Post by Malik Moriga-Tay on Apr 2, 2014 9:14:18 GMT
“Thank you for agreeing to meet me in person at such short notice Miss Tay.”
Malikora looked up from the datapad laid on the table in front of her and gestured to the empty seat opposite. “Please, call me Malik.”
She took a sip from the glass of wine by her side, “Besides Miss Veelat, I must admit, I just had to find out what business proposition was so crucial that it necessitated the hacking of my personal comms channel to deliver the invitation.”
Allena Veelat sat down in the chair indicated, and twisted it around so that she sat at an angle. Placing her briefcase on her knee she rifled through its contents for a moment before removing a small datapad of her own, placing it down in front of her. She watched calmly for a moment as Malik slowly drank her wine, almost as if interested in the motion of the liquid in the glass, before reaching forward for the second glass on the table and sampling the liquid for herself. She seemed to be considering her words as the subtle tastes of the wine played across her palette, before returning her gaze to the silent women opposite “Well, in truth it was decided that this was the best method to engage your attention.’ She placed the glass back on the table before glancing at her datapad. “Your Psych profile implies that flattery would be ineffective, and that direct action would illicit a negative outcome to this endeavour....curiosity they say Miss Tay, killed the cat. Not a direct threat you understand, more a comment.”
Malik narrowed her eyes slightly as she regarded the women opposite. The well tailored grey business attire suited her rather pale complexion and dark brown hair. With the minimal use of make-up and slightly severe ponytail she looked every part a minor Caldari CEO about to conduct a business interview, rather than a direct threat or potential assassin. She swirled the remaining wine around her glass a couple of times before replacing it on the table. “I had a cat once Miss Veelat. Her name was Patience, a trait of mine which you have exhausted already. My curiosity it seems may have been misplaced.” Scooping up her datapad she pushed back her chair and made to leave
“Please, sit back down Miss Tay.” Allena quick responded. “There really is no rush. As we speak my associates are picking through the insides of your ship for the information we need, and it will stay here, as will you, for as long as I decide, depending on your answers to my questions. So lets just sit here like a couple of friends enjoying a drink and make this as civil as possible.”
Malik slowly lowered herself back into her seat, bristling at the tenacity of those words and coldly formulating her response….
Noticing the flush of anger spreading across her quarries face Allena quickly added “And, before you surrender to your customary bout of temper, let me draw your attention to the large, extremely capable gentleman currently talking to the bartender to my right.” Inclining her head slightly in the indicated direction, she continued “He is here to ensure no harm comes to myself, the patrons of this bar, or to you for that matter. Do we have an understanding Miss Tay?”
Glancing across to her left Malik noticed the man Allena meant. She quickly eyed the dozen or so other patrons of the bar as if checking for other potential hostiles. Most seemed to be normal people, sitting in couples or groups of three, chatting in low voices and utterly unconcerned by the happenings at her table. Allena’s associate casually sipped at his drink while apparently engaging the bartender in small talk, his large frame purposely between herself and the only exit from the establishment.
“What do you want from me?” She hissed, staring across the table.
“From you? Nothing.” Allena calmly replied. “The exploits of a bored trust fund capsuleer pose no immediate interest to the organisation I represent.” She glanced quickly at some piece of information displayed on her pad before snidely remarking “Typical that you would assume that you were the focus of our interest…..that comment alone speaks volumes to your character.”
“You don’t know me Miss Veelat” replied Malik in a brusk tone.
“Know you? Dear, I know every little sordid detail of your life to this point. Though it still amazes me that that you managed to end up a capsuleer...goes to show its not what you know but whom. How did the only child of an Intaki diplomat mother and a Chemical Industrialist fall so quickly from her family’s grace? Rhetorical question of course….I would guess about the time you started trading information to the Serpentis”
Malik froze at mention of that name, what little colour she had draining from her skin in seconds
Enjoying her companion’s obvious distress Allena took another sip of wine before continuing “I suppose it was quite clear from your psyche profile that you would seek something other than the perfect life you wore born to. And that quaint belief system of you Intaki…Ida isn’t it? Well that was clearly not going to hold you for long. A pity, the theme of moderation and self denial could have saved you a lot of pain."
Frowning down at a few lines of text on the pad, Allena’s hand skipped back and forth for a few seconds as she attempted to piece together her line of inquiry. She looked back up to the now pale face and wide eyes that regarded her with apparent horror and confusion before returning to her role of interrogator. “Now, my information is incomplete for this section, so please tell me how you went from graduating with honours in Reaction Kinetics, through a position in Catalyst research at one of your families R&D facilities, to overdose and hospitalisation in 12 short months?”
Visibly shaking now, her voice barely audible over the background noise of the bar, Malik replied “It was not supposed to go like that.” she began, hands clutched in her lap. "When it became clear that dancing was no longer an option I turned to the simplest answer. I was surrounded by formulae and equations from birth so University and a career were the easiest routes. It was just a natural progression from study to research, and I even enjoyed the challenges it presented.” She paused, running her fingers thought her auburn hair before continuing in a whisper “The chems just go hand in hand with that I guess. A little at first to dull the pain of failed dreams or to aid concentration on long nights and short deadlines. Then a little more for the dull days or to make the tedious a little more attractive. Production is simple, supplies readily to hand. I always just thought why not? It was not as if I needed them really, and I always always felt in control. But then I started to notice the odd discrepancy at work. Research projects were disjointed, with the findings of my team ending abruptly before the problem was properly solved. Colleagues would come, set to a task for a few weeks and then be transferred to a new project. Direction, if there was any, seemed to be mult-faceted and not in line with the general research to discovery through product and profit that should be the norm for a corporation”
“And what were your Fathers replies to you obvious questions?” asked Allena as she carefully added points and links to the info in her hand
“That it was nothing, just the way of the business” replied Malik, taking a sip of wine with slightly steadier hands now that she was speaking out loud. “Or that I was imagining things, implying links where non existed. Perhaps I was, it all started to become more disjointed with time. Later he just told me stop asking questions to get on with the tasks at hand.”
“But you were not satisfied with that answer, were you?”
“No, of course not. I started to dig around, to look for the research threads that generated projects and to try and track where our discoveries were being used. It was during the stress of all that going on that I really started to increase my usage, upping my dosage to stay focused.”
She glanced around the room, then turned her gaze to the table top before continuing “One shipment really stuck out, a batch of prototype reactive catalyst with the potential of boosting the production yield of certain biochemical processes by up to 30%” Malik stared out of the viewports beside their table into the blackness outside the station, her words coming together in a faster, more confident stream. “It left the facility on its way to a Poteque Pharmaceutical production facility in Covryn, but never arrived.”
Allena looked up momentarily, a look of doubt on her face. “And that’s it? Hardly unusual for a cargo to go missing in Placid now is it?”
Malik returned her gaze to the table top again. “No, its not Miss Veelat. The unusual thing is that, when I queried the shipment with them directly they claimed to have no knowledge of an order or any dealings with us at all.”
“Ah” Allena replied, “And now we get to the crux of the matter. You suspect that the company was completing orders for a third party, using legitimate research orders as a front?”
“No Miss Veelat. Either with or without Fathers knowledge I know that people inside the facility were doing exactly that.”
“How so?” asked Allena, a little too eagerly.
“Because a couple of hours after sending the order query through is when I met my first Serpent.”
Allena stopped her incessant tapping there and regarded the capsulleer like a hungry wolf about to win a meal. “Your saying that you found direct proof that your Farther, or Fathers Company, has been dealing with the Serpentis?”
“No” Malik sighed. “That’s just when someone who claimed to represent Serpentis business interests decided to ruin my life” She brought her arms up and crossed her hands to her shoulders as if to comfort herself before continuing. “Father had not been answering my calls for a few days, and Mother was out of contact on some diplomatic assignment or other. Most of my friends at the facility had been moved on to new projects, and the replacements were not exactly friendly. I guess it was easy for someone to drug the water flask in my room, or my meal or something else. Maybe I just took too much of my own supply one night, I guess it doesn’t really matter. One minute I’m feeling isolated, alone and a little light headed in my quarters and the next I’m coming around in a cargo crate on some ship or other”
She closed her eyes now as if focussing inwardly on some detail . “It was one of those guys who called himself a Serpentis associate.” She murmured, recalling a face from memory. Bitterly she continued “He also calmly told me that I was going to turn up in a few days, dead of an overdose, on some backwater station or other, just another rich girl playing too far out on the edge” She winced as if the memory hurt her “My habit had not gone unnoticed at work he said, and an easy chain would be put in place attributing my awkward questions to a confused users paranoia. He said they would even produce linked payment details and a message string indicating that I ‘d been swapping information for drugs….all readily believable stuff and enough to shatter any credibility I may have had. Certainly more than enough to silence any alarm bells that may have started to ring due to my delving”
Allena regarded the women sitting miserably before her with barely concealed contempt. Coldly she snapped “That must have been upsetting for you, but I know where this is going now. I have your medical records and the priority missing person files from Gallente security that your mother raised.” Almost to herself she added “I assume they drugged you and dropped you in one of the stations more colourful levels, with instructions to the local dealers that it should eventually look like death by misadventure.” She scanned through a couple of pages of reports before adding “Station logs show that, from disappearance to discovery was by 6 days....quite a long time to out of your mind I would guess? It says here that station security found you in an ally, unconscious and in quite a state. Amazing in equal parts that you were recognised and that you survived. Do you have any memories of that period?”
Malik shook her head slowly “No, I remember nothing after the ship. I think perhaps my mind shut down for a while to protect itself. Nothing becomes solid again until the white memories of a hospital room”
“Quite. No useful information was found in the transcripts of your therapy sessions or from your treatment record during your recovery on Intaki Prime, so lets move forward shall we? But first, I note for some inexplicably reason you never had that facial scare removed during that time?”
Malik instinctively raised her left hand and smoothed her fringe down across her forehead
“Scars are nature’s way of reminding us that we survived an event Miss Veelat”
“Indeed” replied Allena with a mocking look. “But now to bring us up to date. We are not precisely sure how much your family had to give to get you into the Federation Naval Academy with such a colourful history, though we are sure the place on the capsuleer programme was bought and not earned. Perhaps a Fathers guilt, or a Mothers contacts, who knows? But any price seems to have been given willingly to provide their daughter with a second chance in life. What we can be sure of it would have been a genuine surprise to your superiors and perhaps even your parents when you actually succeeded.”
“Mother always said that if I could focus for long enough on something then I could achieve it. Besides, it came easily at that point. And it helped to have a reason to focus.”
Allena glanced over to her associate at bar, before placing her datapad back into her case. “Well what you have told me certainly explains why you seem to have spent the first few months of your time as a capsuleer accepting every agent contract that involved destroying Serpentis ships."
“For a time I thought that if I killed enough of them I may get to that first serpent some how.”
“Naïve, but I suppose understandable” Allena conceded.
“Well Miss Tay, the information you have provided here corroborates some of our own, and merits further discussion into you knowledge of your Fathers business. We will also examine your Mothers ties for signs to any abuse of her position or insider use of her diplomatic contact network. There is also an interesting thread involving her known sympathies with the Syndicate and some of Gallente's more prominent politicians….all valuable information.” Allena glanced around again and made eye contact with her associate, who nodded acknowledgement and moved to stand by the bars entrance, his jacket falling open to reveal the weapon holstered at his waist.
Getting up from her seat, Allena put her bag back on her shoulder and looked down at the woman still huddled at the table. “As you are aware Miss Tay, there are worse things than death. But unless you would like to find out just how creative either the Amarr can be at keeping you alive, or the Serpentis at making you wish for death you will come along with me now, nice and quietly so as not to disturb these good people."
“Just one thing before we leave” Malik whispered, eyes still cast down to her feet
Allena turned back, a look of mild irritation on her face. “Yes?”
“I would like to thank you for the information you have given me”
“I have given you no information Miss Tay” replied Allena, a hint of uncertainty edging the corner of her words as she spoke
“No, you have” replied Malik, leaning forward to place her hands on the table. “Thanks to you I now know the limits and extents of your knowledge and interests in myself and my Family.”
“I don’t see how that information is going to do you any good, once off this station your ability to act on it will be severely curtailed…”
“Stop talking now and listen to me” hissed Malik through clenched teeth as she snapped her gaze up and onto the women in front of her. “I am going to get up and leave now, and you will pray you never see me again”
Allena carefully placed her bag down on her chair before removing a small handgun from within. Holding the weapon down by her thigh out of site from any who may be watching she smiled at Malik before calmly replying “I warned you about that temper now didn’t I? If your not going to behave I’m more than willing to force your compliance”
“You can try” Malik said as a smile spread across her face. Scooping up the wine bottle and glass she quickly poured out the remaining liquid before sitting back in her seat, bringing her boots up to rest on the table top. “But before things get messy in here I’m going to share a couple of things I know with you” She raised her glass to her lips and took a long sip before continuing “I know that the goon by the door you pointed out had just enough sedative in his drink to ensure that he will be cut in half by the bartender long before his gun clears his holster.
Allena expression froze and her body stiffened as Malik continued “I know that of the nine people who exited your Merlin in docking bay T4, three are unconscious in the cargo hold of my Nemesis, two are sealed in the airlock on level 4 and the others are in here with us now, sitting behind us at the table three over and to my right”
“If any harm comes to any of them…”whispered Allena, her hand tightening around the grip of her pistol.
“Oh sweets” purred Malik. “Stay calm and don’t worry about them right now. She placed her now empty glass down next to Allena’s half finished one “Besides, you have ingested enough toxin tonight to kill you several times over, so I’d save some concern for yourself.”
Allena hand clutched to the back of the chair in front to steady herself as she glanced around the room, the meaning of those words quickly sinking in.
“Best keep that gun of yours pointing at the floor too” Malik warned as she smiled at the look of anger dawning on Allenas face. “I’d hate for one of my mercenaries seated around us to end our conversation prematurely.“
“What have you done?” she gasped, staring down at the glasses.
“I’m curious but also cautious” answered Malik, turning her gaze away from Allena and back out in space. “Station security, docking control, all paid to ensure you came to where I wanted you to be. Without turning around she waved a hand around her head once “This bar as the meeting place, the bartender and a dozen guns to ensure the odds” She turned back around and picked up the wine bottle “Even this, one of my favourites, just as added security.”
“But you drank more than me!" Allena almost screamed.
“A derivative of methylphosphonothioate with an in interesting crystalline coating” answered Malik “one of the little things I learnt before my misadventure…rendered inert by ingesting a catalyst inhibitor partially of my own design. Lethal in about two hours, or once the coating dissolves in you system.”
Malik got to her feet and slowly circled around the table to stand in front of Allena. “I’m no monster Miss Veelat, so here is what is going to happen. I’m going back to my ship now. Once aboard I will release the three from my cargo hold. When I’m clear of the station the bartender over there will give you the antidote to your predicament….don’t worry, it tastes of vanilla. After that these lovely people around us will ensure you all make it safely back to your ship and escort you to the nearest gate.”
“That all?” asked Allena “You’d let us go?”
“Of course” Malik grinned. “We both got something out of this, a nice story for you to tell , some parts of which may actually be true, and some interesting things for me to think about” She took a few steps towards the exit before turning back. “Or you can try and shoot me Allena, and die now of gunshot wounds or sample the twin delights of Areflexia and Ataxia before screaming out your last on the floor. Either way all your people here die and for what really?"
Turning back for the door she sidled past the hired muscle and flashed him a smile before heading back towards her ship. “Besides” she thought to her self, “you just gave me something more interesting to focus on.”
