Kansas City Shuffle

Posted on Thu Aug 10th, 2023 @ 1:57pm by Lieutenant JG Ryland Dedeker & Lieutenant Sophie Xiong
Edited on on Fri Aug 11th, 2023 @ 1:51pm

1,612 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Season 1 Interlude II (E5.5)
Location: various
Timeline: ID 6

When Sophie woke up from the shared dreamscape with Ryland and others who had kept their distance, there was a flurry of activity among her captors. Still restrained at the wrist to the pillar which held up the old ramshackle bunker that passed for a mountain cabin, there was nothing to do but watch the Pakleds run to and fro. A distinct roar came from outside that could only have come from the shuttle engines she had worked on the entire day before. The following persistent hum only confirmed what was already obvious. It was time to go.

"You! Human!" Two Pakleds approached her, one with a laser weapon trained on her while the other slowly approached her restraints. "We fly now. Do not make trouble or we'll shoot a limb off. The Black Nagus buyer doesn't need all of them, just your living head."

Sophie had, of course, forgotten the dream as well as her promise to keep out of trouble immediately upon waking. So now, she was back to feigning helplessness and just doing as they asked in her attempt to get to whoever was representing the Black Nagus out there. “Okay, okay!” she replied irritably. “Geez, I’ve never met someone as impatient as you.”

Jaglikar the lead Pakled kicked her once before removing her restraints. "Shut up! Move!"

The Pakleds loaded Sophie onto the shuttle and restrained both hands to a fixture that had clearly been spot-welded for that very purpose. So primitive. At least the shuttle would be spaceworthy, though, and so they would actually achieve escape velocity without being torn apart or decompressing past the exosphere. Until then, though, it would still be a bumpy ride. Inertial dampeners were one thing, but this shuttle wasn't made for turbulent air pockets from the shuttle's uncontrollable chop.

“I told you we shouldn’t have cheaped out on the gravimetric emulator,” Sophie muttered irritably as the shuttle jerked through the air. They probably also shouldn’t have cheaped out on this pillar they’d ‘secured’ her to. If she stood up and stretched onto her tip toes, she could easily release herself over the top as the fixture didn’t quite reach to the ceiling. Good for them she wasn’t interested in escaping.

The turbulence came to a sudden stop, indicating they had broken atmosphere. Now, so long as life support didn't fail, they would be in the clear. "Don't even think about trying to escape," Jaglikar said. "We will throw you out into space!"

"Boss!" shouted one of the two Pakleds at the controls. "Clumpship says to meet at the edge of the system."

"So?" Jaglikar said. "We are meeting someone else, remember?"

"But..." The copilot paused for a moment. "What if the captain..."

Jaglikar interrupted. "We don't work for the captain no more!" He stomped away from Sophie to yell at the two pilots face to face. "We get enough money from her to get our own Clumpship, see?" Turning a wary eye back to Sophie, he remembered something. "And maybe her boyfriend, too. How do we get your boyfriend?"

“I don’t-“ started Sophie, but then she instantly snapped her mouth shut. A vague memory of a promise to try to get away flitted through her mind. But when could she have made such a promise? She hadn’t seen Dedeker in a couple of days now. “I don’t know,” she finished lamely, having changed directions from her initial irritated reply. “I haven’t seen him in days. I don’t know where he is. We’ll have to look for him. How are the sensors on this thing?”

"You said he would rescue you," Jaglikar said, "but clearly that was a lie and you know nothing." He turned back to the cockpit. "We go to the meeting spot and wait for the buyer."

"Where's that again?" asked one of the copilots.

"The Epsilon Ceti Outpost!" Jaglikar shouted. "Where else? This trinary system only has two planets! We just left one and the other is a glowing rock! we can't leave without the Clumpship following us, so there is only one place we could meet."

"Right..."

Epsilon Ceti. That should be significant, but Sophie couldn’t figure out why. That meant one of two things: 1. It wasn’t important to being an engineer. 2. It merely sounded similar to something that actually was significant, without actually being significant itself. Experience told her that the first was more common than the second, but the second happened often enough that she couldn’t rule it out just yet. She shook her head as the shuttle shuddered ominously. “Reverse thrusters for a few seconds or you’re going to depolarize the hypersonic shielding,” she told them. “Unless, of course, you were trying to die.”

"RTS has nothing to do with shield emitters!" shouted one of the Pakleds who wasn't in the cockpit.

"Yeah!" Jaglikar agreed with a little uncertainty but no small exuberance. "RTS doesn't affect shield emitters! We aren't stupid!"

“Oh, I didn’t realize all of you had advanced engineering degrees as well,” replied Sophie sarcastically. “Listen, lunkheads! The hypersonic shielding protects the shuttle from subspace harmonics, which are created when traveling through the radiation of a nearby star. When you’re going too fast, it can overload the shielding, resulting in depolarization. If they depolarize, we end up with a feedback loop where the subspace harmonics bounce around in the shields until they burst. And then the shuttle goes kablooey!”

The readout on the helm beeped. "The Epsilon Ceti B star is emitting stellar radiation," the pilot reported with a hint of trepidation.

"All stars emit stellar radiation!" Jaglikar retorted. Then, less confidently, he said, "Reduce speed and take a wide berth."

"Yes, sir!" the pilot replied.

Jaglikar eyed Sophie with suspicion. "We knew that already," he said. "We have been traveling space for years. There's nothing we haven't seen." A pause. "Any other bright ideas?"

“Yeah,” snapped Sophie irritably. “Let me go now and I won’t kill you later.”

The Pakleds sounded off in laughter one by one. By the time it died down to a dull roar, the Epsilon Ceti Outpost was in view. The blue-tinged concentric discs piled together like the Tower of Hanoi, making a tidy use of the space with nothing wasted.

The arrangement also made for a large population of tunnel rats, a criminal element who could scurry between decks and sections while avoiding checkpoints and scanners. For a time, the Outpost was a respectable alternative to Risa for any travelers of a chaste or prudish disposition, whether religious or corporate or any other setting, but over time the criminal element overtook Risa's reputation. As a result, few respectable people stayed on the Outpost more than was necessary--refugees with nowhere to go, fringe thinkers and cultists, assorted drifters, and the typical explorer that didn't need more than a stopover before continuing onward.

All in all, if there was anywhere in the sector to conduct a discreet human trafficking transaction, one could do far worse than Epsilon Ceti Outpost.

"Dock at one of the commercial berths," Jaglikar said. "And use one of the burner registries. The buyer wants no trace."

"Aye, boss," said the pilot.

In a moment, they were docked. Jaglikar turned back to Sophie. While one guard trained his weapon on her, Jaglikar barked, "Stand up! Put this on!" He presented a nondescript metal box with two hand holes in one side.

Sophie pointedly looked at the pole to which she was still cuffed. “That’s going to be a little difficult,” she pointed out in her most condescending tone.

With a huff of contempt, Jaglikar fired a round at the pole, blowing it free with only minor singes on Sophie's clothes. "Better?"

She gave him a scowl. “Brave of you, to risk damaging the merchandise,” she said irritably. “What is this? How exactly do I put it on?”

"Stick your hands inside the--" Jaglikar handed his laser rifle to his minion. "Never mind, I'll do it myself!" He forced Sophie's hands, one at a time, inside the metal box which then clamped down around her wrists. The harder she pulled, the tighter the squeeze. "Now you can't get away!"

Meanwhile, the shuttle docked at an underside commercial berth that made the entire vessel rattle when the docking collar took. The flight crew, all of two of them, powered down the engines and joined Jaglikar and the armed guard at the airlock. "If anyone asks, you hurt yourself in a routine maintenance accident and we're taking you to the clinic."

“Putting me in a cuff box is a sure fire way to get people to question that story, you do realize that, don’t you?” she asked the Pakleds.

Jaglikar laughed first, prompting the others to start laughing too. "That's just so you don't find your way out of this."

Two of the Pakleds presented a waste bin on an anti-grav sled. The top was removed, revealing enough space for Sophie if she ducked down and partially contorted herself.

"Get in." Jaglikar wasn't laughing anymore.

Sophie took one look at the box and shook her head. “Absolutely not,” she said vehemently. “I will not get in there even if my life depends on it. You’ll have to kill me to get me in there.”

For the second time since being in Pakled custody, Sophie was rendered unconscious by a blow to the head. It was a fact that would annoy her to no end upon return to consciousness.

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