hangs for a moment. After less than a second, it continues booting as normal and the Sheen device lets out a quiet beep.
Good job toaster ovens. Angel powers down the machine, shutting the door quietly and heads toward the offices at the end of the hallway. All three of them require swipecards to access, unlike the other offices. A promising sign. Angel experimentally raises up the vox again, half expecting an alarm to sound. The squelch deafens Angel and Zaef again, and all three doors unlock.
Angel heads into the first locked office on the left, powering on the computer using roughly the same sequence while he searches for any physical evidence. Preferably photographs of people meeting with shadowy agents, doing dark things. There are no photos of Simmons shaking hands with grey aliens, but there are a couple of file folders left out. The Sheen box again beeps less than a second after the computer hangs up.
Zaef, back in the entry, hears the guard walk down the hall towards the motion detector, stop, and say something that sounds like “What’s that?” in English.
Bingo. Angel grabs what he can, disconnecting the device and shutting down the PC, headed to the next office, not entirely aware of the guard’s somewhat more alert status. No papers are found in the next office, just a computer and locked filing cabinet.
Zaef frowns. The guard couldn’t have found the motion detector, it’s on the other side of the door. Something else must have his attention. “Angel,” Zaef whispers into his vox, “keep it down. Guard’s alert. Swims, can you see the guard on our floor?”
“Not now.” Swims rumbles. “Where is guard?”
“Just down the hall, close by the stairwell.”
“Keep watch, be careful, Zaef,” Swims replies.
Angel doesn’t reply, swiftly going about casing the next office while the Sheen snooper does its thing, keeping an eye on the doorway. This time, the computer stops dead, and the hard drive keeps spinning inside the computer. Seconds go by, and the Sheen device is still working.
“Never mind, must be the highway,” the guard says, and walks towards Zaef. The device is still spinning, and the computer begins to whine. Even Zaef can hear it down at the entrance.
“Unplug it. Now.” The terse whisper comes over Angel’s vox, as does the soft sound of Zaef raising his batons again.
Angel yanks the device out, undoubtedly pissing it off, hoping it doesn’t hose the whole machine. It doesn’t fry the Sheen device, unfortunately, the computer sparks and a large burst of smoke erupts from the back of the case with a whump.
“Hey, what was that?” Zaef hears the guard jog up the the door.
“Zaef, you’re up.” Angel scowls, looking down at the pretty much ruined machine. He’ll come back for it if he somehow has time, but for now he hustles to the third office. A couple of files sit on the desk, on top of the valuable computer. Wishing for the best, he shoves the Sheen device in, powering up the machine, sliding the files into the small bundle he’s got.
Zaef positions himself so that the door will cover him when the guard enters. It’ll buy him a couple seconds at least, and that might be enough to catch the guard off balance.
“What smells like smoke -” is all the guard manages to say before Zaef hits the buttons on his batons simultaneously. They snap to their full length instantly, and as the guard turns around, Zaef’s left hand snaps a baton across the guard’s face, spinning him back, and allowing him to bring the right hand baton arcing down on top of the guard’s head. Two quick blows, and the guard is out cold.
After Zaef checks the pulse, he triggers his vox. “Guard’s out, but we are officially fucked. Finish what you’re doing, Angel, then get ready to break into a couple more rooms before we leave. Swims, are there any more high-profile rooms on this floor?”
“That office alone linked to Russell, do not know about others, why ask?” Swims says.
“Need to confuse our enemies. Just pull up big rooms with A-list names.”
“Ah! One moment.” Zaef can hear Swims’ claws clicking on the dashboard, probably through the holo interface. “Should have thought that, did something similar on Ibura once, Kansat offices closed for week for water damage.” He chuckles with the memory. “First, third, and fourth office in hall. Good luck.”
“Thanks. And Angel?” There’s a grunt and shuffle as Zaef moves the guard into a more concealable area. “If I tell you to unplug the damn thing again, shoot me.”
Back in the third office, the Sheen device beeps after a few seconds of activity. Angel nods. “Will do.” Heading back to the second office, Angel surveys the damage to the computer. It’s still smoldering, but aside from that, one would have to know far more about computers than Angel does to tell if anything can be done. That, and open the case, which Angel probably does not have the time to do.
Angel growls. “Fuck. Well, lets hope this gizmo got something important before we fucked it up.” Tucking the files under his arm, he heads to the front, doing his best to look like he rifled through things much more carelessly, now that he’s been made. “All set.”
“Good. Let’s hit the next two down the hall before we leave, and quick.”
“Fair enough.” Angel hoofs it toward the further of the two offices, blowing through the keycard system again as he does. He rifles through a few offices, grabbing some important looking files - who knows - and stealing the data from at least one PC. Each office takes a minute to go through.
Zaef goes for the nearer office and tears ass through the place, grabbing files with red or black ink stamped messages on the sides, but realizes he doesn’t have the Sheen hacker. “Angel, after you’re done sweeping the office, I’m going to need the hacking thing. I’m sweeping the other now.”
“Got it.” Angel finishes up, tipping over an empty coffee mug on his way out, and heads to meet up with Zaef with the hacking gadget. “Who knows, maybe one of these is riddled with porn.”
Zaef snorts. “We should be so lucky.” When Angel arrives, he plug the Sheen device in a couple of the more secure office PCs.
While Zaef is working in the second office, Angel hears another guard exit the elevators. “Checking the second floor now,” the guard says into a radio.
Time to find out if the cancer gun works. Angel points it in the faint direction of where the guard will be and heads that direction. The moment the man is in view, Angel shouts an impromptu slogan for an entirely imaginary political movement. “Free trade kills!” and depresses the trigger. The gun buzzes and makes a ramping whine for an moment, and as the guard turns towards Angel and reaches for his holster, the stunner makes a loud brrr-ZZZAP sound, and several bolts of electricity jump from the point of the gun to the guard’s body, blowing him back against the wall and making the stunner buck like a .44 Magnum in Angel’s hand. His hand feels like he spent the last hour sitting on it, while the guard slumps to the floor unconscious.
“Probably just gave us both cancer. Jesus Christ...Zaef, second guard is down, it’s time we wrap this up.”
Zaef charges out of the office, holding the sheen device and the files in one hand, his batons in the other, and looking very much like he wants to use them. “Past time. And no, no cancer. Just a sudden case of incoming guards,” he says as he charges back towards the stairwell. Angel joins him in beating a hasty retreat, grabbing up the motion sensors as they pass them.
The rest of the way out is clear all the way down to the alley. As Angel and Zaef run back towards the street, you both can see flashlights in the second floor windows, and lights clicking on. Careful to avoid the sweep of the security camera, Angel makes a beeline back for the van, slamming the door open. Zaef almost forgot about the camera, but remembers just as Angel creeps under it’s line of sight. He follows him past the camera but manages to outrun Angel back to the van.
You both see Swims picking at one of his tusks as you approach, and he turns around as Angel and Zaef jump into the van. ”You’re all right! Did you get the intel? And what about the guards?” he signs.
“Less talking, more driving. Not safe here, now.” ”Right.” Swims reaches for the key, his hand dwarfing the ignition. The van turns over, and he slams the column shift into drive as more flashlights shine through the windows. He mashes the throttle, and the van speeds away from the building. A couple of blocks later, he turns around at a stop light. ”Did you get the intel?”
Packing the Sheen data device away in a pocket again, Angel nods. “We got as much as we could. A mishap along the way - hopefully won’t cost us.”
Swims chuckles as an apprehensive blue tinge settles on his fur. ”It never does, right?”
Zaef shakes his head and sighs. “It never goes smooth. Why, why does it never go smooth?”
The following morning, each of the team members (save Kadi) find notes slipped under their doors telling them to meet at a diner at 0700 a few blocks away, to leave separately and to make sure that you're not followed. The handwriting is recognizable as Davis' chicken scratch, but aside from that, there's no extra information.
Only Angel finds anything extra in his room: while he wasn't wearing his boots (due to combat boots not being the best burglary attire), someone filled his boots with shaving cream, which, due to whoever perpetrated the prank being clever enough to conceal the cream in the toe of the boot, he didn't notice until he put his foot in the first boot.
On arrival, Davis, Ngawai and Hugh are sitting in the back of the diner in the biggest booth, waiting anxiously and looking around for any sign that they're being watched.
Arketta wakes up first, padding to the shower. Luis tosses slightly as she leaves the bed. Before he find a comfortabl position though, Arketta is standing over him, and lightly shakes his shoulder.
"Luis, wake up. Davis left us a note, something about meeting at a restaurant at 0700."
Luis pulls himself to a sitting position, rubs his eyes, and looks around, "Why can't we go one day without everything going wrong?" he asks.
Arketta grins and gives Luis a good-morning peck on the cheek. "Who says something has gone wrong? Maybe something has gone terribly right for a change?"
Lus grins sleepily, "I'll believe it when I see it. You want to grab your shower while I find enough coffee to be able to walk?"
"Sounds like a plan." Arketta walks off, conscious of where Luis' eyes are going as she heads to get in the shower.
The walk to the diner takes only a short time once the two make their way out of the hotel, walking together down the Mall like a pair of tourists. Arketta's not entirely acting, since the Mall and DC weren't on the road trip they took, and her fascination with the buildings of the Mall is enough to inspire Luis to take his mind off worrying about what awaits at the diner, if not enough to keep both of them watching for tails or any other signs of trouble.
Arketta's cheery mood persists even after seeing the nervous glances from Davis, Ngawai and Hugh. She orders a plate of pancakes and eggs from the waitress and sits down across from them. "It's so nice to actually get to see your capital. So much history and beautiful buildings."
As he sits down, Luis nods, "Yeah, it is." He turns to the three already present, "But why do I get the feeling we're not just here for the location?"
Angel arrives wearing a different pair of shoes. He nods slightly at Ngawai, the look in his eye conveying that when retaliation comes, it will come swift, and it will be merciless.
The look softens considerably for the waitress. "Coffee, black. Scrambled eggs and a side of bacon?"
Turning back to Davis, he waits for an explanation.
"No, you're fine, Zaef, we just have more than one company making drinks on Narsai," Davis says.
Swims-the-Black walks through the door, gathering a few startled shouts as he crosses the restaurant to join the rest of the group. He pulls out a chair, looks over the menu and waves the waitress over. "Garrett, could you tell her that I would like steak and eggs, fried?"
Davis nods and looks up at the waitress. "My friend would like steak and fried eggs, please."
"Uhh, sure," the waitress replies, and after a moment of indecision, gives Swims a polite smile, which he returns with a nod. The sight of the wherren giving her a toothy smile around his two large jade tusks just unnerves her further, and she turns and quickly walks off.
"So, we're here so we can get some privacy away from prying eyes and ears and to go over what we know so far," Davis says, keeping his words in Imperial to prevent eavesdropping.
Ngawai puts her vox's holodisplay down on the table and waves it on. "We looked over the haul from Angel, Zaef and Swims-the-Black's recon mission last night, and most of it only confirms what we already knew. Audio from the bugs in Russell's office confirmed that Generals Okuna and Ward are in on it, and documents from the office also point to O'Connor, like we thought."
She flicks up three other emails. "These, though, are more worrisome. They're the only emails we could find that were giving orders to the generals, and they belong to General Kroger, Chief of Staff of the Army, Admiral Brunton, Commandant of the Navy, and White House email addresses belonging to Christine Westgate, the aide to the National Security Advisor and Darren Touchstone, aide to the Director of National Intelligence." The titles lose a bit in translation into Imperial, but you all get the gist of it: this goes higher than just a grudge from some mid-level generals and CIA officers.
"Also, we found prepared smear campaigns on all of us, probably to use soon," Davis says, sliding packets across the table. His contains nothing surprising, accusations of sleeping with Afghan spy Hadiya Sahar, losing control and killing a prisoner, while Ngawai's focuses mostly on simply smearing her as an alien and vague accusations of nefariousness in her Apprehender past.
Swims-the-Black opens his, and reads about how he was a loyal bodyguard to the Emperor himself, and executed his every order without question. His fur flashes through furious colors of red and orange, and he quickly closes his folder up again. "I see that Simmons was busy, gathering information for these packages of lies and innuendo," he signs tersely.
* Conduct unbecoming - in his case, laying with more working girls than can comfortably be counted. Okay, fair enough.
* Attempted fratricide - his attempt to kill Greene during the hostage negotation, which does make Hugh wince looking at it again.
And, listed dead last:
* Conspiracy to violate the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act - or, put a less sensationalistic way, his silent agreement with the brass to not be promoted beyond Captain. This would be funny if it wasn't being used by people who are entirely serious about burning him.
---
"As I'm sure you've noticed," Hugh says, "the Sergeant Major is not here. Before the rumor mill gets started on that, we don't have anything incriminating on her. But given that she only just joined our team, has external loyalties and that Simmons very quickly shut me down when I offered to gather dirt on her, we're being careful. I wish we didn't have to engage in this spy backstab bullshit - sorry, Davis - but sadly, it's necessary at this stage.
So, first order of business - now that we know the rough shape of who we're up against, any off-the-cuff suggestions on how to turn the bigwigs to our side?"
Angel reads his over - a relatively puerile account of his seduction by an Imperial noblewoman, and the ensuing blood bath which is framed as being on her instigation - apparently taking a knife is now instigating. It reads more like an action movie setup than anything else.
It should get good coverage on some of the networks.
"So did we get anything that will let us do something, or just define how fucked we are?"
"If you're talking blackmail material against the big dogs, I'm afraid that we don't have any, Angel," Hugh says. "But now we know who to approach and work on. Maybe we can simply convince some of those bigwigs to take our side, maybe having the info just linking them to the smear campaign can get them to drop ties - don't think it should be too hard to make it embarrassing to have Simmons and Russell on your payroll."
"I agree with Hugh, the best move is to use what they've done to us to take them down," Ngawai says. "If they're as powerful as they seem to be, they've likely thoroughly covered up whatever nasty shit they've done in the past."
"And though these are all powerful people, they're not at the top of anyone's ladder," Davis adds. "Aides and military branch chiefs all are underneath someone more important on the org chart, and we should find out how high this thing goes."
Zaef picks up his packet with a smirk on his face and sits back as he reads. As he flips the pages, his smile slowly fades and at one point the color drains from his face. It quickly returns but Zaef visibly remains somewhat perturbed, even after he puts the file down.
The others have much better ideas for a course of action than he does, so he keeps an eye out on other people who might be trying to spy on the meeting.
Lori walks up in the middle of the unintelligible conversation and smiles politely as she sets the serving tray down on a folding stand. The group of weird people and the big hairy alien stop speaking in whatever weird language the table is using immediately, not that she could understand any of them. Madeline insisted that they were all those Imperial alien people, but Lori told her that they couldn't be, because why would they be walking around? Maybe the big hairy alien, he could be, but the rest look just like people. She passes out their breakfast orders, they smile and thank her (with the same guy translating for the big alien), and she rushes away to deal with her more normal customers.
----
Luis flips through the packet Davis passes to him as the conversation settles into silence with the waitress's arrival. After the pummeling Kadi put him through at the meeting, and her line of questioning with the Sheen, he's less surprised by the accusations of having willingly turned himself into a possible Imperial plant, but his face darkens none the less. He stares at it for a moment, then drops it onto the table and shoves it aside like it's infected as the waitress departs.
Arketta has already worked halfway through her stack of pancakes when she slides her packet open and puts her fork down to read it. She scoffs as she finishes the first page, but when she gets to the second, she stops cold, her cheeks turn more pale and quickly slides the papers back into the envelope. She gives the table a furtive look and goes back to picking at her food, not nearly with the same gusto as before.
"Okay, so we need to know how high this goes, and if we can start cutting apart their plans and their organization," Luis says, "Can we start cutting them apart without revealing how much we know, and risking our ability to figure out how far this goes?"
Luis cocks his head, "In that case, it seems like it's even more important to find out all we can about them. Who they are, how high this goes, anything they're planning that could be used to bring them down. More than just their plans against us personally."
"We've got a lot more to worry about than that these days, though," Davis says, tapping on his blackmail file in front of him. "If they start going after us in public, we need to start thinking about our own image. If the newspaper this morning showed us anything, we're now the public face of the GRHDI. We need to sell the public on the truth of who and what Imperials are really like, not what the Pentagon is spitting out."
"I agree," Hugh says. "Looks like we'll be keeping busy on our vacation."
"And we need to be ready in case they feel bold enough to use any of this on us in public, instead of just insider spinkshit," Davis adds. "We shouldn't volunteer anything unless we have to, but we still need to think about what we'll say."
He thinks for a moment. "Angel, I hate to suggest this, but Tora was a great example of what a lot of Imperials can be like. You knew her better than anyone here." Davis hesitates. "Would you mind going on a few talk shows and talking about her, and sharing what the Imperials that we know are really like? I'll ask Barnes to see if she can get you in ASAP, before you need to meet with the Sheen Ambassador."
Angel gives Davis a thoughtful expression, before looking down at the sheet of paper. "Rather that than seeing that asshole drag her name through the mud."
Davis nods, and Ngawai gives Angel a sympathetic look as Swims' fur gives a flash of solemn violet. "Good. So, Angel will likely be busy with that, Luis and Arketta are leaving for New York in an hour or so, and the rest of us can get started on digging up what we can on our new friends with the New Horizon Group and getting in the good graces of whatever committee and White House department determines whether or not we get the axe. Any job preferences?"
punkey
