[nano] Corsair
Nov. 23rd, 2009 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeBy now it had to be all over the ship how she felt about Ran, the murders, his death. At least it felt that way when Eliot sent over the footage and Maia came into her office to go over it with her. She'd scrubbed her face down, pulled her hair back, everything she could think of to make herself at least somewhat presentable. Officious looking. As though she actually knew what she was doing instead of propelling herself by anger and grief and making it up as she went along.
"Captain," Maia nodded appropriately, not deferential, not scornful or wondering (at least where everyone could see) whether or not her commanding officer was capable of continuing or whether she was too overcome by the loss of her friend.
Or maybe that was just in her head. Maybe there was no such rumor or idea in anyone's head. Well, Eliot's. But it was his job to wonder such things.
She gestured to Maia to have a seat next to her rather than across from. They would both be watching the footage, they should both sit equal. "I didn't have a plan for this," she admitted. "I've had some experience analyzing details of people and their circumstances, but never anything like this."
Her security chief gave her a look that ran the gamut from puzzled to impressed, passing through thoughtful on the way there. "It's not all that different from what you may be used to," she said, but she said it slowly, hesitant, evidently, to judge what Valerie was used to. Job interviews were the first thing that came to her mind to explain away the talents but the truth was that she and Ran had had these kinds of idle conversations for years. Betting on who was what, then taking turns going up and flirting until they found out.
"I'm sure it is," Valerie smiled a little, thinking of some of those afternoons on the Academy campus, watching the first year students. "But nonetheless, shall we see what we can see?"
Maia still didn't sit down. "It may be harder than you think…" without the honorific. Interesting.
"What do you mean?"
The other woman folded her arms. "We're going to be watching the footage of your friend's death. We're going to be watching an attack on the ship, people getting injured, some people dying. Your people. Are you sure you can handle that?"
It was a valid question, and it still pissed her off. She bit back the reprimand she wanted to spit out in her security chief's face for questioning her courage, or perhaps her ability to command. It wasn't like that, she reminded herself. She commanded a courier ship, not a military vessel. She wasn't even in the military, had never been. So it was a valid question. And it still stung.
"We'll find out," she said, after a couple of breaths and when she trusted herself to speak again without biting the other woman's head off. Maia nodded, and finally took her seat.
They watched the footage of the other ship capturing the umbilicus. The first thing that struck Valerie was the skill of the other pilot. She frowned. "Not everyone could dock a ship to another ship that way, not that quickly," she mused out loud, rewinding the footage to note the time markers. How quick it was, that was something she could cross-check, at least with Academy records and those of other space flight schools. Students kept records of who had the best times at everything, who was the biggest daredevil. It at least would give her some names to talk to, or about.
Maia nodded slightly. "Someone who' s had experience piloting ships, both that kind of ship and this one."
"How do you come by that conclusion?" Valerie glanced sideways.
"Look here… where they forced us to maneuver around them or with them or be collided with? They know what this ship can do, the limits of her range of movement. That requires that they be familiar with this ship as well as theirs…"
"Which means they at least have a range of familiarity with courier class ships. That thing can't be anything … maybe a go-fast ship, but it can't be much out of that class."
Huh. Something to note, for certain. She wondered how many people specialized to that extent in piloting a certain class of ship. Probably more than she thought. She played the recording again.
"They're organized," was the next thing that came out of her mouth. She didn't know how to explain it better than that, but it struck her deeply. The way they came through the umbilicus, two point men going left and right once they hit the ship without stopping to check if their backup was behind them. Which implied something else. "They're organized, and they've worked together before. They trust each other."
Maia's sideways glance was more impressed this time than curious or confused. "They're probably military, or ex-military. One of the first nations, or maybe one of the more advanced protectorates. They'd have to be, there aren't many mercenary organizations with this level of training and certainly none that would jeopardize their reputations like this."
"Mmph." But that was also something to factor into her thinking, something she noted down on her stylus pad. Whoever these people were they either wanted to make their reputations as pirates, or weren't concerned with the kind of reputation attacking a courier ship would bring, or they were confident enough that their true identities wouldn't be discovered to do it openly. "And without face coverings…" she realized in a murmur. Maia nodded again, very slightly.
Valerie paused the tape again. "I'll see if I …" she started, then stopped as she ran into the problem of just where to send these photos. "We'll have to get still shots of their faces after this, as many as we can. Someone may know who they are, if we can narrow down the search parameters."
The tiniest hint of a smile curved up the edges of Maia's mouth. She was a lot prettier when she smiled like that, Valerie noticed, but it wasn't the kind of smile she'd want directed at her. Focus, she reminded herself. This was far from the time or the place. And on the heels of that, you're only thinking about her like that because you miss Ran.
Focus.
She started the tape again.
There was no sound in the room but their steady, even breathing. There was plenty of sound coming from the tape: boot heels on the carpet making steady, rapid thuds even as padded as the floor was. The sound of gunfire. Shouts and orders in a language she didn't understand, the harsh and guttural sounds alien to her upbringing. "Do we have a translator…" she asked Maia, who shook her head. As much as they were couriers, they didn't necessarily need to read the messages they brought. Just to ensure that they got there intact and on time.
"The Mentalist might have a familiarity with the language," her security chief offered, though. "From what I understand of them they have to be versed in the language they're carrying the message in to understand it and convey that understanding accurately, the nuances of it. Not just mimic."
Valerie had heard the same thing, and nodded. "They have to be familiar with several languages, yes, but whether or not he's familiar with this one…" It was also a little strange to her to hear someone else call the Tommy by his proper title, not the way she did. Maybe that was a habit she should see about curbing.
"You can ask, at least."
Resume play. There wasn't much to tell with the smoke, but the fact that they used gas bombs and flash bangs was interesting in and of itself. It also answered the question of where Eliot had gotten them. Looted off a prisoner or a corpse.
Eliot looted a corpse?
Valerie pushed her hair back to cover the startled response to that thought, tried to refocus her thoughts. "They move like they're…" she didn't have words for it, again, the concept behind what she was noticing. "They don't run like we do, when we need to get somewhere on the ship in a hurry. They …"
"They move as if they have all the space in the world," Maia supplied. "Wide arms, careening off walls."
"We run tight and narrow," she nodded. Spaceships had come a long way even in her lifetime, but no one in centuries had developed any kind of a way to make an efficient spaceship that didn't have tight corridors, the occasional sharp corner, and on some models the doorways that both descended to hit you in the head and rose up to crack you in the shin. Shin-splitters, she'd heard them called.
"They don't have spaceship experience. Not combat experience in a space ship, anyway. They're not used to taking over space ships, but…" And now Maia leaned forward, frowning. "They are used to taking an area…"
"A building." It was the only possible solution. "Like planet-side law enforcement, they're used to taking buildings."
That was a sobering thought. The average military man wasn't accustomed to taking buildings with a team, nor was the average mercenary or law enforcement professional. Not in any of the nations she knew about or had had experience with. At the very least, it meant that they were one of the special units, the door-busters, the ones who were called in for hostage situations or terrorists. At worst…
… could this be someone's military agency? Either national or corporate, corporate military was trained in this manner, too. This was some sort of specialty group. Valerie was liking this less and less.
And they had known exactly what they were here for.
"They may be leaving their faces exposed but they're not carrying any insignia," Maia murmured. Valerie had noticed that, had figured it was just good business practice if your business was flying here and there around the fringes of the system attacking innocent courier ships and taking hostages. Prisoners. Then murdering them. Whatever they had hoped to accomplish by that.
Now that question nagged at her. What had they meant to accomplish by taking prisoners? Had they hoped to get something out of them before they killed them? Had they really thought she would trade her cargo for their lives? Would she have, if Ran hadn't pressed the issue then and there to his death?
Focus, Valerie. This is the task at hand, this is the issue here. Find out everything you can about these people from what you have been given. It's all there, if you want to look hard enough.
She heard the words in her head, only she heard them in his voice.
"They're not... They move as a unit. They move well-rehearsed, but they're not reacting to surprise well at all…" The surprise, here, was that some of the crew could and were more than willing to defend themselves. It seemed the initial collision of attackers and attacked was responsible for most of the prisoners currently enjoying her guest quarters.
Maia pursed her lips and thought that over for a moment. "Go back… rewind that?" Valerie did. "They are well rehearsed. They're well trained, and those series of movements there, that will be the signature series of movements, almost, for whoever trained them. But they don't have much in the way of real world experience. They haven't been given simulations against real people with paint or gel rounds to practice, they're not…"
"They're running it by the numbers," Valerie supplied. "They're not running it as though it was the real world. They're operating on the assumption that everything will work out as planned."
"They didn't plan on one stubborn as hell Captain and a crew that takes its cues from her," Maia said, and glanced over at Valerie with something like a tired smile that was gone very quickly. "We got lucky. Both sides, we both got lucky."
She wanted to disagree, but the woman was right. If these people were as well trained, therefore hair triggered, and inexperienced in the real world as Maia thought, and her crew certainly had never been up against an armed assault before, they were all lucky more people hadn't died. The worst she'd ever been in herself was a bar brawl, and she'd had backup she trusted. Dammit. Why does everything today come back to him?
Because the loss was still fresh in her mind. Because to solve his murder she would need the skills she had learned alongside him. Because of many things, but most of all because she ached for all the things she'd never said and all the things they'd never done and she missed his steady presence in her life. Even if it was just a call on the feed now and again.
And it had only been a day, maybe two at the most. She didn't want to think about what the rest of the time would be like.
The footage ended, switched over to the other ship. No, Valerie wasn't sure she could watch this. She stood. "I think … maybe you're right. It would be better if you did this alone. Unless you want me to send in someone…"
"No, thank you, Captain, I have everything I need." Maia touched her arm, soft, compassionate. Valerie didn't want compassion right now from an employee and relative stranger, she wanted to hit something. "I'll let you know when I have something more."
"Thank you," Valerie nodded, and fled.
Out to the bridge, the doors hissing shut behind her. Valerie leaned her head against them and sighed quietly, taking care not to draw attention from any of her bridge crew. They were still all going about their business, paying close attention to their stations, closer than usual. Kedrick was bent over her window, one hand pressed to her ear despite the utter lack of danger that her earpiece would fall out. Tanner and Kelstrom weren't even looking at each other, let alone talking with their usual irreverent banter.
No one had cracked more than a tiny smile on the ship in hours. Not since the attack. She knew why, she just couldn't comprehend that her crew, always on the lighter side of orderly, wasn't laughing.
"Any change?" She spoke to Kedrick in Eliot's absence; communications usually had an ear on what was going on. Everyone looked up at her, though.
"Nothing since you arrived up station, Captain." Kedrick looked tired. Her eyes looked bruised and red; Valerie wondered if something worse than usual had happened. Maybe usual wasn't the right word for it. "There's nothing on the news feeds. There's barely anything at all. We've been pushed back to the gossip columns and the small thirty second newsbytes."
Her hand closed on Kedrick's shoulder before she had time to think that maybe she wasn't in the best shape to be comforting someone. War in the offing on Crash's home planet, and now her ship was invaded. No wonder she was on the edge. "Do you need forty eight?" she asked, low and closer to the woman's ear, so that the rest of the bridge crew wouldn't hear. Not that they cared, but had she been in Crash's case she would have appreciated the discretion.
Kedrick started to shake her head, then changed her mind and nodded, swallowing. "There's a rumor…" she started, but it came out hoarse and choked up after that, so she swallowed and started again. "There's a rumor that Hourric is going to be invaded," she told her. Then shook her head. "It's just a rumor. They don't even say who they'd be invaded by, but…"
Valerie squeezed her shoulder again. "Take forty-eight. We can do without you, and Johns and Lubenko can take over a couple hours of your shift." She, herself, would take the middle. They didn't have enough personnel on board to spare for a replacement, but they'd all work to pick up the slack.
"Thank you, Captain," Kedrick whispered, taking off her earpiece and rising from her station with as much grace as she could manage. Heads lifted all over the bridge, but no one said anything. Tanner patted her arm as she moved past her.
Valerie looked after her for a moment, then sighed and took up her position at the communications station. No way to tell what was bothering Crash Kedrick, if anything more than what was to be expected, except by asking her. And she wasn't up for doing that just yet. With luck one or more of her friends would track her down and ask. She thought that she and Tanner were particularly close.
Kedrick was right about one thing, though, at least by implication if not by outright statement. The news feeds were empty of copy about the attack on their ship, and that was a little depressing.
They were mercenaries, Maia had said finally. They were hired by someone. And they came from Cöttingden. You might be able to find your answers there.
Well, she had. The only problem was that the contract under which they'd been hired looked nothing like the contract on file with the corporate court under the auspices of the hiring body. What they'd sent out as a contract and what these mercenaries believed they were supposed to do seemed like two very different things.
No, that wasn't the only problem. The other problem was the company putting out the contract.
Fallon & Pierce wasn't just any other company, they were the biggest player in the corporate courts. Maybe not the biggest company in terms of financial power or even in terms of geographic territory, but they owned the most pieces of the pie. They covered food, clothing, military resources, medicine, even some luxury items. If there was a household name, it was theirs. Valerie would have liked to believe that they had nothing to do with what had happened, and it was possible.
It had been a household name for her for entirely other reasons, reasons that she did not want to go revisiting for anything other than life or death matters. Ran would not have approved.
"Well, you're not here, aren't you," she muttered to the inner voice of her friend.
She took the shuttle down. Rocky ride, and most of it strapped in, and that meant she had far too much time to sit and think. About the last time she had spoken to Sienna, about the last things they'd said to each other. How it had been. It hadn't been ugly, their breakup, it hadn't even been that vicious, but it had hurt more than she had expected possibly for that exact reason, that it hadn't been either ugly or vicious. They had just drifted apart. Ran had asked her for months afterwards why she didn't just call the woman up just to say hello. Finally they'd fought over it and then they didn't speak for a couple of months.
She wondered if he had kept in contact with Sienna even after that fight, just him and her. She wondered why she didn't feel jealous about that. She wondered what Sienna would say when she told her that Ran was dead. They'd gotten along well together.
Valerie disembarked, pulling her hair out of the absurd hood that kept it in place on the shuttle ride down, stripping out of her shuttle clothes and folding the stupid bulky jumpsuit back into her bags. It really wasn't worth it coming planetside for just a day, but that was all she had while the Tommy was off on Papillion. It might, she thought, too, have been all she wanted. She didn't even know how much she wanted this meeting, nor did she have any idea how it was going to go.
That was what she really wanted, she decided. She wanted to know if she should be bracing herself or if she was able to relax and look forward to it. She hadn't spoken to Sienna in a long time. She didn't know what was going to happen.
Valerie fell asleep on the tram ride over, stress aside. She woke up with her hair plastered to her face from sweat and the vague taste of bad breath in her mouth, not the kind of image she wanted to present to the other woman. In the lobby she begged a moment before the receptionist called Sienna down, took five in the bathroom to wash her face and clean herself up. There were dark circles around her eyes, and her hair looked flat and limp. She was in captain's casual, which wasn't up to the kind of standards Fallon & Pierce maintained for their corporate executives.
At least Sienna wasn't out in the lobby when she made it outside the bathroom. She felt grungy, dirty. Underdressed.
"Valerie…"
Sienna's voice. Her back stiffened despite her best efforts to stay calm, she felt her face twisting. Instead of saying anything or turning immediately she took a couple of breaths, turned around.
She was still as pretty as she remembered. Not pretty, beautiful. Brilliant red hair short-cropped and framing her pixie face. Poise and grace packaged with wicked intelligence and perception. She remembered Ran saying that if she hadn't snapped her up, he would have. Which reminded her of why she was here, and made her shoulders slump and her gaze drop again. She pushed a hand through her mess of dark hair.
"Did they tell you why I'm here?" she asked after another couple of breaths, long enough for Sienna to look concerned, not long enough to give her boldness to step forward.
Sienna shook her head. "Only that you were coming to see me about some contractors of ours, hired by us, off the record…"
One arm crossed over her body, the other hand covered that elbow. She was so damn tired and she didn't want to repeat the stupid story yet again. "A couple days ago the Corsair was attacked. Pirates of some kind, we didn't know who, but…" This wasn't the hard part. "They went looking for either our passenger or the Mentalist we were ferrying, ultimately to Sagan."
She blinked. "The Mentalist wasn't your passenger?"
"No. We… took on another passenger. A favor for a friend. He was going where we were going, and…" Valerie swallowed. Made herself say the next words calmly and coolly, as though it was happening to someone else. "When we were attacked, they made straight for the passenger rooms. They took prisoners. They took them to their ship. They broadcast the feed over to the Corsair, I… they never said why. I think they were going to try to make me …"
Sienna took her arm, took her to the elevator. "Here, why don't we go upstairs."
It was the tone that snapped her back to the present. That kind of let's take care of the grieving widow tone, and was that really what she was? "I think they wanted to try and get something from me, some cargo or some information, in exchange for the prisoners' lives. Ran couldn't have that, of course, he started mouthing off the way he does, and…"
Sienna's eyes widened, then. No, she really hadn't heard the news, and they really had buried it that deeply. And she wasn't keeping an eye on the Corsair anymore. That stung Valerie more than she'd expected, less than she'd thought.
"Ran was on the…"
She talked right over Sienna. "… and they shot him in the face." If she had to live with it, so did Sienna.
Her pretty eyes went wide, and she took a step back. And then another, until she was leaning up against the wall of the elevator. Valerie couldn't really fault her that response, at least; she still felt sick remembering it. The gunshot. The mess it had made. Dark hair over pale forehead and all of it spattered with shards of bone and blood and oh she was going to be sick if they didn't stop very damn soon.
They did. They stopped at Sienna's floor, which consisted of her office and only one other person's office. Her office had a view, too. Valerie didn't quite bolt for the window but it was a near thing, pressing her palms to the glass and leaning her forehead against the cool, smooth surface. Staring out at the blue skies, green landscape below. Terraforming at its best. She wondered what color this planet should be before everyone had taken to space and started meddling.
"He's dead?"
Her strangled voice sounded exactly as Valerie had imagined. Would have imagined. As she had wanted to sound herself except she'd had a ship to run and people to protect, a murder, an attack to investigate or at least pursue an investigation on, reports to file. People at her company to contact. She'd been too busy to let her voice crack when discussing the attack.
"They shot him in the face, Sienna, you don't exactly live through that and even if you do…" Oh, there went her lunch again. That was even worse than her first thought.
Sienna's hand closed on her shoulder, slid down over her back. She leaned into the other woman, too exhausted to care whether or not this was a good idea. It was hard to say unless she really focused and went based on the dates and times she knew for a fact, how long it had been since Ran had died. Shot on that other ship. Alone. Surrounded by enemies, or at the very least, other prisoners. Now that she had started she couldn't stop thinking about it.
"I'm sorry," came the murmur from beside her cheek. Valerie nodded a little, and Sienna hugged tighter.
She obliged them both by putting an arm around the redhead's waist and holding on tight. He'd been her friend first, but he'd been a friend to both of them eventually. It still hurt.
And Valerie was still a Captain, with a self-assigned job to do. She stepped away after she had managed to lock it back down under the usual fog of old memories, stomping it back into its box. "The mercenaries…"
Sienna flinched.
Just a bit. Just a very small bit and if she hadn't been looking for some sign of recognition in her former lover, probably also if she hadn't just brought up their friend's death she wouldn't have seen it. But it was a flinch. It was enough to tell her something even if she didn't know what it meant.
She started again, more watchful. "The mercenaries who attacked me, they were off Cottingden. They were hired by Fallon & Pierce. Do you know anything about that?"
Sienna gave her a strange look, as well she might. She was involved in research and development, not contracts with hired killers. Not unless they were defending her people in a contested zone, anyway, and Valerie was pretty sure she would have heard about that if that were the case.
"Why would I know anything about that?" she gave the predictable answer. "My department doesn't deal in military contracts, weapons development, anything like that."
Valerie gave a slight shrug and an inscrutable expression. "Gossip around the water cooler. I don't know. I'm not officially authorized to investigate this, and you were the only one I knew in a position to know anything about this." And then she had to say something to lessen the sting out of it, make it sound less impersonal. Even if she wasn't sure she meant it all the way. "I was coming here anyway to tell you. Figured I might as well ask."
The other woman relaxed from the tensed, clenched up posture she'd started to adopt. It was a likely excuse. It made a certain amount of sense.
"I don't know anything. I know that we do send out contracts to mercenary companies for self defense, for training, for escort work, but…"
Valerie thought about showing her a copy of the contract, decided against it. "Is there any way one of these contracts could be falsified, or if not falsified, could the records or mandate be altered so that they read like something else instead of …" Whatever it was they had originally been hired to do. She wasn't supposed to know that. If she knew that this looked more like an investigation instead of an idle question asked by a grieving friend.
"I… I don't think so," Sienna shook her head slowly. "I suppose anything can be counterfeited, it's a very lucrative industry in the black market, but … I don't know of anyone who's managed to do it. I've never heard of it being done."
She was shaken, too, by the news. If she was shaken by just hearing the news, Valerie thought then, what must she be feeling when she had seen him die on a live feed? What should she be feeling that she wasn't?
Valerie nodded, more shaken by the realization that this was going to hit her someday soon and she was going to hurt over it than the lies her former lover had told her.
"Captain," Maia nodded appropriately, not deferential, not scornful or wondering (at least where everyone could see) whether or not her commanding officer was capable of continuing or whether she was too overcome by the loss of her friend.
Or maybe that was just in her head. Maybe there was no such rumor or idea in anyone's head. Well, Eliot's. But it was his job to wonder such things.
She gestured to Maia to have a seat next to her rather than across from. They would both be watching the footage, they should both sit equal. "I didn't have a plan for this," she admitted. "I've had some experience analyzing details of people and their circumstances, but never anything like this."
Her security chief gave her a look that ran the gamut from puzzled to impressed, passing through thoughtful on the way there. "It's not all that different from what you may be used to," she said, but she said it slowly, hesitant, evidently, to judge what Valerie was used to. Job interviews were the first thing that came to her mind to explain away the talents but the truth was that she and Ran had had these kinds of idle conversations for years. Betting on who was what, then taking turns going up and flirting until they found out.
"I'm sure it is," Valerie smiled a little, thinking of some of those afternoons on the Academy campus, watching the first year students. "But nonetheless, shall we see what we can see?"
Maia still didn't sit down. "It may be harder than you think…" without the honorific. Interesting.
"What do you mean?"
The other woman folded her arms. "We're going to be watching the footage of your friend's death. We're going to be watching an attack on the ship, people getting injured, some people dying. Your people. Are you sure you can handle that?"
It was a valid question, and it still pissed her off. She bit back the reprimand she wanted to spit out in her security chief's face for questioning her courage, or perhaps her ability to command. It wasn't like that, she reminded herself. She commanded a courier ship, not a military vessel. She wasn't even in the military, had never been. So it was a valid question. And it still stung.
"We'll find out," she said, after a couple of breaths and when she trusted herself to speak again without biting the other woman's head off. Maia nodded, and finally took her seat.
They watched the footage of the other ship capturing the umbilicus. The first thing that struck Valerie was the skill of the other pilot. She frowned. "Not everyone could dock a ship to another ship that way, not that quickly," she mused out loud, rewinding the footage to note the time markers. How quick it was, that was something she could cross-check, at least with Academy records and those of other space flight schools. Students kept records of who had the best times at everything, who was the biggest daredevil. It at least would give her some names to talk to, or about.
Maia nodded slightly. "Someone who' s had experience piloting ships, both that kind of ship and this one."
"How do you come by that conclusion?" Valerie glanced sideways.
"Look here… where they forced us to maneuver around them or with them or be collided with? They know what this ship can do, the limits of her range of movement. That requires that they be familiar with this ship as well as theirs…"
"Which means they at least have a range of familiarity with courier class ships. That thing can't be anything … maybe a go-fast ship, but it can't be much out of that class."
Huh. Something to note, for certain. She wondered how many people specialized to that extent in piloting a certain class of ship. Probably more than she thought. She played the recording again.
"They're organized," was the next thing that came out of her mouth. She didn't know how to explain it better than that, but it struck her deeply. The way they came through the umbilicus, two point men going left and right once they hit the ship without stopping to check if their backup was behind them. Which implied something else. "They're organized, and they've worked together before. They trust each other."
Maia's sideways glance was more impressed this time than curious or confused. "They're probably military, or ex-military. One of the first nations, or maybe one of the more advanced protectorates. They'd have to be, there aren't many mercenary organizations with this level of training and certainly none that would jeopardize their reputations like this."
"Mmph." But that was also something to factor into her thinking, something she noted down on her stylus pad. Whoever these people were they either wanted to make their reputations as pirates, or weren't concerned with the kind of reputation attacking a courier ship would bring, or they were confident enough that their true identities wouldn't be discovered to do it openly. "And without face coverings…" she realized in a murmur. Maia nodded again, very slightly.
Valerie paused the tape again. "I'll see if I …" she started, then stopped as she ran into the problem of just where to send these photos. "We'll have to get still shots of their faces after this, as many as we can. Someone may know who they are, if we can narrow down the search parameters."
The tiniest hint of a smile curved up the edges of Maia's mouth. She was a lot prettier when she smiled like that, Valerie noticed, but it wasn't the kind of smile she'd want directed at her. Focus, she reminded herself. This was far from the time or the place. And on the heels of that, you're only thinking about her like that because you miss Ran.
Focus.
She started the tape again.
There was no sound in the room but their steady, even breathing. There was plenty of sound coming from the tape: boot heels on the carpet making steady, rapid thuds even as padded as the floor was. The sound of gunfire. Shouts and orders in a language she didn't understand, the harsh and guttural sounds alien to her upbringing. "Do we have a translator…" she asked Maia, who shook her head. As much as they were couriers, they didn't necessarily need to read the messages they brought. Just to ensure that they got there intact and on time.
"The Mentalist might have a familiarity with the language," her security chief offered, though. "From what I understand of them they have to be versed in the language they're carrying the message in to understand it and convey that understanding accurately, the nuances of it. Not just mimic."
Valerie had heard the same thing, and nodded. "They have to be familiar with several languages, yes, but whether or not he's familiar with this one…" It was also a little strange to her to hear someone else call the Tommy by his proper title, not the way she did. Maybe that was a habit she should see about curbing.
"You can ask, at least."
Resume play. There wasn't much to tell with the smoke, but the fact that they used gas bombs and flash bangs was interesting in and of itself. It also answered the question of where Eliot had gotten them. Looted off a prisoner or a corpse.
Eliot looted a corpse?
Valerie pushed her hair back to cover the startled response to that thought, tried to refocus her thoughts. "They move like they're…" she didn't have words for it, again, the concept behind what she was noticing. "They don't run like we do, when we need to get somewhere on the ship in a hurry. They …"
"They move as if they have all the space in the world," Maia supplied. "Wide arms, careening off walls."
"We run tight and narrow," she nodded. Spaceships had come a long way even in her lifetime, but no one in centuries had developed any kind of a way to make an efficient spaceship that didn't have tight corridors, the occasional sharp corner, and on some models the doorways that both descended to hit you in the head and rose up to crack you in the shin. Shin-splitters, she'd heard them called.
"They don't have spaceship experience. Not combat experience in a space ship, anyway. They're not used to taking over space ships, but…" And now Maia leaned forward, frowning. "They are used to taking an area…"
"A building." It was the only possible solution. "Like planet-side law enforcement, they're used to taking buildings."
That was a sobering thought. The average military man wasn't accustomed to taking buildings with a team, nor was the average mercenary or law enforcement professional. Not in any of the nations she knew about or had had experience with. At the very least, it meant that they were one of the special units, the door-busters, the ones who were called in for hostage situations or terrorists. At worst…
… could this be someone's military agency? Either national or corporate, corporate military was trained in this manner, too. This was some sort of specialty group. Valerie was liking this less and less.
And they had known exactly what they were here for.
"They may be leaving their faces exposed but they're not carrying any insignia," Maia murmured. Valerie had noticed that, had figured it was just good business practice if your business was flying here and there around the fringes of the system attacking innocent courier ships and taking hostages. Prisoners. Then murdering them. Whatever they had hoped to accomplish by that.
Now that question nagged at her. What had they meant to accomplish by taking prisoners? Had they hoped to get something out of them before they killed them? Had they really thought she would trade her cargo for their lives? Would she have, if Ran hadn't pressed the issue then and there to his death?
Focus, Valerie. This is the task at hand, this is the issue here. Find out everything you can about these people from what you have been given. It's all there, if you want to look hard enough.
She heard the words in her head, only she heard them in his voice.
"They're not... They move as a unit. They move well-rehearsed, but they're not reacting to surprise well at all…" The surprise, here, was that some of the crew could and were more than willing to defend themselves. It seemed the initial collision of attackers and attacked was responsible for most of the prisoners currently enjoying her guest quarters.
Maia pursed her lips and thought that over for a moment. "Go back… rewind that?" Valerie did. "They are well rehearsed. They're well trained, and those series of movements there, that will be the signature series of movements, almost, for whoever trained them. But they don't have much in the way of real world experience. They haven't been given simulations against real people with paint or gel rounds to practice, they're not…"
"They're running it by the numbers," Valerie supplied. "They're not running it as though it was the real world. They're operating on the assumption that everything will work out as planned."
"They didn't plan on one stubborn as hell Captain and a crew that takes its cues from her," Maia said, and glanced over at Valerie with something like a tired smile that was gone very quickly. "We got lucky. Both sides, we both got lucky."
She wanted to disagree, but the woman was right. If these people were as well trained, therefore hair triggered, and inexperienced in the real world as Maia thought, and her crew certainly had never been up against an armed assault before, they were all lucky more people hadn't died. The worst she'd ever been in herself was a bar brawl, and she'd had backup she trusted. Dammit. Why does everything today come back to him?
Because the loss was still fresh in her mind. Because to solve his murder she would need the skills she had learned alongside him. Because of many things, but most of all because she ached for all the things she'd never said and all the things they'd never done and she missed his steady presence in her life. Even if it was just a call on the feed now and again.
And it had only been a day, maybe two at the most. She didn't want to think about what the rest of the time would be like.
The footage ended, switched over to the other ship. No, Valerie wasn't sure she could watch this. She stood. "I think … maybe you're right. It would be better if you did this alone. Unless you want me to send in someone…"
"No, thank you, Captain, I have everything I need." Maia touched her arm, soft, compassionate. Valerie didn't want compassion right now from an employee and relative stranger, she wanted to hit something. "I'll let you know when I have something more."
"Thank you," Valerie nodded, and fled.
Out to the bridge, the doors hissing shut behind her. Valerie leaned her head against them and sighed quietly, taking care not to draw attention from any of her bridge crew. They were still all going about their business, paying close attention to their stations, closer than usual. Kedrick was bent over her window, one hand pressed to her ear despite the utter lack of danger that her earpiece would fall out. Tanner and Kelstrom weren't even looking at each other, let alone talking with their usual irreverent banter.
No one had cracked more than a tiny smile on the ship in hours. Not since the attack. She knew why, she just couldn't comprehend that her crew, always on the lighter side of orderly, wasn't laughing.
"Any change?" She spoke to Kedrick in Eliot's absence; communications usually had an ear on what was going on. Everyone looked up at her, though.
"Nothing since you arrived up station, Captain." Kedrick looked tired. Her eyes looked bruised and red; Valerie wondered if something worse than usual had happened. Maybe usual wasn't the right word for it. "There's nothing on the news feeds. There's barely anything at all. We've been pushed back to the gossip columns and the small thirty second newsbytes."
Her hand closed on Kedrick's shoulder before she had time to think that maybe she wasn't in the best shape to be comforting someone. War in the offing on Crash's home planet, and now her ship was invaded. No wonder she was on the edge. "Do you need forty eight?" she asked, low and closer to the woman's ear, so that the rest of the bridge crew wouldn't hear. Not that they cared, but had she been in Crash's case she would have appreciated the discretion.
Kedrick started to shake her head, then changed her mind and nodded, swallowing. "There's a rumor…" she started, but it came out hoarse and choked up after that, so she swallowed and started again. "There's a rumor that Hourric is going to be invaded," she told her. Then shook her head. "It's just a rumor. They don't even say who they'd be invaded by, but…"
Valerie squeezed her shoulder again. "Take forty-eight. We can do without you, and Johns and Lubenko can take over a couple hours of your shift." She, herself, would take the middle. They didn't have enough personnel on board to spare for a replacement, but they'd all work to pick up the slack.
"Thank you, Captain," Kedrick whispered, taking off her earpiece and rising from her station with as much grace as she could manage. Heads lifted all over the bridge, but no one said anything. Tanner patted her arm as she moved past her.
Valerie looked after her for a moment, then sighed and took up her position at the communications station. No way to tell what was bothering Crash Kedrick, if anything more than what was to be expected, except by asking her. And she wasn't up for doing that just yet. With luck one or more of her friends would track her down and ask. She thought that she and Tanner were particularly close.
Kedrick was right about one thing, though, at least by implication if not by outright statement. The news feeds were empty of copy about the attack on their ship, and that was a little depressing.
They were mercenaries, Maia had said finally. They were hired by someone. And they came from Cöttingden. You might be able to find your answers there.
Well, she had. The only problem was that the contract under which they'd been hired looked nothing like the contract on file with the corporate court under the auspices of the hiring body. What they'd sent out as a contract and what these mercenaries believed they were supposed to do seemed like two very different things.
No, that wasn't the only problem. The other problem was the company putting out the contract.
Fallon & Pierce wasn't just any other company, they were the biggest player in the corporate courts. Maybe not the biggest company in terms of financial power or even in terms of geographic territory, but they owned the most pieces of the pie. They covered food, clothing, military resources, medicine, even some luxury items. If there was a household name, it was theirs. Valerie would have liked to believe that they had nothing to do with what had happened, and it was possible.
It had been a household name for her for entirely other reasons, reasons that she did not want to go revisiting for anything other than life or death matters. Ran would not have approved.
"Well, you're not here, aren't you," she muttered to the inner voice of her friend.
She took the shuttle down. Rocky ride, and most of it strapped in, and that meant she had far too much time to sit and think. About the last time she had spoken to Sienna, about the last things they'd said to each other. How it had been. It hadn't been ugly, their breakup, it hadn't even been that vicious, but it had hurt more than she had expected possibly for that exact reason, that it hadn't been either ugly or vicious. They had just drifted apart. Ran had asked her for months afterwards why she didn't just call the woman up just to say hello. Finally they'd fought over it and then they didn't speak for a couple of months.
She wondered if he had kept in contact with Sienna even after that fight, just him and her. She wondered why she didn't feel jealous about that. She wondered what Sienna would say when she told her that Ran was dead. They'd gotten along well together.
Valerie disembarked, pulling her hair out of the absurd hood that kept it in place on the shuttle ride down, stripping out of her shuttle clothes and folding the stupid bulky jumpsuit back into her bags. It really wasn't worth it coming planetside for just a day, but that was all she had while the Tommy was off on Papillion. It might, she thought, too, have been all she wanted. She didn't even know how much she wanted this meeting, nor did she have any idea how it was going to go.
That was what she really wanted, she decided. She wanted to know if she should be bracing herself or if she was able to relax and look forward to it. She hadn't spoken to Sienna in a long time. She didn't know what was going to happen.
Valerie fell asleep on the tram ride over, stress aside. She woke up with her hair plastered to her face from sweat and the vague taste of bad breath in her mouth, not the kind of image she wanted to present to the other woman. In the lobby she begged a moment before the receptionist called Sienna down, took five in the bathroom to wash her face and clean herself up. There were dark circles around her eyes, and her hair looked flat and limp. She was in captain's casual, which wasn't up to the kind of standards Fallon & Pierce maintained for their corporate executives.
At least Sienna wasn't out in the lobby when she made it outside the bathroom. She felt grungy, dirty. Underdressed.
"Valerie…"
Sienna's voice. Her back stiffened despite her best efforts to stay calm, she felt her face twisting. Instead of saying anything or turning immediately she took a couple of breaths, turned around.
She was still as pretty as she remembered. Not pretty, beautiful. Brilliant red hair short-cropped and framing her pixie face. Poise and grace packaged with wicked intelligence and perception. She remembered Ran saying that if she hadn't snapped her up, he would have. Which reminded her of why she was here, and made her shoulders slump and her gaze drop again. She pushed a hand through her mess of dark hair.
"Did they tell you why I'm here?" she asked after another couple of breaths, long enough for Sienna to look concerned, not long enough to give her boldness to step forward.
Sienna shook her head. "Only that you were coming to see me about some contractors of ours, hired by us, off the record…"
One arm crossed over her body, the other hand covered that elbow. She was so damn tired and she didn't want to repeat the stupid story yet again. "A couple days ago the Corsair was attacked. Pirates of some kind, we didn't know who, but…" This wasn't the hard part. "They went looking for either our passenger or the Mentalist we were ferrying, ultimately to Sagan."
She blinked. "The Mentalist wasn't your passenger?"
"No. We… took on another passenger. A favor for a friend. He was going where we were going, and…" Valerie swallowed. Made herself say the next words calmly and coolly, as though it was happening to someone else. "When we were attacked, they made straight for the passenger rooms. They took prisoners. They took them to their ship. They broadcast the feed over to the Corsair, I… they never said why. I think they were going to try to make me …"
Sienna took her arm, took her to the elevator. "Here, why don't we go upstairs."
It was the tone that snapped her back to the present. That kind of let's take care of the grieving widow tone, and was that really what she was? "I think they wanted to try and get something from me, some cargo or some information, in exchange for the prisoners' lives. Ran couldn't have that, of course, he started mouthing off the way he does, and…"
Sienna's eyes widened, then. No, she really hadn't heard the news, and they really had buried it that deeply. And she wasn't keeping an eye on the Corsair anymore. That stung Valerie more than she'd expected, less than she'd thought.
"Ran was on the…"
She talked right over Sienna. "… and they shot him in the face." If she had to live with it, so did Sienna.
Her pretty eyes went wide, and she took a step back. And then another, until she was leaning up against the wall of the elevator. Valerie couldn't really fault her that response, at least; she still felt sick remembering it. The gunshot. The mess it had made. Dark hair over pale forehead and all of it spattered with shards of bone and blood and oh she was going to be sick if they didn't stop very damn soon.
They did. They stopped at Sienna's floor, which consisted of her office and only one other person's office. Her office had a view, too. Valerie didn't quite bolt for the window but it was a near thing, pressing her palms to the glass and leaning her forehead against the cool, smooth surface. Staring out at the blue skies, green landscape below. Terraforming at its best. She wondered what color this planet should be before everyone had taken to space and started meddling.
"He's dead?"
Her strangled voice sounded exactly as Valerie had imagined. Would have imagined. As she had wanted to sound herself except she'd had a ship to run and people to protect, a murder, an attack to investigate or at least pursue an investigation on, reports to file. People at her company to contact. She'd been too busy to let her voice crack when discussing the attack.
"They shot him in the face, Sienna, you don't exactly live through that and even if you do…" Oh, there went her lunch again. That was even worse than her first thought.
Sienna's hand closed on her shoulder, slid down over her back. She leaned into the other woman, too exhausted to care whether or not this was a good idea. It was hard to say unless she really focused and went based on the dates and times she knew for a fact, how long it had been since Ran had died. Shot on that other ship. Alone. Surrounded by enemies, or at the very least, other prisoners. Now that she had started she couldn't stop thinking about it.
"I'm sorry," came the murmur from beside her cheek. Valerie nodded a little, and Sienna hugged tighter.
She obliged them both by putting an arm around the redhead's waist and holding on tight. He'd been her friend first, but he'd been a friend to both of them eventually. It still hurt.
And Valerie was still a Captain, with a self-assigned job to do. She stepped away after she had managed to lock it back down under the usual fog of old memories, stomping it back into its box. "The mercenaries…"
Sienna flinched.
Just a bit. Just a very small bit and if she hadn't been looking for some sign of recognition in her former lover, probably also if she hadn't just brought up their friend's death she wouldn't have seen it. But it was a flinch. It was enough to tell her something even if she didn't know what it meant.
She started again, more watchful. "The mercenaries who attacked me, they were off Cottingden. They were hired by Fallon & Pierce. Do you know anything about that?"
Sienna gave her a strange look, as well she might. She was involved in research and development, not contracts with hired killers. Not unless they were defending her people in a contested zone, anyway, and Valerie was pretty sure she would have heard about that if that were the case.
"Why would I know anything about that?" she gave the predictable answer. "My department doesn't deal in military contracts, weapons development, anything like that."
Valerie gave a slight shrug and an inscrutable expression. "Gossip around the water cooler. I don't know. I'm not officially authorized to investigate this, and you were the only one I knew in a position to know anything about this." And then she had to say something to lessen the sting out of it, make it sound less impersonal. Even if she wasn't sure she meant it all the way. "I was coming here anyway to tell you. Figured I might as well ask."
The other woman relaxed from the tensed, clenched up posture she'd started to adopt. It was a likely excuse. It made a certain amount of sense.
"I don't know anything. I know that we do send out contracts to mercenary companies for self defense, for training, for escort work, but…"
Valerie thought about showing her a copy of the contract, decided against it. "Is there any way one of these contracts could be falsified, or if not falsified, could the records or mandate be altered so that they read like something else instead of …" Whatever it was they had originally been hired to do. She wasn't supposed to know that. If she knew that this looked more like an investigation instead of an idle question asked by a grieving friend.
"I… I don't think so," Sienna shook her head slowly. "I suppose anything can be counterfeited, it's a very lucrative industry in the black market, but … I don't know of anyone who's managed to do it. I've never heard of it being done."
She was shaken, too, by the news. If she was shaken by just hearing the news, Valerie thought then, what must she be feeling when she had seen him die on a live feed? What should she be feeling that she wasn't?
Valerie nodded, more shaken by the realization that this was going to hit her someday soon and she was going to hurt over it than the lies her former lover had told her.