12-15-2015, 12:05 PM
By Other Means__________”Has anyone else had word of him?"
__________Not this tide.
__________For what is sunk will hardly swim,
__________Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
______________- Rudyard Kipling, My Boy Jack
Bruchsal Base, Frankfurt System
Jana Achen walked the cramped hallways of Bruchsal Base a stranger. A steady stream of unfamiliar faces and insignias passed her as she followed the flow of traffic up, towards the station’s armored core and the administrative heart of the Bundschuh movement. The station was between shifts, and the air smelt of sweat, reheated MREs, and antiseptic. Somewhere above her a vent fan clicked in its mounting. The quiet sense of despair that flowed with her was almost a physical force.
Four months had passed since Liberty’s Lane Hackers had leaked a report exposing the looming destruction of Hudson’s jumpate. Jana had read it the same day. A dry, technical document that promised the demise of a jumpgate connection and the annihilation of the star system that housed it with no more fanfare than a parking ticket. A little over a week later, the Bundestag and Libertonian Congress had signed a ceasefire to facilitate the gate’s repair. Against all expectations, political wrangling had been set aside, and millions in Hudson had been granted a chance at survival.
It had been the worst news Jana had heard all year. The border was still heavily militarised, of course. It would be months before the repairs were concluded and months again until there was sufficient trust between the belligerent nations to begin the drawdown. But it would happen, and when it did, Rheinland would turn its armed forces against internal threats. The wartime military would not, could not, persist for long when the inevitable economic slowdown took hold, but it would survive for long enough to do the Bundschuh lasting, perhaps fatal, harm. That knowledge hung over Jana’s head like an executioner’s axe, and she did not return the half-hearted greetings the passing traffic offered.
A red-faced man with the long, thin limbs of a lifetime spacer and a squat, ugly submachine gun at his hip was dredging a half-eaten protein bar from his overalls when Jana slipped through the fragile mylar airlock that separated her office from the rest of the station. He waved at her and nodded to a datapad resting on the hard plastic table that dominated the room. ”We’re still clear, Oberst. The only bugs in here are yours. You can send my fee to the usual account."
”Of course." Jana dismissed the deck jockey with jerk of her head. He was a freelancer, one of three independent security experts on her payroll, and far and away the most reliable. Money tended to have that effect. Jana shared her office with two other party members on rotating shifts, but a handful of tweaks to the station’s scheduling software had been sufficient to spare her an hour’s use. She settled her coat over the bare plastic chair and settled down to wait.
The heating was malfunctioning in his dormitory, and as a result he was bundled in heated blankets and rubbing his hands together to stay warm. Coming back to lucidity, he realized he’d been staring at a glowing monitor for at least the past half-hour.
A picture of a smiling Magdalena Atzenbruck on the other side of a candlelit table covered in sumptuous delicacies graced the screen. It was a relic of their last meeting; time spent in private aboard her transport christened the Thaya both to and from Lyon - Where some of the finest doctors on the planet were paid to treat his weakened left leg’s frayed nerves.
He wriggled it absentmindedly; it’d been years since he hadn’t felt pain from it, but no longer. Still, appearances had to be kept up to ward away any suspicion about high-quality CEO-level healthcare such as that provided for him by his affectionate contact in ALG - The revelation of which could put them both in grave danger from both sides of the century-long civil war.
Erich’s eye involuntarily twitched. There was a notification at the corner of the Neural Terminal’s monitor, glowing white. Among the Bundschuh, this was a highly important matter, code for a non-stellar meeting of political weight. Couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time, really. Evidently more time was needed in his cocoon of heated blankets charged by simple packs of powercells before he could metamorphose into a being capable of facing another dreary and dour Bundschuh political conversation.
And yet he split open the warm shell regardless, donning his coat and ‘official’ apparel, and not leaving his room without the heavily calibered and heavily modified projectile magnum always at his side; heavily illegal under Rheinlandic law for the sheer brutality of this particular specimen.
An irritating number of deck transitions later, he found himself at Die Festung’s partition of Bruchsal, two non-sect Bundschuh ‘Arbiters’ providing security and insurance against the civil disagreement that arose all too easily within the confines of the Bundschuh’s administrative heart.
Bidding the two men passage to stand outside, he passed through the airlock and within the office, fixing Jana Achen with a knowing silent scowl. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
”Oberst Klugmann. Kindly close the door behind you." She fixed him with a knowing smile and nodded towards the thin plastic chair opposite her, eyes darting to his hip. ”Really, Erich. I’m flattered, but I hardly think this meeting merits the artillery. Leave it with your monkeys at the door."
As if to illustrate what scarcely fit the label as a ‘sidearm’ at his side, the Oberst rested his hand on the ebony stock of the prized weapon, sealing the simple airlock closed. ”You’ll forgive me, Jana, if I’ll politely decline your request. I’ve been saved in meetings and simple public receptions such as these by ‘Titania’... Approximately Three too many times."
Despite his sardonic response, Erich’s posture was stiff and unfriendly as he sat down on the plastic chair and rested his calf over the other thigh. ”Get to the point, Achen."
”It’s a foolish affection, Erich, but please yourself. If I wanted you dead, I could have had it done months ago and saved us both getting out of bed this morning. I daresay you could say the same." She rested her palms on the table, one folded neatly atop the other. The innocence of the expression belied the amusement in her voice. ”But here we are, united under a common banner. At least, that was how I understood it. I’ve recently come into contact with information that makes me wonder..."
The plastic creaked as Jana settled back in her chair with an airy wave. ”Perhaps you would care to tell me what one of your Kommandants is doing on Hamburg. One Nika Haupt."
Most members of the Party’s Congress were well-versed in the art of not showing one’s political hand; to maintain a ‘poker face’ in the ironically corrupt and contentious Bundschuh inter-sect underground. But in this particular circumstance, the opposite was equally important - The dilation in Erich’s eyes at the news betrayed a genuine look of non-understanding to a trained eye such as Jana Achen’s.
The grinding of Klugmann’s teeth was nearly audible, yet his tone still kept a clinical and calculated edge. ”Hamburg as you well know is well within the Syndicate’s general territory, and the Widerstand doesn’t dare interfere with Die Kerzen’s work."
”Perhaps your Widerstand does not." She said, waving away a face at the door, and slid a datapad across the table. ”Vorsitzende Eistocher does not appear to share your compunctions. She contacted me a little over a standard week ago, requesting my assistance to deliver Kommandant Haupt to Hamburg’s surface. She was nonspecific as to the kommandant’s objective."
Erich bristled. The very mention of the Vorsitzende’s name was like constantly scratching an insect’s bite; It’s quite possible that one would have killed the other if not for the sheer necessity of them bringing to bear their considerable influence among the Party. Accepting the datapad, the intuition of hundreds of similar meetings and their consequences suddenly activated in the recesses of his mind. Acutely aware that he was likely not ‘alone’ with her in the room, he asked rather stodgily: ”Jana. When and how did you transport my Kommandant to Hamburg’s surface?"
”Ah, now we come to the heart of the matter." Achen gave a shark’s smile, all teeth and the constant, distant hint of something colder, something alien to an age of starships and reason. A glimpse of the twisted sort of logic that lead the first desperate men on a snowy mountaintop to cannibalism, eons ago. ”I never met Kommandant Haupt. My people never met Kommandant Haupt. As far as I can determine, Kommandant Haupt arrived on Hamburg entirely alone and entirely without the aid or sanction of Die Festung. I expect she was already en-route by the time Eistocher approached me."
She rested a single finger on the cheap laminate desk. ”This concerns me. The Bundschuh is, if nothing else, a wholly democratic entity. If Eistocher has begun to act without the knowledge or consent of the General Assembly, I’m quite certain their reaction to the failure of Kommandant Haupt’s mission will be all the more… Shall we say, unfavorable?"
There was nothing in her tone that suggested a threat. Nothing needed to. Her words carried her meaning well enough.”And she will fail. Acting alone, how could she not? Your choice, Erich, your only choice, is whether the Kommandant’s blunder is fatal."
Erich stood up, the small bump in his neck pulsing. Barely audibly, he hissed. ”I didn’t need this now…" Not now. It could have been for any of a hundred reasons, knowing - or more accurately not knowing the Vorsitzende’s agenda. Haupt was one of the best pilots and hardest workers the Bundschuh had seen in some years, and allowing her to be flung like a cube of meat onto a swarming Federal anthill was hardly a part of Erich’s own.
He rested his hand on the desk, other hand resting warily on his sidearm. ”Keep me posted, Achen. But remember that her falling into the wrong hands would be a titanic catastrophe."
He turned to the airlock, pausing for a moment with his back turned. ”And quite frankly, I’m no longer certain whether the Vorsitzende’s own hands qualify." He stepped through, the departing pace readily apparent to those milling about the deck that not all was well.
Jana sealed the hatch behind him and picked up her datapad. She checked the forecast on Hamburg, tutting quietly at the cold.
Then she made a call.
Four months had passed since Liberty’s Lane Hackers had leaked a report exposing the looming destruction of Hudson’s jumpate. Jana had read it the same day. A dry, technical document that promised the demise of a jumpgate connection and the annihilation of the star system that housed it with no more fanfare than a parking ticket. A little over a week later, the Bundestag and Libertonian Congress had signed a ceasefire to facilitate the gate’s repair. Against all expectations, political wrangling had been set aside, and millions in Hudson had been granted a chance at survival.
It had been the worst news Jana had heard all year. The border was still heavily militarised, of course. It would be months before the repairs were concluded and months again until there was sufficient trust between the belligerent nations to begin the drawdown. But it would happen, and when it did, Rheinland would turn its armed forces against internal threats. The wartime military would not, could not, persist for long when the inevitable economic slowdown took hold, but it would survive for long enough to do the Bundschuh lasting, perhaps fatal, harm. That knowledge hung over Jana’s head like an executioner’s axe, and she did not return the half-hearted greetings the passing traffic offered.
A red-faced man with the long, thin limbs of a lifetime spacer and a squat, ugly submachine gun at his hip was dredging a half-eaten protein bar from his overalls when Jana slipped through the fragile mylar airlock that separated her office from the rest of the station. He waved at her and nodded to a datapad resting on the hard plastic table that dominated the room. ”We’re still clear, Oberst. The only bugs in here are yours. You can send my fee to the usual account."
”Of course." Jana dismissed the deck jockey with jerk of her head. He was a freelancer, one of three independent security experts on her payroll, and far and away the most reliable. Money tended to have that effect. Jana shared her office with two other party members on rotating shifts, but a handful of tweaks to the station’s scheduling software had been sufficient to spare her an hour’s use. She settled her coat over the bare plastic chair and settled down to wait.
*
The heating was malfunctioning in his dormitory, and as a result he was bundled in heated blankets and rubbing his hands together to stay warm. Coming back to lucidity, he realized he’d been staring at a glowing monitor for at least the past half-hour.
A picture of a smiling Magdalena Atzenbruck on the other side of a candlelit table covered in sumptuous delicacies graced the screen. It was a relic of their last meeting; time spent in private aboard her transport christened the Thaya both to and from Lyon - Where some of the finest doctors on the planet were paid to treat his weakened left leg’s frayed nerves.
He wriggled it absentmindedly; it’d been years since he hadn’t felt pain from it, but no longer. Still, appearances had to be kept up to ward away any suspicion about high-quality CEO-level healthcare such as that provided for him by his affectionate contact in ALG - The revelation of which could put them both in grave danger from both sides of the century-long civil war.
Erich’s eye involuntarily twitched. There was a notification at the corner of the Neural Terminal’s monitor, glowing white. Among the Bundschuh, this was a highly important matter, code for a non-stellar meeting of political weight. Couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time, really. Evidently more time was needed in his cocoon of heated blankets charged by simple packs of powercells before he could metamorphose into a being capable of facing another dreary and dour Bundschuh political conversation.
And yet he split open the warm shell regardless, donning his coat and ‘official’ apparel, and not leaving his room without the heavily calibered and heavily modified projectile magnum always at his side; heavily illegal under Rheinlandic law for the sheer brutality of this particular specimen.
An irritating number of deck transitions later, he found himself at Die Festung’s partition of Bruchsal, two non-sect Bundschuh ‘Arbiters’ providing security and insurance against the civil disagreement that arose all too easily within the confines of the Bundschuh’s administrative heart.
Bidding the two men passage to stand outside, he passed through the airlock and within the office, fixing Jana Achen with a knowing silent scowl. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
”Oberst Klugmann. Kindly close the door behind you." She fixed him with a knowing smile and nodded towards the thin plastic chair opposite her, eyes darting to his hip. ”Really, Erich. I’m flattered, but I hardly think this meeting merits the artillery. Leave it with your monkeys at the door."
As if to illustrate what scarcely fit the label as a ‘sidearm’ at his side, the Oberst rested his hand on the ebony stock of the prized weapon, sealing the simple airlock closed. ”You’ll forgive me, Jana, if I’ll politely decline your request. I’ve been saved in meetings and simple public receptions such as these by ‘Titania’... Approximately Three too many times."
Despite his sardonic response, Erich’s posture was stiff and unfriendly as he sat down on the plastic chair and rested his calf over the other thigh. ”Get to the point, Achen."
”It’s a foolish affection, Erich, but please yourself. If I wanted you dead, I could have had it done months ago and saved us both getting out of bed this morning. I daresay you could say the same." She rested her palms on the table, one folded neatly atop the other. The innocence of the expression belied the amusement in her voice. ”But here we are, united under a common banner. At least, that was how I understood it. I’ve recently come into contact with information that makes me wonder..."
The plastic creaked as Jana settled back in her chair with an airy wave. ”Perhaps you would care to tell me what one of your Kommandants is doing on Hamburg. One Nika Haupt."
Most members of the Party’s Congress were well-versed in the art of not showing one’s political hand; to maintain a ‘poker face’ in the ironically corrupt and contentious Bundschuh inter-sect underground. But in this particular circumstance, the opposite was equally important - The dilation in Erich’s eyes at the news betrayed a genuine look of non-understanding to a trained eye such as Jana Achen’s.
The grinding of Klugmann’s teeth was nearly audible, yet his tone still kept a clinical and calculated edge. ”Hamburg as you well know is well within the Syndicate’s general territory, and the Widerstand doesn’t dare interfere with Die Kerzen’s work."
”Perhaps your Widerstand does not." She said, waving away a face at the door, and slid a datapad across the table. ”Vorsitzende Eistocher does not appear to share your compunctions. She contacted me a little over a standard week ago, requesting my assistance to deliver Kommandant Haupt to Hamburg’s surface. She was nonspecific as to the kommandant’s objective."
Erich bristled. The very mention of the Vorsitzende’s name was like constantly scratching an insect’s bite; It’s quite possible that one would have killed the other if not for the sheer necessity of them bringing to bear their considerable influence among the Party. Accepting the datapad, the intuition of hundreds of similar meetings and their consequences suddenly activated in the recesses of his mind. Acutely aware that he was likely not ‘alone’ with her in the room, he asked rather stodgily: ”Jana. When and how did you transport my Kommandant to Hamburg’s surface?"
”Ah, now we come to the heart of the matter." Achen gave a shark’s smile, all teeth and the constant, distant hint of something colder, something alien to an age of starships and reason. A glimpse of the twisted sort of logic that lead the first desperate men on a snowy mountaintop to cannibalism, eons ago. ”I never met Kommandant Haupt. My people never met Kommandant Haupt. As far as I can determine, Kommandant Haupt arrived on Hamburg entirely alone and entirely without the aid or sanction of Die Festung. I expect she was already en-route by the time Eistocher approached me."
She rested a single finger on the cheap laminate desk. ”This concerns me. The Bundschuh is, if nothing else, a wholly democratic entity. If Eistocher has begun to act without the knowledge or consent of the General Assembly, I’m quite certain their reaction to the failure of Kommandant Haupt’s mission will be all the more… Shall we say, unfavorable?"
There was nothing in her tone that suggested a threat. Nothing needed to. Her words carried her meaning well enough.”And she will fail. Acting alone, how could she not? Your choice, Erich, your only choice, is whether the Kommandant’s blunder is fatal."
Erich stood up, the small bump in his neck pulsing. Barely audibly, he hissed. ”I didn’t need this now…" Not now. It could have been for any of a hundred reasons, knowing - or more accurately not knowing the Vorsitzende’s agenda. Haupt was one of the best pilots and hardest workers the Bundschuh had seen in some years, and allowing her to be flung like a cube of meat onto a swarming Federal anthill was hardly a part of Erich’s own.
He rested his hand on the desk, other hand resting warily on his sidearm. ”Keep me posted, Achen. But remember that her falling into the wrong hands would be a titanic catastrophe."
He turned to the airlock, pausing for a moment with his back turned. ”And quite frankly, I’m no longer certain whether the Vorsitzende’s own hands qualify." He stepped through, the departing pace readily apparent to those milling about the deck that not all was well.
Jana sealed the hatch behind him and picked up her datapad. She checked the forecast on Hamburg, tutting quietly at the cold.
Then she made a call.