Sci found Mike sitting in the cockpit of the Home, a small smile on his bruised face as he maintained watch over the autopilot.
"Do you have a minute?" Terra Lead asked.
"For you, Major, I have 90 seconds. Pull up a pew," Mike replied, waving at the co-pilot's seat. Sci sat gingerly, wary of any pranks Mike might have set up.
"Not on my own ship," Mike commented. "At least, not anywhere I'd have to do the cleaning up."
"We have a prisoner," Sci said, almost approaching slightly perturbed. "And I'm looking for someone to interrogate him."
"Vickie," Mike suggested.
"Debriefing after the firefight," Sci replied.
"Josh Cochran?"
"A decent impression of Luke after Hoth. Complete with lack of contact."
"Jedi. Pfff. Josh Nolan?"
"Eating."
"Brad?"
"Showering."
"Becki?"
"With Thayer."
"Thayer?"
"With Becki."
"Well, I had to check. Um, Lorrdain?"
"Surgery."
"Lorrdain?"
"No experience."
"Kristy?"
"Debriefing Vickie."
"Zee?"
"You're just clutching at straws."
"You?"
"Me?" Sci stood, and walked out of the cockpit. "You must be mistaken, Lieutenant. I was never here. . . "
Mike stood outside the small storage room that served as the Red Home's brig. He looked through the peephole, and was unsurprised to see a familiar face. This particular thug had robbed him in Paris, and now Mike was looking to get some payback. He dimmed the lights in the corridor and in the brig, before pulling the hood of his coat over his head and slipping mirrored sunglasses over his eyes. Then he waited five minutes. Just long enough to unsettle the prisoner.
The door hissed open, and Achmed looked up. He watched uneasily as an apparition slipped silently into the room. The gloom filled room had started to get on his nerves, and he had a feeling that he wasn't being held by police. He'd seen enough police station interiors to know that hydraulic doors and storage racks weren't common features of such places, while the presence standing silently in front of him couldn't possibly be a policeman.
"I want to talk to a lawyer," Achmed said. It was the first English he'd ever learned.
The black-clad apparition sprung lightly up onto Achmed's chair, his right foot snugly nestled between Achmed's legs. His left foot clicked forward, and clipped the backrest, sending the chair toppling backwards with both passengers aboard.
Achmed's head bounced off the floor of the room, and he blacked out momentarily. When he returned to consciousness, his ears made the first pertinent contribution.
"Humming," they reported. "Steady humming. Almost a sizzling, really."
He opened his eyes, which immediately crossed in an effort to focus less than an inch from his forehead. All he could make out was a bright yellowish glow holding steady at an uncomfortably small distance from his forehead.
"Bad," was about as much as he could manage to think. The tableau held for a long moment.
"Achmed," Achmed said to himself. "You need to sit up right now like you need a hole in your head. In fact, my friend, sitting up will probably give you a hole in your head, so don't do anything, do you understand?"
Achmed would have nodded, but realised that he needed a hole in his head about as much as, well, as he needed a hole in his head.
In spite of the compromising position he was in, Achmed was quite proud of himself. He hadn't shown any weakness thus far, and had even managed a moment of levity. Ishmael would have been crying for his mother by now.
Then Achmed noticed that the apparition had one knee on his upper chest. And in any language a knee on your windpipe is nine-tenths of the law. So, not a spirit, probably not a policeman, what, then, was this? Achmed gurgled, an attempt to strike up a friendly discourse with the person who could kill him twice without moving more than two inches.
"Ah, you want to talk?" the figure asked. Achmed tried to focus on its eyes, but all he could see was his own face reflected back at him. Achmed watched for a few seconds as cold fear began to filter across his features. He waved a hand, a vague gesture of agreement that put a fearsome smile on the figure's face.
"I'll say now that if you don't tell me everything, you'll be in trouble. You've put one of my team in serious danger of her life, you tried to kill one of my best friends, and you're probably the sort of person who's cruel to animals. I wouldn't have many reasons to like you, even if. . . "
Achmed watched as the figure leaned back, and pulled a pair of mirrored sunglasses from its face. Reason began to filter into Achmed's mind at this point.
"Just a man," he told himself. "A man with a strange weapon, but even so. . . Nothing much to fear here." The man waved an arm, and the lighting in the room began to increase in brightness. "Yes, you can come out of this well if you just keep your wits about you."
The man looked down, and Achmed's wits fled.
"If you hadn't left me for dead in Paris. You've been living on borrowed time the last four days, my friend, but I have come for you. And now, if you don't tell me everything. . . " The man leaned forward until his nose was nearly touching Achmed's. His long hair fell across Achmed's face, forming a dark place where Achmed was alone with this man, this man who scared him greatly.
"Well, if you don't tell me everything. . . " The man leaned back fractionally, and the glowing blade slipped between their faces. It was close enough that Achmed could feel the two-day stubble on his chin sizzling.
"You want to tell me everything, don't you?" the man said. Achmed wanted to nod, to say yes, but he dared not move his mouth.
"Tell me everything," the man said. "What is your name?"
"Achmed," he managed to hiss. Suddenly, the pressure on his chest was gone, the man was gone, the blade was gone. He looked around, and now the man was sitting in a chair, a pleasant smile on his face. Achmed stood up gingerly, rubbing the back of his head.
"Please sit down, Achmed," the man said. "I'd hate you to complain about the treatment you've received."
Achmed righted his chair, and sat down.
"Now, my name is Mike. Achmed, it's a pleasure to finally meet you. I do feel we rather got off on the wrong foot in Paris, so perhaps we can start over? Tell me about yourself, Achmed."
The man -Mike's- eyes narrowed. "Tell me everything."
Twenty minutes later, Mike left the brig, and was met by three friendly faces.
"Thayer!" he said, shaking hands with the monarch. "Thanks for coming. At last."
"Mike, I don't know whether I should thank you or throttle you," Thayer replied. "If not for you, I'd never have gone to Paris. . . "
"Hey, if you get a chance, talk to Sci," Mike said. "He's been dealing with the same question for, oh, fifteen months? Things have worked out okay now, yes?"
Becki's grin said all that needed to be said.
"Oh, Wing. Here, the results of my interrogation of that schlub in there," he said, jerking a finger back at the brig. Becki took Mike's PDA from him, and looked askance.
"OAoutline.html is kind of an overview of what he knows about the shield. Plotstorms.doc is what he thinks might be the next step. No real ideas about the GFFA link, but you have a name to look up. . . "
"I have a name to look up? What about you?"
Mike slipped his hand into that of the third friendly face, Noreh S'ytsirk.
"Me?" Mike grinned, and led Noreh toward the cockpit. "You must be mistaken, Lieutenant. I was never here. . . "
[1] The robbery in Paris took place here. I rather intended Ishmael and Achmed to become recurring characters, so maybe we'll get to see them again. . .