care?”
Jamal answered, “This is Agent Tomas and he is investigating this case for the Fed Council.”
“Okay, so you’re a policeman. Big deal, got lots of them here. What are you going to do that they can’t?”
Tomas knew he had to come off tough here or the king would eat him for supper.
“I’ve had the suspect under surveillance prior to this for his involvement in other crimes and that gives me jurisdiction over all local proceedings. This planet is a member of the Federal Council and you must recognize my authority. This is my case and your men now report to me.”
“So you were watching this guy and you allowed him to come here and kidnap my daughter?” asked the king.
“I have reason to believe that this was not a kidnapping,” said Agent Tomas.
“How nice for you,” said the king. “We, on the other hand, do believe this to be a kidnapping. Let me tell you what I think is going on - you screwed up, let this guy get away and now you’re trying to get him back without letting too many folks know exactly how incompetent you really are. Look, you’re here, nothing I can do about that, but you’re not in charge of anything. You can follow my guys around and play the home edition of the game, but that’s it. Everyone understand?” Everyone there nodded except for Tomas and the king left the room
“Quite the character,” said Tomas, wondering what would have happened if he had tried to reason with him.
“That’s part of his job description,” said Jamal.
“I’ll just look around a bit, if you don’t mind.”
“Be my guest. We’ve already taken this room apart. Nothing new to be learned here.”
Tomas looked over the teleport. True, it was damaged beyond repair and there was no way to obtain the destination codes. The teleport signal itself contained a program layer that made it invisible once it joined the rest of the network traffic. The monitors saw it flash for a nanosecond and then it was gone.
Tomas spent a bit of time analyzing the equipment used to modify the teleport. Interesting stuff, he thought. Not like Jon at all. Jon’s a software guy and would have hacked into a teleport already set up to go off world instead of hot wiring this one. Not his style at all.
Agent Tomas had seen enough. For whatever reason, a cover-up was in full swing and Jon was being labeled as a kidnapper. So be it. He might even be able to use that to his advantage later on. He came here right away hoping the trail was hot, but he wasn’t fast enough. He’d been to the ICC, now he needed to go to the other location that involved Jon. He needed to go to Earth.
Tomas returned to the ICC, loaded up with the latest in Earth pop culture as well as the high points of the past 100 years. He had the ICC computer issue him a driver’s license and a few credit cards. As it had done with Jon, the ICC computer hacked into the corresponding Earth computers and added Tomas into all the databases so everything was legit. That is until the first month’s bills go unpaid.
The ICC computer reported that the lab was unoccupied and Agent Tomas teleported to Earth. He spent time searching the lab, but found nothing of interest. He had a nagging feeling that he was missing something obvious. He left through the back door and reentered from the front. He hoped that underpaying security guards was a universal truth.
“Hello. I’m here to see the gentlemen in suite 51,” he said.
The guard checked the register. “I’m afraid they’re not in.”
Agent Tomas took a twenty out of his wallet, “Can you tell me how long they’ve been leasing space here?” he asked.
“Just over a month,” said the guard, accepting the money.
“Thanks,” said Tomas. He walked away feeling more at ease. He had just discovered the obvious something that was missing in the lab - clutter. This wasn’t their regular lab. There weren’t any calendars or pictures, nothing that gave it that slobbered in look. And the teleport
Jamal answered, “This is Agent Tomas and he is investigating this case for the Fed Council.”
“Okay, so you’re a policeman. Big deal, got lots of them here. What are you going to do that they can’t?”
Tomas knew he had to come off tough here or the king would eat him for supper.
“I’ve had the suspect under surveillance prior to this for his involvement in other crimes and that gives me jurisdiction over all local proceedings. This planet is a member of the Federal Council and you must recognize my authority. This is my case and your men now report to me.”
“So you were watching this guy and you allowed him to come here and kidnap my daughter?” asked the king.
“I have reason to believe that this was not a kidnapping,” said Agent Tomas.
“How nice for you,” said the king. “We, on the other hand, do believe this to be a kidnapping. Let me tell you what I think is going on - you screwed up, let this guy get away and now you’re trying to get him back without letting too many folks know exactly how incompetent you really are. Look, you’re here, nothing I can do about that, but you’re not in charge of anything. You can follow my guys around and play the home edition of the game, but that’s it. Everyone understand?” Everyone there nodded except for Tomas and the king left the room
“Quite the character,” said Tomas, wondering what would have happened if he had tried to reason with him.
“That’s part of his job description,” said Jamal.
“I’ll just look around a bit, if you don’t mind.”
“Be my guest. We’ve already taken this room apart. Nothing new to be learned here.”
Tomas looked over the teleport. True, it was damaged beyond repair and there was no way to obtain the destination codes. The teleport signal itself contained a program layer that made it invisible once it joined the rest of the network traffic. The monitors saw it flash for a nanosecond and then it was gone.
Tomas spent a bit of time analyzing the equipment used to modify the teleport. Interesting stuff, he thought. Not like Jon at all. Jon’s a software guy and would have hacked into a teleport already set up to go off world instead of hot wiring this one. Not his style at all.
Agent Tomas had seen enough. For whatever reason, a cover-up was in full swing and Jon was being labeled as a kidnapper. So be it. He might even be able to use that to his advantage later on. He came here right away hoping the trail was hot, but he wasn’t fast enough. He’d been to the ICC, now he needed to go to the other location that involved Jon. He needed to go to Earth.
Tomas returned to the ICC, loaded up with the latest in Earth pop culture as well as the high points of the past 100 years. He had the ICC computer issue him a driver’s license and a few credit cards. As it had done with Jon, the ICC computer hacked into the corresponding Earth computers and added Tomas into all the databases so everything was legit. That is until the first month’s bills go unpaid.
The ICC computer reported that the lab was unoccupied and Agent Tomas teleported to Earth. He spent time searching the lab, but found nothing of interest. He had a nagging feeling that he was missing something obvious. He left through the back door and reentered from the front. He hoped that underpaying security guards was a universal truth.
“Hello. I’m here to see the gentlemen in suite 51,” he said.
The guard checked the register. “I’m afraid they’re not in.”
Agent Tomas took a twenty out of his wallet, “Can you tell me how long they’ve been leasing space here?” he asked.
“Just over a month,” said the guard, accepting the money.
“Thanks,” said Tomas. He walked away feeling more at ease. He had just discovered the obvious something that was missing in the lab - clutter. This wasn’t their regular lab. There weren’t any calendars or pictures, nothing that gave it that slobbered in look. And the teleport
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