Outlaw Badjans (Six of Toigan)

by D Gemcats Purcell

  After 0900am in the morning with everything so far proceeding routinely. I opened my mind to Jessi and she popped right back.

  “ Jordan you were in my thoughts. I was hoping you’d have a moment to check in.”

  I said, “We have all been hectic as you know but we have been so far peaceful here at Moog’s farm, trying to get all the harvesting done with this good weather giving us a break. There’s supposed to be a cold front coming in over the weekend and we are trying to beat that deadline. We already did our main farm, despite the challenges. I’m sorry I could not be with you when you had you near home invasion.”

  She said, “No need. Even I just twiddled my thumbs while I watched as my Dad and Mum handled it. That was an eye opener truly. By the way, Dad says that when things settle down with you, he’d love to have you over to do some simulator work. In fact, he’d like for all of Six to come since we all want to go interplanetary eventually. Jordan, I miss you. I hope we can get together soon down in the country at your place or over here.”

  I said, “Miss you dearly Jessi, it feels like such a long time ago that we came out of the quest. I can’t wait to squeeze you tight.”

  She said, “ I’ll let you do that, but you’ve got to promise on all the Bibles that you’ll let me breathe.”

  I said, “ Maybe I will, after a while.”

  After a few more minutes of back and forth we called it quits, blew each other a kiss and in my case got back to work.

  I told Moog that I’d just communicated with Jessi, after he noticed me silent and seemingly distracted for a while.

  Moog smirked loudly, “There goes my little brother, falling in love ha ha!”

  I gave him a solid cuff on his huge arm and walked off to get a drink. He declined my offer to bring him one.

  We as a group were supposed to link up with Breecher for updates around 1 pm and I was looking forward to hearing how the investigation was going and particularly how the situation was looking for the possible ring leaders. Breecher basically told us the details about the investigations so far. He wanted to keep Mr. Waple feeling relaxed and unthreatened. The next contact with him he felt should happen when Jonah can also go. So Jonah agreed to go with Jongi and some Securinet officers on Monday. He wanted as many folks to peer into his mind as possible. This will be done at his work office and unannounced. His boss Mr. Morgan needed to be debriefed too. However, on Saturday the five Outlaws who were holed up in two separate homes would be extricated. Team Six will take on the three holed up in one home and Team Five will help with the two in the other home. We would maybe have more info to use in the ‘interview’ with the agricultural company bosses.

  Thursday’s harvesting as well as Friday’s went well and we had no further skirmishes. Moog’s farm was now taken care of and just in time. Rain was forecast for Saturday evening. All seemed well at our home farm too. So we packed up and drove up to our farm keeping alert for any surprises. Thankfully none disturbed our peace.

  18. Badjans on the run in Bahoe

  Team Six got together and made plans telepathically. It was Friday night and we conferenced. We would get together at my home early Saturday and travel in my Dad’s van to our staging site. I would pull a couple of 4-wheelers and two of us would approach from the back entrance to the house with the three Outlaws. We were going to use the same back entrance like they had done themselves from Route 63 while the other four would take a frontal approach from Route 54 where the driveway of the house connects. We had no illusions about those Outlaws, they would be definitely armed and dangerous. We each carried a blaster but hoped for surprise and capture, rather than have a shootout.

  Mader and I got our four wheelers off the trailer after we had pulled up Dad’s van in a slightly widened part of the road just before the trailhead taken by the Outlaws. We rode slowly along Route 63 for a few hundred feet while Jessi, who was the van driver did a careful course reversal and headed back to link up with eventually Hwy 403 and thence Route 54 while pulling the trailer. We waved to them and then turned onto the trail.

  We had plotted the Outlaws exact route down the trail and across the creek, keeping our senses tuned for remote cameras. Luckily the creek crossing was easy, but we could tell that if it had been raining we would have had a challenge. There was at least eight inches of water flowing and it was fairly cool. We rode crouched feet on top of the seats rather than sitting on the seats yet still got some splashes. If they did have remote cameras that we missed, hopefully we would be assumed to be young adults joy riding. We sensed no electronic devices though up to that point. Up on the hill where the Outlaws had paused for ten minutes we stopped to pretend to admire the views and we actually did. There was a cleared hillside overlooking the creek and most of the trail back to farm route 63 could be seen in patches. We actually saw a vehicle or two on that sparsely travelled road. We tarried in the area for thirty minutes to give our folks time to be closer to route 54 and thus the front driveway of our target.

  We checked in with the team and they were just a few miles away so we got back on our 4wheelers and now headed mostly down hill toward the back of the property. Winding our way between the trees very slowly we came across a few laser trips, so easily detected that we had to smile. In our sensitized state, the devices were like light shows. Bursting through them no doubt would ring alarms in the residence and for now we wanted to get as close as possible to their back door to let the team at their front door pressure them to maybe bolt into our arms.

  We had rehearsed a plan but we all knew well how plans were just that-plans. They would be flushed out into our arms and we would close the trap, just like little butterflies in the net. Plan B could also involve smashing them violently on the head. It was totally up to them really. Of course, they could go out fighting out their front door too. The four up front would then have to teach them a lesson. Hopefully they wouldn’t have an old fashioned nuclear weapon that would blow them and the whole area up to a fine dust Hara-kiri style. We would try to prevent that too.

  So with ‘our antenna waving’ we got to the edge of their rear tree line leaving the 4wheelers a way behind. We would blend invisible if needed. Reaching out and into the dwelling, we could feel all three of them inside. There was a basement and two of them were exercising noisily. One who had been the pilot, was on the ground floor in the kitchen making breakfast it appears. None of them seemed alarmed or particularly vigilant. They seemed content to let their electronic warning devices do the work of ‘protecting them’. We wanted them nice and alive so that they could answer questions. It was a little puzzling that they were there sitting for days maybe awaiting instructions. They had not ventured out at all since their last rampage. They were truly laying low. Now it was time to tease them out.

  We concentrated on getting into their thoughts. Very low level is the conclusion we came to. These folks were committed to their cause definitely but they were the muscle. They worked for credits- money. In fact they came from Northumbria surprisingly, really on the other side of the globe on loan to the Bahoe Outlaws and they were very much muscle for hire with an Outlaw bent. They had no connections to local people here and had been hired from a fellow called Scanlon their leader in Northumbria, to steal and fly transports as well as do other odd jobs along the line of kidnapping and torture. Their contact here was Benton the main pilot for the agricultural dasher company that Mr. Morgan owned. That was some news. Low level Outlaw trash but no less dangerous. Making contact with Breecher and a Jongi, we passed on what we got from mining their minds.

  Dad’s van was here. It pulled up in the road slowly close to their driveway with the trailer behind. Everyone was updated and the door opened Dillion got out and walked up the driveway just like an innocent seeking help. The person in the kitchen immediately responded and went to look out the window we could tell. He went to the front door and as he opened it in response to whatever Dillion told him, Mader and I began to drain him. He became so weak that he ended up on his kne
es barely able to speak. Cherese and Matt had by then emerged locked the vehicle doors and were just behind Dillion on the stoop. They walked around Dillion and once through the door translocated themselves into the basement where the other two were still sweaty coming off their exercise machines. They had heard the driveway alarms and likely front door and were grabbing blasters to come investigate. Those blasters suddenly were ripped out of their hands and appeared next pointing at their chests in the hands of a young man and a pretty petite young lady.

  “Ok, at ease. You turn around slowly,” Cherese said. The large muscular man hesitated, I suppose wondering whether to fight his way out of his predicament. The muzzle waved very authoritatively and he realized that from 5 feet away the slightest tug on the trigger would vaporize him. It could be that Cherese sent him a visual of the large hole in his mid torso with blackened burnt edges as he was falling to the ground and that tempered him.

  The second smaller Outlaw with a smile that he must have thought would be disarming said, “Hello there sweetie, are you the young woman I was dreaming of last night, come here hand that dangerous weapon to me.” Cherese shifted the muzzle and there was a flash and the second Outlaw’s foot was vaporized leaving a blackened stump. He made a wheezing sound and then let out an avalanche of curse words. Sweetie suddenly became ‘bitch’ and a barely intelligible strings of unmentionables.

  She calmly said, “Shut up, hobble to the railing and get yourself up the stairs asshole. I’m not your sweetie, got it.”

  The big muscular man Outlaw lifted his arms and was inspected by Matt and was very submissive. After his partner was checked for hidden weapons the muscular one asked if he could help the injured one up the stairs. Getting the ok, he did just that. They were then walked out the front door just as a transport zoomed in overhead and pirouetted to make a dainty landing on what passed as their unkempt front lawn. Two Securinet officers disembarked and threw those loops from their belt which roped the muscular Outlaw wrists and ankles loosely together; it was wrists only for the injured one. He was put on a stretcher and restrained. A rough bandage was applied to his leg missing a foot and a shot given. Creating a new foot for him with a bit of his DNA was easy nowadays. Or he could get an excellent prosthesis if he preferred. He was still cursing the ‘so and so bitch who had blown away his foot.’ Maybe he will develop a little respect for petite ladies one day, but he was not there yet definitely.

  We were busy trying to pick those Outlaws’ brains while their guard was down and they were vulnerable. They seemed to be acquaintances of the other two who team Five were sent to retrieve. We gathered as much information on their group in Northumbria under ‘Scanlon’ since I felt sure such intel would be valuable. The mere fact that they could spare some of their Outlaws to come up to our neck of the woods to be mercenaries told a story in itself.

  Team Five we later learned had gotten to their quarry, surrounded the farmhouse, deduced that those two were at the breakfast table and three of Five after they had all taken turns reading their minds, simply teleported in to join them at the table. The couple of utterly shocked Outlaws simply lost all interest in their meal but one of them had very quick reaction times. He grabbed at a weapon at his hip, got his hands on it but found his hand frozen and unmoving. Once he realized that the game was done and he was outclassed by a group of apparently unarmed young folks standing in his kitchen nook, he nodded in defeat. Serena in her tall brown hiking boots took a few steps in his direction and his hands though still cramping loosened up enough to let go of the weapon. He looked down at his hand as if wondering how it could possibly have let him down so pitifully. He was probably just about then realizing how lucky he was to still be breathing.

  They were checked for hidden weapons and their mind reads revealed much the same; they were disposable mercenaries on loan from the Scanlon group. So there was a network of groups assisting each other. Not at all surprising to find that people help each other even in criminal enterprises. For all the advancements that we humans have made, the core remains the same. It would be crass to think that we would ever truly get rid of criminals amongst us. The best we could do is to make it as unprofitable and as risky to the criminal as possible. That was our duty for now anyway, for both team Six and Five too. We were essentially doing practical college, between the Immersion giving us the the raw knowledge crammed into our brains and the practical real world experience we just might be more prepared for later service in life as full adults.

  The transport taking our three prisoners was beginning to power up as two more transports with forensic investigators landed, one next to it and the other in the backyard. Jessi and I had just said hi to each other in this moment of relaxed mental state. We both heard what would have sounded like a ‘damn it’ were it to have been a verbal out loud exclamation, but it was not. It came from the mind of the muscular Outlaw who was now strapped into the transport. Both Jessi and I instead reached into the transport pilots mind and drummed the instruction to power down. The poor guy had no clue likely why he did suddenly needed to abort, but he did instantly, easing back the throttle. He was our mental slave so to speak, fully under our control. We ran to the transport door and as we commanded, it opened. One of the bossy officers started to unbuckle his seatbelts and put his hand out as if to stop us coming in. The thought occurred to us, “Does this jackass not know that he is trying to stop us from getting to OUR prisoner?” So we just did the mental telepathic equivalent of running him over with a dump truck- not nice but we mind slapped him and he just slumped back into his seat. “Do not get between us and the object of our desire fool!”

  We reached over and touched the muscular one. That close physical content left him squirming. There was no holding out on us. We now knew clearly that he was upset with himself about not having had time to destroy a little communicator box that he had secreted under a loose floorboard in his bedroom here in the safe house. He was upset too, because he was supposed to send a message to his boss Juwait in Northumbria who was then to report to Scanlon. We knew the already composed message too. It was to say that the job was done and they were awaiting next set of orders from the group here. What was critical was the existence of the box at all and the fact that it was to be sent via one specific Securinet’s own satellite that was to pass five minutes from now when within range. That satellite was to keep that message until directly overhead a specific coordinate and narrow beam it to Juwait. Now that was critical. We grabbed the muscular one out of there forthwith and marched him with his ankle restraints on and him taking tiny mincing steps back into the house up the stairs to the second floor and still under our mind control. We got him to guide us in the retrieval of his special communicator and made him send his message off like normal. Breecher was now fully engaged with the full power of Securinet tuned in to listen in and track the message. Securinet now knew, likely a major exploit that was being used by the Outlaws to utilize and in a sense hijack Securinet’s own satellites to communicate among themselves especially long distance. By keeping the beams narrow and of short duration directly up and down to and from the target, it was easy to be overlooked by Securinet. Somehow they had gotten hardware onboard during the manufacture or deployment of that satellite or had rigged up a way to achieve that. We had stumbled onto a major bit of intel here. This was transmitted to Five who quickly located an identical device at that other safe house too.

  Our muscular Outlaw was had been mentally persuaded to send off his message while Securinet was watching closely got see where Juwait was located and from there follow the subsequent messages between him and Scanlon. Those Outlaws were now be tagged and were set up to be followed digitally on the electromagnetic spectrum and as well as physically. It was likely Breecher said that as long as they did not suspect their communication portal was breeched, that they would keep using it. Securinet was re-routing one of their repair and guardian satellites to swoop in from another orbit to visually inspect and photograph the offending satellite
to better locate the re-transmitter. There were only four folks who could control that snooping satellite and mind to mind instructions only were given, so hopefully the Outlaws would not know that securinet had learned about their hijacked satellite and stop using it.

  Fortunately team Five located the secret communicator box at their safe house but mind dredging of their captors did not reveal any pre arranged expected communication. So yes the Outlaws would learn that two of their safe houses were busted soon enough and might be more leery about trusting that mode of communication yes, but Securinet would already be onto them anyway.

  Any additional information garnered would be extra gravy on the plate.

  We returned the muscular prisoner to the transport after he transmitted his message dutifully and on time. Could the Outlaws be watching us directly now on our own satellites was a real concern. That was Breecher’s problem to figure out. We could not be so cocky as to think that that was impossible. They were human and just as savvy as we were. A few minutes later, the satellite transmitted the message to specific coordinates on the other side of the globe and what would have been signals lost amidst the constant wail of radio frequency noise now took on very clear logical conversations which though encrypted, was easily broken by our Securinet’s quantum quark based supercomputers. We knew where the players were and would rapidly escalate the intelligence gathering so as to have a better chance to swoop in and dismantle their structures, both human assets and system assets. In fact there were two other hotspots beside the ones in Northumbria and here in Bahoe where messages were uploaded and downloaded over the globe as the special satellite passed. Other specialized teams were already enroute to those areas. Also looking back at recordings made of intercepted transmissions of the same type revealed years worth of messages and information that Securinet was sinking their teeth into. This turned out to be a richly rewarding boon for Securinet.