Cato Fett
Character
Colonial Ring
Tapani Sector/Freeworld Territory
Fonder
An Orbital Luncheonette
Luncheon
“It's not autonomous if it's dependent. That's just my take.”
The Attache rolled fish crepe cake around his stainless fork and speared it into a side dish of murky, sour soy. “It's a political dinosaur, in the true sense. Very risky playing sovereignty nowadays. You gonna eat that? It's expensive.”
Cato's dish was a thickset clay bowl that looked like a hollowed landmine, grey cast claystone banded with adegan blue around the lip. Cold, fat noodles wallowed in chilly cream sauce and darkened tempura. He hadn't taken a bite. His gut felt full but hollow with a tense ache. An untouched, thin-stemmed wine glass caught silver light, turning odd refracted planars and broken fractals on the white table cloth. Cato shook his head, tensed and relaxed the muscles in his good wrist, and waited on the conversation.
“Suit yourself. Gotta eat the shrimp at least. Fondor's got a love affair with seafood. Their own ocean beds dried up ages ago and there's industrial surface coverage everywhere. So the import scene, specially the high-end stuff, makes sickening numbers. Where were we?” He wiped his chin on patterned napkins.
“Sovereignty,” Cato said.
“Right. Sovereignty. That's the play here. Technically, the region leans on the Abomey city-state and through them support from the Alliance. Very touchy place. Hate it myself. Thin-skinned bunch of skinnies, they-they ride high... Ride high on nationalism but they wouldn't be anywhere if it weren't for ATC. Or the Alliance. I mean, who do you think runs their army? Who you think gave them one?”
A droid waiter like a silent seneschal rolled up on chrome-wheel legs and took their plates. It replaced Cato's untouched wine with a folded-glass frosted mug of chilly water. The Attache accepted a refill on his liquour, a smooth jive of carefully seasoned Togorian vodka and apple juice. It disappeared in a slow gulp, leaving behind wet ice-cubes clinking.
“If the Imperials had put their boots down first, guarantee you it'd be a different story. Not a whisper of 'autonomy'. They'd take the diplomatic package, grin like they gotta eat shid, and that'd be it. Story's written. There'd be a kind of national inventory, Imperials compartmentalizing their resources, set up a garrison. Real neat. Not bloodless, mind you, but neat. Like running over an obsidian scalpel. Cleanest slice. Region is stabilized. Like being strapped into an durasteel lung. The Imperial machine works all the administrative organs for you.”
The Attache named himself as Mister Dormir and he certainly liked to chat. Dormir was a comfortable politico, thickset with belted and buttoned weight, a three-piece ensemble of black japanagar silks and polyester textile, silver cufflinks and a thin, leather-knot tie. His fingers were fat as cigars and unadorned. His skull was a wide-set block of meat and bone, jowls hanging with wrinkled age under a dark head of trimmed curly hair. Liver spots showed under a blood ringed eye.
Dormir's invitation reached Cato through intermediaries. Enough middle-players to signify something clandestine. The foreword quickly glazed through introductions and urged him to contact the comm. number and given frequency, to confirm their mutual appointment. It rang warnings of spook territory and he knew that anything to do with the invitational would lead into dark territories shadowed by cool agendas and even cooler operators enforcing their goals. A bad feeling hung over like hoarfrost, thawing only at the prospect of a sizable contract.
“So the region's happy to sort of self-regulate. Problem with that though, is when part of the political nervous system acts out. Neuro-palsy. One organ in the branch glitches. Interrupts homeostasis. Complicates things immensely, for us.”
“Who's us?” Cato baited. Dormir smiled, dabbed the soiled napkin at his bottom lip.
“Officially 'unofficially'? A cut-out asking if I can wrangle you in for work. What's the story, Fett? Interested?”
“Not particularly.” Cato watched the Attache slowly cut and divide his way through a side platter of some bright, wet fruit.
They were lounging at high orbital anchor off the skeleton of a massed zero-g drydock. The empty bistro was the 'Jar of Tea', an Atrisian blend of Jan-Zok-Jung aesthetic sensibilities with ultra-modern Kuati tastes sutured together. The space experimented with industrially fabricated taste, smooth titanium white laminate coating and stainless silver-steel accents, ergonomic furniture that recalled images of amorphous life-forms, an entire wall composes of mirrored solar-plast shutters open to space and Fondor's ugly, swollen planetary bruise. Soft and breezy music filtered unseen from porous speaker-meshes mounted under the flooring.
“How come?” Dormir asked.
Cato tamed an urge to vault their table through the Attache's solar plexus. After a pause, “Tell me truth, Mister Dormir.”
“...Truth is,” The Attache discarded food for another kind of subsistence. Thin cigarro, long as his hand, rolled in fine brown aromatic leaves and wrapped in gold-violet foil. He tore the foil, clenched an end down in his white teeth, lit from a jade-cased plasma wick and took a heavy draught. “Putting it simply. You need to do me a favour. Sorta hefty. Why we're having this shiddy lunch, all of the record. What I got for you, Fett, is a contract that does not exist.”
“Wet work,” Cato said. “Is this spy country, Dormir?”
“Not quite. Not yet. Think of it like a hand with a blade. Blade is the instrument for this certain task, the hand instructs the blade how it will move to perform it. You're the blade, I'm the hand that isn't here and isn't talking. Make sense?”
“'Lek.”
Dormir snorted blued smoke out his nostrils. “Mmmnn... Back to the first points. Autonomy. Dahomey, you ever been? Former prison colony, turned Alliance and ATC rehabilitation darling. Abomey's in the north, largest population centre. City-state. South of that down the continent, before you get to the wet equatorial belt, is the Greater Horn of Iron. Steady region. Mostly.”
Cato watched Dormir smoke. A low cloud hazed over their heads now. “The Republic of the Jubah is a flashpoint, though. Problematic, every sense of the word. North is developed, south half ain't and it's in the south where the real wealth springs. Resources, minerals, you get it? So it's upside down, tangled three different ways. It's in the north we're gonna focus on. Now, the RJ declared dependent autonomy from Abomey last year. They've been... working at greater economic independence, switch the order up, get Abomey and the Alliance dependent on them, which leads again to the south and ethnic violence, but that's another case. RJ executive government just underwent elections. New president, new cabinet staff, topsy turvy times. One element that did not get turned over... was the Minister of the Interior.”
The Attache reached into a breast pocket. A slim-lined datapad, an industry model not yet slated for release until the next quarter, was pushed over to Cato's reach. He grasped in his left hand: a red-cased prosthetic. Dormir's glance fell on the appendage, momentary discomfort. Cato smiled to himself. The 'pad winked on and brightly coalesced a high-rez image of a long-faced woman with a dark, shaved skull and eyes hidden behind a chrome band of padded shades. “That's her?”
“Interior Minister Garang.” Dormir nodded. “Real cool customer. Sharp as a tack. Didn't make for a great police officer but she could play the game. Now she's threaded in deep with all the other executive branches. Like a wire-tap on the spinal stem. Hard to unravel her legally, very difficult.”
Cato studied her face; he'd seen vibro-blades with more kindness. “I take it her rhetoric's gotten her in trouble.”
“Rhetoric and a lot of political stunts. See, Garang is ethnically Majiě and the Majiě are the mainline demographic. Versus the south, the Noloi. Bad, dirty blood, going back before the Dark Ages. Garang's capitalizing on it, pissing off a lot of folks. Vested folks, interested in what a united Jubah has to offer the Alliance. Short answer to a long scenario, Garang's gotta go. No if's or but's. She's a hardliner with brownshirts for state police and clout enough to survive whatever administrations come and go. She's bad medicine for Jubah.”
“But this isn't justice.” Cato gave the 'pad back. A flint-hard eye regarded Dormir.
“Yeah, no, it ain't. It's not, no.” The Attache rubbed his jaw. “We could give a shid, you know? Non-interventionism is looking attractive these days. Alliance command's made it vocal they'd be appreciative if Jubah resolved itself. By... some means.”
“...Haven't pulled the trigger yet, Dormir. What are we looking at?”
“For you? Compensation?”
“'Lek. Say I do this.”
Now the Attache grinned, rolling the chewed cigarro end between his knuckles. “...Three mil. Don't go choking on that.”
“I don't believe it.”
“Why not?”
“Garang isn't worth it. Not three. Thirty-kay at best, for a local politico with dirty boots? She's not a sector wide force. Not yet.”
“Let's say there's appreciable ramifications when and if the Interior Minister dies. Three million gets returned at... well, the figure is pretty big. Pretty big.”
“...So how does an embassy attache get authorization to move three million?” Cato smiled again, thin and without warmth.
“So you'll say 'yes'?” Dormir was leaning forward, elbows tipping the table edge back. Cato caught his warmed glass before it could slide. “Just say it, man. Say it. You need it. We need this.”
“...Alright. 'Lek. I'll do it.”
“Ahhh!” The Attache let go and loosed a heavy sigh, breathing through phlemgy chuckles.
“You're good for the credits?”
“Of course. You know it.”
“You can prove it.”
“Certainly,” Dormir said, taking out his datapad. “Name it. Right now. I'll make it happen.”
“...Twenty thousand in advance,” Cato said. He'd been ready to leave the bistro for the past half hour. Better manners stayed impatience and relaxed him into an analytical mode. He was chancing Dormir possessing a temper if he pushed for a proof of able, ready payment. The Attache knitted his eyebrows together and tapped his thumbs across hard-light holokeys. Gold light reflected off his brow. A jingle-ping rang and he slid the datapad back into its breast pocket.
“There. Done as done. You can check away when you're off station.”
“...Trust that all this - “ Cato motioned between them. “Is deniable. I'm going it alone.”
“Mmn. For deniability, this is your own show. I can't promise technical support. Just how it is.”
“It's fine. I prefer working solo anyway.” Cato stood, turning to walk.
“Hey, hey! ...We do this right. Shake on it.” Dormir held out his left hand.
“...Fine.” He reached and clasped it, pumping his arm once and returning to his stroll.
The exit out of the 'Jar of Tea' were folding opaque plasteel plates mounted on a telescoping micro-motor rod. Cato walked away from the white-out interior, into a length of dimmed interior corridor, partially in thought. He did not miss the four minders, disguised as electricians consulting opened bulkhead panels, as he made his way to the docking umbilicals. The feeling of growing hoarfrost returned to coat his belly. As a courtesy, anticipating he wouldn't be allowed otherwise, he met Dormir unarmed and in plain olive-drab fatigues, pockets empty. The encounter in its entirety had unfolded on terms outside his control. If there was to be another face to face, minders or not, he wouldn't be coming without a readied pistol and straight dagger.
Intelligence interests had wicked, embittering habits of reneging agreements for expediency and cost-saving measures. With this venture, nothing was iron-clad. He rolled his wrists in tandem, waiting for his umbilical bridge to extend out, feeling the air-lock servos thunk and rotate out of sight in the portal frame. Three million. Exactly, more or less, what his dried up and overdrawn accounts needed. What the twenty comatose bodies slowly resuscitating in a Polis Massa clinic required to finance their final stages of marrow-growth treatments and neural stimulation. Cato breathed, ignored the phantom ache past the end of his left elbow, wiggled the kinetic feedback in his false hand, and watched the reflection on a frosty plasteel porthole.
Tapani Sector/Freeworld Territory
Fonder
An Orbital Luncheonette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwHA_vylJOw
Kiefer Sutherland
Yaphet Kotto
EQUALISER [NOT ALONE]
Luncheon
“It's not autonomous if it's dependent. That's just my take.”
The Attache rolled fish crepe cake around his stainless fork and speared it into a side dish of murky, sour soy. “It's a political dinosaur, in the true sense. Very risky playing sovereignty nowadays. You gonna eat that? It's expensive.”
Cato's dish was a thickset clay bowl that looked like a hollowed landmine, grey cast claystone banded with adegan blue around the lip. Cold, fat noodles wallowed in chilly cream sauce and darkened tempura. He hadn't taken a bite. His gut felt full but hollow with a tense ache. An untouched, thin-stemmed wine glass caught silver light, turning odd refracted planars and broken fractals on the white table cloth. Cato shook his head, tensed and relaxed the muscles in his good wrist, and waited on the conversation.
“Suit yourself. Gotta eat the shrimp at least. Fondor's got a love affair with seafood. Their own ocean beds dried up ages ago and there's industrial surface coverage everywhere. So the import scene, specially the high-end stuff, makes sickening numbers. Where were we?” He wiped his chin on patterned napkins.
“Sovereignty,” Cato said.
“Right. Sovereignty. That's the play here. Technically, the region leans on the Abomey city-state and through them support from the Alliance. Very touchy place. Hate it myself. Thin-skinned bunch of skinnies, they-they ride high... Ride high on nationalism but they wouldn't be anywhere if it weren't for ATC. Or the Alliance. I mean, who do you think runs their army? Who you think gave them one?”
A droid waiter like a silent seneschal rolled up on chrome-wheel legs and took their plates. It replaced Cato's untouched wine with a folded-glass frosted mug of chilly water. The Attache accepted a refill on his liquour, a smooth jive of carefully seasoned Togorian vodka and apple juice. It disappeared in a slow gulp, leaving behind wet ice-cubes clinking.
“If the Imperials had put their boots down first, guarantee you it'd be a different story. Not a whisper of 'autonomy'. They'd take the diplomatic package, grin like they gotta eat shid, and that'd be it. Story's written. There'd be a kind of national inventory, Imperials compartmentalizing their resources, set up a garrison. Real neat. Not bloodless, mind you, but neat. Like running over an obsidian scalpel. Cleanest slice. Region is stabilized. Like being strapped into an durasteel lung. The Imperial machine works all the administrative organs for you.”
The Attache named himself as Mister Dormir and he certainly liked to chat. Dormir was a comfortable politico, thickset with belted and buttoned weight, a three-piece ensemble of black japanagar silks and polyester textile, silver cufflinks and a thin, leather-knot tie. His fingers were fat as cigars and unadorned. His skull was a wide-set block of meat and bone, jowls hanging with wrinkled age under a dark head of trimmed curly hair. Liver spots showed under a blood ringed eye.
Dormir's invitation reached Cato through intermediaries. Enough middle-players to signify something clandestine. The foreword quickly glazed through introductions and urged him to contact the comm. number and given frequency, to confirm their mutual appointment. It rang warnings of spook territory and he knew that anything to do with the invitational would lead into dark territories shadowed by cool agendas and even cooler operators enforcing their goals. A bad feeling hung over like hoarfrost, thawing only at the prospect of a sizable contract.
“So the region's happy to sort of self-regulate. Problem with that though, is when part of the political nervous system acts out. Neuro-palsy. One organ in the branch glitches. Interrupts homeostasis. Complicates things immensely, for us.”
“Who's us?” Cato baited. Dormir smiled, dabbed the soiled napkin at his bottom lip.
“Officially 'unofficially'? A cut-out asking if I can wrangle you in for work. What's the story, Fett? Interested?”
“Not particularly.” Cato watched the Attache slowly cut and divide his way through a side platter of some bright, wet fruit.
They were lounging at high orbital anchor off the skeleton of a massed zero-g drydock. The empty bistro was the 'Jar of Tea', an Atrisian blend of Jan-Zok-Jung aesthetic sensibilities with ultra-modern Kuati tastes sutured together. The space experimented with industrially fabricated taste, smooth titanium white laminate coating and stainless silver-steel accents, ergonomic furniture that recalled images of amorphous life-forms, an entire wall composes of mirrored solar-plast shutters open to space and Fondor's ugly, swollen planetary bruise. Soft and breezy music filtered unseen from porous speaker-meshes mounted under the flooring.
“How come?” Dormir asked.
Cato tamed an urge to vault their table through the Attache's solar plexus. After a pause, “Tell me truth, Mister Dormir.”
“...Truth is,” The Attache discarded food for another kind of subsistence. Thin cigarro, long as his hand, rolled in fine brown aromatic leaves and wrapped in gold-violet foil. He tore the foil, clenched an end down in his white teeth, lit from a jade-cased plasma wick and took a heavy draught. “Putting it simply. You need to do me a favour. Sorta hefty. Why we're having this shiddy lunch, all of the record. What I got for you, Fett, is a contract that does not exist.”
“Wet work,” Cato said. “Is this spy country, Dormir?”
“Not quite. Not yet. Think of it like a hand with a blade. Blade is the instrument for this certain task, the hand instructs the blade how it will move to perform it. You're the blade, I'm the hand that isn't here and isn't talking. Make sense?”
“'Lek.”
Dormir snorted blued smoke out his nostrils. “Mmmnn... Back to the first points. Autonomy. Dahomey, you ever been? Former prison colony, turned Alliance and ATC rehabilitation darling. Abomey's in the north, largest population centre. City-state. South of that down the continent, before you get to the wet equatorial belt, is the Greater Horn of Iron. Steady region. Mostly.”
Cato watched Dormir smoke. A low cloud hazed over their heads now. “The Republic of the Jubah is a flashpoint, though. Problematic, every sense of the word. North is developed, south half ain't and it's in the south where the real wealth springs. Resources, minerals, you get it? So it's upside down, tangled three different ways. It's in the north we're gonna focus on. Now, the RJ declared dependent autonomy from Abomey last year. They've been... working at greater economic independence, switch the order up, get Abomey and the Alliance dependent on them, which leads again to the south and ethnic violence, but that's another case. RJ executive government just underwent elections. New president, new cabinet staff, topsy turvy times. One element that did not get turned over... was the Minister of the Interior.”
The Attache reached into a breast pocket. A slim-lined datapad, an industry model not yet slated for release until the next quarter, was pushed over to Cato's reach. He grasped in his left hand: a red-cased prosthetic. Dormir's glance fell on the appendage, momentary discomfort. Cato smiled to himself. The 'pad winked on and brightly coalesced a high-rez image of a long-faced woman with a dark, shaved skull and eyes hidden behind a chrome band of padded shades. “That's her?”
“Interior Minister Garang.” Dormir nodded. “Real cool customer. Sharp as a tack. Didn't make for a great police officer but she could play the game. Now she's threaded in deep with all the other executive branches. Like a wire-tap on the spinal stem. Hard to unravel her legally, very difficult.”
Cato studied her face; he'd seen vibro-blades with more kindness. “I take it her rhetoric's gotten her in trouble.”
“Rhetoric and a lot of political stunts. See, Garang is ethnically Majiě and the Majiě are the mainline demographic. Versus the south, the Noloi. Bad, dirty blood, going back before the Dark Ages. Garang's capitalizing on it, pissing off a lot of folks. Vested folks, interested in what a united Jubah has to offer the Alliance. Short answer to a long scenario, Garang's gotta go. No if's or but's. She's a hardliner with brownshirts for state police and clout enough to survive whatever administrations come and go. She's bad medicine for Jubah.”
“But this isn't justice.” Cato gave the 'pad back. A flint-hard eye regarded Dormir.
“Yeah, no, it ain't. It's not, no.” The Attache rubbed his jaw. “We could give a shid, you know? Non-interventionism is looking attractive these days. Alliance command's made it vocal they'd be appreciative if Jubah resolved itself. By... some means.”
“...Haven't pulled the trigger yet, Dormir. What are we looking at?”
“For you? Compensation?”
“'Lek. Say I do this.”
Now the Attache grinned, rolling the chewed cigarro end between his knuckles. “...Three mil. Don't go choking on that.”
“I don't believe it.”
“Why not?”
“Garang isn't worth it. Not three. Thirty-kay at best, for a local politico with dirty boots? She's not a sector wide force. Not yet.”
“Let's say there's appreciable ramifications when and if the Interior Minister dies. Three million gets returned at... well, the figure is pretty big. Pretty big.”
“...So how does an embassy attache get authorization to move three million?” Cato smiled again, thin and without warmth.
“So you'll say 'yes'?” Dormir was leaning forward, elbows tipping the table edge back. Cato caught his warmed glass before it could slide. “Just say it, man. Say it. You need it. We need this.”
“...Alright. 'Lek. I'll do it.”
“Ahhh!” The Attache let go and loosed a heavy sigh, breathing through phlemgy chuckles.
“You're good for the credits?”
“Of course. You know it.”
“You can prove it.”
“Certainly,” Dormir said, taking out his datapad. “Name it. Right now. I'll make it happen.”
“...Twenty thousand in advance,” Cato said. He'd been ready to leave the bistro for the past half hour. Better manners stayed impatience and relaxed him into an analytical mode. He was chancing Dormir possessing a temper if he pushed for a proof of able, ready payment. The Attache knitted his eyebrows together and tapped his thumbs across hard-light holokeys. Gold light reflected off his brow. A jingle-ping rang and he slid the datapad back into its breast pocket.
“There. Done as done. You can check away when you're off station.”
“...Trust that all this - “ Cato motioned between them. “Is deniable. I'm going it alone.”
“Mmn. For deniability, this is your own show. I can't promise technical support. Just how it is.”
“It's fine. I prefer working solo anyway.” Cato stood, turning to walk.
“Hey, hey! ...We do this right. Shake on it.” Dormir held out his left hand.
“...Fine.” He reached and clasped it, pumping his arm once and returning to his stroll.
The exit out of the 'Jar of Tea' were folding opaque plasteel plates mounted on a telescoping micro-motor rod. Cato walked away from the white-out interior, into a length of dimmed interior corridor, partially in thought. He did not miss the four minders, disguised as electricians consulting opened bulkhead panels, as he made his way to the docking umbilicals. The feeling of growing hoarfrost returned to coat his belly. As a courtesy, anticipating he wouldn't be allowed otherwise, he met Dormir unarmed and in plain olive-drab fatigues, pockets empty. The encounter in its entirety had unfolded on terms outside his control. If there was to be another face to face, minders or not, he wouldn't be coming without a readied pistol and straight dagger.
Intelligence interests had wicked, embittering habits of reneging agreements for expediency and cost-saving measures. With this venture, nothing was iron-clad. He rolled his wrists in tandem, waiting for his umbilical bridge to extend out, feeling the air-lock servos thunk and rotate out of sight in the portal frame. Three million. Exactly, more or less, what his dried up and overdrawn accounts needed. What the twenty comatose bodies slowly resuscitating in a Polis Massa clinic required to finance their final stages of marrow-growth treatments and neural stimulation. Cato breathed, ignored the phantom ache past the end of his left elbow, wiggled the kinetic feedback in his false hand, and watched the reflection on a frosty plasteel porthole.