Frozen Soul, and other works: Chapter 174

(Crystal Wind Nightclub, Thelorious, Dimiya)

“There’s our target.”

Konia Whitehand, former agent of the Alliance Intelligence Agency, and more recently reduced to a bedwarmer for pirate scum, but now a slave to the Black Star Company, sipped her drink as she leaned back in the chair she was sitting in. She gave no visible sign that she had heard the voice. Not a surprise since the voice had come from her noise-canceling headphones, and those weren’t typically used for carrying on conversations. The devices were commonly used by individuals who had enhanced hearing when going to places where loud sounds would be particularly ‘distracting’, if not damaging to their sensitive ears. Such places included nightclubs, naturally, with their loud music, pulsing rhythms, and all the other sounds associated with people enjoying their lives.

Of course, Konia’s muffler, as the devices were called, was not typical, even if it looked exactly like the most popular version of the device used by the Felisans on Dimiya. The Black Star Khsaoeb mufflers were quickly taking a rising market share amongst Felisans in the Confederacy, actually, since they had been designed from the beginning to fit a Felisan’s physiology, rather than being a ‘one type fits all species’ concept, like most of the items on the market. Rumor had it that the Owner of the company, her ultimate Master, had set his design people on the task when he found out that a friend of his, the owner of Kiki’s Custom Arms (which was itself becoming a major player in the custom weapons market, focusing on high-spec, custom made firearms tailored to the needs of an individual), had complained that she couldn’t enjoy the nightlife on Dimiya because they hurt her ears, and the mufflers designed by other companies didn’t take into account the differences in physiology between Felisans and, say, Knelfi, making the resultant devices clumsy at best for her to use.

Instead of simply just designing headphones that had a shape purpose built for Felisans (a similar model was already available for Knelfi, and other versions were coming out as they were designed, but the Felisan version was the original), the Khsaoeb (a word that meant ‘whisper’ in one of the old languages of Terra) was designed with noise-canceling and frequency shifting technology in mind, allowing one wearing the comfortable device to tailor which sounds made it through unaltered, and which were reduced to more pleasant levels of volume. It was a rather ingenious device, she had to admit, which is probably why it had instantly been a success amongst the Felisan population on Dimiya. Of course, the ‘civilian’ model was not quite the same as the one she was wearing. After all, those versions didn’t have secure communications devices in the ears, allowing her to hear the report of her subordinate while she was sitting at the edge of the dance floor supposedly enjoying her drink.

A halo popped up in her HUD glasses, another Black Star device, though one designed for general consumption, rather than a single species. Like her Khsaoebs, the glasses were slightly more than the normal version. Most important at the moment was the secure communication function worked into them. She looked at the man her ‘information support’ (read: hacker) had highlighted, and clicked the comm button hidden in the design of her flattering dress once to confirm she had eyes on target.

She had been working with her little hacker for months now, and was impressed with the way Suga Hibari had developed. The woman had been roughly used by the pirates, and had been under threat from Imperial forces before then, but she had taken to the role of ‘spook’ quite nicely, and her rough edges were getting worn down as she lost the need to constantly prove to herself, if not others, that she wasn’t a victim. With her help, she’d been working on building a successful spy network here on Dimiya. That was a task she had done plenty of times before, and she was glad to be doing it again, rather than spending time as an exotic pet for a pirate.

Their target for the evening was the newest potential ‘asset’ for their growing network of information sources. Toross Phileth was a high-ranking bureaucrat in the Ministry of Trade, serving under the Senior Undersecretary in charge of overseeing mercenary and private security groups. He was a career bureaucrat, who wasn’t likely to rise any further since he had no intention of playing the political games that were everywhere in the Confederate government. Higher ranking members of the Ministry had a tendency to come and go with every election, leaving him as one of the senior ‘lifers’. This made him rather more important than his title would suggest.

Unfortunately, that importance was not the kind of importance that got one into the fancy private clubs that the movers and shakers were a part of, like the Origin Club. Outside the Ministry, only a few people, most of them other bureaucrats, knew of his importance. That fact led to a certain amount of resentment that waxed and waned depending on the political climate (after all, HE, thankfully, didn’t have to deal with those jackals in the press), and had given rise to a couple bad habits he had gained as coping mechanisms.

His position had brought him to Konia’s attention as a potential asset. His bad habits (which Suga had artfully exposed with her computer wizardry) were the hook she would use to ensure he was properly held in line. She simply needed the proper bait to ensure that her little fish hooked himself. The ‘bait’, in this case, would be herself, as Mr. Phileth was something of a ladies’ man (in his own mind, at least), and he was particularly fond of non-knelfi businesswomen. He enjoyed using his power to help them with the red tape of the Confederate government and the slight (but noticeable) knelfi-centric bias that existed on Dimiya, being the Knelfi homeworld. Once he helped them, he had his claws in them, and he used the women as he liked. Having beautiful women under his power was his drug of choice, and his position and fetish for non-knelfi ensured he had a constant supply, should any of his current ‘stock’ being to bore him, or had the bad taste to get pregnant despite his arrangements.

Being a womanizer was merely one of Phileth’s vices, of course. It was simply the easiest way to get their foot in the door, as it were. What was going to make this man such a wonderful asset for them was the fact that he had been naughty in all sorts of other ways. There was a certain level of corruption that was expected in the higher levels of any government. That much power, money, and influence had a tendency to attract the types who would fall prey to offers of more power, money, and influence.

In Phileth’s case, he had a bit of a gambling habit. Well, the gambling wasn’t a problem, in and of itself. Plenty of people enjoyed gambling, after all. But he’d lost a sizeable share of his fortune a few years back, around the time the ownership of the Arena changed hands, and in the years since, he’d had a series of bad bets that had further depleted his funds, and racked up a good store of debts. Those debts had not gotten large enough that they were something that would ruin him outright, but they were quite embarrassing. Especially when his most recent ‘favorite’ thing to gamble on was not so respectable as Arena matches. Gambling is one thing. Losing money on the ponygirl races, on the other hand, was quite another. His career wouldn’t survive the scandal if it got out to the media, even if his finances could handle the impact.

Fortunately, one of the hackers that had tried to attack Black Star recently had also been working on gathering evidence on the ‘stars’ of the racing circuit, to use as blackmail material for their own ends. Once Black Star’s people knew about the circuit, they began digging. While individually they might not have been as good as the hacker that got caught, with twelve of them working in concert, they were able to get a LOT of dirt on the members of the circuit, both the ‘racers’ and the most frequent guests.

All of this was why Konia was about to turn him as an asset. Sure, she could have just gone with the blackmail approach, but entrapment and a bit of bribery, with the compromising material held in reserve, was better for a long-term relationship. It was easier to go from a ‘friends’ relationship to a ‘bitch’ relationship than the other way around.

Seeing the target moving towards the bar, she finished her drink, thanking Black Star’s technicians for installing the toxin screens in her digestive tract that stripped out poisons or drugs from her system. Drinking was part of the job, but getting drunk was not. While one could use a variety of tricks to make it look like you drank more than you had, counterespionage types were trained to look for that, so the advanced bit of cyberware allowed her to drink normally, which reduced suspicion.

She arrived at the bar just as Phileth did, just by coincidence sliding up next to him at the crowded bar. She smiled at him as she excused herself for bumping him, and he smiled back clearly not having a problem at all. The lure was clearly working. When he offered to buy her a drink in one of the VIP lounges, she could tell he was hooked. She smiled naturally, and agreed. He wasn’t bad looking, for a knelfi, and he was definitely smooth. Too bad he was clearly such a pervert. But perhaps she could turn the tables on him while she turned him. Teaching someone who fantasized about control to submit would make him easier to handle in the future. Some alcohol to help relax the mental defenses and cloud his memory, and a bit of mental psy to complete the job, and he would have an ‘awakening’ that would leave him like putty in her hand.

Dragging a man around by his kinks, especially those you created for him, was always more effective than just trying to scare them with blackmail.

(Confederate Intelligence Service HQ, Somewhere on Dimiya)

Alok Paxisys frowned as he read the reports. For his sins of being one of the few people in the Confederate government (and the only one in the CIS) that the eccentric owner of the Black Star Company actually liked talking to, he had been put in charge as the head of the small (but growing) task force in the agency that was tasked with investigating Black Star, finding out what they were up to, and, hopefully, getting any of their secrets that he could. It was not, as one might think, an easy task.

Which is why the report that was the cause of his current ill mood had landed on his desk. Well, no, that wasn’t fair. It was simply the latest in a string of reports that had landed on his desk, all implying the same thing. The Black Star Company was making moves. They had been beefing up their already formidable security ever since they found out they were being attacked by the Shining Path idiots, but now they looked to be going for a more proactive approach. Major Zumrora (who had also been promoted to get more responsibility from the Navy’s intelligence branch when it came to dealing with Black Star), had passed along a report his ‘liason’ at Madrigal Station had written. While a known Intelligence officer was obviously going to be watched like a hawk, they couldn’t expect him to be on the station and not find some way of getting information about what was happening there.

In this case, it was a manifest of the slaves the Black Stars had taken when they captured the base and most of the sector’s pirate fleet in that ‘Trojan Horse’ style action where Admiral Mollen disguised himself as the leader of one of the three pirate clans in the area. The fact that it had taken so long to get the list wasn’t a problem. After all, Black Star was paranoid by nature, and believed in treating their slaves far better than most companies out there. Getting the profiles on that many slaves was never going to be easy.

No, the problem was a few specific items in that manifest. A few specific individuals that his dataminers had managed to discover as being important. Two were former Navy, the Captain and a Marine off the Kyathaela Daven. The Navy wasn’t going to be happy about the two survivors of that ship not being returned with the ship itself, but he had offered them both the ability to be on a warship again as officers, which would have never happened if they had come home to the Navy. Even after they were ‘raised from the dead’, legally speaking.

The others were, mostly, not that interesting, except for one name. There was a slave in the registry by the name of Konia Whitehand, a Felisan who had been recently enslaved by the local pirates. According to the notes in her file, she was Alliance Intelligence, and had been given a mission to infiltrate the pirate clans and turn them against each other. According to the file, she had been betrayed by a superior who had gone dirty, and had taken bribes from the pirates, which explained how she ended up a slave. He had done some digging, and, within two months of Black Star taking Madrigal base, that dirty superior had been killed and exposed, with his misdeeds laid bare in what was the mother of all black eyes to an Alliance already reeling from the Kul’tirans’ misfortune.

To Paxisys, this suggested that Mollen had arranged the hit to buy the loyalty of this Whitehand, in addition to whatever he got from rescuing her from life as a pirate’s whore. That kind of loyalty, on top of what Black Star consistently tried to build for itself by focusing on its workers and their families first, had led to massive success for Mollen in other fields, as devoted employees who are inspired to new heights will do amazing things. If he now had a fully trained spy in his employ…

Paxisys stopped moving for a moment, before rushing to check some of the other reports that had come in, closer to home. Mollen had access to a fully trained spy, used to going into areas and building up networks, and he already knew that there were factions inside the Confederacy that had decided to make enemies of him. If there was anywhere Mollen would choose to start a spy ring, it would be here, on Dimiya. And he had the perfect pawn to use in the opening gambits! Damnit!