On Unofficial Business...

[Thexare]

A young, brown-haired woman walked down the halls of Alcatraz Depot, carrying food and some sort of drink. Whatever it was, it wasn't water.

Which room was it again? 2B? Or... no, definitely 2B, she thought to herself, walking up to the room her friend was staying in. "Alicia? Alicia, come on, let me in. I brought you dinner."

"Not hungry, Amber. Go away."

Amber sighed, and popped open the keypad that controlled the door's lock in the event of emergencies. Remembering what Alicia had taught her, and smiling at the irony, she switched a few wires around, reattached the keypad, and entered the factory default code, 1379. As the door slid open, Amber saw Alicia sitting silently on her bed. She looked like she hadn't slept in weeks, and her glasses were folded up on the table.

"Alicia, you look tired, and no one's seen you eat all day. What's wrong?" Amber asked, sitting next to Alicia and putting her arm around her friend. Alicia sighed, knowing that she'd end up telling Amber eventually, so she told the whole story; how she'd nearly lost a fight with a Starblazer, how she'd been outwitted and outhacked by an LSF agent, and everything else that had happened on that miserable day.

"We all have our off days. A Navy patrol nearly caught my weapon shipment on the way here, in fact. Now, you could stay here like this, or you could look at this guy as a challenge."

"You're right, I can kick this guy's ass next time. Thanks Amber. And thanks for the food."

"I only have one other question."

"Mm?"

"Was he cute?"

"Go away!"

Amber laughed, and walked out of the room, leaving Alicia to eat and perhaps finally get some rest.


Meanwhile, elsewhere in Sirius...

"Huh. Wouldn't expect someone like her to have done all that," Floyd said to no one in particular as he scanned through Alicia Nall's file. Murder (executed with admirable precision, the LSF agent noted), destruction of corporate property, destruction of military property, assault, piracy, numerous counts of violation of trade secrets, dealing of arms to pirates and terrorists... And she looked so sweet and harmless, too.

He decided that perhaps he should review his logs of the Malachite incident. He considered his actions in Kusari to be a great learning tool. Perhaps he had forgotten a few mistakes he made.

> /home/Mouse/logs/freelance/Log2.vid
Log2.vid opened.
Initiating video playback...

Two people were sitting at a table in an apartment on New Tokyo in the evening. Starfliers, Hawks, Drones, and Drakes could be seen through the window, gradually thinning out from afternoon traffic. At one side of the table sat Floyd, still wearing a long, grey coat and a grey fedora. Across from him sat a black-haired Bretonian woman, the bomber pilot without a bomber.

"No Train can handle guns like that..." Floyd said quietly, thinking about the battle from the day before.

"What are you talking about, Floyd?"

"Transport turrets are strong, but... not enough to destroy a bomber with an indirect hit, nevermind what happened to those Templars..." His tone quickly changed from a contemplative one to a questioning one, however. "Allison, I have to ask, why did you take this job?"

"Excuse me?"

"The question was quite straightforward," he replied, rather annoyed by her response.

"I need the money," Allison replied sadly. "I don't really have any other options." Floyd was unconvinced. She could've taken a job with BMM, BowEx, Gateway, or even the Bretonian Armed Forces... but then, perhaps she had taken a job with the Bretonian Armed Forces. "So, do you want to look around and see what we can do here?" she asked, clearly wanting to change the subject. "Sitting in this apartment all the time would get boring quickly."

"No, I've got something to work on. I rented a Starblazer for you, though, so you can go wherever you like."

She thanked Floyd, and left. When she was gone, Floyd set up a small computer he had kept in a box in his bedroom, and connected a datapad to it. What the other Freelancers didn't know was that he had managed to get a copy of their ships' recordings, only getting Allison's because she also kept a recorder in the cockpit, which went into the escape pod when the ship was lost. The recordings confirmed that those were not standard transport turrets. Each shot was actually two consecutive blasts; this wasn't clearly visible in the battle, but explained why the ships fell so fast. The first hit destroyed their shields, the second hit the hull directly. The shots themselves looked unusual too, not like the normal laser blasts.

"What the hell are these people working on?" Floyd asked a senior LSF agent over a secured channel. "Bah, that's no help. Hold up, I'm getting another message." Floyd pressed a few buttons, and switched over to the incoming message, closing the LSF communication just to be safe. "This is Floyd Roberts, go ahead. Ah, Mr. Kouryo, good to hear from you. No, she's not here right now, but I'll give her the message. Certainly, we'll see you then."

End of file. Video playback terminated.

As Floyd closed the video player on his computer, a small text box came up. All it said was "Thanks, Floyd."

"... Alicia."