Old Flames: Accidentally Briefed
Posted on 12 Feb 2024 @ 10:31pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Loki III, Admiral Madison Indri's Ranch
Timeline: Day 23 Early Afternoon ("Following Old School and New")"
1871 words - 3.7 OF Standard Post Measure
Driving a ground vehicle was something Gordon hadn’t had cause to do for quite some time. It helped that the roads between the Kalaran spaceport landings and Indri’s ranch on the outskirts were wide open and that there was on board navigation. At first he drove like the old man he was, hunched over the wheel and squinting; but as he went, the long familiar feeling of the ground peeling away and dust kicking under the heavy terrain tires relaxed him and his old eyes came to life behind his shades. It was nice getting some wind in his hair. It was just like memories of days gone by, traveling to the next story and tracking down interviewees and informers who liked to keep off the radar.
Looking to pass the time and help him to stay focused as he combated the desert glare, Gordon switched through the receiver trying to pick up on a Kalaran broadcast. There were exactly two stations, both of them in a dialect the Universal Translator was doing a very hamfisted job with, making it more difficult than just listening to the pitch and rhythm of the language itself alone might have been. He switched off his comm’s automated translation so he could appreciate the natural intonations. Someone was very fired up, spitting into the mic with emphasis, almost like an old time earth preacher, he thought. He switched to the second station and decided to stay with that one as long as they were playing the flute and drum music: It did have a nice beat for driving.
There was a sign demarcating the drive to turn into for the ranch, but the letters had been completely sandblasted off- if it had ever had any lettering on it to begin with. It didn’t look like Indri cared very much to name her Ranch. It was known around town as the Ranch of Indri or Admiral’s Ranch. That had been enough for him to get directions— at least he hoped this was actually the turn. The desert still stretched out, the outline of the mountains standing out starkly over the hot sand stretch. Here the ground began to form the foothills, forcing an occasional climb and some shifting of the vehicle’s gears.
Gordon jammed on the break as a dust cloud shrouded some kind of obstruction in the road ahead… A moving mass of… what looked to Gordon to be giant ostrich-raptors was racing across the road, looking like they were trying to outrun something. Twisting, Gordon tried to see what had them beating their giant clawed bird feet. Toward the rear of the procession he made out some hover bikes through the dust, which couldn’t have posed the dinosaur birds much threat.
The radio started to squeal, picking up on some signal which cut through the music and as quickly as Gordon switched it off it stopped.
The herders had to be using some kind of frequency that instilled a terror in the powerful raptor-ostriches. As they stampeded by, he caught a better look at the ones that came closest; He imagined they could apply their serrated beaks and curved talons to rip through an unarmored vehicle like his with about as much effort as opening a tin can... Eventually, as the birds and bikes cleared the road, beating their thunderous way downhill, Gordon breathed a little easier once more and restarted his vehicle.
“Stillwell?”
Gordon very nearly jumped through the roof. A Klingon woman, her battle scarred face decked out in reflective goggles and her wild grayed hair worked into dreadlocks, was straddling a hoverbike and leaning into his driver side door; not having noticed her loop around and pull along beside him, she’d caught him off guard.
“Qap’la, you old bastard!”
“Korin?” he said, recognition returning to him as the shock passed. She may have grayed, but the battlescars remained the same. That the tough old Klingon woman’s name was the same as the latest race in peril of which he was now concerned struck him as a strange, if meaningless, coincidence. “You’re here too? Of course you’re here too.” She’d been with Madison since the war.
“What brings you to the ranch? You come to see me, eh?” she grunted and waggled her eyebrows teasingly.
Gordon swung a forearm over the wheel, aiming to look as suave as he once had felt. “As tempting a proposition as ever, Korin. But I was just hoping to pay a visit and get a sense of the place. I might as well, while I’m in the region, you know?”
“Ha!” Korin grunted a chuckle, not misled as to Gordon’s true purpose. It had been the better part of a decade since he had last come calling for Indri, in another star system, far away. But some things would never change. “The Admiral will be returning shortly. She left earlier for an errand.” Korin said as if she had just popped into town for some figs. “Continue up this road and turn left when you see the fence line ahead. There is a hanger, you may park inside. The house is visible from there. Make yourself at home, Stillwell.” Her eyebrows once again accentuated her meaning. “As you have always been.”
Before he could reply, she switched her hover bike back out of park, pulled on the handlebars and gained altitude, keening to the right and away to continue encouraging the movement of the bipedal stock into their next active forcefield pen.
The noise of the stampede grew distant and the dust cloud settled gradually. He resettled himself in his seat and continued on the road as Korin had advised. Sure enough, following a rocky outcropping, there was nestled a number of sheds and a hanger. Many other buggies and vehicles lined the way outside of the hanger, with a few native obsidianites and romulans and others coming and going with supplies and materials.
Gordon was impressed. It truly was an active Ranch and not just some dustbowl property. Korin had told him to park inside of the hanger, but the doors were rolled half closed, as if the hoverbikes had been the last thing to have been made admittance for, and Gordon felt he could operate them the rest of the way without making himself a nuisance to any of the work going on. As he hopped out of the door of the rover, the ranch hands were too busy to address him and must have been accustomed to strangers coming and going. Maybe salesmen, deliveries, buyers, and other guests, Gordon thought. It wasn’t a very high security installation at any rate.
As he sauntered up to the hanger door, he regarded the mechanism to see which way to pull or push to get the thing to slide, but just as he laid hands on it and started to lean and brace so as to get the leverage and push he needed, his ear came close to the corrugated metal, and he heard voices on the opposite side.
The first voice, the one that made his ears perk with recognition, was Maddi’s. “Well, we can pay the head price again, just get them rounded up and released to us.”
“With all due respect, Admiral, I've seen your books. I don’t think you can make the price this time.” The other voice, the voice of a young man who sounded fluent in standard but with a musical tone similar to Obsidianite speech replied.
Gordon suspected maybe Maddi was making some deal for buying some of those dinosaur birds. He waited, not meaning to eavesdrop, but not wanting to interrupt her business, either.
“This time? Are they changing the rates?” Madison asked.
“With Starfleet now breathing down everyone’s neck, the cost of ransoms keeps going up”
Gordon froze, realizing they weren’t talking about dealing in livestock, but in people. Maddi and this guy were discussing buying out slaves or prisoners or something.
“Shit,” Madison swore. “I’m never sure if the Fleet makes things better or worse. Well. Can we buy out some of them, at least? Until I can get the next run to market? Will Saluz extend us another loan, maybe?”
“I’m not sure there is time. By the time we find the money, they may no longer be accepting ransom at all. There is a rumor that the camp will soon be abandoned. I’ve tried to get information from Olnibeb and from my inside friend on the north guard, but no one knows the location they have been moved to since the last three lunar cycles.” His voice was starting to crack with desperation. “What if we cannot locate them and they are left to the desert’s will? What if my sister—”
“It’s just a rumor, just a rumor.” Maddi was soothing him with some gentle shushing. “Hopefully we have some more time than that. I’ll get Korin to take my ride out to the bush and check for kids on the rocks before sunset. Meanwhile I’ll ride into town to talk to Hazami myself, okay? He probably knows something, or knows someone who does.”
“I already tried Hazami’s court. Hazami is not in the city. His palace guard turned me away.”
“Damn. Okay. Well. We’ll try to scrounge the head price. Meantime I’ll shake out some of my contacts on West End Cou'a'hali Tower, to see if they’ve absorbed any guard changes from the north. Maybe some palms can be greased to find out the location of—”
Gordon felt the handle turn in his hand as Indri forced the slide open from the other side, and there he was, standing dumbly face to face with her, by small mercy still wearing his shades, although he wasn’t sure they were doing much to hide his surprise, or to shield him from hers.
“When the hell did you get here?” Madison demanded to know.
Gordon found himself stunned by the force of her will in her posture and her projection. Age stole nothing from her in his eye, even if it was uncomfortable being the subject of her ire, caught as he was in eavesdropping. Behind her stood a willowy Obsidianite young man wearing vulcan-style desert clothing and looking on uncertainly.
Well, there was no point in hiding anything from Maddi. In all his years with her, she had tended to find things out one way or another in the end. He’d always told himself he couldn’t keep more than the one lie from her. And he could only bear maintaining just that one terrible secret seeing as it was the last promise he’d made to his closest friend.
“I arrived at about the part where you were guessing the going rate on ransoms these days.” Gordon deadpanned his own reply. “But before the part about picking up abandoned children. I’m not sure what I missed prior to that. You aren’t planning to overthrow the sitting Suranj, are you?”
“Goddammit, Gordon.”
“Yes that was my feeling precisely.”
