Hunting the Hunter Part 5

For once, there'd been no-one Amieta knew in the Gate.

Not sure if that's a relief or if I should be worried what Cia's gotten up to since I saw her a few days ago. Amieta thought as she walked through the maze of hallways from the Last Gate to the Interbus terminal nearly on autopilot. Her mind turned to the upcoming operation. The last bits of intel had come through, and Amieta knew that at that moment Sarakai's team was probably in place.

Guess you can still get nerves even when you aren't one of the ones holding a gun.

She walked out onto the main terminal concourse, and turned toward the ramp for her shuttle

____________________________________________

Studying the vending machine in the Interbus terminal with every appearance of a man unable to chose between the equally unpalatable alternatives of a dry cheese sandwich or a can of Quafe Ultra, Jorion Roth watched the room behind him in the polished metal of the machine's frame.

There.

Instantly recognizable to him after the hours he'd spent studying her picture, even if the long sleeves of her uniform jacket covered those distinctive undisguised prosthetic arms, Commander Amieta Invelen strolled across the terminal.

Jorion punched the button for the sandwich, picked it out of the slot as it dropped and turned, head down as if he were struggling with the vacuum-sealed wrapping. He fell into step behind Invelen, making sure to keep thirty feet of distance and a good number of other passengers between them.

He already had his ticket to Ennur IX - M7 - Impro Research Center. He had a few others as well, to Torrinos and Rens to cover all the bases, but within a minute it was clear that Invelen was heading for the boarding gate to the Ennur shuttle.

Eating his sandwich, the half-peeled off wrapper mostly obscuring his face, Jorion filed on after her. She took a seat near the front of the shuttle. Jorion took one three rows behind her, far enough away to be out of reach of those arms, close enough to be sure he wouldn't miss. Invelen picked a holozine from the rack set in the back of the seat in front of her and flicked through it. Jorion did the same, seeing none of the glossy advertising or the breathless copy, watching the window beside him out of the corner of his eye, studying the view it showed him - stars moving past superimposed on a tiny inverted reflection of the cabin.

Tiny-upside down Invelen read her 'zine. I wonder what Sansha make of these things? Jorion wondered. Do they have their own versions, filled with advertorials about the new improved True Slave relay?

He would have liked to ask Invelen that. I would have liked to ask her a lot of things. But that was not going to happen. The shuttle flashed through the Ennur Gate, aligned, and kicked into warp. Jorion dropped his 'zine and got to his feet, to all outward appearances a man in a hurry to disembark as soon as the shuttle docked.

Clear shot, he thought, fingers gripping the butt of his gun.

"Don't fucking twitch."

Cool metal touched the back of his neck.

Even as he tensed, every passenger on the shuttle drew a weapon, aiming them directly at him. Every passenger except one.

Commander Amieta Invelen dropped her 'zine and stood up. "Thank you, Sarakai. Your team is to be commended."

Jorion swallowed, looking around at the 'passengers'. The Sansha passengers.

Invelen turned, a predatory smile spreading across her face.

"Mr Roth," she said. "I'm so glad we're going to have the chance to talk. I have a few suggestions about parenting I'd really like you to hear."

Hunting the Hunter Part 4

"Well, that will be a relief, won't it?" Ciarente asked. "To wrap it up?"

"I don't like people messing with me and my crew." Amieta said with a nod, "Don't like it at all."

Amieta sent another message to Sarakai, "Is the assault team ready?"

"It must have been awful," Ciarente said, "Not knowing ... I mean, having someone on your crew, not knowing who it was, betraying you."

"They're ready, and we've identified several potential places to execute the op. It's mostly a matter of waiting for the opportunity. We need to get just a little more intelligence."

"We found out who it was. Not much slips through our net, and no one does it more than once."

"Make sure you're very clear that we want a live capture if at all possible." Amieta's voice was grim, even to her own mind, "I have some questions I want answered."

"I can imagine" Ciarente nodded.

"Of course Commander. When the opportunity arrives, we will be ready."

"All that's left is deciding what sort of example will be the most..." Amieta finished her drink, "Educational."

"Thank you Sarakai. Invelen out."

"Oh." Ciarente said with an uneasy look

____________________________________________

Interbus records really are too easy to get into.

The day they work that out, we're going to lose one of the biggest intelligence resources we have.

Jorion scanned the ticket records:

Amieta Invelen:

FROM: Ennur IX - M7 - Impro Research Center, TO: Goinard IV - M5 - Impro Factory Station AT: 111.06.02 08:00 (RET 11:00), 111.06.03 05:00 (RET 7:30), 111.06.05 05:30 (RET 6:45), 111.06.07 05:00 (RET Ticket Open)

FROM: Ennur IX - M7 - Impro Research Center, TO: Rens VI - M8 - Brutor Tribe Treasury AT: 111.06.01 01:00 (RET 06:00), 111.06.04 02:00 (RET 11:00)

FROM Ennur IX - M7 - Impro Research Center, TO: Torrinos V - M5 - Lai Dai Corporation Factory AT: 111.06.05 23:30 (RET 111.06.06 04:00)


Odd for a Sansha to be so fond of a bar run by Veto and frequented by Ghost Festival, Jorion thought.

Odd, but convenient.

Ethan Verone's security was far too tight to make the club itself a possibility.

But there's all that time on the Interbus shuttle.

And all those corridors between the shuttle terminal and the Last Gate's front door.

He studied the records one last time, and then took a datachip from his pocket. Slotted into the terminal reader, the chip's program began to run, deleting every trace of the searches run over the past weeks. Deleting, scrambling, over-writing: Jorion was confident that even the FIO's best forensic programmers would find not a single bit or byte that looked suspicious.

As the program ran, he reached down and opened the bottom drawer of his desk, and typed a long combination of numbers on the keypad inside. The false bottom of the drawer folded back, and Jorion reached past it to take out the mag-pistols beneath.

He checked the loads carefully, and then, as the terminal flashed to signal the conclusion of the program, he put both guns and the datachip in his breifcase.

On the way out he stopped at Tomas Proleque's door. "Taking the rest of the day, Tom," he said. "Spend a bit of time with the kids."

"Of course," Tomas said. "That's good, Jory. You need to - "

"Take a break, I know," Jorion said. "Good advice. I might take tomorrow, too."

He left the office at just the right speed, a man glad to leave work behind, looking forward to an afternoon in the sunshine with family, a spring in his step, a slight smile on his face.

It was three blocks before he let that smile die, and changed his course.

At the shuttleport, he showed an ID that said he was Artaurd Quintel.

"First time to Goinard, Mr Quintel?" the deskclerk asked.

"Yes," Jorion said. "But I'm looking forward to it."

Hunting the Hunter Part 3

"How are things with you, anyway?" Ciarente asked.

An indicator blinked at the edge of Amieta's vision.

"Busy." Amieta was leaning against the black crystal bar of the Last Gate. "We - you remember when we were losing crewmen? A couple months ago?"

Amieta made the connection with a thought. Sarakai's voice spoke as if she was right there, whispering,"Good news. Rask has accepted the delivery of the first shipment."

Ciarente Roth nodded. She and Amieta usually met a few times a week at the Gate for a drink or two in the evening.

"Great work. You're confident she doesn't suspect anything about Tragenne? If you get even a-" Amieta cut off as she realized she had paused in her conversation with Ciarente.

"I don't know how much I told you about that," Amieta continued, expression a bit grim, "but it ended up being a blooder related slaving operation. They were using TCMCs. In any case, we got most of our people back."

"Nothing beyond the usual paranoia. She's run all the usual checks, his story held up just fine." Sarakai answered, "As far as she can tell, he is exactly what he appears to be. We even fed her a 'real' name, since no self respecting smuggler would operate under anything other than an alias."

Ciarente looked shocked. "A blooder - oh, how awful."

"The doctor? Has he given you anything else useful?" Amieta shot off the query and focused back on Ciarente again. Carrying on simultaneous conversations still gave her a headache, but it was better than when she used to zone out completely she reflected.

"When we hit their operation, there was one odd bit. A doctor - name of Rolasque - who was a known Angel affiliate. He was one of the ones perform the implantation surgeries." Amieta sipped her drink, "Yeah, I'm just glad we managed to get our people back. Anyway, someone sprung this doctor. After we got back to Ennur."

"Not so far, I might arrange for him to take a vacation. He's too jumpy, and the weak link in Tragenne's cover. If Rask decided to lean on him, he wouldn't hold up."

"Oh." Ciarente hesitated. "Like, someone on your crew?"

"What about our turncoat sensor tech, what was the name?"

"Gazal." Even through the com-link Sarakai's fury was evident. She took a traitor among the crew personally, "He is being dealt with. Whatever he knows, we will find out."

"Yeah, looks like there was an inside guy, who we have in custody now too." Amieta Invelen glanced around the bar, eyeing a couple of nearby patrons disinterestedly and shrugged, turning back to Ciarente, "We know who the doctor is working for, and it is a local boss. In Ennur. Strange, right? We're planning on wrapping the whole thing up. We knew when they were trying to break him out, and we tracked what they did and where he went."

____________________________________________

Jorion tapped the screen with one finger. Mighty active for a dead woman, Commander Invelen.

He knew he could be wrong, but instinct told him otherwise.

Two records blinked on the screen below the image.

Ishukone Corporation Record of Birth: Amieta Invelen, 10-04-74.

10-04.

Jorion brought up a surveillance file: both his former daughters, followed by a crew-member wheeling a trolley which held a large, irregular shape wrapped up like a present. The date-stamp on the file read 23-04-11.

Wrapped up like a present.

Like a birthday present.

He studied the second blinking record. Captain Amieta Invelen, M.I.A on 23-09-00. Presumed dead.

Is that how you ended up in the Sansha Nation? Jorion wondered. Captured? Converted? Rewired?

And then passing on the favour? To my daughters?

And how many more in the future?

Jorion could feel sorry for the long-gone Captain Amieta Invelen. Presumed dead. And that presumption was right, as far as the real, original woman was concerned, even if her body walked around under Sansha control.

A keystroke brought up another file of images. Invelen with her metal hand on Camille's tiny shoulder. Invelen side-by-side with Cia, leaving the Last Gate. Invelen walking into Cia's cargo hanger. No doubt about it. She's the one, the one we'd call Cia's 'handler' in the FIO. In Sansha terms? Controller maybe.

Captain Amieta Invelen.

They didn't even have the decency to let you rest in peace.

But I can help you with that.

Hunting the Hunter Part 2

There was a hush in the room as the audio feed came in from Maj. Tragenne. Dorne Tragenne was head of the fighter wing aboard the Ideal, Amieta's ship. Despite not being trained in espionage as such, Amieta suspected his prior experience had prepared him to pretend to be a smuggler for the Serpentis Corporation. His meeting with Rask was in the back room of an Amarr eatery that the Angel boss used as her HQ.

M'selle Rask, a pleasure to meet you. Dr Rolasque tells me we may be able to help eachother?

"How are we doing on the counter-intelligence side?" Sarakai glanced over as Amieta spoke, "Everything going smoothly?"

"It is going well." Sarakai added a qualification, "Though there is never a guarantee, when you are dealing with professionals. I'd be very, very surprised if we've been anticipated or detected though."

Well M'selle I think I could supply steaks at 1000 and both types of, ah, flour you wanted at 400, standard. Premium cuts would need to be on a case by case basis, of course.

"Let's hope so Sara." Amieta glanced at the cheap speakers, "Sounds like we've got her hooked. If Dorne manages this without being tossed out an airlock, remind me to give him a bonus."

Of course Mr Trenes.The Angel's voice was gravelly, I look forward to a profitable relationship.

____________________________________________

Notification: Search complete. Number of results: 2451. More? Y/N?

Y.

Records scrolled past. Most were easy to discard. Jorion was not interested in Amiadi I., Lai Dai employee charged five years ago with violating confidentiality agreements. Nor do I care about A. Torvelen, listed as inventor on an application by Caldari Steel to patent a new cargo loader inversion locking system.

A touch of the screen sent results to one file or another, each decision feeding back into the computer's search algorithm. No, I do not want to know more about Amieta Inveligall, senior executive at Echelon Entertainment. No, do not tell me more about A. Invelly, teacher of modern dance at Nugoeihuvi Corporate school on the station orbiting the fourth moon of Uphallant III.

Yes, please give me further information about A. Invelen, listed as corporate support co-ordinator for Home Guard in the Koichi system ten years ago. Yes, please tell me more about Amiala I., registered FIO informant in Nonni for six months in 80.

Jorion reached the end of the results. Some were promising, but ...

None of them feel right.

He called up the image he'd stored off the Behind New Eden broadcast and studied his target. FIO informant? Corporate Support Co-ordinator?

Unlikely.

But if Amieta Invelen wasn't somewhere in those search results, where was she?

Where would I hide, if I were hiding my past?

He re-opened the search program. Broaden search: include (status = deceased)

The computer bleeped acknowledgment. Working.

Jorion Roth waited.

Hunting the Hunter Part 1

Amieta Invelen stood, arms crossed, studying the images thrown up by a projector on one wall of the cluttered office space. Sarakai Voutelen, Amieta's head of security, pointed to a man exiting a doorway surrounded by neon lights as she continued briefing her boss.

"This is Rolasque leaving the 'Lucky Comet' Casino on deck 17. He spends a lot of his time there and we have two of our people on the staff." Sarakai tapped on her datapad and another photo popped up, "This is Dr Rolasque meeting with who we think is his boss. Her name is Ollada Rask. She is one of the local Angel bosses, very big in the protection and illegal gambling rackets in-system. We are also pretty sure she is the one behind the trouble we've been having, but we aren't sure why."

"Do we have anyone close to her yet?" Amieta turned, "Much as I don't want to do the polices' work for them, if she's the one, we should make an example of her and the entire organization under her. Hunt them down to the last crooked dealer."

"Well, Rask has been trying to break into arms and narcotics too. Sort of set herself up as the local criminal one stop wholesaler. Major Tragenne has volunteered to pose as a smuggler with Serpentis connections willing to be her supplier, we would just need an 'in'. We were thinking we would flip Rolasque, use his gambling problem."

Amieta eyed Ollada Rask's profile on the wall.

"Do it."

____________________________________________

The terminal beeped quietly. Notification: Search complete.

Jorion Roth tapped the keys to bring up the results. Subject: Amieta Invelen. Number of confirmed matches: Forty-seven. More: Y/N?

Y.

The results scrolled across the screen: fragments of conversation from public comm channels captured by FIO sniffer programs, records of Interbus tickets, reports of corporate standings ... Jorion skimmed them.

Scolluzer caught his eye. Not that I needed proof that Naqam took Camille as well as Ciarente. But if I did ... The date, the arrival and departure times on the Interbus records, were incontrovertible. Naqam, in general. Amieta Invelen, in particular.

Scanning the rest of the results brought no new information. No record of birth; no record of employment prior to becoming a pilot ...

No-one walks across the Cluster without leaving a few footprints.

He pulled the keyboard towards him and began to type. Query type: individual. Parameters: (Amieta or *ieta or Ami* or A) AND (Invelen or *velen or Invel*) AND Caldari citizen AND (current age = 25 < gender =" F)">

The computer warned him Reducing probability match threshold will result in increased false positives. Do you wish to continue: Y/N?

Jorion pressed Y.

Yes, he thought. I wish to continue.

Birthdays Part 4

((Part 1))

4/10/101

A man stopped in the doorway of hydroponics bay 3a and glanced around the interior. He was perhaps 183cm tall, handsome in an unremarkable, regular way, with gray eyes and short cropped brown hair. His uniform identified him as a Warrant Officer attached to an assault wing in the Watch. He stood apparently lost in thought for several minutes, until the room's other occupant approached him.

"Can I help you with something?" The man who spoke was heavily built, with sad, pale blue eyes. He stripped off a pair of gloves as he approached and crossed his arms across his chest.

"Possibly. I'm looking for Janirinen Matakima? He is a researcher here, I was told he was working in this section? I'm his brother."

"Spirits, Val? Is that you?" The heavier man's eyebrows threatened to reach his receding hairline.

"Jan? Ancestors man, it's been ages. I finally got enough leave to come back for a couple days. This place hasn't changed a bit, you know."

"Really?" Jan chuckled, a sparkle in his eyes, "It has you know. I've managed 1.3% better efficiency, plus I'm working on extracting more nutrients from the ice they process at the refinery so we can expand without having to import so much from off-station. Means we've got more plants, now."

Val held up his hands in mock surrender, "Forgive me for not noticing the difference. Now that you mention it, greenery is practically bursting from the duct work. When I was asking after you, your underling did say that this bay must be a special project of yours. Apparently they think you have some sort of hidden lab in here, because you're always here, and always come out with new and greater ideas."

"No, no secret labs. I just do my best thinking in here. Calms my mind, I guess, I'm so familiar with it now. Some of my happier memories too. When we were..." Jan turned and busied himself organizing a clutter of tubing on a nearby workspace as he trailed off.

Val's smile disappeared, "I went to the memorial, you know. They just had the one, for her whole unit."

Val leaned against the door frame, suddenly looking tired, as Jan turned back to him, eyes red, "All she did, making through the accident, through OCS, her last letter said they might have been considering her for Captain... Do you know what happened to her Val? They wouldn't tell me anything. I'm lucky I even found out, and it was just 'Asset missing, presumed deceased' in some database. I didn't even know there was a memorial."

Val shook his head, "No idea. I tried to find out, but it's classified way, way above my pay grade. It's the Watch though Jan. Whatever it was, if there was anything they could have done-"

Jan interrupted him, "I know, of course. They did whatever they could, even if it wasn't enough. I know, but it doesn't bring her back." Jan rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, "Want to get a drink? I don't know about you, but I could use one."

Val looked like he wanted to respond, but then just nodded with a weak smile, "Yeah, sounds about right."

"Let's go." Jan headed for the door, gesturing for Val to follow him as he walked out of 3a, "You remember Valenin? He runs a bar down in R section now."

Two days later, Val sat aboard the transport that would take him away from the station. Returning, seeing Jan again, and knowing he would never see Ami again made him realize he had been making a mistake. He should have come back sooner, made the time off however he had to. He made a promise to himself to keep in touch with Jan, to make sure it wasn't 17 years next time. Life was too short to only see family at funerals.

Birthdays Part 3

((Part 1))

4/10/94

Jan slipped into the hospital room. Though it was the first time he had left his home station, that wasn't the reason for his hesitance. A cocoon of medical equipment hid the recumbent figure inside the room. As he approached he realized that the shape was wrong, even with all the equipment. Far too narrow, near the top. Fragments of the doctor's explanations came back to him, slipping into his thoughts as he walked further into the room:

Severe burns over most of the torso and...

He came close enough to peer through a transparent window near the head area and smiled with relief when he saw blue eyes only partially dulled drugs. They peered up at him and it was a moment before the brightened with recognition.

It's a miracle she survived more than a few seconds, much less long enough to reach us.

The lower half of her face was entirely occluded by some sort of breathing apparatus. The machinery that kept her alive whirred in the background.

...barely stable...

He cleared his throat, "Hey Ami, don't know if you can hear me in there. The doctors say you'll be out of here in no time. Anyway, it's our birthday sis."

Her arms had to be amputated, and most of the internal structures of the shoulders were removed as well. Virtually all of the tissue near the surface of the upper body will need to be regrown.

"I brought you this." Jan held up a small glass container, perhaps half the volume of an average beverage can, "It's its own ecological system. It just needs a little light now and then."

This accident is really an opportunity...

"It was for next time you visited. I didn't know I'd be seeing you so soon." Was that crinkling around the eyes the top half of a smile?

...opted in for the enhanced capabilities program when she applied to recon...

"Anyway, I thought you might like to have a little piece of home with you. I hope I made it small enough so that you can keep it in your personal effects."

...new program, and she will be one of the final late stage trials.

He turned it so she could see the tiny bits of green that were inside "I designed it to last nearly forever."

...better than new! In fact...

Jan swallowed and set the little glass world down on a nearby table, concentrated on what he knew, "The circulation systems run on heat, so a warm light, or being held once in a while helps."

Further prosthetics will be implanted if she remains, ah, a viable candidate...

"Well, you can tell me if you like it later. In any case, they say you're st... that I can stay for a few hours. I thought you might like some entertainment. I thought I'd read Kirigan's 'In the Wind, Dragons' to you." Jan tapped on a datapad to pull up the collection of traditional stories and poems and began reading in a warm, soothing voice, "First was the Wind..."

Jan had to leave the next day to return to work. He planned on visiting again while Amieta recovered. A string of events conspired to keep him busy until after she was judged sufficiently recovered to be reassigned. By the time he was able to get time off and money enough to travel, she had been promoted and disappeared again into the machine that is Ishukone Watch. One of the occasional letters she was able to send did mention that his gift was a comfort to her.