Jack's Wage Slavery Pt. 02

"That's outside the realm of reasonable responses wouldn't you say? Far beyond what the Japanese government would condone." Cha'Risa said. "These people need to be put down."

"If I may, we should incapacitate them for capture by the local authorities. Our cause will not be furthered by bloodshed of those who look like allies," Gee suggested.

"How do you suggest we 'incapacitate' four trained Earth Forces commandos?" Cha'Risa growled.

"The police will be here in one minute. Give us thirty seconds to flank the commandos. Then draw their attention. We will do the rest." Gee said looking up into her face calmly.

With a nod Gee and Bal raced down the alley at top speed. They looked like shadows leaping from place to place.

The Major shared a look with Nann then they made their way to the south end of the alley. Nann used the fiber cam on her comm to peek around the corner. Sure enough there were the four agents preparing to storm the hotel to confirm their targets had been killed.

"It's time. This should draw their attention," Major Ash stepped clear of the corner and sent a concussive round into the park's brickwork wall just to the left of the commandos. The exploding brick and mortar peppered the four painfully but did no serious damage.

They ducked behind the cover of a vendor booth and moments later Gee stepped out from behind the same booth and waved.

The Major and Nann ran towards the park entrance and saw the four commandos trussed up and unconscious on the sidewalk. A dart stuck out of each of their necks though one had a second dart sticking out of his nose.

"Let's go!" Gee barked and Bal followed her running partner into the park.

Nann gave the Major a surprised look then they ran after the Altarians.

A short distance into the park they saw a small food wagon on its side and one of the Tik wedged inside, covered in noodles, trying to gently get free. The old vendor was standing beside the wagon wailing and shouting at the Tik. At the far side of the park the second Tik was cradling a bunch of stray kittens in its tentacles.

"WHAT THE FUCK? GATE! NOW PLEASE!" the Major bellowed. The Tik jammed in the noodle wagon took a grip with its powerful tentacles and ripped the structure in two to get free causing the old man to shriek in dismay. Bal moved forward and bowed deeply to the man as she held out a metallic card. He stopped his tirade to watch Bal and when he saw what she was offering to him his wizened features lit up in surprise. Apparently Altarian IOU cards were a known commodity as the man returned Bal's bow, took the card and immediately fled with it clutched in his hand.

The second Tik arrived with Leo. It still had one of the kittens with it. "Where do you wish to go now?" it asked.

"Altaria! Ministry of Security! Now!" the Major barked as she heard the police arriving.

The Tik positioned themselves side by side and a deep hum began. The Gate snapped into existence between them and the group saw themselves looking back.

Leo and Maxim got a nod from Nann and they rushed through, quickly followed by the redhead. Gee and Bal pushed the Major through just as the police rushed into the park. The Tik shot through next and collapsed the Gate behind them.

The group stood on the green lawn before the Ministry building, enjoying the warm sunshine as security personnel ran towards them. Leo and Maxim surrendered their weapons as did Nann. Gee handed the Major's weapon to a waiting officer and the security staff relaxed recognizing the two agents. The group immediately headed for the building and quickly made their way directly to the Security Minister's office.

Hellna was coming around her desk as they entered. "Were you successful?"

The Major nodded, holding up her comm. They made their way over to a console where she'd be able to display the contents of the files she'd collected. She connected her comm and pulled up the files on the large display. Ray had created a record of his research process, verbally spoken and transcribed automatically as he worked. In addition to this were a series of documents showing his findings. The transcript helped describe these other documents, explaining what they meant and how he found them. Ray's signature was on this file. This was the report the Major had been expecting to find. She clicked on the transcript file and Ray's voice came out of the speakers under the display.

"This is Lieutenant Ray Sharif, documenting my findings for Major Cha'Risa Ash of Earth Security Council Force. It's, insert date here, and I am at the Los Angeles Gate following a money trail, catching the bad guys and serving up some cool justice. As Nann knows, nobody does it better than me."

Nann rolled her eyes and grinned at the Major but she had tears in her eyes too.

"Determining the members of the Los Angeles smuggling ring was child's play. This document," A file in the folder highlighted momentarily, "lists all of the accounts in use to collect and distribute the funds they earned for passing contraband through the Cargo Gates. And here are the names of these losers clearly linked to the accounts." A second file highlighted.

"Surprise, surprise I found a link to two other cargo distribution Gates, New York and Moscow, and I've added a few names from those as well but chasing this down is not my current priority so I am putting a bookmark in that."

"Now, there is no name linked to the payment for the shipment the Team followed through to Rehm. There is a bank account number however. I like these as they are my bullseye in the banking databases." The sound of rapid typing ensued before his voice returned. "This one, ah! It's a government account. Officially opened ten years earlier for managing the funds of a small project for a branch of Earth's Trade Commission. Let's just see if the Trade Commission has any recent references to the account." More rapid typing sounds. "Ok, the most recent activity in the bank account wasn't referenced in any Trade Commission documentation. So these transactions weren't part of any official Trade Commission business. In fact, the last official Trade Commission document reference to the account ID was its inclusion in a listing of stale accounts needing to be closed. The request memo came from... the Trade Commission's oversight department and was sent to Director Goodson. That- that name sounds familiar. His responding email indicated the accounts had been closed and included the bank's transaction ID to prove it. I'm going to look at the bank's transaction to see what our Director Goodson was up to..." Rays voice went quiet as the sound of frantic typing filled the speakers.

"Ok, I'm back in the bank records but the list of closures they received from Goodson didn't include the account in question. Huh. There is a transaction showing the account had a communication redirect on it... the new address is... ah, an anonymous mailing repository. This could be a dead end. Time to pop their hood." More typing. "Well, thank goodness for dumb criminals. The anonymous account was purchased with funds from Director Goodson's personal account. Bravo!"

The Major shared a look with Nann, Maxim, and Leo. The smugglers were paid from an account only Goodson had access to.

Ray's voice continued as files lit up in the folder for each of the pieces of proof he'd found. "I am flagging Lawrence Goodson, ex-Director of Earth's Trade Commission, as a prime suspect. I am now crawling all of his net accounts." There was a time jump in the recording as his tools needed time to do this work. "My search yielded some good results. The official net accounts have been closed and show no activity since the time he went on the run. Yes, it's that Mr. Goodson. The one who tried to kidnap Mr. Danner before. I did find the threads of a personal account which has been used to access the hidden bank account. So now I'm spelunking the history of this personal account to find any correspondence that leads me to the kidnapping request. Since the shipment went to Rehm I am checking if any messages came from there... and... nope. How did Goodson get the request for the abduction? Maybe it is in the deleted correspondence. It would have to be recent so these messages should still exist on the servers. Looking... looking... hello, what's this? He was corresponding with a dark net bulletin board. He has a recent message from the board. The board in question seems to be for underground anarchists. Clever. Time to dig a little deeper. Maybe these dudes know... Fuck me."

A screen capture file loaded and they were looking at the front page of the bulletin board. Just glancing at the subject lines on the messages made the hairs on the back of Cha'Risa's neck stand on end.

"This is a honeypot! It looks like a nasty little gathering place for anarchists to share their plans for shit disturbing but it's actually run by the Earth Security Council! What the hell was Goodson, a man on the run from this very agency, doing accessing this board? I'm logging into the Earth Security Council databases to review the board policies." There was another time jump and several files were highlighted in the folder indicating these contained the material he was speaking about.

"Ok, there are two levels of accounts on this board. Public accounts which can't see the internal, official flags or annotation fields on the messages and Admin accounts that see and maintain these internal fields. There is a field which indicates the message was planted. Fake leads which can be safely ignored by internal review processes until there are public responses. Here is the... bad thing. The message in Goodson's email contains the flags and annotation fields. This means he's logging in with an Admin account. How did he get a privileged access account? He was a criminal on the run at the time. I- I could follow this but I think it's taking me away from the goal of finding the source of the abduction message. Putting a bookmark in the privileged account question."

They heard the frustration in Ray's voice and Cha'Risa smiled. She knew this was the kind of issue that drove Ray nuts. Holes in security were his personal torment which was ironic for someone who exploited these same security flaws for what he did.

"Going back to the content of the message from the board, it looks very promising," Ray's voice picked up a little energy. He was getting closer to his quarry.

Another screen capture loaded and they saw a message referencing four numbers; two multipart ID's, a shipping ID, and a number representing a very large number of credits.

Ray continued. "Most would find the message to be meaningless but the first two ID's use a structure I've seen before. They represent individuals who work for a government agency on Earth. I'm going to look up the ID's. Be right back." A time jump in the recording. "The first ID belongs to Goodson from when he worked as the Director of the Trade Commission. Drumroll please! The second is the ID for Jack Danner, Earth's Trade Commissioner for Altaria. The shipping ID tracks to a warehouse on, you guessed it, Rehm. Coincidence? I think not!" Ray crowed.

"So the message is the kidnapping request directed specifically at Goodson. He'd recognize his own ID and he obviously still had access to the Trade Commission's personnel data. The rest of the message was the instructions, get Mr. Danner to that shipping address for this much money. I could probably spend additional time on reviewing past messages and find others directed to Goodson. Someone was working with him. Keeping him ahead of his hunters. I'm going to bookmark that task as well."

The team heard him sigh and smiled to themselves.

"Now that I have the actual message ordering the abduction I will track it back to its source. There are approximately thirty staff accounts that have access to the message board internally. The message to Goodson was created with an ID that belongs to a staff member who no longer works for the organization. The ID and account should have been retired. What the creator of the message doesn't know is that all records track the terminal ID of the user as well. Looking through the logs it seems the message was created by... shit. Hang on. I have to double check this." Another time jump occurred in the recording.

Ray's voice returned and seemed a little shaky. The team exchanged glances.

"Well, there's no mistake. The terminal in use when the message was created belongs to Ruan Steyn's executive secretary, Avery Mansfeld."

"Son-of-a-bitch!" Cha'Risa growled as Nann scowled. Maxim and Leo uttered some quiet Russian curses. Here was the source of their current misfortune.

"The man has access to every bit of secret and privileged data that passes through the Security Council. He's protected by being at the very center of the most secure network on Earth behind multiple levels of security and the strongest firewalls they could build." Ray chuckled. "Too bad for him I wrote most of that system. I'm going to hack into his workstation. Yes, I understand the severity of this breach of security I'm about to undertake but the evidence warrants it and I believe it's necessary. I'm going to do a file dump of his workstation. Performance is going to tank on his machine so there's a chance he'll guess he's been hacked but it's my best option for gathering as many of his files as I can get." The timestamp on the recording jumped again and multiple files highlighted in the folder.

"I- I did better than I thought before his workstation was pulled offline. I've attached the most incriminating files to this report. The entirety of what I collected has gone into Earth Security Council Deep Storage. No way to erase that without destroying the entire building. You'll find the files under my name plus the keyword 'Shanghai Insider'. The most important files are the extra contact list and the ledger. They were encrypted but seriously? Most of the names in the contact list meant nothing to me until I began linking them to their roles in government offices, the military, industry, and the media around the world. The ledger shows how the names from the contact list are all on the payroll of Mansfeld. The account he transfers funds from takes deposits from an offworld account which is a dead end to me."

There was some rapid typing and Ray's voice came back on. He sounded nervous.

"There is some seriously dangerous information in this report. I'm going to file it in my personal data cache and send a copy to the Major's account. Then I am going to disappear for a while. With all the poking I have done today that just seems prudent. Stay frosty!"

Ray's digital signature was attached to the report.

That's where the transcript ended.

"Good work Ray. Your best yet," Nann said quietly.

A grim expression on her face, Cha'Risa looked to the others. "We need to get this contact list and ledger to Rosseau and MacDenny. US Brigadier General Thane and Russian Colonel General Zutkov should also get the information. You'll note their names are not on the list. Speaking of which, the list can't be considered complete. There are likely many people below these names who work for them in that capacity."

"Ruan Steyn isn't on the list." Hellna remarked.

"He's being manipulated by his secretary, the actual power behind the scenes." Nann replied.

"What's your next move?" Hellna asked.

"We're done running. Now we go on the offensive." Seeing Gee's troubled look she added, "Peacefully."

Chapter 18

The three days after the explosion were very tense. At any moment Jack expected First to slam through the doors, fry his brain and kill the others. His childish attempt at rebellion came back to haunt him every night in his dreams.

They slept. Worked out. Ate. And repeat. None of the tasks he'd been told he would be doing came to pass.

Jack abstained from any further sexual intimacy but each night the two females would slip into his bed to take comfort in being held close.

Joseph seemed to be doing well. He ate his meals and slept through the night. The constant presence of both Eve and Stella who took turns cuddling the child close against their warm fur seemed to keep him content.

In the late afternoon of the fourth day three Allsa Komanae guards showed up and guided them out of the barracks, across a wide courtyard and into the main building. This was supposed to be the Prime's Palace but it just looked like a larger version of the square boxes infesting the rest of the city. There was no art or style to the building just larger rooms. Now that he was trapped inside an Allsa Komanae environment Jack was getting a very clear picture of the culture and perceptions of the race and it was frighteningly empty of beauty. There was no soul. The cubist skyline was mechanically cold.

They arrived in a vast chamber with a central dais with a throne mounted at its top. They were currently behind it.

Jack looked at his companions to see if they found this as ridiculously theatrical as he did but saw they were actually unsettled by it. Even Kekk looked nervous. Jack wondered if he was missing something or maybe he'd watched too many bad movies.

As they were led around to the front of the dais they saw someone was sitting on the throne. The Prime had arrived? Now Jack felt his nerves jump. There had been no warning! No time to prepare!

Once they'd moved far enough around to see past the sides of the chair Jack realized it was just First sitting in the Prime's throne. Obviously she hadn't arrived yet. Jack felt his body relax and looked once more over at the others.

Eve was carrying Joseph and held him close. Eyes on the floor and gently trembling.

Stella was studiously staring at the floor as well and Jack could see the tension in the corners of her lovely eyes.

Kekk had his head tipped forward but was looking at him out of the corner of his eyes. He seemed to be telling him to look down as well.

Fire danced through his nerves and Jack hit the floor, hard.

"Your continued insolence is becoming intolerable," First muttered, its smooth voice echoing slightly from its lofty position in the huge room. There was an edge of tension in its voice that hadn't been there before.

Jack stayed down on the floor as the cool surface counteracted the memory of the heat in his limbs. He turned his head so his companions could see he wasn't dead. He winked at Eve and her eyes flared with... something. So many emotions rushed by in them he caught his breath.

"Get him on his feet," First growled to the guards.

Jack felt their hands grip his arms and he was pulled up to a standing position. His legs trembled but held. He kept his eyes on the floor and the guards stepped back.

"We've been in contact with the Prime's ship. She's close and will arrive in two days' time. When she arrives there will be a grand celebration and the transfer of ownership will commence." Jack detected a hitch in First's voice. Something about that transfer was bothering it. It might have been... fear.

"Preparations are commencing rapidly now and the Allsa Komanae will be ready when our leader takes... this throne." Again, Jack heard the edge of fear. Something bad was coming for First or it thought so at least.

There was a deep boom sound from behind the group. Jack was the only one to look over his shoulder to see the three Allsa Komanae running towards the throne. Jack felt a flash of flames over his body causing him to stagger before he regained his footing. It had seemed more like a distracted lash than firm discipline as First was staring angrily at the new intruders.

"What is it? Can't you see I'm busy?" First growled.

The new three moved closer to the dais and the center took one more step. "Apologies First. Second and Third are dead."