Date: July 22, 2012
Game date: January 7, EY218
Location: Aiscapo system, Daebak
Previous events: Getting the keys to a fleet of mysterious, yet boring ships
Still confused about their new fleet of ships, the crew slowly heads back to the Steel Hummingbird. Malcolm decides to ask Clegman directly why he's given them the keys to so many ships ("Clegships") and since there's a pretty good chance that he's still on Osan Station Malcolm decides to track him down. After he heads off Jillian decides to check out the job board: maybe they can actually make some money on this journey.
Malcolm does indeed catch up to Maurice Clegman, who is in a bar on the station. Clegman seems happy to see him again and is more than willing to answer Malcolm's questions. Clegman's got a fleet of ships "just in case". Just in case of what? Just in case. Dealing with the Black Rose Syndicate has made Clegman paranoid enough to want to have ships that can't be tied to him if he needs to make a run for it. Fourteen ships seems like overkill to Malcolm but Clegman thinks he's awfully clever. He gave Malcolm the locations and codes for the fleet of ships is for anonymity's sake: the Steel Hummingbird is a pretty recognizable ship, so they now have a way to go about their business without attracting attention. That part, at least, makes some sense to Malcolm.
Clegman doesn't know if there are more slide points. It was the Grob who found out about the one that they used; Clegman just helped with the modifications and flew through the slide point. Malcolm presses Clegman for more details on how to fly through the slide points and, after again warning Malcolm not to do so, he explains what it's like and how he dealt with the conditions inside. The instructions sound seem totally random to Malcolm but Clegman insists that they'll make sense when he's actually there. Malcolm's not terribly convinced but pays close attention nonetheless. After sharing a last drink with Clegman, Malcolm returns to the Steel Hummingbird.
Jillian only finds one cargo job that they can do: a small kimchi load headed for Limbaugh, where it's an exotic imported food. They're leaving for the gate so late that most of the jobs heading that way have already been taken, and Jillian's not looking for passengers while they've still got Grob on board. She negotiates as only she can, bringing up that her ship is fast enough to make it to the current gate opening and that they're fairly desperate for cargo. Besides, she insists, they really want the job! Her keen style nets her a dismal payment that she's convinced is a good deal.
Back at the Hummingbird Jillian works on a route to the gate while they wait for the kimchi to be delivered. She's in a good mood from what she sees as a successful bout of negotiating and maps out a remarkably fast route to the gate.
The plan is for Malcolm to take the Clegship to the gate, everyone else riding the Steel Hummingbird. Jillian's a nominal pilot and can fly her ship while Volkova runs the sensors with a hurried crash course in how to do so: she'll mostly be looking for dots on the screens or for particular lights to illuminate.
Once both ships make it to Providence they'll drop off the kimchi. Malcolm will fly the Clegship, which he's decided to call "Sparrow", through the slide point to Vishnu along with the Iof while the Hummingbird returns to Aiscapo and meets up the the upgraded Resplendent Dragon, after which those two ships will gate to Vishnu and everyone will be reunited. What could go wrong? Kimchi loaded, the ships head off from Osan Station into space. Malcolm, being Malcolm, can't help but to put the pedal to the metal and tears off ahead of the Steel Hummingbird, telling them that he'll meet them at the gate.
The trip will take about a day, so there's plenty of time for Jillian and Volkova to go over the sensor wire that Clegman gave them. It's a horrific mess that looks like someone's been randomly coding noise onto the wire, but with a lot of effort and given what they've been told about the trip there's some structure to be found deep in the signal. Jillian's trying to make sense of how the sensors are picking up data and seeing if there's a way to use that to work out a path to the exit point. Volkova's more interested in the stresses that the ship's structure and systems will have to endure and what she can do to minimize their effects.
Roughly halfway to the gate the sensor indicators light up. Volkova's not sure what's going on in any great detail but she definitely sees four small contacts on the screen that seem to have appeared out of nowhere and are coming their way at speed. Whatever they are, it can't be good and is likely very bad. Jillian hits the distress radio beacon, turns the ship back towards Daebak, and starts to shout out orders. Volkova's needed on sensors and so Quiy clambers up the ladder to the gun turret. The Grob only really has experience with beam weapons but hopefully that skill will translate well enough to the Hummingbird's low-speed autocannon to make a difference. Vob is sent to engineering and Bishop prepares to repair whatever damage he can.
Jillian tries to hail the mystery ships but it looks like she's being jammed, so the emergency signal isn't getting out either. Not that it would make much of a difference; unless help is right on top of them it won't get here until this is over. As the ships close the new arrivals are obviously not friendly: four fighters of uncertain type and not using IFF transponders. Hoping to put some distance between them Jillian kicks in the afterburners and the fighters respond similarly, though two of them lag behind for some reason and thankfully don't end up making it into the fight.
The two fighters that are in range engage the Hummingbird with relatively small-caliber cannons that have difficulty penetrating the armour and toughened structure of their target. More problematic are the missiles that are thrown into the mix, especially when those missiles turn out to be of the homing variety! Volkova, hunched over the sensors, screams out instructions to Jillian, who jerks the stick madly and to be honest not a little randomly. It's not a skilled defence but it seems to work well enough and the best that their antagonists can do are some glancing hits on the aft of the Steel Hummingbird that don't cause appreciable damage to any systems. Calls down to engineering to get more power out of the drive get no response from Vob.
Quiy takes a bit of time to get the hang of the new weapon but when one of the fighters comes in close it gets savaged and has its cannon put out of action. As it tries to back off for another missile attack Quiy gives it no quarter and rakes it again with 30mm rounds; the fighter may be armoured but there's no way that it can hold up to the pounding it receives and it's forced to pull out of the fight. It's lucky to do so, looking like something's chewed it up and spat it out after taking several solid autocannon hits.
With only one fighter left in the mix Jillian's got much more freedom to maneuver and orders Volkova down to engineering to get some more speed out of the space drive. Rushing there Volkova finds Vob looking completely overwhelmed by all the controls: Vob's position on the Iof is that of a theoretical engineer and isn't terribly good at the hands-on side of things, especially under pressure. Volkova ramps up the power past strictly safe levels and pours on more speed for Jillian, who manages to pull out of missile and cannon range from the last fighter and soon leaves it behind.
Finally out of jamming range Jillian sends a transmission to the military on Daebak and, after waiting for the response from half an AU out, is happy to hear that they're sending some naval ships her way. When she contacts Malcolm he calls Commodore Marcus Blith and gets an even more impressive response scrambled.
Communicating between the Hummingbird and the Clegship, it's agreed that Malcolm should continue to the gate and join any ships that come through heading to Daebak. All on his own even his skills are no guarantee against another attack. That means that he'll be delayed for over a day getting back to Osan station but they're probably not going anywhere until the Resplendent Dragon gets upgraded and her cannon can come along for protection.
With a bit of time to catch their breath, Jillian and Volkova look over the sensor data that Volkova picked up from the fighters. It looks like there was a fifth ship, larger than the fighters, that shows up briefly. There's a good chance that it's a stealth carrier that ferried the short-range fighters out there and was briefly detectable when it opened its bay doors to disgorge them. If it's a stealth ship there's a good chance that the naval ships won't be able to find it given the lead it has. A quick analysis of the power output shows that the fighters were most likely military-grade! That's also likely given their use of homing missiles. It also looks like the attackers were going out of their way to cripple and not destroy the Hummingbird: the hits she took are consistent with attempts to take out the space drive, not the ship as a whole.
This attack leads to many questions. If the stealth carrier was a pirate ship waiting for someone to come by why didn't it pounce on Malcolm's ship? Why would it be looking for anyone at this time, anyway? The only reason that the Hummingbird and Sparrow were there was because they were rushing with their much-faster-than-average drives to get to the gate just before it opened: it's unlikely that anyone else would be there at that time. And what were pirates doing with that sort of hardware? Outright military equipment is difficult to get, even in Providence, and chance piracy -- even of kimchi -- isn't the sort of business that leads to the sort of haul that would make their effort anywhere near financially feasible.
Pulling back into Osan Station on January 8th, the crew (not including the Grobs, of course) meet with Commodore Blith, all of them meeting him for the first time. A copy of the sensor wire is handed over. They bring up the idea that the Black Rose Syndicate might be behind this; Jillian emphasizes the tattoo found on the Gurg back in Vishnu, which they reported to the navy there. This provides a possible reason that the Black Rose doesn't like them, and the Syndicate has the resources to pull something like this off. The ships that are flying straight up out of the orbital plane are also brought up: Blith has heard of them and thinks they may be Black Rose ships, but won't go into any details.
Everyone gets some needed sleep. Late that afternoon Jillian contacts her friend Jinjing Wei, who is available for a meeting and at the nearby Eondeog Naval Base. They meet and talk about the attack and Jinjing agrees that it's all consistent with the Black Rose's abilities.
When the crew talk amongst themselves that evening, waiting for Malcolm to come back, Jillian wonders if her ex Rashid might be in the system. It's the over-the-top, violent type of action that he prefers. If he's in the cluster they're really in trouble. One possible course of action is to make knowledge of the slide points public. If the Black Rose Syndicate is after them because it knows that they have found out about the slide points then letting that information out would definitely hurt the Black Rose and, although it definitely wouldn't stop the crew from being in the Syndicate's sights it would hurt a major criminal organization. There are other ramifications as well, such as the Iof not having a subtle way of getting from system to system. It doesn't look like there's an obvious solution.
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Surprise extra conversation between Jillian and Xao that night:
[This conversation takes place at the very end of session 42, while the Steel Hummingbird crew is waiting for Malcolm to rejoin them.]
TO: XAO WANG, WONJU
STEEL HUMMINGBIRD ATTACKED BY PIRATES STOP BACK IN PORT UNHARMED STOP MEET US ON OSAN STATION FOR MORE DETAILS
Jillian meets Xao outside the Steel Hummingbird. “Thanks for coming up to meet me here,” she says, ushering him in. “With everything that happened, I’d rather not get too far from the ship. We’ll talk in my office.”
“Looks like you came out of the fight pretty much unscathed,” Xao comments as he follows her in. “Good old Malcolm and his flying.”
"Malcolm." Jillian lets out a sharp laugh. "He's not back yet. Can I get you a drink? I'm having a drink." She goes to her cabinet and pulls out a bottle of not-awful whiskey. She pours herself a small glass, and looks questioningly at Xao.
"Sure, I'll join you." He takes the proffered drink and sits down in a chair. "So who was flying, then?"
"Me," Jillian replies. Although there is another chair, she perches on the edge of her heavy, industrial-style desk. "Malcolm was in the ship we borrowed from Clegman, and like usual he tore on ahead. When the fighters showed up, he was hours away."
Xao gives Jillian a strange look with his one eye. "I was never under the impression that you were that great a pilot. No offense, but were these competent pirates?"
"Honestly, I think we got away by sheer luck,” Jillian admits. ”That, and the Bird herself is built for taking damage and running away. And I wouldn't say they were extremely competent, but they were definitely well armed. It was one large ship, very stealth -- we could barely get a glimpse of it on sensors -- and four small fighters. They might've been lying in wait for us. They had no markings, broadcasted no signal. Xao, two of the fighters were definitely military grade ships. I'm not so sure these were run-of-the-mill pirates." Jillian gestures with her glass. "And seriously, all we were carrying was a load of kimchi!" She frowns. "We've still got the kimchi. We're going to lose money on this delivery."
"Maybe they were Aiscapan pirates?” Xao suggests playfully. “Kimchi's taken pretty seriously in this system. Seriously, though, they ignored Malcolm and came for you? Any idea why?" He keeps silent about Jillian’s fiscal ineptitude.
"Well." Jillian takes a pretty big gulp of the whiskey. "We've been thinking about that. V and Bishop and I. We can't shake the feeling that whoever it was, they were there for us. When we started counting on our fingers, we came up with a disturbingly long list of enemies." She shakes her head, frowning again. "Not many that would make sense for putting on this kind of attack, though.
"By the way," she adds, "they were shooting to disable the Hummingbird, not to kill it. At least at first. The paint job over the engines is a fucking mess now."
"I noticed the damage,” Xao says. “You're pretty lucky they didn't get any better hits in. Really, you were flying?" He seems to have a bit more respect for Jillian's abilities. Still totally not into her, though. "If they wanted you alive it's not the Vectors or whatever that redneck family's name is. Hoax wouldn't use force like that. Who has the resources to come after you with that sort of hardware? Military ships are actually hard to get, even in Providence. Who do you think is most likely?" Xao takes a sip and looks at Jillian expectantly.
"Varnsens," Jillian corrects automatically. "And it's not like they'd suddenly have military-grade fighter ships at their disposal." She takes a deep breath. "Well, Stillwater Mine might have a grudge against us -- they did send fighters after us when we rescued John from Hannity, but they didn't follow us into deep space. Then there's that dude Flint Cardesco who ripped us off when we tried to upgrade the first time -- we were getting hints he was involved with something bigger and more nefarious, and we did send the Deccan Driller off to investigate the one lead we got on him. But honestly, I don't think it's any of them." She swirls the dregs of her drink around the glass, then slams it back. "Have you heard very much about the Black Rose Syndicate?" she asks, pouring herself another one.
Xao shrugs dismissively. "Stillwater Mine is part of Franken and they don't do anything outside of Providence. Too afraid of their slaves getting independent thought or something. Don't know anything about Cardesco, or the Deccan Driller. The Black Rose Syndicate I've heard of but thankfully never met any of them. All I really know is that they're organized crime. You think they're after you? How did you get on their bad side?"
"It's not absolutely clear that we have," Jillian hastens to insist. "But. Well. First of all -- remember when you were attacked by pirates? Remember how the Hummingbird came across that same ship later, after it had been nearly destroyed by a D'Vor ship? We went on board to try to help the survivors, and I spotted a Black Rose gang tattoo on one of the corpses. The Gurg -- the ship itself -- had nav records showing it came from Zartosht; the Black Rose are big there. Anyway, after we got their life support going, we tipped off the Navy to their location. If they ever put two and two together, they'd probably be a bit annoyed with us.
"Also," she adds, "there's the Clegman connection. Clegman sold the slide point technology to the Black Rose -- and now here we are, meeting with Clegman, poking around his ships."
"You think Clegman sold you out?” Xao asks. “No, he wouldn't have given you that list, then." Xao's brow furrows. “If there's a tracker on his ship they wouldn't have known that the Hummingbird was so far behind; you're known for being fast. If the Black Rose knows about you they probably had someone keeping an eye on your ship to see when she left. It would be a stupid time for a ship like that to sit around waiting for just anyone to fly by with the gate opening so soon, and if they were that stupid they would have jumped on Malcolm. So what's your -- personal -- connection to the Black Rose?"
Jillian blanches. "I didn't say anything about a personal connection."
There is a rolling of eye. "Bishop blurted out that you had some sort of criminal past and you had the same look then as you did talking about the Black Rose now. And that look is really obvious now that I've asked you about it." He seems pleased with himself.
Jillian gets up off the desk and starts pacing back and forth in the small available space. "Bishop has no idea how to keep his mouth shut. I don't tell him any more than I have to and I wish I hadn't told him as much as I did. Fuck. What about you, Xao -- can you keep your mouth shut?"
"In the absolute sense or only compared to Bishop? Yes, I can keep a secret. Really well, as you've probably guessed." He leans back and has another sip, going easy on the whiskey in a way that Jillian isn't. "I don't get the feeling that you're still involved with them, so that's good. Remember when I said that we were with you in this to the end? That's still true, but not if you're still a member. Do you have any connexion with them?" He leans forward again and looks Jillian in the eyes.
Jillian stops pacing and braces herself against the wall. She's still clutching her glass. "I've been on the run from them since I was seventeen years old," she says. Her voice is not quite steady. "I changed my name. I moved two clusters over. I didn't think they could ever find me here.”
She takes another drink. "Last time we were on McNeely station I spotted a man I knew back on Persepolis. A guy from the Black Rose." Jillian looks up at Xao, trying to gauge his reaction. She feels a little dizzy...
Xao watches her impassively, sipping his whiskey. Like always, his true feelings are unnervingly well hidden from Jillian.
"You don't leave the Black Rose," Jillian adds. "Not and live to tell about it. So this is not a thing I go around confessing to casual friends and drinking partners. Malcolm knew me for years before he found out. It was the fucking Varnsens -- stripped me naked in front of everybody."
Feeling unsteady, Jillian decides she'd feel better after another drink. She goes back to the desk, where she’d left the bottle.
"You? Naked? And the world didn't end?" Xao tries to lighten the tone, with an uncertain result. "So why did you leave?"
"It eventually dawned on me that we were completely fucking evil." Jillian drinks again. Unconsciously, she pats her arm where the tattoo is hidden.
"Fair enough,” Xao says. “Do you think that they are coming after you, specifically? Or the Grob? Or the kimchi? It makes a difference about how we go about things. If they wanted you why not just grab you on McNeely? A stealth ship and military-grade fighters is an awfully expensive way to go about this." Xao definitely notices Jillian patting her arm and nods towards it, then asks "That's the tattoo, then?"
Jillian gives a bit of a start and looks at her arm. "Yeah. Malcolm's been bugging me to get it covered up ever since he found out about it -- but that's kind of beside the point if they've seen my face." She perches herself on the desk again -- for a securely docked ship, the Hummingbird feels a little unsteady right now -- and considers Xao's question. "You're right, of course. If it's me they're after, it would've made a hell of a lot more sense to grab me on McNeely. I've been thinking about that for the past two days. I have one theory, but I really don't like it."
"Go on,” Xao urges. “Do you want to sit down?"
Jillian shakes her head, nearly falls off the desk, and accepts Xao's steadying hand guiding her to the other chair, which half-faces Xao's. "The attack might make some kind of sense if Rashid was behind it," Jillian says finally. "If he wasn't on McNeely station -- if he only found out I was in the system after we'd already left -- if he found out I was with the Hummingbird and then caught up with us here in Aiscapo..."
"Who's Rashid?" asks Xao, at the same moment that Jillian, realizing she skipped that point, clarifies: “My husband.”
"This sounds a bit extreme,” Xao remarks. “Grabbing you on Osan Station or on Daebak would be difficult, but why not just wait until you show up in another system? The 'bird's pretty recognizable, he'd have another chance."
Jillian shrugs unhappily. "Rashid likes grand gestures. And he's vicious as fuck. Maybe you're right, though. Only who the hell else would it be?"
"My guess is that it's the Black Rose,” Xao says, “but maybe not Rashid in particular. If they wanted to get the Grob this is a great way to do it: nab a ship in the middle of nowhere, cripple its engines. I don't know how they'd know about the Grob, though. Has Bishop been babbling about them to everyone?"
"Only to Warden Whang." Jillian palms her forehead. "Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. For sure she's connected with them somehow. Oh Bishop, I am going to fucking kill you."
Quickly, Jillian summarizes the sordid history of the Steel Hummingbird crew's history with Warden Whang. She omits the detail of how V ended up in jail in the first place, other than to hand-wave it as 'something minor'. She mentions the drugs and smuggled weapons. She explains about Bishop's crush, and about all his letters.
"If he were a dog we could shoot him,” Xao remarks when she’s done.
Jillian gives Xao a sharp look. "You can't really hurt Bishop, okay? He's just a stupid kid."
"I'm not going to hurt him. Trust me, if I were going to do that I would have done it already. More than once." Xao shakes his head. "If she knows about the Grob then she could have told the Black Rose and they would have been waiting for you. So you're really out of the business, right? With your tattoo you could maybe find out what's going on. How well were you known in the gang?"
Jillian gives Xao an incredulous look. "What, you think I could just go into a Black Rose clubhouse, flash my tatt, and ask how the thing with the aliens is going? Fucking hell, Xao, I've been having nightmares about them finding me for the past thirteen years."
"Just a thought, just a thought. I don't know how these things work. So... do you think Bishop could sleeze any info out of her?"
"Probably,” Jillian concedes. “Without giving more than he gets, though?"
There's a long exhale. "Hasn't he already told her everything?"
Jillian shakes her head. "He hasn't told her what we found out from Clegman. And he hasn't told her that I'm linked to the Black Rose myself. As far as I know, anyway," she adds, rolling her eyes. "Not that he knows much about my history -- I played it down when they all saw my tattoo. Said I joined up for a few months when I was sixteen, carried some drugs for them, then ran. Later I told Malcolm and V exactly how thoroughly my past is tainted -- but obviously this stuff is not for Bishop's ears." Jillian drinks some more.
"Trust me,” Xao says, “I'm not telling Mr. Horndog anything that I don't have to. Are you sure you should be drinking so much? You're already unsteady on your feet. Other than Bishop talking to Whang and getting information out of her I don't see what else we can do other than fly together and let Olivia shoot giant holes in any other stealth ships they send at us. She'd love that."
"I've only had ..." Jillian stares at her glass, squints at the bottle. It couldn't have been very full to start with. "Anyway, it makes me steadier. The Black Rose ... they fuck me up. I fucked up. There are some things you just can't ever make up for, you know? No matter how many fucking security guards you rescue from how many totalitarian hellholes."
"Uh..." Xao seems a bit confused. "You also can't obsess about the past. I’ve seen that eat people up and it never comes to any good. If the Black Rose is after something bigger like the Grob then not letting them have our little grey friends is a good thing and a positive mark on your ledger."
"They can't have the Grob." Jillian nods emphatically. "We're not leaving port until the Dragon's ready to come with us. Olivia's kind of scary, by the way," Jillian adds. "Not Rashid-level scary. But scary."
"Ol's not really scary,” Xao says. “More... intense. She's not a murderer, at least not in the sense that those Varnsens were. She'll use whatever force she thinks is needed -- and I'll admit she does err on the side of overkill there -- but she's not going to put a bullet in someone's head just because they looked at her funny. She does have a thing against pirates, though, which is funny given..." Xao indicates his clothing with a wave.
Jillian eyes Xao's clothes. "Honestly I don't know why you romanticize criminals. You're a courier. You've been attacked by pirates. What the hell is the appeal?"
"The appeal isn't the actual pirates, it's the romantic fiction,” Xao says defensively. “Whenever we've met the real thing they've been horrid. But when I was a kid my parents read me some pirate stories. I went through a pirate phase and never really came out of it. Sort of like people who read romance novels about bodice-ripping assholes who they swoon over while reading but would be bored of in a week in real life. At least I acknowledge that I like the fantasy, not the reality."
Jillian slouches in her chair, eyes on Xao and glass held at eye level. The glass is almost empty again. "I really don't get the appeal," she says. "I guess gangster kids don't play pirates."
"And I never got the appeal of joining organized crime," Xao shoots back.
"Ouch," Jillian says. And drinks. "I was born into the life, actually."
"Meaning what, exactly?” Xao asks. “Your parents were Roses? It's genetic?"
Jillian actually laughs, getting whiskey up her nose. "They don't call themselves Roses. But yeah. My dad was high up. My mom was killed by a car bomb when I was a baby, but before that she did paperwork for my dad."
"Huh,” Xao says. “So Rashid was an arranged marriage? What finally showed you the light about what you were doing?"
Jillian slouches further, putting her army-boot-clad feet up on the edge of Xao's seat. The room feels very warm. Her head is swirling with memories that she'd rather keep repressed. "Growing up in a criminal context, your values end up twisted," she says, pronouncing the words carefully. It occurs to her that she definitely wouldn't be telling Xao any of this stuff if she weren't fairly drunk. "You value strength. Loyalty. Not compassion -- that's a weakness.
"My father and I were very close. With my mother gone, I was the only family he had left. He wanted me to follow him in the business. And I wanted to make him happy." Jillian closes her eyes briefly, picturing her father the way she'd seen him in her childhood: tall, strong, stern-faced but with a special, gentle smile for her alone. "It felt like a good life. We were rich, like your family -- I lived in a mansion, I had servants, bodyguards. All the prettiest dresses, all the most expensive toys. I only had one real friend, though." She glares briefly at Xao, daring him to comment -- he's made it clear that he thinks that she's socially deficient. "It was a secret. We met at school. Her mother was a judge -- an honest judge. If either of our families had found out, there's no way we would've been allowed to continue the friendship. But we were very careful.
"She started to open my eyes to the reality of the Black Rose. She was very scornful of criminals. I argued with her -- tried to defend the point of view that right and wrong are based on power, that the law was just another instrument of force, that the government was no different from the Black Rose. I knew of enough corrupt government officials to make it seem like a pretty good argument. But Sheema -- that was her name, Sheema -- she knew that her mother was a truly good woman. She tried to explain to me what that meant." Jillian takes another sip of her drink -- her glass is close to empty again, but she doesn't feel capable of reaching the bottle now to refill it. "Sheema thought I was a good person, too. She tried to convince me to leave the Black Rose. Run away with her -- start a new life together on some frontier world. This was when we were fourteen, fifteen years old. I don't think she was really serious about running away -- she had a whole big family, and she loved them like crazy. We had fun imagining it, though -- we were going to build a cabin together, grow vegetables, adopt a bunch of orphan children." Jillian laughs. "Sheema wanted kids. I never really wanted kids."
Jillian's smile fades away. "Then there was Rashid. I'd known him pretty much my whole life. He was the only son of my father's boss. Very high up in the Black Rose -- Rashid's father ran half of fucking Persepolis. My father was his right hand man. They were close like brothers, our fathers. As far back as I can remember, I pretty much knew I was going to end up married to Rashid. Not that I minded. He was a couple of years older than me. Very exciting. Charming, when he wanted to be. And about the same time that Sheema and I started building our imaginary cabin, Rashid started to notice me." Jillian glances down at her chest, gives it a wry nod. "It's probably hard to picture, but I actually did dress like a girl back then.
"So Rashid and I started to talk about the future, too. How we'd follow in our fathers' footsteps. Improve the operation, expand it. He was already in the Black Rose for real, by then. He started bringing me along sometimes when he went out smoking hashish and drinking with his friends. Not like meeting gangsters was a novelty for me, but it was very different from serving tea at my father's business meetings. Rashid's friends didn't treat me like a kid, they talked to me like I was one of them.
"I knew that my future with Sheema was imaginary and that my future with Rashid was real. As soon as I turned sixteen, my father let me get the tattoo. I never spoke to Sheema again after that." Jillian glances longingly over at the bottle. It's too damn far away. Xao doesn't make a move to help her. Jillian sighs. "So my wedding with Rashid was set. I started working more closely with my father -- consulting about decisions, meeting his business contacts. You understand, my father's role was largely bureaucratic. If he needed pressure put on someone, he sent in the goons. He had a reputation as a fierce fighter -- I mean, seriously, his nickname was 'The Scimitar' -- but I never saw him do violence personally.
"Rashid, on the other hand, liked to get his hands dirty. My father knew -- he just laughed about it. He'd roll his eyes and say 'let him get it out of his system, he's still a young man.' I didn't say anything against it, but I started to feel ... uneasy? I remember the first time Rashid killed a man. He came and found me afterwards, he was so excited..." Jillian glances up at Xao and flushes. "Well, we weren't actually married yet, so he convinced me to drug my bodyguard, and ..." She trails off, wiggling her fingers in a vague, embarrassed sort of way. "He was very rough. But I figured that was natural.
"I missed Sheema, but I knew there was no going back. I'd chosen a different path -- or anyway, I'd let my father and Rashid choose it for me." Jillian stops herself, shakes her head. "No. No, I did choose. I was very proud when I got the tattoo. I knew that I was better than most people." Jillian casts her eyes towards the bottle again. The moment she decided to leave the Black Rose is on her mind now.
"I am not going to keep talking," Jillian says, "unless you pour me another fucking drink."
Xao pours her another fucking drink, his face a mask to her.
Jillian stares into the amber liquid for a minute or two, and then hands the glass back to Xao without tasting it. “Hang on,” she says. “I need to get something.”
She passes through the connecting doorway into her personal quarters, holding onto the walls for support. Xao, she’s relieved to notice, stays behind in the office. With only a bit of drunken fumbling, Jillian manages to get to the hidden compartment at the bottom of her locker. She briefly touches the necklace that’s hidden there, and then pulls out a manila envelope and extracts a yellowed piece of newsprint from it. She makes her way carefully back into the office, hands Xao the newspaper clipping, and takes her glass from him.
Jillian drinks, giving Xao enough time to glance at the article.
“That’s the man I had killed,” she says. “He was dealing on our turf. My father asked me to take care of it. So I did. Then I considered what I had just done, and I realized that it was evil. The whole business was evil. So I ran. I ran as far and as fast as I could. And here I am.” She empties her glass in one convulsive gulp, and then sinks down in her chair, dizzy and nauseous.
"So you ran. Good decision, I guess." Xao thinks for a second. "Do you have any positive feelings left for anyone in the Syndicate? If it came down to it, could you kill any of them? Or let them be killed? Because if it is the Syndicate coming after you that's probably going to be a necessity and you know better than I do that we might not have a second chance. If we're going to use the slide points then we'll likely run into them where no one else can help and it really will be us or them. Ol's not going to hesitate if it comes to that, and I can vouch for Neet and myself. What about your crew?"
"I've got no illusions about what kind of scruples anyone in the Black Rose would have about killing me," Jillian says. "So yeah, if it comes to a fight, you can count on me. The rest of my crew, too." She closes her eyes, fighting off a wave of dizziness. "I hope it doesn't come to that, though. We already have too much blood on our hands."
"Well, I'm not in any rush to kill anyone either, but we do have to think about it." Xao frowns at her. "You're not looking so great. Why don't you go to bed? We can talk more later, about Bishop getting information out of this warden and planning a safer trip to Providence. And about what you're going to do for two weeks if you're going to be stuck here while the Dragon gets her upgrades."
"Okay," Jillian agrees. She's probably said far too much to Xao by now. And without getting a thing in return. Fucking inscrutable pretend pirate.
She tries to stand up, but the office goes spinning around her.
She wakes up the next morning in her bed. Clothes on, sheets up, glass of water and aspirin next to the bed.
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 14)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: ha! ha!
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 1)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 2)