The Adventures of Mirror Mott, Part Three

Posted on 29 May 2016 @ 12:31pm by Lieutenant Olsam Mott

1,915 words; about a 10 minute read

Previously in The Adventures of Mirror Mott…

Setting your own bones and attaching a stabilizing duranium plate sounded hard in theory. In practice, it proved even more difficult. Localized painkillers and his iron will no doubt helped but by the time he was finished Mott felt completely drained. If he'd been in a position to receive normal treatment then he would have had the bone knit together with the osteogenic regenerator; submersed himself into a bioregenerative unit ("tank," in the local parlance); and spent a week in a day spa receiving physical therapy. As it stood the bone would heal awkwardly and incompletely, forcing him to have it broken again and mended at a proper facility once he was off-planet. But it would do for now.

If he didn't have his mind set on leaving Lithios Prime then he might have taken the trouble to clean up; instead, he left the animal clinic slick with his blue, corrosive blood. He had to get off the planet - even if the gangs didn't find him the authorities would investigate a dust-up that big and then he'd be a seriously wanted man on all sides. So, with veins full of stimulants, painkillers, and antibiotics, he pushed through the broken door, leaned for support on his makeshift crutch, and headed toward his next destination…

And now the continuation....

In the Mirror Universe...

The primary spaceport of Lithios Prime was absolutely out of the question. It would have been the fastest and most economical way to get off the planet, but, even under ordinary conditions, the Pentarchy had arrivals and departures heavily regulated. With the public showdown between the gangs of Jonah the Flower and Dijkstra the Funhouse, as well as the grisly murders at Mott's "office," he'd definitely be on a long list of individuals to arrest on sight (perhaps even a kill-on-sight list). The regional spaceports were generally subjected to the same sort of security measures and he was even afraid of the surveillance equipment at transport hubs, so he'd taken to walking everywhere he needed to be.

That was killing him, of course. His leg throbbed with every step, and the analgesic skin-patch he reapplied every four hours or so only served to dull the pain rather than relieve it entirely. The only silver lining was that the pain reminded him of the disruptor bolt he'd taken to the leg; the disruptor bolt to the leg reminded him that people wanted him dead; and people wanting him dead reminded him just how much he needed to get off this planet.

To that end, he had few choices and only one prepared plan. It relied almost entirely on the really one thing and one thing only working in his favor: blue skin. Well, that and a lot of money.

Like its sister facilities, the Lithios Prime branch of the Bank of Bolias never closed, though at these hours it was manned only by a hologram to assist clients. With branches now opened across the Alliance after the "liberation" of Bolarus IX from the Terran Empire, the Bank had discovered it was to their advantage to keep facilities operational around the clock. Passengers arriving from a planet whose time didn't sync with their destination didn't always have the patience to wait until normal business hours; when Her Highness the Princess Melitos needed the Royal Diadem of Matoket, she wasn't likely to loiter around outside a bank branch waiting for access to her possessions. Instead, they were made available to her through the use of micro-transporters and sophisticated encryption software that beamed her belongings from an undisclosed central storage facility to her present location.

Those inner workings of the Bank weren't exactly secret knowledge but neither was it commonly known outside of Bolarus IX. Thankfully, Dr. Olsam Mott was privy to such knowledge as it presented his last best hope of not being vaporized and turned into a dark stain on the sidewalks of Lithios Prime.

"Greetings, Client #83547596." The hologram had scanned his physiology as soon as he entered the building and altered its accent to a pleasing, neutral selection from the capital city of Bolarus IX. The Bank considered it a personalized touch; Mott considered it pandering. "How may I best serve you today?"

"I need access to my belongings in a private room with a data terminal."

"Of course, I would be happy to assist you with that today. Please proceed to the Nechara Room. Your items will arrive in approximately three minutes. Is there anything else that I can assist you with today?"

Across the decagonal-shaped room, a set of doors opened, the door frame itself turned into a pale shade of illuminated green, and a pleasant series of chimes pulled his attention in that direction. Mott ignored the hologram's final question and limped his way over to the Nechara Room, as asinine a name for a space as he'd ever heard. The room's interior was lavishly decorated, though the table, chair, and data terminal were the only things he was concerned about. The rest he figured were holographic projections anyway, probably set to a default for now but customizable for the Bank's more important (read: wealthy) clients.

Safely behind the Bank's firewall, he used the data terminal to scan the newsnets while waiting on the micro-transporter to deliver his possessions. The two murders at his laboratory, where Jonah the Flower's men had been eaten alive by millions of nanites, was being classified as "an industrial accident." That put a smirk on his face; his industriousness was no accident. The dismaying news was the lack of news about the street fight between the two gangs that had precipitated all this. It meant the planet's ruling body, the Pentarchy, was suppressing it. And if they were suppressing it that meant they were busy trying to clean it up. And if they were trying to clean it up that meant they were eliminating everyone involved.

"Customer #83547596, your items will be arriving in approximately thirty seconds. Thank you for your patronage."

The box that arrived on the table exactly thirty seconds later (Mott had always found the Bank's use of "approximate" amusing considering there was nothing approximate about their operations) could not have been any less remarkable. Slate gray, it appeared at first glance to be one seamless, solid object. A recessed button in the front deactivated the vacuum seal and separated top from bottom. Inside, he was relieved to find everything he needed to get off this f--king planet.

The data spike was the most important, but he grabbed it only after making the rest of his preparations, including changing his clothes. The long thin device was meant to be literally spiked into the Bank of Bolias data terminal. It was crude and effective, but, most importantly, it had been in his price range at the time. More sophisticated data spikes didn't leave a physical mark, but Mott didn't own a moon so he had to make due with what he could get his hands on. Plus, there was less to worry about with the Bank's security countermeasures when you were physically jacked into their system. You were leaving behind critical evidence that would absolutely get you caught down the line, but, in exchange, you could get away with whatever you needed in the short-term.

After negotiating with the computer, he took the biggest risk of his life: he'd either get where he needed to be or have half his body ripped apart at the molecular level.

When he dematerialized on the transporter pad aboard Lithios Prime Orbital Station, Mott actually breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a complete gamble as to whether or not the Bank's micro-transporter would accept organic material of his mass. He didn't know if the pattern buffers were even large enough to deconstruct and rematerialize something as complex as a sentient being or if there was some hidden in-built security algorithm that prevented the movement of sentients through the system. Now that he knew it was possible, he wondered what sort of unknown enterprises the Bank of Bolias might involve itself in. The possibilities for sentient trafficking alone were enormous...

"May I assist you, sir?"

Mott turned to the transporter attendant. He was a young Lithian, much shorter and smaller than the Bolian with the characteristic radiant purple eyes of his people. He'd also undergone extensive cybernetic enhancement, which meant his family was wealthy and powerful enough to be somehow connected with the Pentarchy that operated the planet below. He'd probably been sent up here on an internship, or, perhaps, to dry out from a mushacet binge.

"I require a private shuttle and a pilot," Mott said, speaking with an affected accent taken directly from the upper crust of his homeworld. He produced an identichip from the inner pocket of his very dark suit and handed it over.

On the slim isolinear chip were Bank of Bolias credentials that would stand up to a fair amount of scrutiny. Not that it would matter up here; it was also linked to a Bank of Bolias credit account with enough heft to make scrutiny unnecessary. Or, so he was hoping. Since the orbital station was really just a transfer point for interstellar travel and ships that couldn't land on Lithios Prime, the Pentarchy assumed you'd either be going through the more rigorous security measures on the planet or coming from another planet with similar customs and immigration controls. It would have taken him months of careful planning to circumvent those security measures but up here the lingua franca was currency, which let credits and not biometric data do the talking.

The attendant scanned the chip, which produced the credentials of one Bex Boxx, Senior Director for Investment Banking in the Cardassian Union. A senior Bank official traveling as quietly as this could only mean that he had been dealing directly with the government and that seemed to put an extra little bit of fear into the attendant, who stepped aside from the terminal he'd been accessing and gestured to Mott.

"We have several pilots available, Director Boxx."

Mott eyed him and then stepped up to the terminal, filtering the available craft by speed and crew. He needed something capable of warp nine with only one or two other people on board, which was asking for a lot. By some miracle, there was a Zholom-class light corvette capable of sustained warp 9.1 for 24 hours operated by a Mr. and Mrs. Emor Vookto. He took the availability of the craft and his earlier fortune with the micro-transporter to mean he might actually be destined to escape.

"I'll book this one, the Krutaka."

"Of course, Director, I'll inform the pilot right away."

Mott grunted in response. While waiting for the attendant he pulled up the detailed schematics of the ship: standard issue Cardassian laser cannons, regenerative shielding from Smith & Pentex Corp (with generators likely salvaged from some wrecked Terran ship), Rasertain Industries matter-antimatter warp drive, so on and so forth. It wasn't ideal, but it would serve its purpose if he didn't run into too much trouble on the way. It was just a shame he'd end up having to kill two people instead of one. Then again, beggars couldn't be choosers, could they?

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