Azumi landed the Pink Lady at CLM headquarters. The station was not as she had left it. Somehow, someone had used a lot of time and effort in drawing paintings all over the walls in, was that lipstick?, well, different colours. She recognised LNH and giggled. It was about as lifelike as a smiley, but she had no trouble discerning that the drawing, that more or less looked like a hippopotamus in a skirt with a German WW I pike helmet, was LNH. The shotgun and a can of beer was a dead give away. Well, that and the two crude prosthetic hands.
She went into her own room before going to yoda's, and changed from the sweaty flightsuit, and into a skirt, knee high socks and a white shirt. To finish it off, she made a set of pigtails. She looked i the mirror and decided that she was now officially irresistible. Too bad yoda doesn't fall for these things, she thought.
Yoda had his apartment in a little used part of the station, On the way there she heard the large noises of an industrial sized sandblaster going at full power in the OPS room. She ignored it, lots of stuff happened that she was not a part of, and it was better not to find out sometimes. The door to yoda's place had a very large "KEEP THE HELL OUT" sign, but that didn't stop her the least. With precision and speed she kicked the buzzer without triggering the sensor device that normally ensured that 5000 volts would hammer through whomever disturbed yoda.
The door opened, and the little man peered out. Initially he looked at the floor where a person that would have been stunned would fall, and then before looking up, he nodded his head slightly.
"Azumi"
Azumi bowed deeply and replied "yoda-sensei."
He motioned her inside, closed the door and led her across the tatami mats to a small table. He poured two glasses of water and motioned Azumi to drink first. He then drank deeply before seating himself on the mat.
"So, what brings you here? I know it is not for a hot date, so spill it." yoda's voice was a stark contrast to the very tranquil surroundings. Hard and rasping and full to the brim with barely contained anger. Not at Azumi she knew, but at the whole world.
"I have a parcel for you sensei. From NP."
Yoda's interest was awoken. He looked at the sealed mem-crystal inside the small translucent container that Azumi produced from her backpack. "Very well, leave it on the table. Do you have more?" Azumi shook her head, knowing better than chattering unnecessarily in yoda's presence.
"You are dismissed. I will summon you if I need to leave an answer." With that Azumi got up and walked out of the room and down the corridor. She wondered what to do now. No option really, she ended up donning the flightsuit again and launching the Pink Lady. There was cargo to be liberated, traders to hassle and Serco to kill.
Yoda finished the holo. According to NP, whom he trusted as far as he could bowl a samoflange laden Behemoth XC, someone were whipping up a trade war. As mush as he liked the sound of that, he was enough of a realist to know that if the trade through Latos H-2 and Sedina B-8 were to stop, CLM would be in deep trouble. As in any prey/predator relationship, it was one of mutual interdependence. Yoda wondered who could possibly gain from this. For anybody looking at him, it looked as if he had gone into hibernation with his eyes open, but in reality he used all his energy for his implants. He would solve this.
Tohasandra Chi was not happy. Not only was she treated like the enemy of everyone on the station, but she was also prohibited to use the stations facilities to find out more on the terror attack. Well, almost everyone that is. She could make an appointment with her TGFT liaison, John Eldritch, or make an appointment with Surbius, but what she really wanted was to sit in the cafeteria and make small talk. And she desperately wanted to check up on Hortan, but the shrink had forbidden it. He would rather keep the young pilot sedated, kept on the shelf like some vegetable. She thought he was wrong, but nobody would listen. She started thinking of a plan to achieve all this. At least then she was occupied.
Surbius received an Ultra Secret report through the secure SSCU. Receiving it, he started decoding it with a onetime pad before sending it through a set of quantum decoder stand alone computers. The resulting twelve lines of text was enough to make him shiver all over. This just might be it. He erased the data twice by overwriting it with nonsense 64 times before taking the only copy now in existence with him as hardcopy to the TGFT OPS room. Once inside, he checked twice to make sure that Ecka and he were the only ones before he presented the document to the commander. If this paper was right, some very disturbing things would happen tomorrow. And that would necessitate that Ecka came out of hiding, if nothing else to calm things down.
The seven figures were once again gathered with Ardon in the middle. He had been left there for some ten minutes, which he considered a new record when one of the robed persons spoke.
"Status reports indicate that everything is moving according to schedule. Apart form the massive amount of damage wrought to the station."
Ardon winced, he was not proud of that. But The Anarchist only worked well with completely free hands. If the council was squeamish about the bomb, he was going to get some heavy critique for what The Anarchist was up to next. Too late to anything about it anyway, it was not as if he had regular communications with The Anarchist, and he surely did not follow orders.
"For now, we have confidence in you Ardon. No leads must lead back here on pain of death. Remember who you serve. Dismissed."
Ardon rose and bowed, turned and left to the chamber outside. He would soon be stop serving and start commanding. In a few days his plan would be complete and he would no longer be a servant but a master.
