Valuable Cargo
Heimatar region — Sveipar constellation
Lustrevik system — Planet VII — Moon 9
Brutor Tribe Academy
29 August YC 127
My Hunting the Lieutenants mission didn’t take long yesterday, and I delivered Kirus to Tarak Erand well before 7 am. As the agent started an interrogation early, I expected a call from him in the afternoon or, in the worst case, late at night. Despite my misgivings, no one bothered me at all. Curious, I went to the agent’s office without an invitation. After exchanging greetings, I asked Tarak about the progress of Kirus’s interrogation.
“Oh, Kirus,” the agent said unenthusiastically, “I had to ship him to Keita.”
Surprised, I raised my eyebrows and chuckled, “Did he prove to be such a hard nut to crack?”
“No, no, I didn’t touch him. It’s just that Keita said that she had dug out some info which could help with the interrogation, and asked me to transfer the prisoner to her station.”
“Hmm… I thought you, agents, were not keen to share information about your missions with other agents.”
Tarak nodded, “Typically not, but she is a referring agent for an ongoing operation. In such cases, we pool intelligence and resources and just focus on the mission success.”
“So what do we do now? Just wait for Keita to get back with a new intel?”
“Me — yes, but not you. In fact, I should have mentioned it straight away — the info that Keita plans to use for the interrogation was found in the evidence about Dagan that you brought to her. She wants you to be present while they are, ahem, talking to Kirus. So, your next mission is to fly to Hek.”
I was appalled, “Why does she need me there? I am not going to participate in that ‘talking’ even if you pay me!”
Tarak laughed, “What, you have no stomach for it? Yeah, it takes some getting used to. But don’t worry, you won’t be allowed anywhere near the prisoner. Keita just wanted to clarify something with you. Those dry sensor logs provide a lot of precise data, but it’s hard to understand without context. She needs your first-hand experience to interpret them.”
“Well, if it’s just helping Keita with the analysis…” I said hesitantly.
“Nothing more,” Tarak assured me. “So, are we good?”
“Yeah, I think so. How urgent is the mission?” I asked, totally expecting to hear ‘at your earliest convenience’.
“Can wait till tomorrow, methinks. Krusuals, they like to soften their prisoners before the questioning, you know?”
I didn’t know and didn’t want to know, so I nodded knowingly to close this unpleasant topic.
“Well, mate, that’s it then,” the agent said by way of farewell. “It’s been a pleasure working with you, despite your being of Caldari persuasion. If you ever visit our parts in future, drop by and I am sure I can rustle up a mission or two for you.”
“The pleasure is mine,” I replied politely and went to the docks.
Metropolis region — Barvigrard constellation
Hek system — Planet IV
Krusual Tribe Bureau
30 August YC 127
Upon arrival to Krusual Tribe Bureau, I contacted Keita and immediately got an invitation to visit her in the office. After exchanging greetings, I asked the agent how the interrogation was going.
“Oh, we have not started yet,” Keita replied. “We are keeping Kirus in a sensory deprivation tank; it’s similar to your capsule with pod goo. In my experience, it takes a couple of days of feeling nothing to make people very, very talkative.”
Despite myself, I felt a strange interest in the mechanics of that torture and asked, “I can imagine that you can leave the person without light, sound, smell and taste, but even in amniotic fluid they can move and touch themselves. So, they still can have tactile experiences, right?”
“Nah, we took care of that too. Injecting micro-doses of botulinum toxin incapacitates the muscles and turns them into jelly. Very effective. Although I have to say that I saw cases where some religious fanatics — you can guess whom I am talking about — experienced a kind of epiphany. They thought that they died, and their soul was separated from the body. Now, imagine you are waiting for your god to embrace you but instead you see a face of a friendly Minmatar technician who flushes you out of the tank.”
I snorted and asked, “What did you do with those? I guess they were not inclined to have a frank conversation after such a disappointment.”
Keita nodded and winked at me, “We have other methods.”
Before she could go into the details of those methods, I asked, “So, Tarak said that you needed me to help you with data analysis. How can I be of service?”
“Ah, yes. Look here,” the agent projected her datapad screen onto a wall monitor. “In the mission data that was sent to me, I found several travel logs. They appear to be recorded by different ships. All ships are unregistered. So, the questions for you: whose travel logs are these, and why are they mixed up with your combat logs?”
I looked at the screen. There were dates and destinations in Minmatar and Amarr spaces. The ships were identified by their factory numbers but had no registered call signs. Keita displayed the logs from different ships side by side and showed that, with rare exceptions, their itineraries were the same, meaning that they mostly travelled as a group.
“How many different ships are there in the logs?” I asked.
“Six,” said Keita.
“And what is their file creation timestamp?”
“It’s 28 August YC 127. To be precise,” she opened the file directory, “they were created at 5:54 am Universal Time.”
“Hmm… Two days ago, at 5:54 am I was rousting Kirus out of the habitation module. I have no idea how those files got added to my combat logs but I know someone who should know.”
I put my commlink onto the desk and started a call.
When the connection was established and the commlink projected a holographic image of the person on the other end, I smiled pleasantly and said, “Hello, Aura.”