by Ryan Krauter
"I'm not due for a few days," Halley reassured him. "Will that be enough time?"
"It should be," Loren replied gratefully.
"So," Halley pressed on, all business, "the question is, what do we do now?"
"Put surveillance on Tana Starr," Web said confidently. "She's the key, and practically speaking, she's the only real lead we have. We see if she leads us to anything interesting. If she does, we take advantage of the situation."
"Do we have any rules of engagement?" Halley thought to ask.
"That's an excellent question," Loren admitted. "This is not even an authorized mission. Captain Elco bought us some time in orbit so we could follow this, but there's no way anyone would authorize this sort of thing, except maybe Admiral Bak." He paused, fingers drumming on the beat-up metal table between the club-configured seats. "We're doing this on our own, so we had better be damn well sure of our evidence before we take any sort of irreversible action."
"I can provide some funds," Halley offered. "Enough to do what we need to, I figure. Just so we're all clear, then: we're on our own here. The civilian government would have a psychotic event if they knew we were spying on one of their own, and the military can't afford to admit they want us doing it. So we need to be absolutely sure we have something concrete before we do anything. A good DNA scan and a blood sample would probably do the trick. Finding the Priman strike team and Velk would, of course, be even better."
Everyone nodded somberly. They all knew what they were getting into.
"Alright," Cory took control. "Let's go nail us a dirty Priman spy."
Tana Starr's day had begun on a low note and sunk even lower as the morning wore on. Her 'official' duties as Dennix's chief aide consumed most of her time, and she was forced to waste it on people wanting face time with the Senator to curry favor, offer services, and sometimes outright bribery. It made her realize even more profoundly how badly these people needed solid, determined leadership. These people had no course, no purpose. If only they'd see what her people could offer, there would be no need for the war and bloodshed.
Until such time, she would continue to serve the other half of her duties in the best way she could: Priman officer and covert contact. Salvor had already contacted her this morning using their prearranged signal, and she was not in a position to offer any help. The Confeds had slapped an immediate and effective quarantine on transport traffic, offering threats of a terrorist attack by Priman sympathizers to the public as the reason. Salvor, Velk, and what remained of his team couldn't remain in their safehouse for long. They had run into unexpected resistance and lost a large number of their team, and sooner or later even these rudderless humans would start searching the cities, and the capitol was the logical first place to start. She had scheduled a meet with him tomorrow night, in a crowded nightclub. She actually went there twice or more a week, just to establish her presence as normal there. It helped being a 'regular'; people watched out for her and she'd had an employee run off a drunken suitor once or twice. A quick conversation with somebody there was noticed but not remembered by the staff and patrons. It pained her to make public contact again, but if she was going to do her job, that was the price she needed to pay.
Loren's group had changed into civilian clothes and started to plan their day. Halley offered to go scout the government center where Starr worked in Senator Dennix's offices. Merritt and Cory had gone to pick up two hovercars from a rental agency. They were the most common vehicle on the planet by make and color; six passenger, two different shades of blue, lots of chrome and lights. In any other city they'd stand out like a sore thumb; here, they blended right in.
They'd been torn about what to do for a base of operations. They didn't have the means to acquire a big, well-located space, but a records search found that Tana Starr didn't own a vehicle, meaning she took public transport or walked to work. They therefore settled on cheap dorm-style lodging near the spaceport that tended to service the capitol building and the immediate area. Long-haul pilots tended to have a half day or more of free time as their ships were unloaded, serviced, and filled back up for the next leg. Most spaceports were home to a fair number of low-service lodging; small rooms, prepackaged meals available, and low prices catered to people who just needed a place to crash for a while before heading back out. The bonus was that the mostly-transient population of a business like that afforded excellent anonymity. Loren took care of that aspect, and secured two rooms.
Web stayed with him and helped lay in supplies, mostly organizing the equipment they'd brought from Avenger and stocking up on food and essentials.
By late morning, everyone except Halley was back. After a brief discussion, Web and Merritt took one of the hovercars to go meet up with Halley in case Starr left during her lunch hour. Halley had already cautioned Loren to stay out of sight; Starr had met him personally, and seeing him around her place of work when he had no business there would likely make her suspicious.
The afternoon brought no lunch dates and no surprises, so they prepared to follow her home after work. Loren and Web were ready in one hovercar, Merritt drove the other. Halley and Cory prepared to follow her on foot if she walked, in which case Merritt would park the hovercar and work into the rotation following Starr on the ground. There had been a rushed meeting between the lunch hour and Starr's expected afternoon departure between all of the Confed officers, during which Halley had outlined some basic tradecraft.
First, while all of them would be utilized in some way, Halley would start off in the most exposed and critical position, often referred to as The Eye. She would directly observe Tana Starr and call out initial movements and reactions. The Eye's job was to steer the rest of the team onto their target; if Halley dropped the ball or ran a sloppy intercept, the whole thing would go down in flames. She was by far the most experienced of the bunch when it came to surveillance, so it was her call.
Second, she discussed how to watch Starr without standing out. They'd have to rotate positions and techniques to avoid detection. If Starr saw any of them repeatedly over time, in different environments, or caught unusual demeanor from them such as trying to avoid eye contact, following too closely or making sudden turns or stops while in close proximity to her, she'd be tipped off.
Third, they needed to start thinking about the next step right away. Look for patterns of behavior; places she frequents, times she does things, routes she takes, people she talks to. Look for weaknesses in any place or routine she has. Determine any security or countersurveillance techniques she uses. Think about how to plan an attack using the environment they saw around them. It was an intense briefing from Halley, filled with lots of head-nodding and note taking. In the end, she pronounced them ready enough and they took to the streets.
Salvor was uncharacteristically restless in the safehouse. It was a nice enough place; at least, that's what Starr had told him. Unfamiliar with the trappings of a surface-based home and the activities centered around it, he had taken her at her word that everything around him was considered normal.
They were in a lower middle class neighborhood; the neighbors were hard workers, polite without being nosy, and apparently completely unfazed by the 'three' young Drisk who'd moved into the fixer-upper at the end of the street. Salvor and Starr had prepared an elaborate backstory about how he and his two operatives that were seen in public were all starting a specialty transportation company, but the people around the neighborhood just smiled and waved, none of them prying too deeply. Perhaps that would come later with familiarity, but Salvor wouldn't be staying that long.
He considered the tactical situation, which heavily favored his people. They were in a residential area with tightly packed, tall (three stories) but narrow houses. There were two, sometimes three tiers of homes that extended on for blocks and blocks. The ground level homes were like anywhere else in the civilized galaxy. The upper tiers had to have a lot more open space so as to not cast a complete shadow over the surface levels. The second level o
f homes was built right over the first on separate supports. The roofs of the first level homes were where hovercars were parked, and after that gap the second levels started. Instead of streets, there were large open spaces with lanes where hovercars were meant to rise or descend to the desired street level. Instead of yards, there were large open spaces, with shared patios and sidewalks, backed up with invisible barriers and repulsor fields to stop people from falling (or jumping) to their demise far below.
From his perch atop the second level and without a third tier above, Salvor could see someone coming from a long way off. If somebody wanted to get to his place, they'd need to either approach via the sidewalk in front, the open courtyard on the west side of the home, or the roof. He had three floors to choose from, and besides Representative Velk there were still five more members of his original strike team. Things could be better, but they could be far worse.
Now, he just needed Tana Starr to help them get out of the city.
Tana Starr either felt she had nothing to hide, or she had nothing to fear. She just walked home, fifteen minutes from the immense capitol building complex, though there was a public tube system she could have used had the weather been bad.
Halley had directed the team and used every last trick she felt they were capable of. They'd followed her at a discrete distance on the ground, made easier by the fact that Starr was apparently using zero countersurveillance tradecraft. Halley had later explained that the appearance of no countermeasures didn't mean there weren't any in place, though. Starr might go through certain chokepoints where she could watch for familiar faces, or she might have some sort of remote monitoring of her route provided by an accomplice or electronic means.
Halley had taken no chances. With the exception of Loren, who had to stay in the hovercar, everyone had been involved. Several times, Halley had used Loren in the hovercar to briefly watch Starr as Halley rearranged the rest of them, swapping drivers in the other hovercar and racing to drop each other off on likely routes of travel. She'd forgotten how exhausting a serious, properly run surveillance was.
Still, it paid off. Starr arrived at her high-rise apartment, and based on the time it should have taken to get up to her unit versus how long it actually took, Halley assumed the woman had spent some legitimate time clearing her tail while in the building. That was fine; she didn't have an immediate interest in getting into Starr's apartment.
The best part of running an effective surveillance was watching the target relax and let her guard down. Loren's description of Starr as a hard-case staffer was confirmed again and again during the trip, but things changed once in her apartment. Halley, watching from atop an adjoining building with high powered optics, saw Starr shuck off her shoes and formal tunic, then head to a window in bare feet and tank top to open it up and let the breeze in. Starr seemed to savor the wind in her hair, closing her eyes and allowing the faintest hint of a smile to appear. Halley had to remind herself that the legends had the Primans stuck out beyond the butt end of civilization past the edge of the galaxy for a thousand years; feeling the wind in her hair and the warm sunlight on her skin might have been one of Starr's lifelong ambitions.
Starr went back into her apartment and sat on a long couch, stretching out her legs and crossing them as she extracted her comm device from her pocket and started to putter around with it.
Halley quickly checked her camera's settings. She herself knew that there were many ways to detect if you were being recorded; laser rangefinders, electrical emissions, certain radio frequencies and magnetic fields in the right proportions were all telltale signs that recording equipment was being used. Web's insight about using still images was a good one, but she only allowed herself to take a handful of them and once Starr's comm device came out she stopped doing that as well. She had to assume Starr had access to as good or better technology than she did, so from then on she resorted to just watching through the optics and taking notes on a non-connected data pad lying next to her.
Halley had commed Web using her nanite-controlled dermal patch as she watched Starr's apartment. The woman was making a light supper, though it was hard to tell exactly what as the residence started to fall into shadow with the setting of the sun. She'd asked Web to find a window inside the building she was sitting on top of so that they could move their operation inside. It was a shared commercial/residential building, and Web quickly found an office whose tenants had left for the evening. He had entered and cleared it, then called her down.
They'd only gotten settled in when Starr made her move.
"She just changed clothes," Halley said simply.
"Anything good?" Web asked, partially distracted as he was concentrating on eliminating the signs of his recent break-in to the office. He was using an aerosol mister to spray the surfaces he'd touched; seconds afterwards, the mist would have broken down the oils in his skin that left prints and damaged but not destroyed most types of organic forensic evidence like hair and even blood.
"Looks like a naughty nurse outfit, and she's putting on some old fashioned exam gloves," Halley replied.
"Don't you have a getup like that?" Web replied, suddenly very close to Halley. She smiled at him coyly.
"I was just seeing if you were paying attention." She grinned. "And no, I don't have one."
"But you could get one, right?"
"I'd prefer to use the molecule gloves, though," she said seriously, referring to the bracelet-controlled 'gloves' similar to what the coroner had used on the dead members of the Priman team that broke Velk out of the detention facility the day before.
"Well, now I know what to get you for your birthday," Web replied.
"That will have to wait," Halley said, back to business as she commanded the comm line open so everyone could hear. They'd long since agreed that the only way this would work was to have her run the show despite being lower in rank to all of them, but service rank was much less important than expertise at this point, and there were no objections. "She's going out; she got dressed up nice, put on some makeup, and she's making one last check in the mirror by the front door. Cory, Merritt, downstairs for the pickup; you decide who's on her first." Halley picked up her camera and started stashing it in her bag as she made a whirling motion with her other hand for Web's benefit. The meaning had been explained earlier: it's time to go. She swept the room as she made for the hallway beyond, Web doing the exact same thing behind her to double check.
"Loren, grab whichever hovercar you weren't using earlier and get ready to watch Starr when Cory and Merritt have to break off and reset. Web and I are taking the second hovercar and we'll set up down the line after you give us a guess where she's headed."
Halley dashed out into the hall, Web closing the door behind him and misting the surfaces as he passed. Then they were on the way to the roof.
Tana Starr walked confidently down the third tier sidewalk towards her favored nighttime hangout, a bar called Energy. At first, walking on the upper tiers of the city had made her nervous; being caged inside a ship for most of her life didn't provide many opportunities to acclimate to such wide open spaces, heights and long drops to the unyielding ground below. She had come to love them, though, as a symbol of what her people would reclaim as they settled on the planets of the galaxy.
She peered over the edge, careful to not get too close to the framework of the energy barrier. It would send a mild but undeniable jolt through anyone who tried to pass beyond the edge, and she had tested it only once. She slowed down so she could inspect the people wandering below in the night; from up here, they looked like insects bustling about, carrying on with some mindless task that only they seemed to understand.
She did love the night time. It was a bridge for her, between the freedom and open skies of the planet and the dark, infinite reachees of space which she was most familiar with. This time of the evening allowed her to feel a little of both. She was home, yet part of her new surroundings as well. Going to the bar was part of her desired cover,
but taking the third tier skywalk instead of a tube car was a personal choice.
She approached the entrance to Energy, a brightly lit and bustling two story building, all glass and chrome with some concrete fixtures here and there to give it some dimension. There was a large patio that jutted out into the clear space far above the street below, and a good number of people were simply wandering around the open space, enjoying the clear night air. She'd chosen this bar very carefully, despite it also being the closest one to her apartment. Primarily, she liked the demographic. Half a dozen different species, most in their twenties and thirties, most of them professionals or just urban and trendy.
She wanted to avoid the political hangouts like the plague. In every government town, there were a handful of bars and restaurants that the officials and their staff loved to frequent. The officials mingled to show off their power and influence, hoping people would see them. The staffers mingled to be seen as well, but they were all still on the way up and needed to be seen as part of the system. Everyone knew that plenty of work was done after hours, hammering out deals and feeling out opinions on matters that would be discussed in public the next day. While the officials came to unwind a bit, the staffers were always on the clock in one way or another, whether it was making a deal or simply keeping tabs on each other. Tana avoided it for that very reason. When she was out at night, she didn't need anyone from the capitol building trying to buddy up to her and curry favor. She'd been forced to switch bars once before, just after she inserted herself into Dennix's office. Somebody had made the connection, and before she knew it people were attempting to attach themselves to her while she was out maintaining her cover. She'd even gone so far as to change apartments, and had made it known that she did not play the game and wanted no part of anybody else's efforts, either.