The Shadow of Polity (Qedesha and Graid)

[Qedesha]

Samantha leaned against the back wall, carefully affecting boredom as she listened to the man ranting at the front of the room. The usual Separatist jargon, denouncements of the AIs, sweeping statements about attacks and similar acts... she'd heard it all before, and knew that less than one claim in a hundred had any veracity.

She was actually watching the people at the front of the gathering. They were quieter than the others, their faces less animated, their appearance more conservative and casual. They were 'real' separatists, effective and capable terrorists, and she'd been very, very frightened since they'd arrived.

Samantha, a curvy, dark-haired woman had originally joined the separatists with her then-boyfriend. After splitting up, and after becoming aware of their real goals and methods, she'd willingly contacted the runcible AI and turned herself into a secret agent. She'd had some successes, hence the arrival of the offworlders... they'd come to 'hunt the leak', nobody imagining that Samantha could be it.

She was well trusted by the others, and privy to a lot of high-level information. She just hoped she'd survive long enough to get it somewhere useful.

 

[Graid]

ECS Agent James Marrow, tall, blond, carrying more concealed weaponry than he really knew what to do with, stood on the the bridge of the Thief of Time, a chainglass bubble that made it seem like he was floating in space, and looked at the planet below.
It was the second of five worlds, one huge gas giant closest to the star, then this ball of dark rock, striped with greenish bands of cloud, then another Jovian planet and two tiny frozen worlds farther out. It was called Prejudice, which Marrow thought did not bode well for any off-worlders. But he had been to worlds with any variety of designations, many of which did not bear any resemblence to their names. Murder had been a largely peaceful place, what he would have thought of as a garden world. Some AIs had a really messed up sense of humour.
Thief hung in orbit over the dark side of Prejudice, chameleonware effectively hiding it from any prying eyes or inquisitive scans, while Marrow considered his plan of action.
There was a Seperatist cell operating done there, probably more than one, trying to secede from the Polity or to just cause as much mayhem as possible before being brought down. The futility of their actions never seemed to slow them down or put a stop to their murderous antics - men who felt they had nothing to lose were often the most dangerous, a fact which Marrow knew well enough.
They had somebody on the inside here, a woman currently known only as Samantha, who had joined the cause when things here were going well for the seperatists. A few small successes, mostly minor acts of terrorism, bombs planted in sensitive areas and so on, but nothing really to worry about so far. But success made people grow bold, and so Marrow had come to get their informant out before she was discovered, to learn what she knew about other cells. What happened after that wasn't really much of his concern.

 

[Qedesha]

"Agent Marrow."
All of the Ship AI's had their quirks. Thief of Time's was that she didn't like talking directly to passengers, using subminds or consoles or drones. This was the flat, empty tones of a submind, probably the one responsible for the life support systems again.
"Please proceed to the shuttle bay. The shuttle there will drop you just outside the runcible port... there is a visitor spaceport there as well. Your contact has been assigned by the cell to watching the port for visitors."
The door hissed open pointedly.

Down on the planet, Samantha stifled a sigh of relief as the meeting finally broke up. She avoided meeting the gaze of the offworlders, simply ducking out of one of the side doors and making her way to the port causeways. She actually enjoyed the port-watching duty... she could while away the time watching people arrive and depart, pretending they were on urgent missions, dreaming of being one of them.

The AI, in their rare, secret communications, had hinted at a more direct contact arriving. She knew enough to know that her cell wasn't normally important enough for that level of attention... and one such as herself weren't normally told, unless they needed to be involved. It didn't take long to combine it with the arrival of the offworlders and realise that she herself was in serious danger, and that a lot of trouble was approaching.

 

[Graid]

Marrow sighed. He liked AIs to be a little more communicative than this one; he didn't even know its name. He assumed it was Thief, since ship AI was usually named for the ship that was its body, or perhaps the other way around. He didn't spare it much thought because a man could spend a lifetime trying to figure out the ineffable mind of an AI and still end up with more questions than when he started. It didn't want to talk to him, so he didn't want to talk to it. Besides, he had other, more pressing matters to worry about just now.
He went out the door the AI had obligingly opened and followed the corridors to a cargo bay. The gravplates that lined the centre of the tunnels were set to mimic the gravity of the world below, a comfortable 0.9, for him to be accustomed to it. Which showed that maybe Thief cared a little more for its human passengers than it seemed.
The shuttle was a boxy metallic shape lacking weapons and fitted with hardshields only sufficient to ward off impacts from such space junk as might be expected in orbit above an occupied world. It had no offensive weapons, only meteorite defense lasers which would be of little or no use against another ship, even if it was close enough for them to be effective. It was, in fact, a junker.
But since there was no other way to get to the surface, he clambered in, and let the AI run through the preflight checks and guide the vessel from the bay and into the star-marked darkness beyond.
Accessing his personal netspace though his aug he saw that there was nothing of any interest in his inbox. It was going to be a boring hour until landing.

 

[Qedesha]

"Agent Marrow,"
This time the voice was melodious, soft to the point of shyness. None of the subminds bothered with voice modulation, and the shuttle's comms panel showed the communication coming from the ship. It must be the AI itself.

Text flickered across the screen, and his aug flagged a note saying that copies had been sent to it. The melodious voice continued, a sort of breathy ripple that sounded like she was murmuring into his ear.
"The situation has become more serious. Three individuals have joined the local cell... they were last observed as part of an incident over the Line. The incident is classified, but I can tell you that it resulted in the destruction of an attack-class Polity vessel, as well as the deaths of more than five hundred thousand colonists. Contra-terrene devices were used by the Separatists."

The communication line was abruptly disconnected. The files were a series of reports... some showing blurred pictures of the three individuals, some showing that seventeen energy signals similar to those given off by passive CTDs had been detected in the area he was flying to, and one a comprehensive report of the current cell's activity to date.

The shuttle cruised steadily, if a little noisily, into the atmosphere and then curved down for a slightly rough landing on a small pad. The door opened to show a noisy crowd milling about on the other side of the fence... the planet obviously had a healthy traveling culture.

 

[Graid]

"CTDs," thought Marrow. "Fuck."
But seventeen of the anti-matter warheads was far more than he had thought. They were not easy for anyone to come by, at least for anyone working outside ECS. Which meant that they had somebody, probably more than one somebody, working on the inside. And that was almost unheard of. Most were found out before they could siphon off funds or armaments to their organisation, and... steps were taken, discrete steps, to ensure that whoever was involved wouldn't be causing trouble like that again.
There were always people waiting for bodies, even slightly used ones.
Marrow was on the ramp and down it even before it had finished lowering to the surface of the landing pad. There was the usual mob of people one found in a place like this. Waiting for people they knew to arrive, others seeing friends or family safely off on their journey, a bunch of people lurking around without anything to do other than watching the various comings and goings.
Marrow himself, dressed in a long dust-coloured coat, a dark sleeveless shirt and camo fatigues, didn't exactly fit in. He didn't entirely stand out either. Carefully applying an expression of someone a little lost to his features, he accessed a map of the place through his aug.
The landing pads, mostly for smaller shuttles, were to the west of the runcible and both were placed together at the northern end of a long causeway lined with the sort of places that sold over-priced local rubbish to tourists. In the south was the port town proper, which didn't seem to have a name. Highrises mostly, office buildings and residences. Nothing special, pretty much what he was expecting of a world like this. Beyond it would be wildernesses left over from terraforming, large swathes of skarch trees, mosses and algaes. Prehaps some wildlife too, accidentally brought in through the runcible or deliberately released as game.
Know that he had orientated himself sufficiently, he found a seat on a bench and applied himself to spotting whoever the seperatists had sent to keep an eye on the comings and goings.

 

[Qedesha]

There was only one way in and out of the complex... it was a big gate, but it was a bottleneck nonetheless. This was normally considered sufficient... the runcible AI knew practically every particle that entered or left the spoon, and there were serious checks on the cargos that the shuttles brought in, so why need more than a final gate. The capabilities of the Separatists here made it obvious that it wasn't in fact enough, but that was a question still to be solved.

The single gate made it easy for Samantha to watch the people, her discrete, high-quality aug helping her scan the flow of people for suitable warning signs. She was very easy for him to spot, a rather attractive, comfortably dressed woman leaning against the gate wall, seemingly just watching the crowds together with the other hangers-on. To Marrow's ECS-trained attention to detail, however, she was obvious... it was the perfect watching place, she had a smooth, regular way of scanning faces that spoke of long practice, and of course she matched the single picture the AI had filtered out.

She hadn't seen him yet, being focused on the nearby swarm of people.

 

[Graid]

Marrow compared Samantha in the flesh to the picture provided for him by Thief. It was the same woman, curvy, dark-haired, attractive, and she did not seem to have changed at all since the picture was taken. Of course she hadn't. Marrow himself hadn't physically changed any great deal since his early twenties, and would probably still be looking the same at two hundred. He vaguely wondered how old she might be. There was no available information about this woman, which he marked as downright suspicious.
Was this really his contact? Was she even the right woman? Could it be a trap?
There were ways of dealing with traps, and Marrow chose the easiest; walking right into it.

He stood up and wrapped his coat around himself as he strode confidently towards Samantha, his long legs quickly eating up the distance between them. He stopped when there was only a few feet between her and himself.
"Samantha?" he enquired.

 

[Qedesha]

She saw him coming, eyes narrowing as her aug search program no doubt threw up all sorts of warning indicators, and then widening as he came right up to her. She looked around hurriedly when he spoke, relaxing a bit as she made sure they weren't being watched, and then nodded curtly.

"Yeah. Who're you?"
Her hands hadn't moved to any kind of weapon, but she stood with a relaxed, even posture that screamed some kind of training. She also kept her head slightly down, able to watch his eyes but keep his hands in her pheripheral vision. This was even more confirmation... she was more than the average separatist, she was capable while still being relatively discrete.

The flow of people surged around them, a usefully noisy clutter that went a long way to masking them from watchers.

 

[Graid]

"My name is Marrow," said Marrow, keeping his voice low enough so as not to be easily overheard but not so low as to invite suspicion. He debated internally wether or not to disclose his connection with ECS, and decided against it. "I'm here on behalf of some people," he continued, putting a particular spin on the word people, "who would like to talk to you about certain... delicate matters. Is there somewhere we could go to talk privately?"
He carefully watched her eyes while she watched his just as carefully, and slipped his hands into the pockets of his fatigues. To the untrained observer, and perhaps to Samantha too, there seemed to be nothing in either of them. Marrow, however, knew that the left was occupied by a thin gun. He didn't take a grip on it, though, just stood with his hands in his pockets while waiting for this woman to make up her mind.
It had occured to him that, if this was a trap, it could be the kind of situation that he wouldn't walk away from. At least with all his major organs still intact. Risks were for taking. What was the point in being alive if you didn't take the odd chance now and then?

 

[Qedesha]

She stared at him for a long, tense moment, then slowly nodded. There was an obvious tensing in her face when his hands went into his pockets, but logic rapidly overruled... if he was ECS, there was no reason why he'd shoot her. If he was a Separatist trick, then she was already a dead woman walking... he wasn't likely to shoot her here either way.

"There's a box motel up the street, third building, next to the old shuttle building. Take a room, tell the guy at the desk you're waiting for someone. I'll join you there in ten minutes."
She looked into his face for a moment longer and then looked away, turning her attention back to the crowd.