FSE

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--- Knock Knock

The door chime caught Lance by surprise. How had he missed the maintenance elevator? Monitoring the building's security channels was one of his few indulgences while staying with Reg, yet somehow this had evaded his notice. Reg never had visitors, except for Becka, and she was already here. Lance was confused and not entirely sure what to do. His holo-presence materialized in the bedroom where Reg lay spooned with Becka.

"Ahem... AHEM!... Reg? Reg, someone is at the door", said Lance.

Reg groaned a barely coherent, "So?", as the chime sounded again.

"There is someone at the door, requesting entry", repeated the AI.

"Go see who it is, and then tell them to go away", he mumbled as he reasserted his place as the larger spoon.

"What am I now, your butler?", aggrieved Lance sarcastically.

"I'm not asking you to fetch my slippers, just make the beeping stop", he growled as the chime sounded a third time.

Lance's hologram dissolved, then resolved outside the door to the apartment. His projection was now twenty percent larger than normal, in hopes that it would be somewhat intimidating. In some circumstances this may have worked, and certainly would have had a better chance of working this time, if he had also lowered the pitch of his voice by an octave. Instead, the result was an over average sized felinoid, trying to sound curt and tough, with a voice more fitting someone much smaller.

"Can I help you?", he asked.

The figure pulled back its hood, still dripping from the rain outside, revealing the black furred head of a female mephitine with green eyes. "You must be Lance", she said, "I am looking for Captain Reginald Ferimon."

"On what business?", asked the hologram.

The skunk produced her ident card. "Employment."

The fact that she presented the card directly to Lance's hologram, as if he were physically standing there, was not lost on the AI. She could have just as easily held it up to the door's optics, but this was a subtle display of social recognition. Acknowledgment that she was dealing with a fellow sentient. Lance returned the gesture by tilting his head as if to better read the card, even though the door's security panel could read it easily in any position, and his holographic eyes had nothing to do with vision.

The sudden widening of Lance's eyes was due to a completely different and less subtle display of recognition. "Just... just one moment", he stuttered, and his image dissolved.

It resolved again, back in the bedroom, still twenty percent larger than normal.

"Reg, you have an important visitor. I suggest you get dressed", he said as the lights snapped on.

Becka started to rouse, but thought better of it, and pulled a pillow over her head to block out the light.

"What? Who?", Reg asked, as he sat up, squinting in the brightness.

"Internal Security", said Lance. "Your slippers are next to the bed."

--- The Visitor

Reg swore to himself. "Internal security? What could they possibly want? Better let them in, Lance", he grumbled, "Before they get impatient and do it themselves."

Lance's hologram vanished from the bedroom.

"And check your projector settings, your scale is out of alignment", he said into the now empty space.

Reg swiveled himself into a sitting position on the side of the bed, and braced himself for the room's attempt to continue rotating without him, but it didn't happen. He was finally acclimating to planetary gravity. 'About bloody time', he thought to himself as he began fitting his toes into his slippers.

Standing up, he stumbled forward into the wall, and clung to it. Realizing that his assessment may have been a little premature, he waited a few seconds before pushing himself away from the wall. At least the room was no longer spinning when he moved, that was progress. Tilting and leaning like some twisted carnival mirror, yes, but not spinning.

"Who is it, Reg?", came Becka's muffled voice from under her pillow.

"No idea, love. I'm sure its nothing. Go back to sleep", he replied as he tied a robe about himself. Dialing the lights back down, he carefully made his way to the hall, dragging one hand against the wall for support as he went.

---

Lance unlocked and opened the door as his normal sized projection appeared in the entry. "Please come in, Reg will be with you shortly."

The skunk stepped into the room, glancing about briefly before removing her coat, and hanging it on a strategically placed hook, where it could drip without making a mess. Under her coat, she wore simple loose fitting clothes, all in earth tones, and a gray leather satchel strapped across her back.

She turned back to face the room, and waited. Lance's image stood next to her, also facing the room, waiting for Reg to appear. After an eternity of seconds, Lance could no longer remain silent.

"I'm sorry about before...", he said.

She turned, making social eye contact with him as before, but remained stone faced.

"..with the whole size thing. We never get visitors, and you caught me off guard", he finished, dropping his eyes.

"Not the first time someone has tried to impress me with flashy visuals", she replied, turning her attention back to the room. "But it is the first time anyone has bothered to apologize for doing so. Apology accepted", she added with a smile.

Lance beamed.

---

From the hallway, the sound of shuffling feet and periodic mumbled swearing could be heard. The automatic lights in the hallway slowly came up, revealing the source. It was difficult to tell if this was a toddling child taking its first steps, or a tottering old man taking his last.

Upon entering the room, Lance attempted to introduce him to their guest. "Reg, this is Shan.." he began.

"Don't care", snapped Reg, cutting him off with a growl as he approached. He was not in the mood to bother with cordial niceties. The immediate need was to stop moving, so he could think and talk at the same time without worrying about falling on his face. Passing by the visitor and Lance's glowing form, he reached a heavily padded chair, turned, and slowly lowered himself into it. It was only then that he noticed that the light blue robe he had selected failed to cover his knees.

"Are you quite alright?", asked the skunk.

"Gravitosis", he groaned, "The planet and I are not yet on speaking terms."

"Is it always this bad?", she asked.

"Is this a medical review?", he asked derisively. Now that he was stationary, he felt recovered enough to manage a little snark at this intrusion into his privacy.

"No, but if that robe were any shorter, it could be", she retorted.

Reg smiled at that, and motioned for her to sit, but made no move to change how he was sitting. "Yes, it's always this bad. And about the time it wears off, I get to do it all over again when I transition back to my ship."

The skunk unslung the satchel from her back, and placed it on her lap as she took a chair opposite Reg.

"So why bother coming down?", she asked, "You could stay in a parking orbit, or up on the Ring."

"Reg, I think you're wearing my robe", came a sleepy voice from the hallway. A white rabbit with red eyes entered the room, still tying the sash on a burgundy robe, which pooled around her feet.

"Ah, of course", said the skunk, nodding knowingly.

--- The Offer

"So what brings Internal Security into my privacy?", Reg asked, emphasizing the last word, as Becka moved to sit next to him.

The skunk opened her satchel and took out a data pad. After touching a few select points on its face, the screen became a single still image of raw static. Turning the pad to face Lance, she asked, "May I?"

Lance glanced at the screen, realizing that the random static was not random at all, and knew that he was the only person in the room that could see it that way. It was a digitally encoded legal form, asking for permission to use his projector to display information. It was a standard form which he had seen many times while on missions where the location was too remote to have a projection system of its own.

"Certainly", he replied, and his image dissolved into nothing.

Turning back to the pad, the skunk began selecting specific files and data points, as multiple two dimensional panels floated above the table in the middle of the room. Star maps and schedules, showing all of Reg's pick-ups, deliveries, detours, and repair stops. Personal profiles of current and former crew members, including himself and Becka, each with their own smaller maps showing where they spent their time on shore leave. Each new piece of information stacking on top of the last, in a vast pile of virtual pages.

Reg looked through the wall of pixels before him at the skunk still selecting files on the pad. "Yes, yes... I know where I have been, and I know that privacy is a fiction, which I have chosen to believe exists. We all know that the Federate sees, hears and monitors all. So who are you trying to impress or intimidate with all of this?", he said waving his hand at the display.

The skunk stopped requesting data, and looked up. "The reality is, that we monitor very little. The public sector has a deeply embedded sense of mistrust, and monitors its own internal activities far better than any monolithic organization or government department ever could."

Tossing the pad on the table and leaning back in the chair, she continued. "Everything you see here is public information that anyone can find without any special security access. I have included an outlined citation list, if Lance wishes to verify any of it."

"Already doing so", came Lance's disembodied voice.

"Internal Security employs people like me, who are good at digging through mountains of data, collating it, and recognizing patterns."

"So what clandestine pattern did you find in my history that brought you here?", Reg said with some dismissiveness.

"Funny that you should put it that way, since it is what this data does not show that ultimately led me to your door. In all the years you have been captain of the Lyandra, after hundreds of missions and millions of tons of cargo, you have never once dealt with the Oroyo Trading Guild. The largest shipping magnate in the whole of the Federation, and never one shipment or contract. Why is that?", she asked raising an eyebrow.

Reg gripped the arm rests of his chair, making the material crunch. "Because the Oroyo is a den of thieves and politicians. They have one hand in the pocket of everyone who works for them, and the other hand around the throat of anyone who doesn't. Everyone knows this, yet it somehow manages to elude Internal Security, even with all of your data and patterns."

"Patterns are not proof. Without hard proof we cannot...", she started.

"Then you might as well give up now", interjected Becka, cutting her off. Her red eyes no longer tired, but fiery with anger. "The Oroyo had their networks in place long before the Federation was founded. I may not have your data collection skills, but the things I see when trying to secure a contract or shipment for Reg make me sick. I have long lost track of the number of times someone has tried to bribe me, or the veiled threats I have received when an expected bribe was not offered. Not to mention the number of cargo containers we have 'accidentally' left behind because they contained items not listed on the manifest."

"And it is my guess that it was the apparent inaction of law enforcement that caused you to stop reporting suspicious activity a few years ago", said the skunk.

Becka nodded and sank back into her chair, still obviously fuming as she bundled the excess robe material around herself.

"Regardless, I... WE will never accept work or money from the Oroyo", Reg added pounding the arm of his chair for emphasis, "The sooner that company collapses, along with that ancient bitch running it, the better it will be for everyone."

"Good, we share a common goal then", said the skunk as she retrieved her pad. Wiping her palm across the screen, all of the projected data vanished, and was replaced by new data, including a star map.

"I wish to book work passage to this location", she said, pointing out a small blinking icon on the map.

"Remote mining outpost", supplied Lance, "We've been there a couple times, but its been over a year since we were that far out in the fringe."

"Oroyo contracts ate up all the far fringe work. High demand for contraband out there, and almost no law enforcement", noted Becka.

"I can arrange enough legit cargo to make the trip worthwhile for you, in both directions", the skunk added, while shipping manifests, complete with mass and volume details, began appearing above the table.

"So whats the catch?", asked Becka incredulously, "There is always a catch."

"Wait, back up a bit. Did you say 'work passage'?", asked Reg, not entirely sure he heard that correctly.

"Yes", replied the skunk. "I need to travel covertly, so standard passenger travel is not possible, and I do have other skills which may be useful. I happen to be a fully qualified engineer, though I have no experience on a ship so.."

"Old?", Reg challenged.

"I was going to say 'traveled'", she replied.

Reg smiled. "So you are asking me to take you on, as an untried assistant engineer, on a run to the deep fringe, and return you back to Maramus after your mission?"

"Almost", the skunk sighed.

"See, there's a catch", chided Becka.

"Regardless of the outcome of my mission, I will not be returning with you. I am only asking for a one-way trip. Afterwords, I will either find my own way home, or I won't be around to worry about it."

The room remained quiet as the seriousness of her words sank in.

"I will however need to reserve a VIP cabin for two, for the return trip, provided my mission succeeds. Obviously I cannot share the finer details, only that my arrival there be as secret as possible."

"Traveling that far into the fringe, our spare passenger cabins will likely be empty both ways anyway", confessed Becka. "If this is to be secret, how will we hide you from customs on the manifest?"

"No need to 'hide' anything. Both I and the returning couple will be traveling under false identities, which I guarantee no one will question", finished the skunk, as she wiped the pad again, erasing the projection and releasing control back to Lance.

After returning the pad to her satchel, she withdrew a wooden box about twice the size of the pad, and as thick as her arm. Placing it on the table, she released two catches on its face, then rotated the box to face Reg and pushed it across to his side of the table.

"Payments and banking are easily traced, so I would like to offer this as a good faith deposit for the trip. If anything goes wrong.. If I don't show up, if the VIP couple does not show up, if the cargo doesn't show up, you can keep it."

With Becka's help, Reg slowly slid himself to the edge of his chair, and carefully leaned forward to grasp the lid of the box.

"If everything goes right, then I want you to give it to the VIP couple when they disembark."

Reg opened the lid of the box upward on its hinges, revealing hundreds of large red coins, all standing on edge in alternating stacked rows.

"I count approximately fifty thousand, in universally accepted, untraceable Federation coins", stated Lance, who had reappeared in the room.

Reg snapped the lid shut and reset the catches, then looked up at the skunk sharply. "This isn't normal practice, is it?", he questioned suspiciously. "Not even for Internal Security."

"No, it is not", admitted the skunk, "None of this is sanctioned by my superiors. I am operating alone, off the books, and on my own time. As you said, the Oroyo networks are old and deep. I cannot prove that my own chain of command has not been compromised, so my need for secrecy is not for illicit gain, it is to avoid the eyes of the guilds, and my own bosses."

Reg turned to face Becka, and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Becka turned and gave the skunk a hard look, then turned back to Reg, and nodded.

"Looks like you have a ship... Miss?..", Reg began, but was at a loss to remember her name. Surely she had mentioned it earlier, and he was just too tired or distracted to remember.

"I'm sorry, I only formally introduced myself to Lance when I arrived, and he has done an exemplary job of maintaining my personal privacy in the matter. My name is Shannon. Shannon Oroyo."

Reg sank back into his chair as if the local gravity had just tripled.

Becka could only stare, mouth agape, while Lance cringed sheepishly.