An Unrefusable Offer (Part 4)
Posted on Sat Dec 14th, 2019 @ 3:31pm by Fordyce Kirschler PhD
Mission:
Mission 10 - Temperance
Location: Various, Lithios Prime
Timeline: MD 10 02:51
3005 words - 6 OF Standard Post Measure
Previously, in "An Unrefusable Offer (Part 3)"...
The console next to the door gave him access to his flat's systems. He triggered an imminent storm alert and instantaneously two massive duranium storm doors slammed down to seal off this entrance and the doorless one through which the assailants had come. Meant to protect him from the ravages of the occasional violent Lithian hurricane, they'd hold long enough for what he was planning.
He managed to write out a new software program for the nanites in about two minutes. He wrapped up the coding with instructions that limited activation to just the interior of his flat and pushed the program to the nanite control system. There were probably a billion invisible nanites clinging to him, Biberveldt, and Biberveldt's friend alone - billions more inside - and he definitely didn't want the ones outside to follow the example of their brethren on the inside.
Ford wasn't a man to shy away from the gruesome or grotesque, but he started limping away from the door almost immediately. Even he had no interest in hearing what was taking place inside his flat as the environmental circulation system kicked up to maximum and the billions of reprogrammed, black market nanites inside started whizzing around, consuming every last molecule of organic material in the room. As he hobbled down the sidewalk away from his Lithian life, he thought he heard the holographic version of himself shouting one last insult - drop into the rotten mouth of death! - as the room's occupants did just that.
Now, the continuation…
After clearing out of his place, Ford had followed Lucienne's instructions to a nearby stash house to pick up his departure kit - a bag filled with clothes, rations, credit chips ("scrip" in local parlance), several forged credentials, a low-capacity stun pistol composed of materials likely to make it through scanner checkpoints, some medical supplies, and a few other items. He'd tried not to think about the taunting Fordyce Kirschler hologram - drop into the rotten mouth of death! - or the method through which he'd murdered four people to save his own skin. Willful amnesia and a shower would help.
He'd let Biberveldt and the other boy tag along; during the walk over he'd learned the latter's name was Hedwig. Idiotic name for an idiotic kid, even if he was the smarter of the two of them. Ford had let them keep the Tal Shiar pistols, though he cautioned them to ditch the weapons before boarding a transport. He'd even altered two sets of the credentials to rechristen them Strenger and Hubert, packed them some rations, and loaded them up with enough scrip to get far away from their current district and off Lithios Prime altogether when the blockade was lifted.
He'd felt it was the least he could do for two hapless victims of the senseless violence of the Lithian underground. Even if they'd brought the trouble down on him in the first place, they'd still been instrumental in his escape and actually delivered the goods that were making him sixty-seven bars of gold-pressed latinum. Plus, he owed that much to Dijkstra the Funhouse. And, too, the pair were good shots and pretty tough - tough enough to make decent bodyguards or find themselves some other line of security work if they survived that long. It would have been a shame to take good talent out of the galactic talent pool. But, at this rate, they'd just be lucky to make it to the transport hub without getting bolted by either the Primarch's men or some roving band of Iron-Arse Maarten's gang.
Ten minutes ago, he'd wished them well and pointed them in the direction of the transport station least likely to be overrun with unfriendly elements and gave them the name of an innkeeper in a rural town where he'd once gone on holiday. Of course, there was always the off chance they wouldn't take his advice. They might have taken his scrip and blown it all on mushacet tabs by now. But he'd done his part. If they wanted to get caught and end up one of the flayed bodies that dangled from the street lamps during the Primarch's occasional purges then that was their business. For his part, Ford sure as shit didn't intend to end up that way.
And toward that, he was making slow time - too slow, really - but he'd finally arrived at his destination. Lucienne had been kind enough to arrange for some medical tools in the departure kit, but it wasn't near enough to begin to address his horribly fractured leg. He had to resort to unseemly measures for that.
Thankfully, no one seemed to worry about the desecration of the dead around here. There were perks to living on an ethically bereft planet like Lithios Prime, such as those occasional moments when one was pressed into basic grave robbery and the mutilation of a corpse. He added them to the night's growing list of sins and wondered if there might be a holy man that could absolve him of all of it. 'Why, yes, my son, murder, grave robbery, and desecration of a corpse, all committed in the act of blockade running, are acceptable in the eyes of God. All is forgiven. Just slip your latinum in the donation box on the way out, would you?'
The gate wasn't exactly standing open, but all it took was a little nudge for it to swing wide and admit him. No locks, no security, no surveillance. If it was anything other than a cemetery, Ford would have been suspicious.
Luckily, he knew exactly where he was going. It just took him some time to get there from dragging the useless leg behind him. He'd fashioned a crutch out of some old pieces of conduit back at the stash house, but it could only do so much. He'd also loaded himself up on more stims, which he'd regret in a few hours, but he had to keep pushing. He was under a deadline set by Lucienne Bex, which meant it wasn't a very generous one.
The route itself he recalled from a month prior when the old woman had bit the dust. Such an event was apparently monumental enough for a truce, tragic enough to unite the disparate underworld for the funeral of a venerated figure. Ford hadn't known Iron-Arsed Maarten's grandmother very well except for all the requests she put through for cybernetic enhancements to counteract her rapidly aging body. And every interaction had helped to cast her as a sour old bitch. So, he'd been glad when she died, and he had suspected many others felt the same. The universe was a better place for it. All she'd caused him was trouble in life; now, at least, she'd serve some useful purpose in death.
Thankfully, the Lithians had accessible burial arrangements. The soft limestone-like coffin was completely exposed within the tomb, encircled by bollards and rope. The bollards were evidently secured by some cheap self-sealing stem bolts; the application of a little pressure pried one up from the floor enough for him to work it loose. Five minutes later he'd made quick work of one corner of the coffin and dragged the old woman's body out onto the floor. Another minute later he'd removed the motorized assistive device from her leg with a laser scalpel and a little more elbow grease.
Without access to something as sophisticated, prized, and regulated as an osteogenic regenerator, he had to be a little unorthodox to address his messy fracture. Given the state of alert among the security forces and the street gangs, he didn't dare show up at a hospital. This would have to be a self-repair job, which required cannibalizing some parts, as it were. The device could be crudely attached to his leg and powered with an external power pack. So long as it worked, that's all that mattered to him. Of course it would probably deal untold damage to his fragile organic parts, but it wouldn't be anything that a few bars of latinum couldn't fix once he'd gotten off planet.
The little veterinary clinic had everything he needed with easily disabled security. The only downside had been sacrificing the time it took to drag himself to an area of the city wealthy enough to support something as luxurious as a veterinarian, all while avoiding the central authorities, Iron-Arsed Maarten, and Starfleet patrols. By now they'd likely all three pieced together what happened at Ford's place and probably assumed he was dead. He wanted to keep it that way, as seeing him alive and wandering the streets would have made him a 'person of interest.'
Attaching a stabilizing, powered cybernetic apparatus to your own leg sounded hard in theory. In practice, it proved even more difficult. Localized painkillers and his very basic medical expertise no doubt helped but by the time he was finished Ford felt completely drained. If he'd been in a position to receive normal treatment then he would have had the bone knit together with an osteogenic regenerator or submersed himself into a bioregenerative unit and spent a week in a day spa receiving physical therapy. As it stood, the bone would start to heal awkwardly and incompletely, but his leg would move in a mostly normal manner under power. A proper nerve block would have been better but painkillers would have to do as the assistive device propelled him around at the expense of bone and flesh.
If he didn't have his mind set on leaving Lithios Prime then he might have taken the trouble to clean up; instead, he left the animal clinic slick with blood. Lucienne's timeline loomed over him like a threat. If he missed the window, he knew she wouldn't call again. As something of a gambling man, he was betting on the vet cleaning it up for him. The guy probably (read: hopefully) wouldn't want the increased attention a reported crime would bring to his business, particularly one that was bloody and gruesome.
So, with veins full of stimulants, painkillers, and antibiotics, he pushed through the broken door, leaned for support on his makeshift crutch, and headed toward the local branch of the Bank of Bolias with the sincere hope that Lucienne's plan relied on a branch rather than the branch closest to his flat. He'd never be able to hobble back over there in time.
The walking was killing him, of course. His leg throbbed with every motorized step, and the analgesic skin-patch he'd already reapplied once served to only dull the pain rather than relieve it entirely. The silver lining was that the pain reminded him of the disruptor bolt he'd taken to the leg. In turn, the disruptor bolt to the leg reminded him that people on this planet had been shooting at him recently. And people shooting at him recently reminded him just how much he needed to be elsewhere.
With branches opened across three quadrants, the Bank of Bolias had discovered it was to their advantage to keep facilities operational around the clock. Passengers arriving from a planet whose time wasn't synced with their destination didn't always have the patience to wait until normal business hours. Like its sister facilities, this particular branch of the Bank never closed, though at these hours it was manned only by a hologram to assist clients.
It was also an endpoint for an unusual system of storage that would work as much to his benefit as it did to that of the Bank's actual patrons. Or, so he hoped. The system had been designed for a very niche market of very wealthy people with very expensive things that needed to travel very securely across very large distances.
For example, Her Imperial Highness Princess Melitos didn't travel around with the Royal Diadem of Matoket. After all, it was more priceless than her. She could die in a fiery shuttle crash and the Royal Family of Matoket wouldn't bat an eye. But the loss of the Royal Diadem might very well delegitimize their reign and subsequently destabilize the entire planet. It couldn't be risked to Orion pirates or atmospheric turbulence or any of the other hazards that made space travel so treacherous. Instead, it was entrusted to the Bank of Bolias, which made the Royal Diadem and other items like it available through the use of a chain of micro-transporters and sophisticated encryption software that beamed belongings from one of several undisclosed regional storage facilities to the user's current bank branch. Her Imperial Highness Princess Melitos could deposit the diadem on Matoket, where it would be beamed to some unknown point of storage, and then retrieve it a week later when her shuttle arrived on Vulcan.
Those inner workings of the Bank weren't exactly secret knowledge but neither was it commonly known outside of Bolarus IX. Thankfully, Lucienne Bex was privy to such knowledge as it presented Ford's last best hope of not being vaporized and turned into a dark stain on the sidewalks of Lithios Prime.
"Greetings, Client #83547596." The hologram had scanned his physiology as soon as he entered the building and altered its accent to a pleasing, neutral selection from Earth. The Bank considered it a personalized touch; Ford considered it pandering. "How may I best serve you today?"
"I need access to my belongings in a private room with a data terminal."
"Of course, I would be happy to assist you with that today. Please proceed to the Nechara Room. Your items will arrive in approximately... three minutes. Is there anything else that I can assist you with today?"
Across the decagonal-shaped room, a set of doors opened. The door frame itself turned into a pale shade of illuminated green, and a pleasant series of chimes pulled his attention in that direction. Ford tipped his hat in answer to the hologram's final question and limped his way over to the Nechara Room, as asinine a name for a space as he'd ever heard. (Nechara was the name of the wife of the Primarch of Lithios Prime - more pandering.) The room's interior was lavishly decorated, though the table, chair, and data terminal were the only things he was concerned about. The rest he figured were actually holographic projections anyway, probably set to a default for now but customizable for the Bank's more important (read: wealthy) clients.
Safely behind the Bank's firewall, he used the data terminal to scan the newsnets while waiting on the micro-transporter to deliver his possessions from wherever Lucienne had stored them. The six murders at his flat, where Iron-Arse Maarten's men had been eaten alive by billions of nanites, was being classified as "an industrial accident." That made his stomach do a somersault; his industriousness was no accident, and he felt a sense of regret. The dismaying news was the lack of news about the street fight between the two gangs that had precipitated all this. It meant the planet's ruling body was suppressing it. And if they were suppressing it that meant they were busy trying to clean it up. And if they were trying to clean it up that meant they were eliminating everyone involved, including his new friends Strenger née Biberveldt and Hubert née Hedwig. He sincerely hoped they made it, but he didn't stop to do anything that might have helped further.
"Client #83547596, your items will be arriving in approximately thirty seconds. Thank you for your patronage."
The box that arrived on the table exactly thirty seconds later (Ford had always found the Bank's use of "approximate" amusing considering there was nothing approximate about their operations) could not have been any less remarkable. Slate gray, it appeared at first glance to be one seamless, solid object. A recessed button in the front deactivated the magnetized vacuum seal and separated top from bottom. Inside, he was relieved to find everything he needed to get off this damn planet.
The data spike was the most important, but he grabbed it only after making the rest of his preparations, including slowly and painfully changing his clothes. The data spike - a long thin device - was meant to be literally spiked into the Bank of Bolias data terminal. It was a high-end model, which left no physical trace of the system infiltration as it was inserted. After negotiating with the computer for a moment, allowing it to process the spike's pre-programmed instructions, he removed the device and waited thirty seconds. He was taking one of the biggest risks of his life: he'd either get where he needed to be or have his body ripped apart at the molecular level.
Although Lucienne had assured him that her "tech people" had assured her that it was completely safe, it was still a total gamble as to whether or not the Bank's micro-transporter would actually accept organic material of his mass. He wasn't sure if the pattern buffers were even large enough to deconstruct and rematerialize something as complex as a sentient being, or if there was some hidden in-built security algorithm that prevented the movement of sentients through the system. If it was possible, he wondered what sort of unknown enterprises the Bank of Bolias might involve itself in. The possibilities for sentient trafficking alone were enormous.
The computer beeped to acknowledge that it was ready to carry out the transport. He had the option of declining or confirming, and Ford let his finger hover over the green "confirm" button on the console for a long moment.
Oh well. Dematerialization was better than hanging from a street lamp.
Right?
OFF::
Dr. Ford Kirschler
Engineering Consultant
Bank of Bolias
