Detroit II
Part 8
They were in downtown he supposed, in a big ugly Chrysler building meets soviet architecture looking skyscraper that was a nasty taupe color. "So the fire was intentional?" Gene found himself asking, even as he leaned back in the cheap office furniture.
"Sure looks like it," Tigger replied. The arson investigator was a portly man in build, but was at least six four, and had a mustache that would have been right at home on the face of a French politician before the first world war, or thereabouts. "Fire is definitely separated from the bomb, which was definitely a bomb."
"Not a grenade?" Colonel Khan asked softly.
"Grenades looked like they were thrown into the front like we saw elsewhere, but they wouldn't have hit the gas, or collapsed that wall. That's HBX doing all that," The big man replied, "And like I said that was all separate from all of that. If I had to guess I think they probably all done by separate groups. The bomb was probably placed first, and I think based on the timing that the fire was started after the grenades came in?"
"So the arson might have been trying to conceal criminal records."
Tigger shrugged. "Could be." Of course most of the gambling done on Detroit was more gray than outright black... illegal gambling was mostly of the not paying taxes sort. The same with loan sharking. Private loans weren't illegal just involved a lot less oversight, and were prone to abuse.
It just all looked suspicious as fuck. Khan's brow scrunched up as he probably ran the numbers that this whole gang war was looking increasingly like someone had intentionally jammed a pole into a nest of hornets just to see what happened.
He said as much as soon as the fireman was gone.
Colonel Khan looked at the carbon paper copies of information. "Someone went to a great deal of trouble then, and I can already imagine that looking into it will step on more toes." That was in short the end of it. Detroit's government didn't want to step on toes. It was a dead end they couldn't go any further because there wasn't any political will to do so.
Short of Fields being wrong, and that this did turn out to be some giant pirate conspiracy by the would be pirate king Black Jack McGirk this was done. It was over. "Alright."
"Alright?" Khan seemed skeptical that he'd just drop it that easy.
Much as he didn't want to, he wasn't going to risk company standing with the MRB, and he wasn't going to risk Khan or anyone here as a point of contact by starting something that might turn into a political mire. "I'm not going to be here that much longer, I won't pick at it." The ganger fighting had died down anyway seemingly having realized there would be hell to pay if they went picking a fighting with the reinforcing merc unit. He would have preferred if Bahar had waited another week before coming in from North. Or at least not rolled both of the Tokugawa tanks into the streets quite so blatantly, but it was done now... "Your techs are the ones helping fix the Baffins and I appreciate that. I'll put in my paper work for this with the MRB, and we will leave this at that." It was the business. This was the job, and customer was right, and all of that.
The MRB took even longer... there was so much paper work, but part of that was hiring contracts and bringing people on. He had a ship to crew after all Or as Septim had commented over beers, 'Getting into the real business now'. He was distracted by the notion to ring the Magistracy representative. Not that he was sure Centrella might have been willing to make time this short notice, but at least to see if she would and then see if Raventhir or Luxen might not have a use for Phillip and Jowett sticking around there, maybe that he almost ran into Mustafa, one of the azami techs, "How is repairing the prize going?" He asked as he recovered
"We're still stripping it down, but that's not it Shosha," He accent was a little hard on the word but he interpreted it to be 'Major', "You should follow me." Septim was clearly vexed by the situation where he was waiting.
Gene wasn't sure what was going at first. He recognized one of the guys who'd been pulled out of hte rubble. One of the few survivors from a gambling den that had had probably close to four hundred people last time he had checked in with the emergency services on the matter. The man who was missing two fingers on his left hand was holding a book.
... "Boss?"
... and he had just told Khan that he recognized that he wasn't supposed to be causing any kind of interstellar incident. "Mister Ishida I was under the impression that the doctor recommended bed rest." He had to steel himself to keep an even tone... to not immediate put the whole company to an elevated alert. There was no way the combine could have repaired the mechs they'd bought off them... but now he was suddenly regretting agreeing to the purchase given he had no idea how many more mechs they might have brought with them.
It didn't take all that much effort to confirm that it was indeed his copy, made somewhat easier by the simple fact the book had the tiniest bloodstain from a paper cut of handling it on Aquagea two years earlier that remained on the margins. Really more than that he couldn't imagine that there were that many copies of the book on planet, never mind early editions, and certainly not a first edition. He doubted anyone would have bothered with an attempt at forgery either. It left the question of did he want plausible deniability of what all had happened, or did he want to satiate the burning curiosity of just what the fuck had been going on.
At least Septim seemed at least as confused about the whole mess as he was. That was something of a relief. It lead them to hold something of an emergency conference of the company's officers.... which was an entirely too fancy way of saying himself, Septim, Bahar, and the Azami captains of the JumpShips. Not that with a ship off world date coming up soon there hadn't already been a plan to have a meeting, but this was still somewhat impromptu.
The company not having to load a bunch of salvage to catalog, relocate, and figure out to do with... and probably overwork the techs in the process... had generally been considered a good thing. That it had also meant a pay day similarly was a generally construed as a mark in the win column of a business. Instead of convening in a few days where the topic would have run the gamut from the simple, how many tons of missiles are aboard, to the more complex renting berthing for jump collars they were convening early.
The group created something of an overlap, a ven diagram of experiences and factors for those represented. The captain of the JumpShip Lebanon was the oldest in the room and had at one point captained a DropShip. He had never been a MechWarrior. The captain of the Colorado had been strictly a merchant before his elevation to the position of captain of the Leviathan class, and was in his late forties at least.
In terms of age that left Septim closer to him and Bahar than the Azami ship captains... and a naval captain should have outranked Ground Company commanders. "So what do we do with this guy? Are we taking him with us?"
"I generally am poorly disposed to thieves, though I suppose this is stealing back that which was stolen in the first place which does moderate the matter some,"
That was the crux of the issue. Instead of basically laying up in hospital recovering there would be new recruit had went to go for a bit of payback, which was probably an issue in itself. The Combine using the Yakuza as cut outs made sense, them double crossing the local yaks also... made sense. Ishida couldn't really give any details on the matter of motive, just that 'dead fish eye', who was probably one of the visiting snakes who might or might not have been ISF had wanted the warehouse broken into. That had been apparently before they had confirmed ComStar was keeping the salvage in bonded warehouses, but they might have snooped around anyway even knowing that. Fishy boy had insisted on taking the book and apparently been very good at minding his p and qs subsequently about where he'd been keeping it. Ishida had apparently had little trouble getting inside the hotel in the 'hospitality district' knicking the book and making it back here all apparently without being detected.
"Yusuf has a point there, and also that the thieves will notice sooner rather than later." The older man shrugged, "If we are to take him with us, letting him come and go would probably not be wise."
"We can't just keep the guy locked up."
"He is probably a criminal, Captain Alexander." The bearded man replied, "Whether or not he has done a service or not if he freely comes and goes all the more chance it invites the Dragon's agents to see us with him."
"And we are not suggesting he be imprisoned merely given quarters to which he can remain." Yusuf agreed. "Finding out what he wants to accomplish in the mean time, and returning what was stolen may warrant passage off world at least." He compromised. "It would be wise though to avoid further dealing with the Coordinator's servants though."
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Commentary: Ok, so two things, well four, This will be something of a longer one...
Firstly I dug back the outline, and originally there was going to be a Detroit Part 9, there have been a couple of revisions since then, and I'm tempted to just open with Elidere Part 1.
Secondly again relating to my outlines I should have caught this earlier on the written outline, done on loose leaf paper like an idiot, I was missing the entirety of events for 3018. So nominally speaking it should be Elidere then the 3018 then the start of the reach contracts and lots of pirate killing.
Now for the other two as I mentioned last month, or august, Luxen was originally basically three separate chapters compressed into one reduced chapter. That was kind of hit or miss, the Rim World thing ended up being a we will come back later to deal with, but not a lot of time was spent on the planet. Now I did say I'd probably end up going back and addressing that, and that will most likely as I said end up with its own thread, that you can read or ignore, but among other changes besides extra content it will incorporate the new dating format.
Lastly, and this is not definitive but there is a good chance that I will be cutting back regular updates for the rest of the year, (November and December), to work on other updates. This will probably mean two sundays a month. That being said I would like to get through Elidere, but once we do start the general pirate killing thats going to last a while most likely, and involve very little in the way of Inner Sphere proper politics. IE won't be showing up again, probably after the actual HBS story campaign is taken care of. Right now Elidere is looking to be if not the last time IE shows up for a while then the last contract with them, and while they may get passing mention in story their screen time will be much reduced until the mid thirty twenties.
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