It had been weeks now, weeks since Mand’alor came out of Dxun and rallied the clans, and nobody had heard from Byrne. Some people – not that Novoc was one to name names, especially when they knew damn well who they were – didn’t think he was coming back at all, but that just didn’t sound like the person Novoc knew. Sure, Byrne was a strange one for wanting to live out in the middle of nowhere and help foreigners fix their ridiculous problems, but he was still a mando’ad. If he was at all capable of it, there was no doubt in Novoc’s mind that Byrne would already have answered Mand’alor’s call.
Which meant that something was very, very wrong. What, was impossible to say without talking to Byrne himself, and if he wasn’t answering his e-mail then the only thing to do was go look for him. Or his kid. Novoc wasn’t going into this with any illusions; if Byrne was having problems big enough that he couldn’t even call home, then it was likely he was now beyond any problems at all. If that was the case, it’d be up to Novoc to get little Kay out of there.
Getting into Japanifornia was easy. A homebody like him didn’t have a criminal record that would worry station security, even for a place a lot less dirty than this, and his scars could be dismissed as products of small workplace accidents – which to be fair, was true for at least a quarter of them. He left most of his armor on his ship, except for the chest piece which he concealed under a long, thick coat, and the helmet which he tucked into a suitcase along with some small machine parts. Just a small businessman on a small business trip. The guards working the security checkpoint didn’t give him a second look.
Once he was through customs, he ducked into a deserted – and disgusting – public bathroom, and quickly re-assembled the pistols he’d disguised as “machine parts” before belting them to his thighs. Once he’d made sure that his coat would cover them, he slid on his eyepiece and stepped back out into the hallway, suitcase in tow.
Byrne had left his mark all over customs, just as Novoc had hoped. Electronic tags, invisible to everyone without access to the jorhaakar, the mando’ade version of the extranet, peppered the security checkpoint and the guards, identifying weakness and corruption. Novoc noted with grim amusement that an official who’d smiled at him as he put his suitcase through the scanner was connected with murder, then turned away, walking deeper into the station. Byrne hadn’t been considerate enough to label a path to his home base, but Novoc could download a map from the station’s extranet and cross-check it against the tags. A cluster of tags in one of the residential sectors was different from the rest, focusing on domestic things instead of crime. Children who Kay liked to play with, a woman whose shithead boyfriend Byrne had chased off, an elderly couple who sometimes made treats for the neighborhood kids…And in the middle of it all, a residence labeled “Badd’s.”
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-12-18 02:10 am (UTC)Which meant that something was very, very wrong. What, was impossible to say without talking to Byrne himself, and if he wasn’t answering his e-mail then the only thing to do was go look for him. Or his kid. Novoc wasn’t going into this with any illusions; if Byrne was having problems big enough that he couldn’t even call home, then it was likely he was now beyond any problems at all. If that was the case, it’d be up to Novoc to get little Kay out of there.
Getting into Japanifornia was easy. A homebody like him didn’t have a criminal record that would worry station security, even for a place a lot less dirty than this, and his scars could be dismissed as products of small workplace accidents – which to be fair, was true for at least a quarter of them. He left most of his armor on his ship, except for the chest piece which he concealed under a long, thick coat, and the helmet which he tucked into a suitcase along with some small machine parts. Just a small businessman on a small business trip. The guards working the security checkpoint didn’t give him a second look.
Once he was through customs, he ducked into a deserted – and disgusting – public bathroom, and quickly re-assembled the pistols he’d disguised as “machine parts” before belting them to his thighs. Once he’d made sure that his coat would cover them, he slid on his eyepiece and stepped back out into the hallway, suitcase in tow.
Byrne had left his mark all over customs, just as Novoc had hoped. Electronic tags, invisible to everyone without access to the jorhaakar, the mando’ade version of the extranet, peppered the security checkpoint and the guards, identifying weakness and corruption. Novoc noted with grim amusement that an official who’d smiled at him as he put his suitcase through the scanner was connected with murder, then turned away, walking deeper into the station. Byrne hadn’t been considerate enough to label a path to his home base, but Novoc could download a map from the station’s extranet and cross-check it against the tags. A cluster of tags in one of the residential sectors was different from the rest, focusing on domestic things instead of crime. Children who Kay liked to play with, a woman whose shithead boyfriend Byrne had chased off, an elderly couple who sometimes made treats for the neighborhood kids…And in the middle of it all, a residence labeled “Badd’s.”
That looked like a good place to start.