Mi Casa Es Su Casa

Posted on Apr 12, 2016 @ 2:08am by Selyara Chen
Edited on on Apr 12, 2016 @ 2:08am

Mission: Fortress: Earth

"Mi Casa Es Su Casa"

(Cont. "Final Preparations")

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"There are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company,
you can't make a waiter see you until he is ready to see you,
and you can't go home again."
- Bill Bryson

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Location: The Sol System

Stardate: 2.16.0411.2143

Scene: Terran Airspace Control holding pattern

Selyara’s breath caught in her throat as Earth lay before them, a blue, glittering jewel in a sea of black. Ahead of them a long line of ships settled into a holding pattern as they waited to dock on one of the orbital platforms, land, or enter into a geosynchronous orbit around the planet as the inhabitants beamed down. It seemed like forever since she’d been here last, and even longer since she’d been planet-side long enough to enjoy it.

It must have been audible, because Raxl shifted subtly in the seat next to her, and she could feel his stare boring into the side of her head. She did her best to ignore him, and let her eyes wander down the familiar lines of the continents.

“Glad to see that even the cold-hearted Selyara has a little room for childlike wonder left. First time here?” the smirk in Raxl’s voice was obvious.

“I was raised here.” Selyara’s eyes flicked towards him in annoyance. She’d come to the conclusion that Raxl Drayton was, above all things, damn lucky. He was the sort of person that managed to luck into all sorts of things; accidentally crossing paths with her while he’d taken on her bounty, even though he was essentially clueless, for one. He wasn’t unskilled, to be sure, but it was his persistence that really allowed him to fall on his feet time, after time, after time. “Which you might have been able to figure out if you thought about it for two moments. Tell me, how did you ever manage to make a living bounty hunting?”

“Good luck, muscle, charm, and elbow grease.” Raxl quipped.

“I believe three out of four of those. You need to learn how to work smarter, not harder.” Selyara retorted, her eyes not leaving the viewscreen. She steepled her fingers meditatively and pressed her forefingers to her lips. “You need to know your quarry, you need to know how they think, what drives them, what habits and tics they have that they’ll have trouble erasing, even if they change their face. If you know your target well enough, you’ll be able to anticipate their motions, and you’ll be able to find where they are as much by what you don’t see as by what you do.”

“See, *that* sounds like working harder not smarter to me,” Raxl said, propping his feet up on the dashboard. “And all your planning, all your information didn’t do you a lick of good when push came to shove did it? You couldn’t handle it yourself, you needed me to pull you out of trouble.”

“Perhaps I did, but I knew you well enough to manipulate you into doing it.” Selyara pointed out.

“That was just your mind voodoo.”

“Not at all, though a bit of it was,” Selyara scoffed, looking at him askance. “I know more about you than you think. I know you were born on Amaraz 4, I know you bought this hunk of junk for a frankly outrageous amount when there were much better, more reliable options readily at hand, I know the vast swathe of destruction that generally follows your exploits. I know you have a weakness for pretty women, though they rarely figure into your thoughts much after you get them between the sheets, and I know what really happened on Altair-”

“And *I* know you’re enormously irritating, which right now is all I need,” Raxl cut her off, clearly not quite in the mood to listen to her showing off. She’d tried to be respectful of his personal space on the voyage to Earth and confine herself to her computers in a corner of main galley, but it was nearly impossible for a Human to coexist with another in such a small space without a certain amount of friction setting in. She stared at him for a moment, wondering whether she needed to remind him of his place, and then decided against it. She was the one in charge, to be sure, but he didn’t need to actually be aware of the fact.

She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the transparent aluminum of the screen. She’d changed her face again, now she appeared to be a dark eyed, dark haired human of Asiatic extraction, round faced and soft of features. Out of respect to Raxl she’d not immersed herself in her new persona, keeping her voice and mannerisms the same. The console chimed, and Selyara adjusted her body language swiftly from bored, smug insolence, to an open, warm shyness.

[[Names, location and duration of stay, and credentials,]] a very lacklustre human woman with purple hair said with an air of unshakable ennui as she filed her nails and blew an enormous bubble.

“Raxl Dreyton, and Magnolia Chang, San Francisco, a month, and transmitting documentation to you now,” Raxl pressed a button on the console and leaned back.

[[Hold please.]] The woman pressed a button and the screen went dark.

“Those papers of yours better be as good as you say they are,” Raxl muttered softly to her. She scoffed, ever-so-slightly, the soft, doe-eyed expression of Magnolia Chang not leaving her face.

“Oh, they’d have to run DNA to realize I’m not who I say I am.” Selyara said breezily, annoyed in spite of herself that Raxl continued to doubt her. “It’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”

[[You’re cleared to the Bay landing station.]] The woman said. [[Welcome to Earth.]]

“Told you,” Selyara smirked at him as they dropped out of orbit and made their way down to the massive landing station.

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Location: San Francisco

Scene: Outside a house, Alameda de las Pulgas

“You drive like a maniac.” Raxl said queasily as Selyara dropped the small, ovoid travel-pod she’d hired down fifty feet into the designated parking area outside of an old house on a picturesque street lined with lilacs and Jacaranda trees, or at least that’s what Selyara had told him they were. They just looked like purple flowers to him. He unclenched his hands from the dash of the pod and opened the door, grateful to have his feet on terra firma once again. She gave him an amused look. “I think we almost died what, three or four times?”

“The pods have safety systems, they won’t let you crash into anything,” she pointed out flippantly. “I have better reflexes than a human, anyway. They looked like close calls to you, but I assure you I had plenty of time.” She opened the undercarriage of the pod and removed her computers and a mysterious crate she’d insisted on keeping from the Orion’s stash.

“Be that as it may, normally when people drive one of those things they try to stay on one plane, instead of, I don’t know, *dropping like a rock* to avoid obstacles?” The first time she’d done it, Raxl hadn’t been expecting it, and had nearly lost his lunch. By the third time, he’d begun to suspect she was doing it for her own amusement.

“You were more fun on Limbo.”

“You were less crazy,” he retorted. “What is this place, anyway?”

“Safe house,” Selyara said over her shoulder as she moved across the pavement to open the gate. “Do me a favor and get the pass-key out from under the door mat?”

“Not exactly a shining example of security.” Raxl said as he did as she asked. The mat was a handmade rug of exotic fibers, that proclaimed ‘welcome’ in cheerful archaic script, surrounded by birds and trees.

“Wait until you see the guard dog.” Selyara turned the lock in the door. No sooner had she done it than an old woman suddenly appeared from the house next door, and began to unleash a torrent speech in a choppy, sing-songy language. The lady was so old, she’d begun to resemble a Ferengi rather than a human, hunched and wizened and nut brown, with long greying hair tied back severely into a bun. Selyara, unphased, smiled and bowed, before responding in the same language, hands illustrating some point or another with elaborate gestures. The woman made a harumphing noise of temporary satisfaction laced with suspicion, and clomped back into her own yard, where Raxl could see her pretending to tend to her roses as she stared nosily at them.

“I take it that’s the guard dog?” Raxl asked as they stepped into a tidy courtyard covered neatly covered in white chip stone gravel, with an elaborate mosaic pathway down the center, and dotted with large pots of varying size in shades of deep blue full of bright flowers. Weeds were beginning to grow through the gravel, and there was a sense that the house had been vacant for a while. In the very center, the pathway split neatly to go around a square pond, tiled with elaborate blue and white geometric tiles. As they walked past, Raxl could see the water was low and filled with algae and the bloated corpses of carp.

“Yes. Nothing gets past old Mrs. Xengh. I think she doesn’t sleep. I remember-” Selyara trailed off without finishing, apparently having thought better of what she was going to say. “Anyway, we’re here now, we’re safe, after a fashion. This is the last place anyone would look for me.”

She opened the door to the house, and waved him in. The entry-way to the house was neat and tidy, on one side a staircase went up to the second floor, on the other two doorways opened into dark rooms, and in the back there was a large set of French doors which led outside to another garden with a patio and large trees, heavy with fragrant white flowers and neon green buds. Selyara turned to the doors and disappeared into the one in the back. Raxl followed, and found himself in a comfortable kitchen with bamboo floors and cream walls. Selyara set her equipment on a table in a small breakfast nook and began to put it together.

“So what’s the plan now?” Raxl took a seat at the table and propped his feet on the surface before her disapproving gaze prompted him to remove them.

“The plan is, I need some time to get my ducks in a row. I have contacts in the Federation HQ, I need to find out more about Edgerton, find out his patterns, where he spends more of his time, who his confidants are.” Selyara opened her computer.

“Why? You’re planning to turn yourself over to him, right? I assume that means you intend to play him as though you’re on his side, or just brainwash him.” Raxl stood and looked for the replicator, and was pleased to find a high quality one disguised as an old-time kitchen appliance.

“I am, but I don’t particularly want to die, and I don’t think my abilities will work on him. There has to be a certain amount of pliability and openness for them to work, and I imagine that Edgerton’s mind is going to be very guarded. No: The only way I stay alive when you hand me over is if we choose the right moment, a moment when there are enough people around him that he can’t simply have me killed without raising eyebrows. Besides, I can’t do much on my own, I need to have actionable intel to send to someone I used to know.”

“That’s possibly the most annoying phrase in the English language. Replicator, steak, medium-rare, and a large whiskey- What?” Raxl paused as Selyara made a face.

“You don’t want replicated whiskey. Look in the cabinet over the food stasis chamber. There might even be some cold whiskey stones in the cold compartment. Replicated whiskey is horrible.” Selyara swung sideways on her chair and draped one arm across the back of the chair, and stared ruminatively at Raxl as he searched the cabinet in question and measured himself a couple of fingers of liquor. “Edgerton is a wild card, unfortunately. I think he might have developed some delusions of grandeur since last I checked in on him. Fortunately it looks like I don’t need to worry about you as well as myself. Edgerton is not so stupid he’d try and stiff you. If he did that, word would get around, and he can kiss getting any mercenary help for future endeavours goodbye, and seeing as he is starting to rely on them heavily, he wouldn’t risk that.”

“Is that the criminal mastermind actually expressing *concern* for another me?” Raxl said taking a bite if his steak before what she’d said sunk in. “Waitaminute. Are you saying that before now, you thought that Edgerton might kill me when I brought you in, rather than paying me?”

“The thought had crossed my mind. That would be what I would do in his place,” Selyara admitted, cocking her head to the side and studying him carefully. “But I thought on a balance that it was a risk I was willing to take.”

“You are un-fucking believable.” Raxl glared at her and crossed his arms.

“If it’s any consolation I was fairly sure I would be able to stop him as long as I was still alive. And I did feel a little bad about it. You aren’t… You aren’t the most useless of people I know.” She actually sounded slightly embarrassed, and it seemed that she might be trying to apologize.

“Not the most useless!- Your people skills are awful.” Raxl snatched the plate off the table and left the room.

* * *=/\=* * *

Scene: Cafe near Starfleet Command

Raxl was half listening to one of Selyara’s contacts recount the recent goings on at Starfleet HQ as they sat outdoors under a green and white umbrella in a plaza at a white enameled table, sipping coffee and eating some sort of sugary pastry.

“-Well, Edgerton has a main office in Starfleet HQ, he spends most his time in there, although he occasionally disappears. I don’t know where he goes, though. I’m fairly good friends with his secretary, a nice Human girl named Gina Lacey, chatty, and she’s more than a little scared of him, though she won’t actually do anything but sing his praises. He has an aide named Leonard Cagney too. Nice guy, total sweetie, and cute, but he’s got a boyfriend. Besides, Humans. Eurgh. No offense Raxl darling, they just really aren’t my type. You’re all too repressed.” The tiny blonde Betazoid woman Selyara called Anissa said, waving her hands elaborately to reinforce her point. She was one of Selyara’s contacts within Starfleet and she was a veritable font of knowledge, leading Raxl to the conclusion that she was a fairly strong telepath. “Other than that, I don’t have much contact with Edgerton, or any of his cronies either. Once he moved in, there was a re-shuffling of the entire staff at HQ, they’ve really isolated a lot of the non-Humans into a few non essential departments and roles. They did it slowly enough that it wasn’t blatant, but it happened-”

Suddenly she and everyone and everything around them seemed to stop as though frozen in time, a collective gasp. Across the table from him Selyara stood abruptly, the noise of her wrought iron chair crashing to the ground as loud as thunder in the sudden silence.

The sky was on fire- somewhere, from places unknown, propulsion systems launched unknown payloads into the air, like a hundred shooting stars in reverse. The faces of the people around Raxl were pale as they all turned their faces to the sky, watching and waiting with bated breath. The streaks of fire reached their targets and suddenly many bright dots of light flew forth from them, forming a grid across the stars.

There was a long pause, and then one-by-one brilliant golden lances of light were emitted by each bright dot, until a dense net of light encircled the Earth, cutting them off from the heavens. Mild panic and hysteria ensued as the confused citizens around them tried to make sense of what had just happened, with people jostling and running and chattering breathlessly. Amidst the swirl of activity, Selyara stood stock still, like the pillar of a bridge with the river eddying around it, the soft expressions of her alter ego momentarily replaced by a look of disgruntled fury as she looked upwards. With a snarl she swung around to Raxl and grabbed his lapels in rage, shaking him like a rag doll.

“How the HELL did he manage this without me knowing!” She yowled into his face. “This is huge! You shouldn’t be able to keep something this big a secret! They-”

[[Attention, visitors and inhabitants of Earth, what you have just witnessed was the launch of the Aegis Planetary Defense Network. Do not be alarmed. The renegade fleet lead by the traitors Admiral Marxx and Captain Kane, and backed by the false Federation council are en-route to Earth. This network is intended to protect you, and ensure that they are not able to lay waste to Earth as they intend.]] Richard Edgerton’s face appeared on every screen in the area, and his voice echoed from every personal communication device in the area. [[Until further notice, travel off planet is suspended, as is inbound traffic. Any communications off-world may be monitored by Starfleet Intelligence to ensure that no critical information is leaked to the renegade fleet. A curfew may be instated once the fleet draws closer. Again, this is for your safety. I would ask that you all be patient, and remember that these restrictions will keep us all safe. Edgerton out.]]

“The sneaky, lying, son-of-a-” Selyara started before Raxl clamped his hand firmly across her mouth. She stiffened and made a muffled sound of protest.

“I’m saving you from yourself *sweetheart*,” he muttered in her ear. “Call me crazy, but I make it a rule never to badmouth a crazy dictator in public.” She shot daggers at him but nodded slowly to confirm her agreement. He removed his hands. “So, I’m taking it there’s a change of plans. A huge change of plans. One that involves me not getting paid. Again.”

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NRPG: Okay, under the wire. Let's give Edgerton his Comeuppance.

Alix Fowler
As:
Selyara/Maggie Chan
A Bounty Raxl will probably never collect on.