The Living and the Damned - Part XV
23 Jan 2018Jellicoe
"No!" Sachin Vikash said forcefully, his bright eyes blazing with anger. "You do this and you do it without me, it's wrong.""That goes for me too Commander," Mira added quietly, "We can't follow you this time."
"Same here," Claude Marsaud, Jellicoe's first officer and oldest friend said looking his captain straight in the eye, "But he isn't going to go through with this, are you Skipper?"
Stannis Jellicoe looked around the briefing room at his most trusted friends all united against him. He had just outlined Black Omega's latest offer, find and kill Commander Daman, leader of the Galactic Railroad and he could have the girl, but this wasn't the first such offer they had made him.
"no," Jellicoe said quietly, "They played me once it won't happen again."
"You won't be played?" Vik said, his voice laced with angry sarcasm, "Not because we don't murder honest men on the orders of gangsters, no it's because our great leader doesn't like being made a fool of."
"Alright then Vik you were right," Jellicoe growled, his voice taut with fury, "You were all right and I was wrong. I wanted to get this girl out, I didn't think enough about the consequences."
"Because the great Stannis Jellicoe always gets the job done," Vik answered his anger flowing freely now the dam had finally burst, "You need to stop believing your own legend."
"Alright Vik you've had your pound of flesh," Claude weighed in, "He's admitted his mistake, we all make them."
"Our 'mistakes' don't get innocent people killed."
"C'mon Vik," Mira put in gently, "Nobody keeps their hands clean in a place like this, everyone ends up neck deep in shit."
Jellicoe breathed deeply and massaged his forehead, how could he explain something so personal, so nebulous as the look in a mothers eye or the pain in a father voice for the loss of their daughter? How could he put into words the need of his conscience to do something, anything to convince himself he was still a good man despite all the compromises he had made and the blood he had spilt?
"Because I came face to face with what we leave behind," He said slowly, "I saw two people slowly being destroyed because someone took their daughter. We don't see that, we see a blip on our scanner, a name on our displays and we shoot it but behind every blip, every name there is a Mhera Bathana, there are parents, children, husbands, wives. I can't explain it and I don't expect you to understand but I feel it and it's chewing me up. Now whatever anyone may think about the way I've handled things so far I need to know where we go from here. I promised Mhera's family that I'd do everything in my power to get her back, and that's what I still intend to do and I'll do it alone if I have to. If you don't want to carry on I'll understand."
"Do you even have to ask?" Claude replied with a half smile.
"Commander this crew's the closest thing to a family I've ever had," Mira said, her usually level voice cracking with feeling, "There are some lines I can't cross but I'm not going to bail out now."
"I won't fight and kill for a bunch of gangsters, that doesn't mean I'll leave this girl to rot." Vik answered, "Besides, you'll only get yourself killed without me to watch your back."
Jellicoe was silent for several moments, staring out of the porthole, desperately fighting to stop himself welling up. "So we can't buy her out so what about breaking her out? You're the planner Claude any ideas? I believe the Exotica girls do escort work, could we get her out that way"
"No." Claude replied firmly. "I did look into it but whenever they leave the premises the girls wear a tracker necklace, it's also boobytrapped so if they can't get her back they make sure she's no use to anyone else."
"Could you deactivate it?"
"Maybe, I don't know but I'm not willing to bet this girls life on it."
"Any better ideas?"
"Possibly," Claude said slowly and thoughtfully, habitually rechecking his display, "Clients get half an hour with the girl they choose, the girl then gets half an hour to shower, dress and sort the room out, all on security camera of course."
"How do you know?" Mira teased.
"I gave one of the deckhands some credits and told him to go and have a good time in return for taking some micro-drones in for me," Claude replied matter of factly, "It's quite remarkable what people will pay to have done to them."
"So we're screwed, she's either on camera or wearing a tracker?" Mira exclaimed.
"But camera's can be hacked." Jellicoe replied looking at Claude."
"I'm glad you remembered," Claude said with a smile of self satisfaction, "The network security was better than that dive of Darrin's but with the help of a couple of those micro-drones I got in eventually."
"So you're gonna kill the camera's?" Mira asked.
"No. There are two cameras on the bedroom plus another on the shower room, one might go down from a fault but if three fail at the same time they'll smell a rat and send people to investigate."
"So what then?"
"I take over the cameras and play a recording of Mhera with a client then cleaning up afterwards, that gives you an hour, you tell her what's happening, give her the overalls you're wearing over your clothes and a wig to put on, get out and get back to the ship before she's missed, again as you leave I play footage through the corridor cameras showing people milling about, nobody ever looks closely enough to notice. Take Kira with you, there's a good chance the girl'll be traumatised and someone she knows will have more chance of getting through to her than a stranger especially when every second counts. It's risky but the only chance we've got."
"I take Kira with me to a brothel?"
"Trust me, from what goes on in there a couple wanting a threesome won't raise any eyebrows whatsoever." Claude replied with a wry smile.
"Alright," Jellicoe said leaning back in his chair, his brow furrowed with thought and concern, "I'll call Kira and tell her what's happening, we'll go tomorrow morning."
"No we won't." Claude replied pausing for a moment before explaining. "You have an hour to get out, by the time you've explained what's happening, got Mhera into the overalls and wig and left the room it leaves you say forty minutes tops to get out of the building, get back here and get off the station, if the alarm's raised before we're away we'll be prime suspects and that'll be that so we need a diversion. Then if we do get her out what happens next? It won't take them long to put two and two together and Black Omega are exceptionally vindictive, it would be very easy to send an assassin to Wolf 412 to kill her and her family or more likely kill her family and bring her back here and we'd have to watch our backs for the rest of our lives, I'd prefer to have a way of avoiding either of those eventualities."
"Can I assume you have one?"
"Naturally." The hacker replied with a smile, "Kira's been keeping me informed about what the Galactic Railroad are up to and in three days time they're going to hit Claire dock with everything they've got, all Black Omega enforcers will be needed for the defence of the station and the coms net will be restricted to priority traffic, certainly nobody will care about a missing prostitute and nobody will will stop a fully armed corvette that distinguished itself in Wongo from taking off to help defend the station, then we slip away in the chaos. I don't know who'll win but there'll be thousands dead either way, casualty lists are always low security so I just add her name to the list of the dead, she goes home, we go home, everyone's happy."
"Very well," Said Jellicoe, "We go in three days time."