Rollie found himself wandering around the Lowtown disc of New Detroit after a very satisfactory hour of high priced love, well, not 'love' exactly, but a talented facsimile thereof. He had long ago accepted that his soul didn't have the most physically attractive packaging. He was, at 166 centimeters, on the short and thin side of normal, he had large, slightly protruding brown eyes, a face somewhat too narrow across the cheekbones, his lower lip was a bit oversized, and he had a prominent forehead He had a good nose, though; it was well proportioned to his face, and a doctor had once said that it was a "textbook proboscis". All in all, he wasn't hideous, but he was also extremely pale, all of which, when combined, tended to put off members of the opposite sex - well, everyone, really, but the opposite sex was what he'd been seeking today. He didn't waste a lot of time worrying about it, however, he just found ways of adapting to circumstances as they were, and Lowtown had a highly enterprising 'escort services' industry.
Actually, Lowtown had every vice imaginable on tap, and a few that took more than imagination. The area of Lowtown he was in was like the warren of a robotic ferret. The original open areas had been built up and divided, then subdivided, and then people had just walled off corridors to make places to do business, or a home. In spite of the seeming lack of planning involved in how it was all laid out, he could see all of the telltale signs of exactly how and where people would go in an emergency. He was as comfortable here, in the most congested area of Lowtown, as any dirtsider was on his home planet. Small shops and food stands fronted on the narrow arcade, their owners living, more often than not, on the premises to the rear, or in apartments above, or below. Rollie saw a patron at a small Japanese noodle stand vacating his stool in front of the counter, and he made a dash to reach it before someone else decided they wanted it. The smell of noodles being prepared made his mouth water in anticipation, and he was quick to place his order.
His com badge started chirping the second his bowl and chopsticks were placed in front of him. He checked the card sized display to see who was calling before he put the call though; he activated the personal communications device plugged into the cranial interface port behind his right ear, and rerouted the call form his ship's com badge for the sake of privacy.
"Dirk, you got a lousy sense of timing, I was just about to eat, can it wait?" He asked testily.
"Actually, I'm on my way to your location, there's something we need to talk about, but I need to do it in person. Trust me, when you hear why, you'll understand." Was his cryptic reply.
Rollie took a bite of noodles, reflecting on the fact that circumspection and indirectness were not in Dirk's repertoire, and it worried him when he acted this way.
"OK, I'm sending you my current location, but hurry up would ya? I was hoping to get some last minute purchases made before we left port." He paused to continue eating, giving his friend a chance to respond.
"Not to worry Rollie, I pinged your ship badge's locator already; which is why I called you now, instead of while you were in the middle of some gratuitous act of passion." He said jokingly, and continued, "By the time I get there, you should be paying your bill."
The connection cut off before Rollie could say anything else. He hated it when Dirk did things like that; it was technically a minor offense to ping someone's location without their approval, but Dirk had a military grade cranial interface with its override protocols still in place, and he could find just about anyone, at any time, as long as the communications network used Alliance standard network protocols. How he had managed to get out of the Marine Corps with his interface port's overrides still in place was probably the result of either ineptitude or bribery, not that Rollie really cared enough to complain; that sort of thing could come in handy someday.
Rollie had finished paying for his food, and vacated his seat to allow a new patron to sit down when he spotted Dirk headed his way through the crowd of shoppers, laborers, commuters, and various other residents of this area of the station. Dirk, as always, cut an impressive figure, with 187 centimeters of excellent posture, and 97 kilos of extremely well-toned mass, he could have been as ugly as an engine block, and been thought attractive to some. Instead, he had the bad grace to have been born with a straight, sharp nose; high, angular cheekbones; a classic square jaw; and bright green eyes under his strong brow. The only thing unremarkable about him was his hair, which, while thick and well maintained, was an unremarkable dark sand color. All in all, he was an Anglo-Saxon atavism, and he walked through the press of humanity around him with an easy arrogance that one saw frequently with both current and former Alliance Marines. He was dressed casually, but functionally, and Rollie could just make out the tell-tale bulge of a concealed firearm under Dirk's vintage leather motorcycle jacket. The weapon was simply precautionary, Rollie knew, and he would only draw it from its holster if there was no other alternative. Dirk wasn't the sort of person, at least in Rollie's experience, who wanted to escalate a fight to the point of lethal response.
Rollie met up with Dirk just as he was brushing off one of the district's cheap hustlers, and he felt compelled to offer some unneeded advice.
"You might want to at least hear her out D. You never know, but she might be able to teach you something to add to your rep." He waved his hand to indicate the aging prostitute wandering away unsteadily through the crowd.
"I doubt that," he replied confidently, while steering them through the crowds toward one of the arcade's exits, "since she had the glazed look of a steady Kif user, and besides, I'm pretty sure 'she' used to be a man."
"Fair enough. So what has you so jittery that you had to have this meeting in person?" asked Rollie, as they entered another arcade lined with commercial spaces, interspersed with small shops, cafes, and restaurants.
"First things first." he responded, as he lead the way to a small alcove where they could carry on a conversation without much risk of being overheard. "I found a source for some new SPC lines to get the main guns up and running, but I had to get an old friend from the Corps to broker the deal."
"That's risky, granted, but why is that so hush-hush? I get that it might look bad if the Corps found out, but we work on a privateer, D. It's not like they'll care that much." Rollie was beginning to suspect that his friend was being unreasonably paranoid when he answered.
"True, the Corps isn't the problem, it's the source of the parts: They're on the Ocelot, Jayne's ship." He said gravely.
"Saint's balls, Dirk! You'd almost be better off paying the money to buy new from the manufacturer, than to risk getting caught dealing with her. The old man would lose his shit if he found out, and if Jayne finds out who you work for, she'll cut you off at the knees out of spite." Rollie could understand the need for caution now. Their ship's communication badges, because their transmissions were routed back through the Jester's internal com array, automatically had any conversation they carried recorded in the ship's archives.
"Look, I know it's a risk -"
"- Risk, hell!" He interrupted quickly. "If you get caught dealing with the Ex for anything, you could find yerself looking for a new job; and that's if yer lucky!"
Rollie was beginning suspect that there was a malicious god out there that was looking to be entertained by his suffering. There weren't a lot of things - aside from being planetside - that worried him, as a general rule, but the antipathy that existed between the Captain and Jayne Powers, his ex-wife, was like a deep river of acid. If you found yourself in the middle of it, the result wasn't pretty. Now, his friend had decided to move between those metaphoric shores, and he just had to hope that the boat didn't leak. It wasn't that Jayne was a bad person, but she had nearly cost Cameron his ship in the divorce, and that had been the one thing that he couldn't forgive.
"Look, Rollie, I understand your concern - I really do - but I'm insulated from her on this; my friend is just supposed to mention that there's a buyer, not who it is. Kanjira is one of the few people I trust implicitly, and she won't Judas me out. Well, not cheap anyways." Dirk said reassuringly, and continued. "Kanji gets me a price; if it's too high, I say no; if its good, then she acts as my go-between and handles the transfer - for a small fee. See? Minimal risk."
Rollie considered to risk to be more than minimal, but he could see that the likelihood of being discovered was smaller than he'd thought.
"So, assuming that you can swing a deal that the Captain will go for, how do you plan to handle physically getting the lines from her ship to ours?" He inquired, as a way to point out the one aspect not yet considered.
"Simple: I hire a cargo handling company here to do the pick up and delivery; if I get a non-disclosure contract, Jayne can't ask, and they won't tell." He answered with a cocky grin, and continued. "Like I said, were insulated, and we can pull this off. That, or we start shopping retail."
Rollie looked back at his friend's expression of self-confidence, and shrugged his shoulders, indicating that he was ready to accept whatever fate threw their way. They walked back to the station's public transit lift together, discussing other, less troublesome, topics on the way back to the ship.
Actually, Lowtown had every vice imaginable on tap, and a few that took more than imagination. The area of Lowtown he was in was like the warren of a robotic ferret. The original open areas had been built up and divided, then subdivided, and then people had just walled off corridors to make places to do business, or a home. In spite of the seeming lack of planning involved in how it was all laid out, he could see all of the telltale signs of exactly how and where people would go in an emergency. He was as comfortable here, in the most congested area of Lowtown, as any dirtsider was on his home planet. Small shops and food stands fronted on the narrow arcade, their owners living, more often than not, on the premises to the rear, or in apartments above, or below. Rollie saw a patron at a small Japanese noodle stand vacating his stool in front of the counter, and he made a dash to reach it before someone else decided they wanted it. The smell of noodles being prepared made his mouth water in anticipation, and he was quick to place his order.
His com badge started chirping the second his bowl and chopsticks were placed in front of him. He checked the card sized display to see who was calling before he put the call though; he activated the personal communications device plugged into the cranial interface port behind his right ear, and rerouted the call form his ship's com badge for the sake of privacy.
"Dirk, you got a lousy sense of timing, I was just about to eat, can it wait?" He asked testily.
"Actually, I'm on my way to your location, there's something we need to talk about, but I need to do it in person. Trust me, when you hear why, you'll understand." Was his cryptic reply.
Rollie took a bite of noodles, reflecting on the fact that circumspection and indirectness were not in Dirk's repertoire, and it worried him when he acted this way.
"OK, I'm sending you my current location, but hurry up would ya? I was hoping to get some last minute purchases made before we left port." He paused to continue eating, giving his friend a chance to respond.
"Not to worry Rollie, I pinged your ship badge's locator already; which is why I called you now, instead of while you were in the middle of some gratuitous act of passion." He said jokingly, and continued, "By the time I get there, you should be paying your bill."
The connection cut off before Rollie could say anything else. He hated it when Dirk did things like that; it was technically a minor offense to ping someone's location without their approval, but Dirk had a military grade cranial interface with its override protocols still in place, and he could find just about anyone, at any time, as long as the communications network used Alliance standard network protocols. How he had managed to get out of the Marine Corps with his interface port's overrides still in place was probably the result of either ineptitude or bribery, not that Rollie really cared enough to complain; that sort of thing could come in handy someday.
Rollie had finished paying for his food, and vacated his seat to allow a new patron to sit down when he spotted Dirk headed his way through the crowd of shoppers, laborers, commuters, and various other residents of this area of the station. Dirk, as always, cut an impressive figure, with 187 centimeters of excellent posture, and 97 kilos of extremely well-toned mass, he could have been as ugly as an engine block, and been thought attractive to some. Instead, he had the bad grace to have been born with a straight, sharp nose; high, angular cheekbones; a classic square jaw; and bright green eyes under his strong brow. The only thing unremarkable about him was his hair, which, while thick and well maintained, was an unremarkable dark sand color. All in all, he was an Anglo-Saxon atavism, and he walked through the press of humanity around him with an easy arrogance that one saw frequently with both current and former Alliance Marines. He was dressed casually, but functionally, and Rollie could just make out the tell-tale bulge of a concealed firearm under Dirk's vintage leather motorcycle jacket. The weapon was simply precautionary, Rollie knew, and he would only draw it from its holster if there was no other alternative. Dirk wasn't the sort of person, at least in Rollie's experience, who wanted to escalate a fight to the point of lethal response.
Rollie met up with Dirk just as he was brushing off one of the district's cheap hustlers, and he felt compelled to offer some unneeded advice.
"You might want to at least hear her out D. You never know, but she might be able to teach you something to add to your rep." He waved his hand to indicate the aging prostitute wandering away unsteadily through the crowd.
"I doubt that," he replied confidently, while steering them through the crowds toward one of the arcade's exits, "since she had the glazed look of a steady Kif user, and besides, I'm pretty sure 'she' used to be a man."
"Fair enough. So what has you so jittery that you had to have this meeting in person?" asked Rollie, as they entered another arcade lined with commercial spaces, interspersed with small shops, cafes, and restaurants.
"First things first." he responded, as he lead the way to a small alcove where they could carry on a conversation without much risk of being overheard. "I found a source for some new SPC lines to get the main guns up and running, but I had to get an old friend from the Corps to broker the deal."
"That's risky, granted, but why is that so hush-hush? I get that it might look bad if the Corps found out, but we work on a privateer, D. It's not like they'll care that much." Rollie was beginning to suspect that his friend was being unreasonably paranoid when he answered.
"True, the Corps isn't the problem, it's the source of the parts: They're on the Ocelot, Jayne's ship." He said gravely.
"Saint's balls, Dirk! You'd almost be better off paying the money to buy new from the manufacturer, than to risk getting caught dealing with her. The old man would lose his shit if he found out, and if Jayne finds out who you work for, she'll cut you off at the knees out of spite." Rollie could understand the need for caution now. Their ship's communication badges, because their transmissions were routed back through the Jester's internal com array, automatically had any conversation they carried recorded in the ship's archives.
"Look, I know it's a risk -"
"- Risk, hell!" He interrupted quickly. "If you get caught dealing with the Ex for anything, you could find yerself looking for a new job; and that's if yer lucky!"
Rollie was beginning suspect that there was a malicious god out there that was looking to be entertained by his suffering. There weren't a lot of things - aside from being planetside - that worried him, as a general rule, but the antipathy that existed between the Captain and Jayne Powers, his ex-wife, was like a deep river of acid. If you found yourself in the middle of it, the result wasn't pretty. Now, his friend had decided to move between those metaphoric shores, and he just had to hope that the boat didn't leak. It wasn't that Jayne was a bad person, but she had nearly cost Cameron his ship in the divorce, and that had been the one thing that he couldn't forgive.
"Look, Rollie, I understand your concern - I really do - but I'm insulated from her on this; my friend is just supposed to mention that there's a buyer, not who it is. Kanjira is one of the few people I trust implicitly, and she won't Judas me out. Well, not cheap anyways." Dirk said reassuringly, and continued. "Kanji gets me a price; if it's too high, I say no; if its good, then she acts as my go-between and handles the transfer - for a small fee. See? Minimal risk."
Rollie considered to risk to be more than minimal, but he could see that the likelihood of being discovered was smaller than he'd thought.
"So, assuming that you can swing a deal that the Captain will go for, how do you plan to handle physically getting the lines from her ship to ours?" He inquired, as a way to point out the one aspect not yet considered.
"Simple: I hire a cargo handling company here to do the pick up and delivery; if I get a non-disclosure contract, Jayne can't ask, and they won't tell." He answered with a cocky grin, and continued. "Like I said, were insulated, and we can pull this off. That, or we start shopping retail."
Rollie looked back at his friend's expression of self-confidence, and shrugged his shoulders, indicating that he was ready to accept whatever fate threw their way. They walked back to the station's public transit lift together, discussing other, less troublesome, topics on the way back to the ship.
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