"Sam's fish is off," Jeannie whispered urgently. "You've been betrayed. Cheated. You need to give him a piece of your mind. Make sure he pays attention to you and listens. You have a lot to say and he needs to hear it. Make sure he does."
Jeannie felt bad about the deception and the warping of another person's mind, but surely it wasn't as bad as injuring them, even killing them?
The old woman proved to be quite the dragon. As her harsh angry words started they slipped towards Sam's from the side out of the edge of even his peripheral vision and into his backrooms. Even if Sam noticed he could hardly ignore his angry customer and the fascinated crowd that was gathering to watch.
The cleaning closet at the back of those rooms was a tight fit for the two of them.
"Sorry, about this," Jeannie whispered to Sheena. "The Pirate Chief is insanely paranoid. Multiple layers and quirks everywhere along this route. I don't think this chokepoint is here by accident." She smashed a hole in the wall next to the decrepit hand pad near the light switch.
"We're just lucky he tried to keep parts low key," she said. "If he'd done this proper and armored this biometric scanner against tampering we'd have been up crap creek without the proverbial paddle." She found the wires she was looking for ripped them loose and touched them together.
"Not everyone knows how to hot wire a security pad," Sheena said. "There's a story or two you need to tell me sometime."
"Not much to tell and all of it rather embarrassing," Jeannie replied blushing a little. As a very young girl just into her teens she'd had a not long but intense period of rebellion. She wasn't proud of it, but apparently it hadn't all been wasted time.
A door to a well lite but barren looking corridor opened in the back of the closet they occupied.
"Follow me," Jeannie said.
Halfway down she stopped and spoke the required pass phrase to the unseen but listening automatic security system. She let a breathe out. Even knowing as much about the security as the Pirate Chief did himself it was a series of formidable obstacles.
"This next part's going to be tricky," Jeannie said to Sheena. "The guards outside the exit of this passageway have orders to not let anyone get close to them or to let anyone pass without checking with the Pirate Chief. The pass phrase will just keep them from stunning us while we wait without moving. Did you get the smoke grenades?"
"Yes," Sheena replied. "Non-lethal knock gas ones too. Gas masks to go along with them. Some batons and a pair of adjustable prods. They go from small shock to heavy stun. I didn't get get any actual stand off stunners figured that be too suspicious".
"Too bad," Jeannie said, "but sensible. As soon as we halt and they relax a little we have to pop the smoke and gas. You have to charge right in and get their full attention." Jeannie felt bad about this part. Supposedly the guards would be using just heavy stunners, but actual injury was possible. A fast moving person who was knocked out wasn't going to hit the deck gently. Injured or knocked out it didn't matter, if the guards managed to raise the alarm Jeannie would need to leave Sheena behind.
"Okay," Sheena said. "Guard duty is boring if we surprise them the odds are better than you'd think."
"Let's go then," Jeannie responded.
In the event it all went quicker and slicker than she'd have dared hope. The guards didn't have time to get a warning off, miraculously the flurry of stunner fire they directed at Sheena only clipped one hand, and they were already falling from the knock out gas when Jeannie reached them with a stun prod.
Exhausted from the intense action and woozy from catching the edges of the knock out gas Jennie didn't have the energy to question their good fortune.
The two of them staggered onto courier that was waiting. They knocked on the door of the cabin Jeannie knew the last ditch guard was in and played a recording of the Pirate Chief giving the password. Sheena grabbed his gun hand when he opened the door as Jeannie slapped him with a drug injector.
"I can't believe we actually managed to jump all those hurdles," Jeannie said as the heavily drugged guard obediently supplied his part of the permission codes to activate the courier for take-off. "We're not home free yet, but this boat has a pirate friendly identification beacon and is faster than anything else they have. We're over the hump."
Jeannie laid her hands on the controls to power the engines up for departure.
A stunner barrel was pressed against the back of her head just behind her ear. "I'm afraid not Jeannie," Sheena said. "Put your hands in the air."
"Sheena?" Jeannie said stunned. "Why?"
"Because they didn't have to take it easy in changing me," Sheena said. "They don't need me to be able to pretend I'm who I used to be. I'm a different woman now with different motivations. Different loyalties, different friends."
"They didn't lobotomize you," Jeannie said. "You must realize that this isn't you. That they're just twisting your feelings."
"Succeeded too," Sheena said. "I'm much happier now. Old Sheena was a dour old witch who was never going to be happy or make anything of herself. She was in a mental box that had no fun in it. Well they broke me out of that box and I'm not going back. Time for you to take a nap."
Point blank the stunner was like getting hit by a brick in the back of head.
* * *
Jeannie seemed to be making a habit of waking up with a headache. This one had to be the worst ever.
At least she was in a dark room and it was quiet. Being alone with her pain wasn't enjoyable but it could have easily been worse. Then she remembered what had happened.
She'd been betrayed. She'd beaten all the odds, jumped over every ingenious and carefully thought out hurdle the Pirate Chief had placed in her way. She'd been ready to take off and escape, but Sheena had sold her out.
She couldn't trust anyone. Worse the Pirate Chief and his assortment of pets were going to be watching her more closely than ever. There was no way he was going to let Jeannie trick him into revealing all his plans and codes again. That ship had sailed. She'd blown her best chance, maybe her last one.
Deep inside somewhere that felt far far away she could feel anger and despair fighting over her soul. She wanted to cry and she had no tears left. She wanted to puke and she was empty. She wanted to end herself but couldn't raise the energy.
She lay like that for how long she didn't know. Eventually for no particular reason she started sobbing. She did that for some while before slowing, running down like a battery gone dead. She lay numbly for a period and then started to notice she was bone tired, bruised and all her muscles ached. She had given her best and done so despite being drugged and not having had enough sleep. Her only mistake had been trusting her best friend and dedicated guard.
It occurred to her that her whole sorry performance was likely being watched. It angered her. The anger was warm. She hadn't realized how cold she'd felt. The anger felt like the ember of a fire that she needed to save herself from a cold storm. She nursed that ember of anger, until she felt like she could think again.
It hurt but she remembered what Sheena had said at the end. "They don't need me to be able to pretend to be who I used to be," she'd said. It was chilling. Taken at face value it meant nobody in the pirate's hands could even trust themselves, that their motivations, emotions, and their thinking could be adjusted to whatever the pirates wanted. She wondered about memories could they adjust even those, she vaguely remembered hearing or reading somewhere that emotions influenced memory. She'd been too quick to dismiss the creepy Doctor as a quack.
Okay, that was one action point. Take the creepy Doctor seriously. Try to figure out what he could and couldn't do. Could he be encouraged to talk? Most men could be turned into babbling fountains by an attractive young woman who wanted to make the effort. The Doctor was not most men, but it was worth trying.
The Pirate Chief had to be something of a lost cause, she'd tricked him into underestimating her twice, she didn't think he'd make the same mistake three times. Still she had to do her best
to convince him not that her spirit was completely crushed but that she rationally recognized she was trapped and needed to co-operate. She might have no hope of lulling him into complete complacency again she needed to take as much of the edge off of his suspicion as possible.
Most of all she needed to be honest with herself. She'd been arrogant and complacent. She'd refused to recognize just how bad her situation was and she'd blown two near escapes because of it. Only trying to escape had itself been an error.
She needed to go on the attack. She had to recognize too that the Pirate Chief and the Doctor were so dangerously evil, that stopping them was more important than saving her own skin. If she could get away great, but a long happy non-brainwashed life was not her goal anymore. Her goal had to be ending the evil that was the Pirate Chief.
And how was she supposed to do that while she was not only a prisoner but couldn't even trust her own mind? If the Pirate Chief had taken it easy in how he meddled with her mind before he wasn't likely to keep doing so in the face of her latest escapade. She needed some way to leave herself secret notes while under constant supervision.
She needed some way to instruct future brain washed Jeannie that nothing was more important than killing the Pirate Chief.
* * *
The Pirate Chief was happy, but more than a little annoyed.
As usual his belt and suspenders approach had paid off. He always had a plan "B", didn't mean he actually wanted plan "A" to fail. In the case of Jeannie Chang's second escape attempt the failure of plan "A" had cost him a valuable asset. He'd hoped to send Sheena Matheson back with the Chang girl when she was ransomed as a generous gesture, planting an agent in a vital location in the process. Unfortunately she'd now been outed.
It'd stopped the increasingly impressive Chang girl's escape attempt cold, but the cost had been great. The process of subverting Matheson had kept the Doctor, probably his most precious asset, constantly occupied throughout the last couple of weeks.
The Doctor had edited out most of the Pirate's Chief capacity for embarrassment. It wasn't a useful sentiment in pirate circles, but still he couldn't help feel a little, well, awkwardness regards the role he'd played in events. Not to put a fine point on it the Chang girl despite being drugged to her eyeballs had played him like a pro. He could respect that. He didn't like it.
Perhaps he could use the Doctor to clean his problem up, induce the Chang girl to forget her guard's change of allegiance. A certain risk in that, but it ought to be eased by the young woman's desire to go along. It wasn't as if she wanted to believe her only friend had betrayed her. He'd talk to the Doctor about it.
He got up from the armchair in which he liked to lounge. Wasn't like there was room for such things on a spaceship, but the Pirate Chief wasn't a spacer born, and he liked his luxuries. He paced back and forth in his quarters thinking.
At least only a very limited number of his people realized how close Jeannie Chang's second escape attempt had come to success. Very few of them even realized it had occurred. None of them had been permanently hurt. She'd kept her word in that regard, which might be a good sign. Also none of them were inclined to talk. Even better.
So for general consumption he could pretend to be following the same plan as before. Just as well because even if he didn't feel embarrassed he couldn't afford to look like he ought to be either. Her prior rampages had already undermined his reputation to an excessive degree. If she made him look any worse than she had, he'd need to take harsh action to save face.
He hated having his hand forced that way.
He was going to have to use the Doctor and his drugs more aggressively, and spend more of his own time too keeping the lid on Jeannie. He was going to have to assign her teams of watchers working around the clock every day, twenty-four seven. He was going to have to leverage her failures to date to convince her her escape attempts were both risky and doomed to failure.
He needed to convince her waiting for ransom was her best bet. His spies were telling him that the Chang's were, after bitter discussion, reluctantly leaning towards violating their policy of not paying them. Was there some way he could pass that information on to the Chang girl without compromising his agents?
He would of course examine all the weaknesses she'd exploited and fix them. She wasn't getting into his drug cabinet a second time. She certainly wasn't going to pick pocket and use his own drugs against him again. He might not be embarrassed about that, but he still had some pride and that was bruised. He'd consider it a learning experience.
So there were moderate and incremental measures he could take to continue to thwart the damned woman. He'd stay the course for the time being.
But damn it one more of her escapades and he was going to give the Doctor free rein to use their full suite of tools. Right up to chipping her if need be.
He didn't want to take the risks turning Jeannie Chang into nothing more than a puppet would require, but if he had to he would.
Too bad he couldn't threaten her with that. Too bad she was so stubborn. Too bad she was too smart for her own good. Too bad it'd only get her back up.
He wanted to be reasonable.
He didn't want to destroy such a unique and interesting person.
Just the same he would if he had to.
9: Mind Games
To give no trust
Is to get no trust
Torson was briefing the Commodore in his cabin. Since it could from time to time expect to be the core of a task force the Casablanca had purpose built flag accommodations. Very nice ones as it happened. Given the diplomatic roles a flotilla could be expected to fill, and the need for private meetings its commander could expect to have Torson didn't think it was an extravagance.
They were in transit in their second jump out from the pirate base they'd found, and were expecting to encounter the patrol craft they used for courier duties in their destination system. They needed to have a plan and all their ducks in order before arriving there.
"It's tricky, sir," Torson said. "But this is the best plan I could think of. We need to find our mole or every plan we make will be compromised."
"I understand and agree, Sven, please continue," the Commodore replied.
"We're lucky to have a short list of only four people. It could be worse," Torson said.
"Not happy with the composition of that list."
"Wouldn't expect it, sir. They're all career officers with good records. They were all given an additional screening when the task force formed. We've had problems with leaks on just about every anti-pirate operation we've ever launched. We tried hard to make sure they were all plugged this time."
"I'll confess I thought you and the Admiral were going overboard," the Commodore said. "Took it as a bit of insult to myself and my officers in truth. In addition it didn't work did it?"
"Well we certainly didn't get them all, sir, but maybe there's just the one mole. Remember these pirates are more than just space going thieves. They're an organized criminal gang with tentacles reaching deep into our society."
"Just keeps getting better doesn't it."
"Not really, sir. Not sure how far the rot reaches into the local merchant community, station and system's authorities, it might be the pirate agents in them just wither on the vine once we destroy all the pirate bases, might be they just regroup and continue their illegal activities in a different form."
"All that great data the Marines captured for you doesn't help?"
"It helps, sir. It just doesn't give a complete picture, we've a rough idea what sort of tips and what sort of bribes the pirate bands whose bases we've already destroyed were getting and paying. The details we don't have."
"So how do we get them?"
"We've got to milk the people we've captured for everything we can. The details we want were probably never recorded. They're all in someone's head. Some of those someones are likely dead, some we likely missed. Worse we've got next to nothing on this new pirate band and we're not guar
anteed to be as even as successful at capturing records or people as we were with the earlier bands. All we can do is make it a priority."
"Damned hard to do that without an overwhelming military advantage we don't seem to have this time."
"Yes, sir."
"We have to catch this mole before attacking."
"And we don't have much time as the pirates will either be prepared to stop us or they'll flee," Torson replied. "Yes, sir, I understand."
"Good, you have a plan?"
"Yes, sir. Pretty sure we're flogging a dead horse trying to find our informer with screening and background checks."
"Sadly I must agree."
"Like you have emphasized the situation is time sensitive so we can't passively wait on our mole to slip and give themselves away," Torson said. "We need to be proactive. So it's not ideal but I've got a plan, a classic one really, to induce our traitor to show their hand."
"Which is?"
"We leak them a piece of information they've got to believe they need to pass on and we give them the opportunity to do so while we're watching them."
"Let me guess there are some tricky details."
"Yes, sir. To start with it is a classic trick and if our mole is at all suspicious they won't fall for it. We have try to prevent them from realizing we know they exist. We have to have a cover story for the comms black out and bridge lock down you imposed in the pirate base system."
"Okay, I wasn't certain ordinary protocols would be enough to keep the pirates from realizing we'd found them and felt extraordinary measures were called for," the Commodore said. "I'll personally see to it that everyone on that bridge is singing from the same song sheet."
"Thank you, sir. You could also help me with Lieutenant Commander Agner. I really doubt she's our mole, but we have to verify that. I think if you were to tell her to make a request to SDFHQ for reinforcements but ask her to keep it strictly to herself because of the morale implications, both of asking and if they were refused, that would be good."
Pirate Stars Page 14
