Flowers in the Black - Part VIII
03 Oct 2018Jellicoe
Kira Goméz sat back on the sofa of the quarters of the quarters assigned to her and sipped a generous measure of gin, she'd been given a house in the Aegis compound of the hab ring, officers quarters she guessed, a spacious house for one person, simply decorated but with every amenity and comfortable if functional furnishing . but it was still a prison. A high hedge at the end of a neatly tended garden marked the limit of Kira's freedom, guarded discreetly and with no doubt a battery of motion sensors and other monitoring equipment to keep her confined to a cage that, if not gilded was at least civilised. Her routine was a simple one, she could order her own meals, make daily, supervised visits to a gym and hold daily 'conversations' with an Aegis spook, a short, slightly balding bespectacled man who walked with a slight stoop, their conversations were polite, wide ranging and not an interrogation in any traditional sense but she recognised the techniques, when time was not pressing there was no need for confrontational questioning and much more information could be gained in the long run.Kira had quickly dismissed the idea of escape, even if she could somehow get out of the compound getting off the station, even getting to the docking bay, would require contacts she didn't have and credits she couldn't access, she also hoped that Stannis would not make some stupid, schoolbyish attempt to rescue her, she knew enough about security to see that these people were very good indeed and that going in with all guns blazing, as he was prone to do, would be a sure way to get himself killed, no, she thought, he does at least listen to Claude and she was confident that the cold headed hacker would talk him out of trying anything foolish, so she would play the long game, use her own skills as a negotiator and reader of people, play the innocent victim duped by the charming, plausible fanatic slowly having her eyes opened to the truth, try to suggest without overtly suggesting that she might be useful to these people and hope that somehow, somewhere it would lead to a chance to get away, once off station she could access coms and her credit accounts, at least that would give her a chance. While she had no coms from her quarters she did have access the full net, and she consumed news voraciously, being certain to spend a lot of time digesting Aegis press briefings, speeches by Tanner and others, anything to suggest she was coming round to their side. She made tea for her guards and had those officers she spoke to round for dinner, deploying all her charm and personability, the one man however who remained utterly inscrutable though was her interrogator, usually able to read people like an open book this man remained an utter blank, was he seeing her as a penitent sheep returning to the fold, or did he see right through her scheme like glass? for a woman like Kira, a practised hand at manipulation it was both infuriating and a fascinating challenge.