Chapter 41 - You Pick the Right Numbers, Luckily.

You stare at the list of twenty five entries. Each one is an identification number for whomever is assigned one of the labs or properties leased from each of the five centers. You scan up and down the numbers and try and make heads or tails. Something about these seems familiar but you aren't sure what.

How do these connect to Doctor Tomoe Maeda? Rather, which one of these leads back to her? You sit back and cock your head to the side, and Anagyros leans forward as you turn your gaze to him.

"Gyros?" You address and your biomechanical companion makes a soft sound in response. "Run these numbers against what we have on Tomoe.... See if any of them connect with her some how... Birth date, Social Security, Measurements, whatever..." It lets out a chirp as it reaches out and touches the screen.

Some of its scales slide off and attache to the shuttle's console, and you see Felira watch with interest as Anagyros interacts with the shuttle's computer systems.

Zoraida smile as you tap your chin, in thought. Numbers. What do the numbers mean? You look up to see that Anagyros had dismissed the Alpha Center's numbers as not connecting in any way. Great. You sight and scratch your chin as Felira turns back to her seat and starts to prepare the ship for entry into the planet's atmosphere.

You look down at one of the numbers, 20-13-52-49-12. It catches your eye because something about it registers... When IVORI was scrambling words, you got a head for the kind of lateral thinking that helped in decoding. 20-13 stand out. You'd changed your own personnel code when you left the Empire, but the alpha-numeric switch was rather basic. Following that rule; twenty becomes T, and thirteen becomes M. 

Wait... those digits.

"Anagyros?" You interrupt the silver scaled synthetic's search, "Check number set 20-13-52-49-12 against Tomoe Maeda's Imperial ID number. Ignore dashes, just check the digits and their order." You shake your head. Tomoe was being brazenly obvious with how she was 'hiding' herself. Either she didn't think the Empire would send agents this way, she had contingencies in case they did, or this was an Imperial trap.

Huh. There's a thought.

Anagyros cheeps as the two numbers compare. 20-13-52-49 compared to 2013-5-24912. She had a single digit birth world number, that was impressive. You remember that now. The Imperial registry liked to rank how venerable your birthworld was and hold you to that. A single digit doctor would have been in the core worlds, wouldn't she?

You nod your head. "That's the channel." You point at the comparison. Zoraida smiles, and Felira brings up the comm systems on her console.

"Didn't even take you an hour to figure that one out..." She smiles.

"You knew?" You look to Zoraida, you hand't considering asking her for advice, about encryption, still. You'd worked it out for yourself, mostly.

"I figured it out when I looked through the numbers. Though I don't recognize any of the others, so it's probably the only one she's using." She raises a finger. "And if she's leasing one of these plots, she's probably got a fair bit of her emergency stash left over," You smile and consider that thought, having the credits to actually pay back the Vedari for the repairs and restock would be the right thing to do, and if they refused payment on principle.... well you'd invest in the future.

"Do you know where this channel leads us, Felira?" You ask as the comm program loads beside you. She shakes her head.

"Well if it's this number, and part of the Gamma sector, I know the general region. I can take us down. Wait until we're through the rough before you make the call though." She strongly suggests before her hands dance over the console and you feel the shuttle start to angle and accelerate. 

You feel the shuttle rumble with the force of atmospheric entry. You smile as it shakes and look over Zoraida to see she's smiling too, her hand reaches out and finds yours, and closes around it. You sense her anticipation, her elation, her caring. You send reciprocal feelings back through your half of the connection, and she blushes deeply.

Eventually the chop abates and the shuttle is flying, actually flying, through the air of Aulus. A few minutes of flying at super high speeds and Felira informs you that short range comms should be available to you. You thank her and see that, on the screen he option to hail the frequency has popped up. You hit the button to call it. No sense dawdling. 


After a moment the channel connects by audio only, with large words declaring that on the screen, and there's a chilly woman's voice. "Whomever you are, we do not want any." The voice carries an air of winter, strong drink and a strong woman. Memories clicked and you realized that a name and a callsign were attached to the same woman.

"Are you sure about that, Treads?" You ask, and hear the woman gasp on the other side of the channel. "And here Zoraida thawed me out, I was hoping for a warm reception. Damn. I'm hurt." You sigh melodramatically. You're not sure why, it just feels... natural? There's a chirp and the option to open video exchange is offered. You click it and a window blooms,

"K-Kapitan?" The dark skinned woman, Corporal Olivera 'Treads' is on the screen. She looks much like she did in your memories, except she's let her hair grow longer, and it falls over her shoulders in a dark mane. She has a few more scrapes on the parts of her skin that are visible. She's wearing only a sports bra that barely covers the heavy breasts pushed out by her reinforced musculature, so you could see she'd picked up several new scrapes and scars. 

Despite the emotion in her voice, her face seems calm, focused. Her eyes widen, even as the rest of her face struggles to remain neutral. "You're alive." She states the obvious, maybe she doubts what she's seeing?

"Very much so," You nod and smile. "How've you been Olivera?" You ask, it would be rather crass to just ignore her and ask to the Doc, at this point.

"Well enough. My injuries have healed, and there's good music here. How are you and Zoraida?" She asks.

"We're doing good," You chuckle as Zoraida gets out of her seat so she can wave at the camera, and Olivera, whose smile grows a little more at Zoraida's appearance. "We ran into some nasties on the way into the system, though." Olivera's smile vanishes and her gaze narrows. "Tough fight." Olivera's eyes flick to the side, then back to the camera in front of her.

"Did you lose Golden Dancer, sir?" Olivera asks, cooly, and her eyes narrow. "I'm reading you in a Vedari Shuttle." She asks, and Felira turns her head at this assessment.

"Wait. She can detect us?" She asks, skeptical. "Our passive signal should be too small, and our profile-"

"We have upgraded sensors." Olivera speaks over Felira, and the half-Vedari pouts with puffed out cheeks. "Shall I inform Doctor Maeda that you're arriving, Kapitan? Or do you want to surprise her?" She asks, calmly, as if the idea was part of the every day for her. "Normally, she is quite absorbed in her research. It makes it difficult to get her attention sometimes, but also... funny, Sir." You consider the options. You COULD give Tomoe a good surprise. As long as Olivera knew you were coming, and made sure you weren't labeled as a hostile on the way in, it could be funny.

"What sort of defenses do you have down there?" You ask, worried about automated anti-air, for starters. 

"A reasonable amount," Olivera responds, noncommittally,  "The Vedari built the labs to be secure, but also accessible in emergencies. We've... improved... on some of their defenses."

"Hopefully, they didn't void their lease..." Felira mutters. 

"Everything we did was authorized and registered to the Gamma Center." Olivera speaks up, and Felira sits up in her seat, "The mic sensitivity for your console seems to be quite high, Sir." She adds and you chuckle as Anagyros waggles his ears toward Felira.

"So what do you say, sir?" Olivera asks.

Do you surprise the Good Doctor? Or let her know you're coming?