Restoring Dignity: Chapter IV
08 Feb 2021Breez Blue
Restoring Dignity: Chapter IVSean had been working for the last month on compiling a list of mercenaries that they could possibly hire for their operations in Draguan Nu, and in that time Maurice had spent much of his time working alongside the local system patrols as they ambushed small groups of pirates and smugglers near Reightler Dock. Sean had done over ten hours of field ops earlier in the day before spending his evening in the CIC aboard Kincaid's command deck, a steaming pot of coffee next to him on a portable burner. He'd had to get a new mug after leaving his behind at Moresby Dock, having opted for snatching one during one of his earlier trips to the PD headquarters almost three weeks ago. Maurice himself had also finished up his field work for the day and had joined him an hour earlier in the CIC.
In the center of the room was a slightly larger projector that Sean had bolted to the middle of an old hull plate that he had welded in and rigged into a console panel with an attached table. He had loaded the holo disk of the system surface maps and downloaded floorplans of the facilities beneath the surface of a few of the planets, and Maurice had been spending his time looking them over. He had done so a lot in the last couple of weeks, Sean supposed that he was likely figuring out the best way to begin chopping heads off of the metaphorical hydra.
"So how is that roster coming along that you've been working on?" the Imperial suddenly asked, having finished looking over the map before zooming it back out to where Sean had set it earlier. Sean, whom had been eyeballs deep in his work, almost knocked over his coffee mug when Maurice startled him. He put a finger on the rim and scooted it a few centimeters away so that he didn't spill anything on the electronics should he be startled again.
"Well I'm doing a search of most of the populated systems within a two hundred light year radius, as well as looking some folks up from back in Amun. I've been hitting up the listings in the connected systems too. Seems that's the best direction to look, but that's mostly due to existing connections that can help us get ahead." he explained before sitting back in his chair and stretching his back. "Unfortunately since we are better off hiring the independent mercs that does limit our choices."
Maurice could easily understand this, and had offered no objection when Sean had brought the idea to him. If the Empire or Federal forces got involved they did not want the people working for them to defer to either power. For that to happen would only fracture the system further politically, not to mention get both him and Sean killed.
"Have you had any luck with getting any messages back?" Maurice asked.
"Oh yeah, we've had a few hits, I've got a buddy over in the Erevate system who is willing to set up an office for his trucking company here; that's a start. He's hand picked fifteen of his best guys to help out too, and they are used to handling hazardous areas. He is travelling the Neutron Highway right now with medical supplies, but he will be finishing the last of his contracts in half a month." he affirmed. Maurice liked what he was hearing, if there were more traders out there looking for a challenge they could almost entirely circumnavigate the corporations.
"What about combat pilots?" he asked as an afterthought.
"Yeah I've contacted a couple dozen to start with, but I haven't gotten that many hits back. Many of them already have work, so it's likely that you'll have to meet up with them yourself. They're not going to come and find you unless they have no work lined up, and that doesn't happen too often in the high traffic systems around Amun."
"What if I start going out and finding them?" Maurice inquired.
"You may or may not have luck there. The trick with mercs is to hire them between contracts, and they're usually pretty good about keeping jobs lined up like dominoes. If all else fails see if you can offer them more pay than what they're already getting, though with credits as tight as they are you're better off telling them they'll have a shit ton of targets to point their guns at." Sean explained. "With those types you want to be careful, someone else might come along and offer them enough credits to kill you." Maurice balked at hearing this.
"If you're interested in arranging a meetup with some of these people you can start here." Sean added, handing him a datapad. "You'll have to do some travelling, but I've made a list of dossiers from a database I've used over the years when I need some assistance on a job. Only worked with a tiny fraction of them, but luckily not all of them are in the work just for the credits."
"Who made this list in the first place, you?"
"Believe it or not the Feds made it, and it's a public listing. Sometimes they hire independent pilots for the jobs that they can't trust their own guys with, or if they need a neutral party to carry out a political hit. That's who's on that list, and those are your best bets from experience. I picked these dossiers out from almost four hundred over the last few weeks."
"Good to know you aren't suggesting I hire just anyone."
"I wouldn't do that unless I wanted us to fail miserably and probably wind up being shot by Sanchez himself. That would seriously suck." Sean joked. The datapad vibrated and a message icon popped up on the uppermost toolbar. Maurice handed it off to Sean, who gave it a quick read before scratching his head.
"I don't know a Nkizo Baxter." he said in confusion. Maurice moved over behind him and began reading the message over his shoulder. It had taken weeks but the rat guy had finally messaged him back, telling him that his Corvette was ready to be claimed.
"I know him, I'll be back later." Maurice replied and began to exit the CIC while Sean sipped his coffee and read the message again. He couldn't help but ask himself how Nkizo knew where Maurice was in the first place. The information on his datapad was public and therefore he didn't bother to secure it, but things still were as they had been when he was stationed here. Moreso than the pirates, the underground businesses had eyes and ears everywhere. Even a guy like himself couldn't help but eventually draw attention in such a setting. Then again, he thought to himself, Kincaid's battered chassis and scraped paint job likely made her stand out like a chainsaw on a China shelf.
When Maurice arrived at the shipyard level Nkizo was waiting outside the elevator, looking amusedly at a floor cleaning robot that was repeatedly bumping into the toe of his boot, trying to get the cigarette butt that he had crushed beneath it. The small robot itself had been covered in shuttle bumper stickers and was dented from what was likely being kicked multiple times.
"Dese tings nevah cease to amuse me, Imperiale. Put a one-track minded program in a machine and next ting yah know it gets de compulsive disodah, ah?" Nkizo joked, showing a lupine grin and pulling his earbuds from his ears, which were sticking out through slits at the top of his grey hoodie before tucking them into the pocket at its front.
"What took you so-" Maurice started before the rat man cut him off by waggling a single clawed finger in his face.
"What did I tell ya Imperiale? Did I not tell ya ta not staht askin' da questions?" he interrupted. Maurice initially wasn't sure what to make of his statement before the rat showed him a toothy grin. "I'm messing wit ya, ah. Yah ship is ready, she just came back from da paint depahtment." Nkizo pulled a miniature datapad from his back pants pocket and powered it on, starting to read from the work order that he had loaded beforehand.
"Da new listing is as requested: Desolation. Dey took da meazhas needed to scrub da identification, work history, took ceah of changing da seriale nombahs of da ship so fah back as to when she was stamped wit it at da shipyahd wheah she was built. Black box removed and switched wit a new one, lastly da paint and outfitting dat was requested, and dey changed many of da fluid seals due to da ship leaking all ovah da bay." he read off, pulling the stylus out of the top of the datapad and looking at Maurice expectantly. "Dese ah all da ohdahs dat you had originally laid out, ah?" Upon hearing how thorough the mechanics at the shipyard had been and the lengths they'd had to go to did make it easier to understand why it would take some time. They likely got so many of these requests that they had a back log due to wanting to get the process right the first time.
"Honestly that's more than what I'd asked for, and I appreciate the fact that they did that. I've technically never stolen a ship before so I didn't know what all it took to make a ship untraceable." he replied.
"Hah, da only ting shoat of melting da fuckah down, ah. Howevah whomevah runs a scan will have no idea wheah she really came from. We go to dese lengts because ouah customahs often ah inexperienced and do not know what it takes so theah asses ah covahd. Is mainly to deflect problems from us, and da business comin' in, ah." Nkizo elaborated, and with a swipe of the stylus the work order was deleted from the device. He sure as hell didn't want to risk any of the PD guys getting ahold of it later during his occasional run-in with their goons.
"So how much are we looking at on the cost?" Maurice asked, to which Nkizo looked at him questioningly.
"De cost of de job has already been taken from yoah credit balance. Once you acknowledge de job is done to de specifications yah asked foah de credits ah deducted and paid to de guys involved in de work." he said bluntly. "Foah you de total was about two hondred million, one hondred tousand credits if I remembah correctly. His expression curdled a bit when he saw Maurice standing there, his mouth slightly agape. "What ah ya looking at me foah like dat, Imperiale? As I said, dey did just about everyting but melt de ship down." he added.
"I guess I underestimated the cost a bit, that was a third of my credits." Maurice elaborated. Nkizo started laughing, much to his dismay.
"I'll tell ya dis much, Imperiale: If ya gonna be huntin' out heah ya gonna be spendin' de credits. Maybe assist de truckahs?" he commented and began to walk away, leaving Maurice by himself in the corridor with the floor robot. The job sure had hit him in the wallet, but at least that meant that he could begin recruiting as well as getting involved in more serious combat with something more sturdy than Francelle.
As he made his way back to the other end of the corridor to begin the trip back to Kincaid he began to turn Nkizo's words over in his head, surprised that the rat guy had given him what was actually very valuable advice. It surprised him that he would do so, an olive branch of sorts perhaps? Maurice wasn't exactly sure, as Nkizo's demeanor tended to keep him guessing, and sometimes it was tough to tell if he was joking or not. Even the advice he'd just received seemed like a bit of a jab at a well on the way to possibly becoming broke Imperial.
Maurice felt a bit apprehensive as he looked at the dingy bar down in the middle levels of the residential block, which looked like all the other dingy bars that lined one side just across the wide, dimly lit corridor from some old flats. Due to it being a weekend the flats were mostly empty as their occupants were visiting the bars and music venues. He had received a message from Sean telling him to meet him at this little place, which in a vintage facing of LCD signage indicated its name was "The Greasy Tea Room". He didn't bother to entertain the images the name on its own conjured in his head as he opened the sliding door and went inside.
Inside the small prefab he could see the bar running along the entire right wall, past a partition that led into a back room. Large glass bottles that had the most generic liquor labels that he had ever seen lined a set of shelves along its length. A bald, heavyset man with hams for fists was mixing drinks for a couple of ladies who waited at the corner of the bar, and a there was electronic music playing that drowned out much of the conversation going on at the few occupied tables in the place and rattled the walls. The orange hue of the dying fluorescents above sputtered and faded every few seconds only to snap back on again a split second later. The floor was covered with rust that crunched beneath his boots as he made his way through. He didn't see Sean at any of the tables in the front room, so he knew he would be in the back.
"Hey, newcomer! Watch that hole unless you wanna be scraped off a roof!" came a loud shout from the bar. Maurice stopped and turned around, seeing the barkeep waving his arms at him. The two ladies that he had just mixed drinks for were looking at him in shock. "Don't fall in the hole, look down when you're walking to the back!" the barkeep added. Maurice looked down and found that he in fact was less than a half meter away from a hole that had been rusted in the floor that was as big around as his thigh. He wondered why the tables were clustered towards the outer walls, and he now knew why. He acknowledged the barkeep with a wave, and the barkeep nodded at him in return. It was likely a chore for the guy to just keep people from killing themselves, much less making drinks at the same time. How many other areas had these kinds of structural problems, he wondered. He took a brief moment to peer into the hole from where he was, and from what he could tell it was a solid drop of at least twenty meters to the next level of prefabs.
When he reached the back room of the bar only three tables had people sitting at them, and Sean was easy to spot as he was the only person back there who was by himself at the time. As usual he was busy with work, his eyes buried in his datapad with a glass of boubon sitting a few centimeters away, and a half gallon bottle of it sat nearby. Unlike the bottles behind the big guy at the bar this one had a label that he recognized, Sean must have brought his own bottle. Not far from that was an empty glass turned over. Upon walking up to the table he pulled the opposite chair out from under it and sat down.
"So how did your meeting go?" Sean asked, putting down the datapad and taking a drink from his glass. He then slid the bottle towards Maurice, stopping it just past the center of the table. The Imperial nodded in reply and Sean grabbed the other glass, pouring two fingers worth of bourbon in it.
"The Corvette is ready to go, and the guys from the shipyard was very thorough with the work." he said before taking a small drink of the amber liquor. Unlike the cheap stuff he had made the mistake of trying during his first week living at Reightler Dock this was more smooth and had apparently been chilled beforehand.
"I'll need to keep that in mind if I ever need to disappear a ship. Sometimes it can be helpful to have a group of organized criminals around." Sean commented. Maurice had to admit to himself that it was true in some ways, though he didn't want to outwardly say it. Sean seemed to notice this and opted to change the subject.
"So I'm guessing when you walked in you figured that I chose this place on purpose." he added.
"I had my suspicions as to why, we haven't visited any part of the slums yet." Maurice answered.
"That's what I'd been hoping to hear, and that's admittedly only half of the reason." Sean said, pausing to take a drink. "The other one is that this is an area of interest due to who runs it."
"Who is in charge of it?" Maurice inquired. Sean leaned in a bit closer, he didn't know if anybody in the room might be listening.
"The big pirate faction out here runs a pretty large sector of the slums out here, many of them former Imperials. I'm pretty sure you've heard of the Brotherhood of Draguan Nu by now?" Maurice cocked an eyebrow at him, he had heard of them but didn't now much about the faction itself.
"The ship and cargo thieves? I thought they mostly stuck to the docks." he replied.
"Not exactly, Culinus. They have their smaller operations out at the docks, which is perpetuated through the shipyard operations. Some of the bays out there are for 'private use'," Sean explained, making air quotes. "However they're used to chop or disappear stolen ships. It's pretty much the same as what they did with your ship, only you paid them to disappear the ID instead of steal it."
"Okay, so what are you getting at?" Maurice asked, confused.
"They have the backing of the corporations due to donations which is funded by what they steal, meaning they have a lot of backing. A lot of backing means that in the long run they're going to be our toughest adversary as well funded as they are. This place? It's owned by them too. The guy at the bar is one of their enforcers who extort the smaller businesses at the behest of the corporations. Keeps any of them from getting too big if you know what I mean."
"How did you find that out?" Maurice asked. Sean stopped in the middle of picking up his glass and narrowed one eye at him while cocking the eyebrow over the other.
"Come on, you know when I stick my nose in something I tend to turn up a lot of bones. I recognize that guy's mugshot from the arrest records the PD guys keep on file. Since I can get into that with permission now I can dig as much as I want without worrying about not leaving a footprint. Many of the businesses in this area are owned by the Brotherhood of Draguan Nu, but if we can begin breaking up their operations in the system it will throw a major monkey wrench in the gears." he elaborated.
"Wouldn't that make this place fall apart even more?" Maurice inquired. Destabilizing their operations, he figured, might lead to even more decay than the rusty prefab that they were sitting in. That which would be was always built upon the bones of what was.
"Temporarily, and the destabilization will be rapid if things go as planned. If these guys lose support then that is a sure way to make it an easy way to fill in the vacuum, and that's where we come in." Maurice understood what Sean was getting at by this point, he had studied regime changes over the centuries, and noticed that he was following the most commonly used method.
"That's bound to cause its fair share of problems to be sure. Isn't there a better way to go about it?" asked Maurice. Sean heaved a sigh and shrugged, not exactly the best sign nor the response he had been hoping for.
"Look, this is an anarchy system and has been for some time now. Unfortunately I don't think either of us has much of a choice. It's pretty much speaking the same language, and that's getting things done by force. I know how we can keep the majority of the fighting off the ground and away from the station, but there will be a fight down here nonetheless." Sean explained. He didn't like what he was hearing, but when Sean factored everything in things began to make more sense. He was more far-sighted as far as possible consequences, then again he had probably had a hand in doing the very thing in the past that they were planning right now.
"Considering everything I'm going to tell you one thing: Don't even think about going into a powder room with a fire striker until you're ready to deal with the blast." Sean warned and drained the rest of his glass. He uncorked the bourbon and poured more inside, offering the bottle to him again. Maurice accepted and, once Sean partially refilled the glass, replaced the cork and pushed the bottle to the side.
"So I guess you could say that this is the first official meeting of what could be a formidable group in the near future." Maurice joked.
"Okay, this 'formidable group in the near future' of ours, I doubt you've thought of a name from the look on your face and your terminology." Sean joked back. Maurice paused, he hadn't really given that much thought. "We could always mislead them with a fluffy bunnies related name or something. And pink ships. We could deck out Desolation out with a sunrise colored paint job while Kincaid rocks some really gaudy pink neons!"
"I know espionage and psyops pretty much go hand in hand, but I think that could possibly come back and bite us in the ass, nor would you be able to do a covert operation again." Maurice replied.
"Yeah maybe you're right." Sean thought out loud, thinking a moment as he rotated the rocks glass in his fingers, slightly swishing around the liquor inside. "However if you look at dictatorships over the millenia they tend to be aptly named in an opposite manner." he added.
"So you're suggesting we call ourselves a democracy?" Maurice asked and took a drink. Sean grinned.
"No, I say we go further than that." he suggested.
"A republic?"
"Exactly."
"If that's not on the other end from a spectrum from a dictatorship I don't know what is." Maurice stated, making Sean chuckle. "Being the 'new guys on the block' as I've heard you put it, we should call ourselves New Republic."
"Self-explanatory and short, I like it." Sean replied. "Sounds like something that belongs in a vid, too."
"New Republic of Draguan Nu, but keep it shortened to New Republic I think." Maurice mused. He'd never given a title to anything but his ships, and he was having fun with it.
"Well I guess that settles it, Boss. New Republic it is. I'll work on finding a graphic artist to put together some ideas in a few days." Sean concluded and stood up, using his knee to push the chair back under the table. "I'm going to finish up some business aboard Kincaid, if you want more bourbon you can come with, I'll probably be drinking on it half the night." Maurice did the same, standing up so that he could leave with Sean.
"On any other night I would, but tonight I'm going to have to pass because of the recruiting work. I want an early start in the morning." he replied as the two of them left the bar for the night.