Outlaw Badjans (Six of Toigan)

by D Gemcats Purcell

  We had truly won the Lotto here; Securinet was swamped with actionable intel. Next on the list for us was to head to the agricultural dasher business. Breecher had already located the chief pilot Benton and he was on the way back to the aerodrome. We needed to get our team Six there to interrogate him as well as interview both Mr. Waple and Mr. Morgan his boss who thus far had not had any more intel fingers point at them. They both had been carefully vetted and all their personal, financial, family lives examined. Nothing definite had been found to clearly implicate them. Last step was for team Six to do the equivalent of a thorough mind exam. There was a Securinet man involved with the gate at the aerodrome and he would let us in quietly unannounced. We were forwarded the schematics as to where Mr.Waple’s and Morgan’s offices were and where the transport that was inbound with Benton on the controls would likely park to refuel.

  19. Global Outlaw Cleanup

  Mader and I headed out back as the investigators in whole body suits were entering through the back door. They would do a thorough wipe down for genetic information, sweep for any communication devices, suck up all the recorded video and other sensor information. If there were any ghosts there, they’d detect them too. Ghosts be on guard! We ran into the bushes carefully, not wanting to tangle with vermin such as poisonous snakes. Off the beaten path, there was a good tangle of underbrush. We had done well to get this far on our 4 wheelers with making too much noise. Once we we retrieved our 4 wheelers, we zipped around to the front, lowered the loading gate and rode up the ramp of the trailer. With the 4 wheelers back on the trailer and hooked in for on the road charging, we took off to the aerodrome twenty two miles away. As we drove there with Jessi on the controls we liaised with Breecher and Jongi. First we will get our hands, well our minds really, on Benton. Then we will go for the other two men in their offices. On Monday Six would get our first near space hypersonic flight from Pommerose Securinet’s special airfield to Northumbria, a 36 hour airline flight compressed to three hours, to get Scanlon, Juwait and his top brass. Five would be getting to make a similar journey to participate in cleaning up another hive of Outlaws too.

  We were let into the aerodrome and drove to the appropriate area for parking. The others would stay put and scan to let us know if any one was attempting to bolt. Benton had landed, let off his three passengers and he watched attentively as his transport got fueled. Then he’d headed for the men’s restroom. Jessi stayed by the door and I slipped into the stall right next to him. He let out a relieved sigh as his stream burst out and I pounced into his brain at this relaxed vulnerable moment. I could feel Jessi slip into his mind with me. He was quite aggravated still over the loss of that transport and the fools who crashed it plus the escape of that persnickety kid that seemed to be highly valued by the Outlaws and his little consort too who also seemed to have some desirable traits. He had informed his friend Gooch about how valuable it would be to get that little noncom guy brain-washed into the fold right after he got through the immersion. Loose lips Waple had bragged about knowing this brilliant little noncom and seeing him use his skills long ago. Hopefully he could use his hidden mercenaries in one more attempt to grab the little buggers. He’d ship them off to Scanlon. He did not spare the rod. He’d get them under control; he was a master at making people do what they’re told. He grinned to himself. He’d heard that Scanlon ‘liked’ to use up both the boys and the girls too! He would dehumanize them with the aid of some drugs rather quickly.

  When he came back to his senses about five minutes later, he wondered how long he had been standing there feeling a little dazed. His mind had been thoroughly drained. He instinctively went to the soap and tap, but had trouble focusing on what next to do. So thoroughly was his mind explored by his two despised targets unbeknownst to his conscious mind. The rest of the team were allowed to jump in as well. Breecher got the short summary. Mader piped into their minds, “Lordy, I’m glad he and Gooch did not get their hands on us and especially you two.”

  Jessi said, “So glad”.

  Two Securinet folks summoned by the other four were right there at the door with their fancy hoops to loop it around Benton’s wrists and ankles just before he was whisked off. A thorough pat down revealed a neat little grey box in the lapel of his jacket containing two pills. No easy way out for you Mr. Benton.

  Jessi and I would do a behind the building rather than frontal approach. We walked the few hundred feet to get behind their offices, then focused on reading Mr. Waple. He was on the phone and very intense. He went from call to call lining up the jobs for his dashers to work with farmers all over this province. Then he talked with repair companies. Then he was dictating notes on those conversations. Finally we could feel him sit in his chair put his hands to his head and lean back with a sigh. As he let the tension out, we slipped in. It was ‘super easy’ for me as I’d been in his head rather deeply before. Searching backwards chronologically including back to the day of the attempt at my farm to kidnap me, we realized that he was simply here late in the evening working as he always does. Nothing there that was even the least bit suspicious. He may have shared some in- law relationship with Gooch, but no real friendship and no business ties. He was clean of ties to the Outlaws. It left me feeling happy to confirm that he quite simply was thrilled for me as a Noncom who had a real chance to make it in the big leagues. It restored my faith in him and I confessed to my friends of feeling more than a little guilty at doubting his genuine interest. Cherese murmured, “Better to be proven wrong here than to have been too trusting.”

  We moved on closer to Mr. Morgan’s office who was himself engaged in a deep conversation with one of his daughters about his grandson who was having seizures and would, would need a brain implant. He was surprisingly knowledgeable and was reassuring her. We could pick up on the self doubts though. We certainly felt uncomfortable prying into his brain. So we slipped away from his present conversation to pry backwards into his memories. Between Jessi and I we covered him thoroughly enough going back more than forty years of his life to know that there was certainly no Outlaw sympathies nor any skullduggery inside that man. He was as pure a soul as one could find. Two kids and a dutiful wife, hard working at his business, having straddled several ups and downs financially still enjoying the his day to day existence.

  We eased on out of there after I had gone into Mr. Waple’s office with Jessi who I had to persuade to go with me. There was now a light drizzle, the cold front was here finally. He was dictating to his computer which he promptly stopped, got up with arms wide. “Oh my gosh, is that you Jordan? So grown up! How long has it been. Five years since I last saw you. I promise that I did enquire about you and Amalae said that you were growing into a fine upstanding man. How are your Mom and Dad?” I gently lifted him directly up levitating him over his desk and let him down directly in front of both of us. His face initially turned a shade of grey when he felt himself being lifted but I could feel him relax and his face turned pink with pleasure as he was placed back on the floor. The hug I got from him was just crushing. “Thank you Jordan, thank you for sharing your secret, your power. I had no doubt that you had it in you. And who is this wonderful young lady?”

  I said, “This is Jessi my very best friend and we met during the Immersion. She took pity on this poor noncom and brought me into the fold..” I did not get to finish because Jessi reached out and pinned my lips with her fingers. “He is my sweetheart, he just doesn’t know it yet.” Waple was just beaming. “You all totally made my day. I couldn’t be dreaming, could I? You are a fantastic couple. Stay true to each other and it will all work out for the better. I feel like Jonah is like a son to me Jessi, so take care of him.” We left a tearfully happy Waple to fight with his phones and scheduling.

  We drove back to our farmhouse quietly. A lot had happened during thus short Saturday. At my home we scanned the area, got some late lunch and retreated to our various favorite spots. The Five had been given directions to our farm and were here too so a Mom and Dad h
ad a full house. Cherese and Arthur seemed to be talking softly with each other in one corner of the living room. Out in the big barn Mader and Adrianna were rubbing shoulders walking around slowly feeding carrots to our two horses. The others were out sitting around reading, chatting with each other. Jessi and I went upstairs and we gave each other the promised tight hugs and we both survived without asphyxiation. We talked and talked about our dreams for ourselves and each other. We committed ourselves to our special friendship then. There was such peace in our little world and we savored it completely. We knew that moments like that weren’t to be wasted. They would likely be few and far between.

  After a lazy Saturday afternoon, we all ate dinner together with Moog and our parents and the rest of Six headed out in the merkaur and Five in their van off to their homes. Mum and Dad got hugs and thank you. Moog’s fiancé Juliana was also with us and we all stood in the driveway to see the groups off. We hoped that we in Six would all get to meet again unharmed by next weekend after our planned trip to the other side of our planet. Meanwhile we had lots of maps, neighborhood diagrams, house plan schematics and photographs of Scanlon, Juwait and their bodyguards in addition to routes to get to them with specialized notes to study then discard when done.

  Early that Monday morning we all met at the airbase entrance off in the suburbs of Pommerose. We were whisked into the loading hanger where our sleek hypersonic transport was sitting just two hundred feet away fully loaded with fuel. At the designated time we were escorted with our knapsacks on our backs to the few stairs up to the entrance behind the short wings. She was a gleaming beauty. Once inside we had to crouch a little, store our knapsacks safely, get seated, look at the safety video, the door was then closed we felt the push back out of the hanger and with a whine the engines started. At the end of the runway, straining at its leach like a dog, the pilots up front got off the brakes and we initially trundled then glided along the runway. There were no windows so we looked at video feed of the surroundings which became a blur and next our chairs tilted us nearly level as we rocketed up. Then in thirty minutes we were weightless and allowed two at a time to practice our weightless maneuvers for a good hour. All the while we could look down on our curved world of Toigan with its blue atmosphere with brown land masses, blue oceans and auroras in the northern hemisphere. Finally on the opposite side of the globe from where we started we punctured the thick atmosphere and an hour later glided to a landing in a super long Securinet airfield in a town called Juno near Northumbria. None of us were seasick and though we felt a little rubbery legged, we walked off exhilarated.

  We had all the geography down pat in our heads from the Immersion, reinforced with a good review of local customs, accents and were ready. Transport was ready for us and in ten minutes we were headed into the country side which basically looked like rolling desert with interspersed green patches. Our driver was quiet but did answer our questions succinctly. His motto seem to be less rather than more in terms of wordiness. He was special forces is all he would tell us openly. We of course had scanned him for his grandma’s name plus. He was not a plant for sure. He was only told that we had special skills and we did not expand on that. We entered a dusty town pulled up under a large covered awning and there were three identically colored vehicles with running engines each with darkened windows like ours. Under the awning we all switched our bags to one of the others and after a snack plus restroom break we took off in the second such vehicle. Each took a different route.

  Our vehicle continued on in the early evening since time had gone backwards for us. It would be nighttime back at home now. Finally we pulled up in one of those desert villages stoped under another awning. Undoubtedly the other identical vehicles were doing the same thing elsewhere. Six dummies were brought in to take our seats.

  We were reviewing the maps and data on our target Scanlon. There were already special forces troops staged all around the town. Now we shifted to two ordinary rental cars while our van with dummies went on with a different driver. We were told that there were likely informants all over and those precautions were normally taken for agents in town, so even if our switches were observed, they would know we were in some way Securinet but not alarming. A female Securinet driver drove Jessi, Matt and myself in the second auto while in the front car which was still driven by our original special force guy were Cherese, Dillion and Mader.

  We were three miles from target and it was going to be a nondescript street with sixteen single story houses on each side of the residential road. There would be three homes on one side with the middle one of the three containing the target as we turned into the street. There were guards in the two homes on either side of the target house and the home directly opposite was also a guard house. Scanlon was a smoker and we knew that he sometimes ventured onto his back porch to puff after dinner. So here we were at dinner time. Guards would patrol and there were all kinds of security with back up generators in case of power failure. There was nothing like an ‘anti-Six’ though! He would be snatched by us and then taken to the waiting arms of Securinet officers. Then we would move onto getting Juwait who only lived six miles away.

  Securinet had rented a vacant home facing his backyard and a nice couple with a clean straightforward easily traced record had moved in two days ago complete with moving truck. Scanlon’s people were watched through the back channels as they researched the couple and as they walked by to get a good look. Reassured, they had gone back to their routine. We were the relatives that would come in to visit for dinner if anybody noticed. We parked quarter of a mile away off the beaten track engine off and out of their cars, like two lovers who were meeting for a tryst. They were to spend a lot of time real close talking as part of their cover, just in case someone was observing them. We kidded with them, “Don’t get it on for real now lads.” He smiled at the thought and she scowled as she pulled out a six inch knife from her ‘bodice’ as she called that piece of apparel.

  We left quickly delving into the bush watching where we stepped. Then we stopped and scanned. No one was observing us, so we collectively blended into the background and covered the remaining ground into the backyard of our renting couple. The side gate had been left fully open for us. Our couple were in the living room with computers plus several monitors on, scoping out the scene. They jumped visibly when as we materialized in their backyard and waved to them. They had left a wired microphone with which to communicate with us and six blasters fully charged in a box close to their fence.

  We relaxed on the folding chairs left up against the fence and scanned lazily. We knew when Scanlon had made his appearance, there was a burst of human activity across the street from guards and the brain activity of our two folks in the living room peaked even before we got the hand signals. One guard in each of the three houses. Scanlon stepping out stopping to cup the flame to his mouth. It still amazes me that folks would deliberately inhale soot, known carcinogenic chemicals, actual known poisons into their lungs this late in human development, but a small percentage still did.

  Mader, Cherese and Dillion combined pulled in on the energies of the three guards who were quickly drained stumbled and went to their knees. They did not stop sucking in. Scanlon was mine and Jessi’s. We were in his mind like white on rice and believe me, if was dirty. Like an automaton, he dropped his cigarette then marched with zombielike purpose across the street and into a gap between the houses before anyone inside the house could notice anything wrong. Jessi and I met him and touched him on each shoulder; we totally owned him. A lone vehicle right on cue came slowly down the street with three large men. The door slid open, he was pulled inside, shackled, injected with a syringe full of yellow liquid and laid out flat after being stripped down to his undies. The usual vial with two pills were removed from his clothes. Five minutes later he was in a transport taking off from the field close to where our two cars had waited for us. Breecher got the message telepathically and we were off to get Juwait.

  Meanwhile, the troopers
flooded the neighborhood and cleaned out the three houses. Three dead from unexplained causes that Six had sucked the life out of, two injured from the house across from Scanlon’s when they put up an initial fight. All were packed up for the decriptor. Securinet had one ready right here in the Northumbria region. They would have their memories harvested and their brain waves tidied up to make them into decent law abiding citizens.

  We arrived at Juwait before he got warned of Scanlon’s fate. Three of the team were positioned near his backyard and three in front with only myself walking up to his front door. He was married with a young kid and both he and his wife too were inside. After a knock by myself, I entered his mind willing him to open the door. I said, “Mr. Juwait please come peacefully with me now. I will ensure that your family remain safe. You are needed to help us in Securinet to figure out a few things concerning Mr. Scanlon.”