The ceiling lamp flickered, the motes of dust floating through the stale air casting strange shadows over the walls and floor. A holographic clock projected from the wall, slowly ticking off the last few seconds of the day before midnight. The table in the center of the room was barren, its only decoration being the emitter for the electro-restraints that had been latched onto the chamber's sole inhabitant's wrists. The man sat in a simple steel chair, observing his reflection in the large mirror on the wall across from him.
Outside the room stood guard a lone marshal, leaning against the doorframe, one hand lazily tucked into his trouser pocket, the other resting comfortably on his sidearm's holster. He straightened up as Director Nazumaki and Deputy Director Mallory came around the musty hallway's corner, relaxing only when they passed through the door adjacent to the one he was watching.
The pair entered the room - even smaller than the interrogation chamber - and came to a stop before the large, one-way window. Through it, they could watch the arrestee without fear of being seen themselves.
Tired eyes lifted upwards in order to take stock of the clock, the numbers of which had no meaning for someone who only a few hours before had landed upon Planet Manhattan, the law enforcement crew already prepared to take him into custody. He was perhaps not even close to being the oddest visitor to these cells, but every single aspect of his being was...out of the ordinary due to its sheer simplicity.
The man was that of, as the Bretonians might have called, a portly nature. Dark of skin, his figure filled out the chair with an astonishing ease, while the restraints upon his thickset wrists regained his attention even as his gaze seemed to pass right through them, staring at something light-years away.
The man's clothes were that of a regular Rogue nature - for there was nothing concrete about them. Pocketed combat trousers, thoroughly searched, sat upon his plentiful frame in a manner as if they had been fitted for him by a professional, even though the frayed edges of some of the pockets showed their age and heavy use. A simple turtleneck sweater, thin in its design and long-sleeved was otherwise accompanied by a simple cut-off leather jacket with a fake sheep-wool inlay - perhaps a size too small, for it did not seem that the front buttons were ever in use. The man's heavy gut spoke of his love for food - though it might have taken a much more astute man to note that he was perhaps somehow involved in the preparation of said food. His fingernails were the most tidy thing about him. Neatly cut, filed and kept remarkably short.
The rest of him, however, provided an appearance of a man who had gone through a lot of stress over a very short amount of time. His heavy cheeks and fat chin(s) were covered in a thickset stubble, which - again, for a more astute observer, told he preferred to be clean-shaven most of the time.
His ship, damaged as it were, was also thoroughly examined. The original owner seemed to be a high profile target within the Rogues. A target this man was clearly not. His own neural implant and corresponding database entries within the Sirian NN showed very little information about anything ship related within the last ten or so years. The fact that the individual otherwise known as Barot Brono was in his mid-fourties and, until recently, affiliated with a group of individuals where men of an older age were a relative rarity, was certainly a rather remarkable one.
If not for the utter unremarkable nature of Brono himself.
He was not someone anyone even remotely connected to the life lived by pilots and space-firers would have expected to emerge from a HFX. The story he had given during the moment of his first encounter with the Marshals had just enough truth to it, backed up by the ship logs. The last departure noted by the ships onboard computer had been roughly three days prior and combat/damage logs indicated attacks on, admittedly extremely low-priority, many Rogue and Xeno ships within the California system. Small freighters, rookie ships belonging to individuals who had not even been a blip on the lawful entity's radar. And yet, just enough were destroyed for the record of these actions to be there, regardless of the actual usefulness of the man's contributions. Enough to not list him as a Kill On Sight for regular patrols, at least.
Perhaps what he said before was true - had the ship not failed during his flight to Rochester, he might have been just another mercenary sitting in Manhattan's low orbit. And yet it seemed that Brono's luck had ran out just there and then.
Mallory glanced at a datapad he had pulled out of his jacket's interior. A slight frown spread across his face as he read over the sparse information his office had been able to pull on the interviewee. They knew little and the little they did know gave them even less to work with. For all intents and purposes, the man on the other side of the mirror was a complete nobody to Liberty. Apart from the detail that he was a Rogue associate - one who had willingly turned himself in to the authorities when the opportunity was granted unto him.
The deputy director let out a quiet huff as he replaced the PDA.
"I'm curious to see whether this works out," he grumbled as he clasped his hands behind his back. He turned his head slightly and glanced at the shorter woman beside him. "He is all yours, ma'am."
With a nod, Director Nazumaki turned on her heels and walked out of the room, turning towards the adjacent door.
Isla took a deep breath and nodded towards the marshal standing guard at the door to the interrogation room. A second marshal showed up from down the hallway, walking briskly, as if he was late.
"After you, Marshal," Isla said as she looked at the man who just nodded back in silence and unlocked the door in front of the three of them. The two guards took positions near the suspect, one behind him while the other sat two meters away from him, observing. Isla slowly walked into the room with an envelope in her left hand and took a seat at the table, opposing the suspect. She placed the envelope in front of her without opening it and looked at the man.
"Listen... Baron," she said with an odd look in her face, not being able to remember his ship's exact identifier at the moment. "I want this to end the soonest possible as much as you do, but for that to happen I need your full cooperation. Do you understand?" The question was more rhetorical than anything, as she didn't expect an answer out of him. She looked back down towards the envelope and opened it, taking a few seconds to read the files within it.
"I see here that your name is Barot Brono, you're around fourty-five years old, and your criminal record is non-existant with no ship entries being in your name for the past decade." She once again lifted her head, meeting his eyes. "And I am utterly confused as to what or who you're supposed to be. You're a Rogue with a completely clean history, who escaped the Rogues looking for a new start and, frankly, none of this seems logical. Why would you bail out of the Rogues, kill a bunch of them, and then go to Rochester seeking a new identity? What caused you to do this and what was your end goal or intention? Is the name 'Barot Brono' even real?"
She let a few seconds go by, a length of time she considered necessary for the man to take in the questions, before continuing.
"And lastly," a small chuckle escaped her, "why should I not just put you in jail?"
The look the man gave her was an appraising one, almost as if he was trying to gauge something about her. Her age? Her station? He sat up just a little bit straighter, not inclined to talk down into his own lap as it were, but he kept his elbows upon his thickset thighs as he referred to her with that same look of a man who knew he was in deep water.
"Oh phese, spare me that nonsense." he began. Brono had an...accent. But as to what sort of accent it was, it was remarkably hard to tell. He had the mannerisms of a Libertonian to be sure, but the drawl he possessed and the cut off words hinted at Bretonian, or just a man with very little education in terms of linguistics.
"As'fya really think tha' I've no record."
The remark was a curious one, for there was actually no record of any recent activities. The man's data signature was not even present in space-flight related databases for a decade or so. The tone was a mix of both accusation, indignation and a healthy amount of suspicion and paranoia. The man seemed to realize this and his shoulders drooped some.
"Mahn', I'vda been on Rochesta' right now. Ah'did everything fine, ahvas almost there. Fah my luck..I dun' even know who you are..." he continued in a slightly more subdued manner, but his rising temper was certainly a sign that he was not at all happy of being their guest. His eyes suddenly fixed upon hers as he seemed to consider something, then shrugged slightly.
"Doestha' name of ol Sylhpeed mean anythin' to you? Ran tha Rogues on Alcatraz backwhen' Hale was around. And ah'was with'm." he stated simply enough, though there was perhaps the -tiniest- amount of pride in his words. That was, of course, until a few moments of silence passed between them and he shook his head slightly.
"Ah'was the barman'n shef at the time. Ol' Sylhpie yoink'd me for his crew, cuz good meals 'n drink is kinda a' big deal for a crew on 'traz. Din't have much of'a choice. Hadta learn to fly, hadta tag along with 'is crew. Got paid well. Very well. An' if yah are telling me right, ah even got the 'hacka treatment, if you say ah've no record. 'Fcourse ah've a record. Jus small stuff. Dun't think ah'was worth it. But 'ey, thanks anyway." he added somewhat sarcastically.
Brono was now shaking his head quietly, caught in his own little rant. It almost seemed as if he had been waiting for years to blurt his life-story to someone, though perhaps an interrogation cell was not nearly what he had hoped for at the time.
"Ol Sylhphie came'n went. Ah'dn care for the whole flying thing. Ah'd my own skills, but the credits ah'earned were plenty for me t'knida jus'...live on. For a bit more 'o ten years or so. Ah'jst sat on 'Traz and watched t'rest of them do their own thin'. Mahbe ah's too free with my creds. A yeah ago ah started to run dry...."
At this point in time the datapad present had managed to apply the local lexicon and algorythms to provide a Closed Caption option for the man's unique dialogue. Even as Brono himself went on, it was most likely much easier for the interviewers to stay focused on the datapad screen, rather than listen to the man himself.
Code:
Barot Brono: Old Sylhpie came and went. I did not care for the whole flying thing, I had my own skills. But the credits I earned were plenty for me to kinda just..live on. I just stayed on Alcatraz(?) and watched the rest of them do their own thing. Maybe I was too free with my credits. A year ago I started to run dry.
Man, I was not about to go to the scrapyard and find myself some dinky fighter to try and ''pull my weight'' out in the field. I was never a good flyer even before and a decade of sitting on my ass and getting fat did not help me change that either.
Barot Brono: Not dying young does have its uses. I had the chance to gather a lot of loose info, codes, passwords, so on for the whole of that station. One day I saw that HFX in the repair docks and...just kinda yoinked it. I had the clearance for the dock. And the ''ace'' who owned it probably has a few dozen others and a gunboat or two anyway, so what do they care.
Barot Brono: Even as someone as dogshait at flying as myself can easily hold my own in one of these. The autopilot could wreck any rookie pilot coming out of that base. I literally did not have to do nothing. Imagine my surprise when I found out I was able to claim sixty thousand credits for blowing away a nobody in the Whitney ice fields. The corps don't care who pops a criminal, as long as that is one active ship identificator less.
Barot Brono: Kinda wonder if all bunters went through this revelation. What is easier? Sitting at a lane, risking your life against corps with hundreds of billions of credits behind them, dodging navy and LPI patrols? Or is it easier to ignore all of that nonsense and just pick off a few rookie rogues in the fields every few days. Most of those poor suckers don't even have guns on their ships, not that the bounties care.
Brono finally sat back up straight, his palms on his knees as he looked up at his captors with an expression that was a mixture of defiance and slight mockery. "So'ese as it is. Ah jus' wanted t' live an easy life. Hop around from bar t' bar. Go into the fields'n shoot up a rookie or two. It sounded s'easy. Heck, th'ship probably could've done it for me."
He chuckled and sat in silence for a moment. The reality of the current situation did, however, slowly begin to set in. She made for a very good point. Other than the fact that Brono was completely below her pay grade. The individual before them was no ace pilot flying for the Rogue colors. In front of them sat a man so utterly out of his depth, no wonder he looked like a depressurized fish. A man who had gotten lucky enough to fly away on a ship he had no right to, nor the training for and only because he was old enough to have seen five full sets of Alcatraz workers turn over during his time spent there, leaving nobody privy as to what sort of clearance he had accumulated over the years.
Isla watched carefully as she tried to understand what the man was even saying. She struggled to keep up with his odd accent, reminding her of the typical Bretonian accent but a bit more... unique. Her left eye twitched as he locked eyes with her, the confusion being visible on her face. "What the bloody hell's he talking about..?" She thought to herself.
While Brono went on to talk about his life story, Isla looked down briefly towards the datapad that was to her right, moving it on top of the opened envelope and tapping a few buttons. What she wanted to do was tell the datapad to translate what the man was saying, seeing how she wouldn't have any success trying to make it out herself.
She looked back at him while the datapad was loading, sighing. The man in front of her definitely didn't sound like a criminal; he rather sounded like someone who made entirely wrong life choices in the past and now suddenly wanted to fix them but there was one thing that still bugged her: his motive. "What was it that caused him to want to make this change all of a sudden? He said he got paid well after all," she thought.
The screen of the datapad flashed a few times, grabbing Isla's attention. It had managed to translate his words, a fact that gave Isla a slight smile as she kept looking down, preferring to read off of the datapad than pay attention to Brono speaking.
"So he ran out of credits even though he was being paid so well, Rogues, I guess," she thought to herself.
Her face was covered with a look of complete confusion as she was getting more lost in his story the more he went on.
"Just kinda yoinked it, what the...?" She thought out loud as she read the text on the datapad.
"So you 'yoinked' a ship just because you could, having spent all the generous amounts of cash you received flying with that 'ace' and being left with nothing in the end," she finally spoke to him, looking back at him. The motive behind his actions still made no sense to her, but she was speaking with a Rogue after all, there was only so much sense in them.
"You mentioned something about gathering info and passwords on Alcatraz. Can you give me anything that might be of use? Anything that could earn my trust?" She continued, giving him time to think as she looked back at the table, moving the datapad to the side and taking a look again at the files in the envelope. She was still in confusion about what to do with this man, but that was a train of thought she could get to later - for now all she wanted was to know if he had truly moved on or not. His intention after all this seemed to be to arrive at Rochester and clean his record, resuming his career as a bounty hunter, perhaps. A far-fetched 'dream' for a Rogue, but nothing impossible provided he gave her the answers she wanted.
The look Brono gave her was equally confused. Of course, after he had stopped with his jabbering, the silence had set in enough for he himself to calm down just a little, thus allowing him to take in her question in earnest.
"Ah mean..ya, I kinda did. Alcatraz's hyuge. Ya land ya ship down, y' throw some credits at the nearest lad th's looks like a grease monkey, then off t' the bar ya go. The monkey got the creds, he gets t'work. They don' really care who takes t'ship later, just tha hte thing is patched up enough t'return and bring that pay'n dude back to them again. If someone yoinks y'ship, good luck finding t'dude ya gave it to in the first place. Big station."
He spoke on, stating this information in a tone of mild confusion, as if he was being asked to describe how a coat hanger works. Of course it was within the best interest of anyone visiting a Rogue station to set up their own ways to prevent such..incidents from occuring. As to why and how the previous owner of the fighter Brono had ''yoinked'' had not done so - it could have been anything from apathy, disinterest, rich nature, hot goods or because the ship was beyond repairing.
By the time the owner had returned to find his ship gone, there would be no way to even find the person they themselves had handed the ship to, for in a most likely scenario the very credits that had patched that ship up were now being spent by that individual for the sake of intoxication, leaving them slumped against a bulkhead somewhere within the rats-nest of the station.
By the sound of it, it seemed Brono was able to just board the ship once it was (or seemed to be) fixed, and leave.
Her question about the passwords, however, made his thick eyebrows furrow slightly as he seemed to try and remember something. A thick lower lip jutted out in a rather..endeeringly comical manner as he seemed to stare right through her, as if trying to recall the particulars.
"Ah's...got 'words for t' back rooms of 't bar. Block A residential room 15...uh. .." at this point the man clenched his both hands in fists, extending a finger one at a time. "Resident'ah A number 31...94....Block B area 20...block D dormitory..."
he continued. It was apparent that he was listing off the passcodes for the bulkheads connecting the various parts of that large station, which - incidentally, seemed to also show the various areas he himself had lived. From a suite at the A block, to a more modest smaller dwelling in B. To a dormitory of all things.
"Dockin' area G1, b'cuz it was our favorite and the one facin' tha Riverside-Gate route..but if ya just look at the numpad, ya can tell what tha' code is. Just pick whatever one number looks tha cleanest and press it 4 times.."
Brono......was not joking. Even the security doors connecting the landing bays to the rest of the station were all given a single four digit pass-key, which if he was right, was just a single digit pressed four times.
Rogues..
It was rather obvious that even Brono himself was starting to get nervous. The man before her had absolutely no real information to give her.
Isla sighed. It didn't take her long to realize that he couldn't really give her any useful information. But what did she even expect, from the past few minutes of their discussion it was rather obvious that the man in front of her was no important target of any sorts. He was rather just someone who happened to end up in the Rogues.
She had most pieces of the puzzle figured out by now and at this point she knew that keeping Brono in a jail for the rest of his life would only eat the government's resources for no reason. He really did seem like someone who just wanted to quit his old life and move on, and while the codes he gave her didn't sound important at all it didn't seem like he was lying either - and giving that sort of response to her meant that he really wanted to move on, 'betraying' his 'people' in such a way.
"Alright, Mister Brono. I've got all the information I need, unless there's something more to be added, I will be taking my leave for the time being. I'll be back before you know it," she spoke in a calm voice as she got up from her chair, nodding to the guards. "Good day," she said to Brono as one of the guards opened the door, exiting the room before Isla. After leaving, the second guard closed the door behind him.
Isla tapped a few buttons on her PDA and she sent a report about the whole incident to HQ, awaiting a response in due time as this report was to be expected.
About twenty minutes later her PDA vibrated, notifying her of a new message. She fished it out of her pocket and saw the exact file she awaited for. She took a few seconds to read the whole thing and then headed to the room next door, where Mallory was waiting patiently for the procedure to be dealt with.
"Mallory...? I'll need your signature here," she said, giving her PDA to the man to sign. "Third from the bottom," she continued. After the deputy director gave her back the PDA she drew her own signature wherever it was required and headed back in the room with the same two guards, who were waiting for her.
"Didn't take that long, did I?" She noted as she stepped inside, putting the PDA on the table and sliding it towards him. "I hope you can read and write, I need you to read this and understand all of it. Fill in the areas that need to be filled, okay?"
I, Barot Brono, hereby plead guilty to the charges and specifications listed below:
Affiliating with, working for, possessing identification, ship or technology of the the Liberty Rogues
For an agreed upon sentence of:
20 million Sirian Credit fine
6-year suspended sentence at LPI Huntsville, pending good behavior by Mr. Barot Brono. If any crime is committed by Mr. Barot Brono, they will be immediately remanded at LPI Huntsville with no chance of parole for a minimum of 6 years from the date the additional crime is committed.
Agreement (Detail):
Mr. Barot Brono has agreed to provide the following information for a reduced sentence:
Mr. Barot Brono has no existing entries on the criminal network and has showed intention of cooperating. Ten years ago, he worked with former high-ranking Liberty Rogue Sylhpeed in the capacity of chef/barman. The following ten years were spent on the Rogue installation Alcatraz, where Mr. Brono spent the credits earned. Mr. Brono hijacked a fightercraft (HFX-F1A Falchion) and fled Alcatraz. He collected bounties on low-ranking pirate affiliates in an effort to clear his name.
Authorizing signatures:
Director of the Marshals Service Isla Nazumaki
Deputy Director of the Marshals Service Edmund Mallory
![[Image: Marshals-Logo.png]](https://i.ibb.co/pRnJRPc/Marshals-Logo.png){kind=logo}
![[Image: Marshals.png]](https://i.ibb.co/MCRPM08/Marshals.png)
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