Restoring Dignity: Chapter II
18 Jan 2021Breez Blue
Restoring Dignity: Chapter IILuckily for him his hopes at going unnoticed had done him well, and he had landed his Courier at Moresby Dock a mere twenty minutes after takeoff. Upon reaching the hangar bay he took an elevator down below the shipyard, even through the layers of metal paneling and framework between the elevator and the shipyard he could still hear the loud, ratcheting whack of impact wrenches. He had thought about waiting around the docking bay for his contact, but standing around like a tourist would only draw needless attention to him. He had already gotten a few stares due to his sheer size, yet he pretended not to notice for the sake of not wanting to stand out even further. The last thing he needed was even more attention that he didn't want.
When he stepped off of the elevator he found himself in an area of strip shops, most of which sold various electronic devices being hawked by salesmen of all stripes of companies. In a way he could understand why a spy might set up shop here with plenty of access to raw electronic and assembled components that he saw as he looked through some of the front windows. None of them held much interest to him right now, he wasn't here to shop but a return trip next week couldn't hurt. He turned his attention away from the shops and continued along the wide walkway when his eyes were drawn to a nearby food stand, watching the cook quickly slice a carrot into thin slices with practiced ease, some of which she scooped up with the knife blade and plopped into a steaming noodle bowl. He didn't see too many of these around Draguan Nu unless there was security nearby. It was far too easy for the less desirable folk there to snag something, which typically resulted in a shootout between them and the vendor.
His train of thought was cut short when a transport shuttle pulled up nearby, the door sliding open before a trio of teenage kids spilled out, not even noticing that they had almost run into Maurice as they spoke amongst themselves, making a beeline for a nearby store. Instead of pulling off from the deck and flying off as usual, however, the transport shuttle simply sat there, the wide door still slid open. The shuttle pilot called to him from inside, giving him a quick wave. The guy was short in comparison to him, and Maurice couldn't see his face due to where he was standing.
"I'm your ride, Maurice; get in." he said, giving him another wave. He hadn't expected this to be sure. Perhaps being contacted through an ad post, one of the holo displays or a transport beacon maybe, he would have expected something like that from a spy. It seemed funny to him that the guy would call a cab for him. Regardless he got inside, being careful not to bash his head against the upper door rail. He slid the heavy door closed and the shuttle took off, flying just below the shipyard level where it merged with a line of a few other transport shuttles on the move.
"So how was the trip, hope these Feds didn't give you a hard time." the pilot commented over the distant noise of the loudspeaker audio coming from the docking bay. Maurice shrugged, not having too much to say as his business wasn't with this guy.
"No problems luckily, why?" he asked shortly after.
"You're an Imperial, man. You stand out here like an Anaconda next to an orbital station." he replied. Maurice had traveled here in mostly plainclothes, so unless this guy had seen him dock how did he have a way of knowing?
The shuttle swept down a few decks from the commercial sector and dipped down to an area that contained private businesses, most of which were shuttered for the day due to the late hour in which Maurice had arrived. A few lit signs still advertised here and there, but the rest mostly just had the lights inside on for the purpose of showing off the occasional showroom. The shuttle then began to slow, pulling off to the side by a transit terminal that was empty before coming to a stop. The sliding door popped and slid open, and the pilot began to disembark as well. When he stood up at the terminal loading dock Maurice realized the guy was indeed somewhat short but quick in his movements. He began to walk away before turning around, looking amusedly at the big Imperial guy sitting in confusion in the shuttle.
"You coming? This is our stop." he asked, tossing his head in the direction of a corridor that led to a multi-tiered cluster of flats in the back. Maurice quickly got out of the shuttle and began to follow him. This guy had some pull around the place if he had people within the transport business readily picking up contacts for him. He said nothing as he followed the shuttle pilot to the building of flats, whereupon the guy produced a keycard and swiped it through a reader to let them in. The interior was nothing fancy, a single lobby with a single hallway leading back from a front desk that was unoccupied. From the look of the place Maurice supposed that each floor was built this way. He followed the guy down the hall before stopping at the second door on the right, where he swiped the other side of the keycard through another reader and opened the heavy steel door. The inside of the small flat was unoccupied by any people but them, yet half of the walls were cluttered with electronic equipment slotted into racks bolted to the wall as well as a bank of holo screens.
"What is this? I'm here to see someone, where is he?" Maurice asked after looking around the room and finding nobody inside. The shuttle pilot removed the hat he was wearing, tossing it on top of a table that had a coffeemaker with a stained mug sitting next to it.
"Relax, you're where you need to be." he replied, grabbing a pair of glasses from next to where the hat landed, putting them on as he touched the power sensors on a couple of computer towers. "You might be here a bit, could I interest you in sharing a pot of coffee?" he asked before turning to face Maurice. The Imperial nearly bust out laughing at how easily he had been tricked. With the hat gone and with the nerdy black-framed glasses on, he recognized the guy with the goofy grin on the dossier. The guy that had picked him up from the commercial district was Sean himself.
"How did you know I was here so quickly?" Maurice asked incredulously. Sean casually pointed a thumb over his shoulder where a cluster of small holo windows projected along one of the walls, each of them patched into Moresby Dock's surveillance system.
"Imperial Naval Ship two-seven Shadow, that was all I needed to know." he replied. Maurice looked at the monitor cluster and based on the camera angle of various feeds from the docking bay, the hangar, the shops and one from the inside of a computer repair service kiosk showed the area where Sean had picked him up. This guy had been watching him the entire time from the point that his ship had docked.
"How long have you been doing this to have been watching me from the start?" he asked. Sean slipped a coffee cartridge into the coffeemaker and pressed the power button before sitting down in a chair that was situated in front of a multitude of monitors and and holographic keyboards.
"I've been at this long enough to be able to make a pretty decent living, good enough for me." Sean replied. "It pays the bills and buys the coffee tins."
"Nobody is going to be mad at you for stealing a transport shuttle?" Maurice asked as an afterthought. Sean stopped in the middle of cracking his knuckles and was silent for a moment.
"I don't think so, I always return what I borrow. I just might have forgotten to ask for permission from the transportation depot this time. I was in a bit of a hurry." he explained quickly with a little shrug, grinning at the look on Maurice's face when he stood there cocking an eyebrow at him. "However the shuttle is beside the point, I'll handle that later when I return it. You needed help getting into an Imperial intel hub?" he asked, ready to get to business.
"I was hoping to, it might help us figure out what happened in Draguan Nu." Maurice answered. This time it was Sean's turn to look at the Imperial like he was the strange guy in the room.
"Of all places you want to take over Draguan Nu? I'll let you know right now that you sound about as green as they get and might get yourself killed in the process." he commented as he turned his attention to the monitor in front of him.
"Here I was thinking ol' Eliano sent you with a white collar espionage case or something. That will be a hard thing to do remotely if you want me to be honest, the Empire did that deliberately so that their security would be more difficult to crack despite it very likely having holes like swiss cheese."
"Will you still be able to do it?" Maurice inquired. The coffeemaker on the small table beeped twice and shut off, and Sean turned his attention from his work long enough to fill his mug from the carafe.
"Of course I can. They merely made it more difficult, but not by much. Keep in mind that the security measures they left behind are probably as old as you are so they are very outdated." he explained before reaching into a drawer nearby, pulling a clean coffee mug out of it and setting it on the table. "Help yourself to some if you want, this may or may not take a bit. On top of that I'm curious as to what you plan to do when I get you what you're looking for." Maurice hadn't come in for coffee, but if things could take a bit he poured himself a mug of it regardless. It tasted terrible and synthetic, but he was still glad to have something to occupy the time while Sean worked. The retired intel op had his back to him, already getting started on his work. The gobbledygook on the main monitor he was using looked absolutely illegible to Maurice as he didn't know much of anything about examining program codes, but he watched with fascination anyways. Why hadn't Sanchez directed him to this guy before?
"So you plan to change things up in Draguan Nu, how do you plan to go about it?" Sean asked, still not taking his eyes off the monitor as he grabbed a data slide at the bottom of a pile to his left, sending a couple of them falling to the floor. Without looking away he picked them up and set them to the other side where there was a bit of empty space on the counter. Maurice heard a series of clicks before the distinct sound of cooling fans began to fill the room with a quiet hum.
"Do you want the honest version or the light version?" he asked after a moment.
"Whoa, getting straight to the point, I like that. Give me the honest version, as funny as a fairy tale from an Imperial might sound." Sean replied with a sideways grin.
"I plan on getting enough people together to take the system over and eventually impose a dictatorial government. Clean the place up and keep it that way, but I'm still building my assets right now." Maurice responded. Sean abruptly stopped typing and spun his chair around to face him.
"Either you're nuts or you are playing dumb while keeping something very clever up your sleeve that even I'm having trouble figuring out. You have your work cut out for you." he commented. "No superpower wants to touch it because nobody has the time to clean up the mess. Smart move if you ask me, imagine how many space maids you would have to hire." He joked and spun his chair again to where he was facing the monitor and continued typing. Maurice knew next to nothing about programming and didn't have a lot of skills regarding using hardware like what Sean was working with, but as he watched he thought he at least had an idea of what the guy was doing. From how he was changing parts of lines of code one at a time and gradually getting more of a response from the database, it looked like he was reprogramming how the firewall that had confounded his hired help for weeks worked. In one history lesson years ago Maurice had learned of how ancient landmines used in wars back on Earth could be reversed to blow back on friendly forces, he supposed this was probably somewhat equivalent to what Sean was doing. Considering how quickly he was progressing it was easy to tell that the seemingly unassuming computer geek, if appearances were to be believed, had been in the business for some time.
Maurice decided to have a look around the room while sipping his coffee to pass the time while Sean worked, finding the room was sparsely furnished except that which was used to keep the equipment off of the floor. A single couch sat on the other side of the small flat, with a triangular table situated in a corner next to it with a stack of datapads situated atop it. For a moment he wondered if Sean had a penchant for borrowing datapads in the same way that he had borrowed the transport shuttle.
"Okay, I got us in." Sean interjected barely two minutes later, but not entirely to Maurice's surprise.
"How easy was it to get through their firewall?" he asked curiously. Sean scoffed and grinned.
"Are you joking? The measures they took to secure their data are ancient at best, might as well have punched in numbers randomly fed into and spat out of a Fortran program. Only thing I am likely to have trouble with is breaking the encrypted data. I had the firewall out of the way a minute ago, but I decided to start something fun in the meantime." he explained, pointing to a datapad that he had set down to his right while Maurice had his back turned. The Imperial leaned down and looked at the screen, seeing nothing but layers of notification windows about spyware detection on the device, and random streaks of bright colors shuddering across the display. This thing was apparently broken, so how could it be fun, he asked himself.
"What is this, and why is it fun? It looks like it's broken five ways." he stated incredulously as Sean drank from his mug. He set down the mug and picked up the datapad, looking amusedly at the screen.
"The video card on this one bought the farm a couple of weeks back so I'm using it to try out a new antivirus I've been working on for a few months." he replied. "Kincaid may be a brick shithouse of a ship but that doesn't protect what's in the CIC if anybody gets any ideas. Give them the equivalent of stabbing them in the hand with a fork." His grin widened. "Like that time my older cousin tried to steal my chicken nuggets as a kid. That didn't end well." Even Maurice had to crack a grin at that comparison.
"From the look of things I'd say your antivirus is having a rough time." the Imperial remarked.
"Wrong," Sean said, waggling a finger while still wearing that boyish grin. "This is supposed to happen, because the one I'm testing and the one on this datapad mix like water and oil. What you're watching is a computer nerd's version of a dogfight." Maurice cocked an eyebrow at him in confusion, and this merely amused Sean more. He set the datapad down again and turned his attention back to the holographic keyboard and monitors in front of him. "Now that I have that in place let's see what the Imps left behind." Maurice sidled over to him to watch, leaning over a bit so that the glare from the single fluorescent lamp above wasn't visible. He could see lists of patrol routes the Empire had used through the system, market routes, local naval personnel data. A trove of warehouse manifests sat in a different submenu nearby.
"For the Empire to simply give up on a system and allow pirates to take over without anybody having anything to say about it I think there's more to this than you or Sanchez have a way of knowing. The pirates might have been an excuse or simply dragged a red herring across their trail in case the Federation came poking around as they're wont to do." Sean explained, breaking the momentary silence as he read. "Looks like the slave market is still there, though they're not Imperial slaves. That, narcotics and illegal munitions seem to be a lot of what drives the economy."
"That and titty bars," Maurice interjected. Sean started laughing.
"Well at least there's no shortage of entertainment, but you know what they say about town bicycles." he said amusedly. Maurice cocked an eyebrow at him in confusion, not having heard the joke before. "Never mind, I'll let you spin on that one." he added before popping out the data slide and grabbing a holo disk from near the bottom of he pile next to him. Again the pile shifted, but he stopped the stack before it could topple again. He then leaned over to his left and slid the disc into another device that was situated just a few inches below the holo monitors. He then put the data slide in his pocket before he began to copy base schematics to the holo disc.
"So have you found anything that will help me reverse what happened in Draguan Nu?" Maurice asked. Sean stood up, taking his coffee mug in one hand. He raised his eyebrows and heaved as quick sigh.
"Yeah, I found out a lot behind what happened." he stated before taking a sip of coffee.
"You're suddenly serious all of a sudden." the Imperial commented. Sean nodded quickly, still sipping his coffee.
"Well just finish up quickly, we are going to need to leave soon." he replied.
"Why is that?"
"It might or might not have something to do with the fact that both the Empire and the Federation had stake in Draguan Nu at one point, that might or might not have been at the same time, and I may or may not have just stolen information from both of them as well." he explained hesitatingly. Maurice almost spit out the coffee he had just drank, instead accidentally smacking his teeth against the rim of the mug.
"Don't tell me that you made a mistake somewhere."
"No, but let's just ponder the hypothetical that I might have hijacked local resources to help me get in." Sean said, a sideways grin slowly creeping across his face. The holo disk popped out of the device he'd put it into and he plucked it out of the drive before putting it into a protector sleeve, putting the small object in his shirt pocket.
"Don't tell me that the authorities know about it." When Maurice stated this Sean's grin widened and he made an uneasy gesture.
"Sort of, but I wouldn't worry about it too much. We need to get you to the hangars so that you can get your ship out of port, and I'll follow behind you with Kincaid." Sean explained, taking the mug from Maurice's hand and setting both of them down on the computer desk. "I'll need the CIC to be able to sort through all of this when we get back to Draguan Nu." He then opened the door, ushering Maurice out as he did so, closing it behind them.
"What about your little duel you had going on in there?" Maurice asked of the busted datapad, noticing that Sean had snatched a different one up on the way out.
"It will burn itself out, don't give it a second thought. Seriously." he quickly answered. They moved around the building the way they came, making their way to the shuttle Sean had used to transport them there. As he climbed inside and slid the door open for Maurice he took a quick look around for anybody from station security. Luckily he found none, meaning they still had time to get to the docking bay.
Maurice abruptly climbed inside, sliding the door shut as Sean pulled the shuttle away from the walkway and a few levels upward, slowing down only when he merged with more traffic heading through the warehouse district. Maurice had to hang onto a rail along the inner top of the door to keep from spilling across the seat.
"Is there really a need to be in such a hurry?" he asked as he hung on, looking at the warehouses outside the window that were passing at a near blur.
"I don't do this for fun, buddy." he quickly replied, breaking from traffic and passing over the depot he had taken the shuttle from and over the tunnels used by transport trucks. He slowed the shuttle as they approached a walkway along the hangar level close to where Shadow was docked. Before Maurice could climb out of the shuttle Sean had already done so and was heading down the stairway that led to the hangar corridor. Before he reached the stairs a shadow passed overhead, causing Maurice to look up. Starport authority shuttles were beginning to roam areas of the docking bay, dodging ships as they did so. Sean wasn't kidding, they were looking for someone. Maurice had to hurry down the flight of stairs to catch up with him.
"Do they know it was you who hacked their systems?" he asked once he caught up with Sean.
"No they don't, but they will definitely be looking for you." he answered.
"Why would they think I did it?"
"Simple, you show up in an Imperial ship and then someone hijacked their systems to grab what I needed and copied some needed decryption codes to translate encrypted data from a system that was given up under some very weird circumstances. They're going to suspect you for sure, though it won't take them long to find me at this point." he explained. As they turned a corner that led to the corridor with Shadow's hangar Sean abruptly stopped him by putting an arm out to block him. He cast a confused glance at the retired intel op and saw him barely peeking around the corner, pressed against the wall. Maurice could hear voices and see shadows moving around the corner, about halfway down the corridor.
"Sorry Maurice, we are going to have to get someone to deliver your Courier later." Sean stated in a hushed voice before taking off in the other direction, turning down a utility corridor.
"Who was that, the authorities?" he asked.
"Yep, I'm not opening that can of worms either. Might be able to get you out of here in something more stylish, though."
"Can't I just fly with you?" he asked.
"Absolutely not. If they're looking for both of us we need to leave separately just in case one of us is caught." he explained before they approached a heavy steel door. Sean turned the airlock, throwing it open and stepping into another hangar corridor. "We'll find something here that you can make an effective escape in." He began to look through a ship listing on his datapad as they passed by the hangars there.
"If you embarrass me with a Sidewinder I'm going to be pissed, Morales." Maurice stated.
"You kidding? I'd stick you with that if I wanted you to be a clay pigeon." Sean said, feigning offense before they came to a large hangar door. Sean took a small device the size of a deck of cards from his pants pocket, opening the top of it before pulling out a pair of data cables that were attached to the small box. He put one in each side of the keypad, leaning against the wall as he hunkered close to it. Maurice knew Sean wasn't trying to get to his own ship yet unless he was just hacking the mag lock for fun. It took mere seconds for the device to hack the lock, making a quiet electronic tweet before there was the telltale sliding clang of the mag lock disengaging. He tested the door before throwing it open so that Maurice could follow him inside. Sean fumbled around for the breaker box on the wall as the emergency lighting next to it was busted, eventually finding the front panel, unhitching the clasps and flipping the large breaker lever. Maurice's jaw went slightly agape as the lights flipped on, revealing the red Corvette that sat inside.
"Here's your ride, hope you like it." Sean stated with a smile as he walked towards the Corvette's cargo ramp.
"What sort of name is 'Barn Burner'?" Maurice asked, looking at the information that Sean had pulled up on the datapad.
"Whoever owns this one must throw a lot of parties, so I guess beware when searching the cabinets in the bathroom." Sean joked with a shrug. When they reached the ship's main airlock he plugged the same hacking tool into the keypad. "If you find a stash of coffee in the mess let me know," he mentioned before the device made the affirmative tweet again. There was a clang and the airlock abruptly slid open. As Maurice was heading inside he felt Sean grab his shoulder, causing him to turn around.
"Just get out of port as soon as you can and make a beeline for Draguan Nu. If anybody tries to stop you or shoot at you just keep going. You won't have to worry about the station defenses so unless you do something a rookie would do you'll be fine." he explained. Maurice gave him a nod and the guy hurried off towards the hangar door so that he could get to his own ship. Maurice sealed the airlock and made his way towards the cargo elevator so that he could get to the bridge. It was all he could do to hope that they didn't ground the ship before he could even take off as the elevator shuddered on its mag rails and began to move.
Upon reaching the bridge he booted up the ship's main systems and began to warm up the Corvette's engines. Unlike his Cutter the angular structure of the bridge was unappealing and to him it smelled of stale liquor, Sean had been somewhat right, but it wasn't like that mattered at this point. As the HUD projection flickered on he sat down in the pilot seat and strapped in, all he had to do was hope he would get clearance to leave before anybody noticed what was going on.
"Dock one seven to flight control this is AMS Barn Burner, requesting permission to depart." he stated as he programmed a route from Moresby Dock to Draguan Nu into the navigation computer. There was a pause and a feeling of dread began to creep up on him. If they denied his request he could always try to bolt, but there was never a guarantee that the restraints on the landing gear could be broken. Even if he could the heavy plate covering the landing pad was something he wouldn't be able to break through. He wondered if Sean had thought this far ahead, and if how long it would take for him to reach Kincaid. If he didn't make it to Draguan Nu then the data that he went through the effort of retrieving would be for nothing.
"Flight control to dock one seven, apologies for the delay as we are coordinating heavy traffic. You're free to depart. Watch for the shuttles on your way out, something's really got security's wind up." came a reply over the comms. Maurice sighed with relief as the docking restraints unlocked and he began to lift the Corvette off the pad. The young lady in flight control hadn't been overstating anything, when he lifted the landing gear and the ship ascended above the flight tower and past the taller structures he could see numerous PD shuttles cruising around the outer edges of the flight corridor.
As quickly as he wanted to leave Moresby Dock he cruised easily towards the mail slot, turning the ship to line up with it. He couldn't help but nervously glance at the defense turrets slotted into either side as he flew by. The turrets, however, were still and not aiming at any of the ships, much less his own. For a moment he thought about trying to find Kincaid so that he could open a comms channel to Sean, but the intel op's own advice was the one thing that stopped him from browsing through the listing of the ships that the sensors were picking up. Once he was a few kilometers away from the station he began to throttle the boosters, putting the mass lock radius behind him as quickly as he could and lining the ship's trajectory for the first jump back to Draguan Nu.