Season 2: Home Life and Shadow Plays
Episode 7: No Need for Conspiracy
(to those Amtgarders out there, the resemblance of any
characters to Sir Sir Sir Sir Aramithras is completely
intentional.)
Office in a Skyskraper
"Your man didn't do his job," the cloaked man said.
"My master was hoping for a bloodier message."
"You did not give us all the information," the man
responded with a slight Italian accent. He didn't like
this Jedi wannabe, but he had paid for their services
in gold bars. "Now we have to find our operative and
dispose of him as well."
"You won't find him," the cloaked man laughed, then
turned serious. "He was carrying the coin, was he
not?" The suit waved off that question.
"You don't seem to understand who we are," the man
told him with a silky threatening voice. "We could
find and take anyone that lives on this world."
"Exactly my point, he was carrying the coin,
correct?" the cloaked man was insistent now.
"He was a professional, of course he had the coin."
"Good, then our business is concluded," the man
stood up from the recliner and began walking out of
the office. "If I were you I would not make any
further moves on the targets, my master would not
appreciate that." The suit snapped and another man in
a dark suit blocked the man's passage out with a
pistol. The cloaked man smiled, he flickered out of
view with a ripping sound as the gunman fired. The
bullet struck the gunman's boss, passing through his
arm and out the window, as the cloaked man reappeared
behind him.
"Your job is done," the cloaked man emphasized the
statement with deadly clarity. "But since you don't
seem to realize that." The cloaked man tossed a small
sphere at the suit as he vanished again. Mere moments
later the top five floors of the skyskraper exploded.
The Yagami Brig
"Well, we've identified your client, Mister...A.R.A
Mithras" Kiyone told the lawyer from across the
screen. The assassin himself was dismayed at the
youthful appearance of his court appointed attorney.
"The locals have quite a file on him, excuse me, but
are you drinking wine out of a box?" The lawyer on the
screen had a large, bright red nose poking out of a
spherical mass of hair that concealed any other facial
feature.
"ITS A CARDBOARD CARAFE!!!" the assassin and Kiyone
both paused to look at him, then they went back to
what they had been doing.
"Wait, wait," the lawyer insisted. Kiyone looked in
wide-eyed embarrassment as the lawyer shuffled papers
about.
"Excuse me, can I possibly get another lawyer?"
"I'll have you know that I'm the most experienced
attorney in this office," the lawyer was indignant.
"You don't act like you've had many cases," the
assassin noted.
"Just how many people from legal survived the Caine
incident?" Kiyone asked nervously.
"Umm, I had to do some shopping for my mother." The
assassin turned from the inebriated public defender to
face Kiyone.
"What do you want to know?" he asked desparately.
"Who hired you?" Kiyone asked.
"Listen you!" the lawyer shouted. "You have to let
me defend you, we can't let the dream die just because
we've had more major disasters and battles in the last
two years than all of the past hundred."
"I don't know who contracted me," the assassin
answered ignoring the lawyer. "I work through an
agency, an office on the top floor of the Makiko
building." Kiyone pulled up a Washu holo-unit and
scanned for the indicated building.
"Bad news for you," Kiyone said. "The top five
floors of that building were destroyed in some kind of
terrorist bombing. Don't you have any clues for me?"
The assassin looked shocked as the lawyer began to
rant about how the Caine incident was all a plot by
the Jurai empire to weaken the true center of
civilization in the galaxy.
"Wasn't Caine trying to destroy all the Jurai?"
Kiyone put in for a moment.
"You see how far they're willing to go to ruin it
all for us!!" Kiyone rolled her eyes away from the odd
man faced the assassin again.
"I had this coin I was supposed to leave with the
bodies," he reached into his pockets and retrieved a
small flat piece of metal with the crest of Jurai
imprinted on it.
"You see!! The evil Jurai have corrupted this
innocent young man...." Kiyone switched off the brig
energy wall and reached out to accept the coin, behind
her Rakkan watched everything carefully. Turning it
over Kiyone saw a serial number.
"Its a Jurai keydisk," Kiyone noted as she raised
the energy wall behind her. She turned to the
holo-unit and typed in the serial number. "Thought so,
that shipment of hard currency that disappeared a
couple of weeks ago." She did a little more checking,
accessing the galactic net through Yagami's computers
and the holo-unit. "The crew reported a black ship of
some kind before all transmission was lost, thanks."
She started to leave.
"Wait, what about me?"
"Oh, I'm going to charge you with possession of an
unlicensed weapon," Kiyone informed him. "If you plead
you might be able to get away with ten years."
"Thanks alot," he grumbled as Kiyone left.
"No problem," Kiyone said non-chalantly as she
walked down the corridor. Rakkan glided after her
after a few moments glaring at the assassin.
"You damn detectives!" the lawyer was yelling.
"You're destroying the Dream with your abuses of power
and rand-*" The lawyer's drunken rant was cut off as
the holoscreen vanished at an unheard command from
Kiyone down the corridor.
The Yagami Living Quarters
"Oh, you beat me again," Mihoshi whined.
"No one can beat me at Spiritblade!" Sasami
declared. "So why don't we try another game."
"Yeah, a spacefighter game," Mihoshi insisted. She
started scanning through the computer's databanks for
more games. She found utilities, reports, databases,
and then finally, after a great deal of random
pointing and clicking she came to something that
resembled a game.
"Hey isn't that Miss Washu?" Sasami asked as the
intro screen of the game popped up.
"Yeah, it looks like her doesn't it."
"What's this game called?"
"Semi-Holographic three-dimensional simulation
field generator," Mihoshi read. "Look at all the
scenarios! Oh, which one should I pick?"
"How about Bandit Swarm?"
"Yeah that sounds fun!"
The Yagami Bridge
"Captain," Karya turned to face Kiyone as she
entered the bridge. "We've just crossed the fifth
planet's sol-orbital path. Is there something we
should know?"
"Less Earth traffic around here," Kiyone noted as
she sat down in the pilot's chair.
"Any idea of who hired that man in the brig," Ayeka
asked in a slightly annoyed tone.
"I have a suspicion, that it was an Akuneko."
"Rei Kuroi?" Tenchi asked, anxious about facing
another dark warrior.
"Nervous, Tenchi?" Ryoko asked viciously. Before
Tenchi could rise to the jibe the ships alarms began
going wild. Kiyone and Karya both turned to the
scanners and controls of the Yagami to see what the
problem was.
"We're tracking approximately forty ships of
various make and designs," Kiyone noted. "They look
like some kind of.....whooaaah!!!!!" Kiyone was cut
off as the ship, seemingly on its own began a series
of evasive maneuvers. The crew were thrown to the side
as the Yagami took an almost instantaneous one-eighty,
temporarily shifting and strengthening the gravity
field.
"What the hell is going on here?" Ryoko yelled.
"I see one of their ships, Captain!" Karya shouted.
"They appear to have a cloaking device of some kind!"
A streak of color blazed past the Yagami's forward
viewpoint, everyone noticed that they seemed to be
looking right through it.
The Yagami Cargo Bay
"What's going on!?!" Washu demanded as she was
plastered to the ceiling and then found herself
falling again. "Who's driving this thing?" The gravity
field shifted again and Washu's fall became a gentle
tumble. The pink haired scientist rushed, or tried to
rush in the currently low gravity, for a section of
exposed circuitry.
"Have to reactivate inertial damper!" she gasped
before being tossed across the cargo bay by another
gravity shift.
The Yagami Living Quarters
"Washu makes great video games!" Sasami declared
cheerfully as she felt the gravity shift with another
motion of the computer ship. The computer recognized
this as the place from which the ship was being
controlled, and while the intensity of the field was
fluctuating, the computer did its best to maintain
center of gravity at the computer. As a result Sasami
and Mihoshi were mostly unaware of the problems
everybody else was having.
"Hey Sasami, you're turn is coming up, try and beat
that score!"
"Oh just watch me!" Sasami exclaimed excitedly.
The Yagami Bridge
"Its stopped," Kiyone declared as the ship paused.
She rushed to the scanners, "No hostiles detected."
"Kiyone, could this be the problem?" Rikyu pointed
to a small monitor on the side of the pilot station
where the words "reloading simulation" were flashing.
"Simulation?" Rakkan asked, confused. "What does
that mean?" Then they were moving again and the ships
alarms blared all over again. Fortunately the gravity
shifts were not near as severe this time.
"Who's flying this thing!!" Washu demanded over a
holoscreen. "Is Mihoshi up there! If I hadn't
reactivated the inertial damper during that pause we'd
still be flying all over the place."
"The computer is running some sort of simulation,"
Ayeka informed the scientist, acting mildly miffed. "I
assume this might have something to do with what you
fiddling with." The ship wasn't maneuvering in the
same insane manner anymore, but it was doing a
somewhat decent job at avoiding damage from the now
obviously holographic ships.
"You think I like being kicked around like a hacky
sack?" Everybody looked at each other in confusion.
"What's a hacky sack?" somebody asked.
"Err, never mind, what's this simulation you're
talking about?"
"Captain!!" Karya yelled. "We're heading back into
the asteroid belt!"
Everybody watched with terror as the Yagami piloted
through the asteroid belt at high speed. They didn't
care about the number of holo-bandits that blew up in
shimmering computer generated explosions. They were
concerned with the very real pieces of rock passing to
the side of them at high speed. By the time they came
out the other side they were all staring in shock out
the viewport. Then the last holo-bandit shattered into
a last explosive light show. Moments later the sound
of Mihoshi and Sasami's voices came to them from the
cooridors.
"That was fun Mihoshi!" Sasami declared. "I'll beat
you next time, you were only ten seconds ahead of me."
"I don't think so, Sasami," Mihoshi declared
proudly. "Guess what, I beat Sasami at a game! Hey
what's wrong with you guys?"
"I thought so," Washu muttered from the holoscreen.
"You can't use my computer without supervision
anymore," Kiyone declared breathlessly. "Neither of
you."
"But Kiyone..." Sasami started.
"I think we have to agree with that," Tenchi noted.
Everybody nodded wordlessly.
"Captain, shouldn't we check on the prisoner."
Everybody took a moment to think about that and then
crinkled their faces in sympathetic pain.
"Err...later..."
=====
"Caffeinated Kender? What's that, a berserk spell?" -
Tribble, Kender Warrior of the Celestial Kingdom
Signed
He of Too Many Names (Thrythlind/Thryth/Luke/Hyperbole/Pika/Pooka)
http://members.aol.com/thrythlind/snake.html
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