Sunday, August 30, 2015

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 32


     Shevaughn brought her leg up at her attacker's lunge, snapping it out at the last moment, connecting with the leg carrying virtually all of his weight.  He responded by using the impact to shift his momentum, and spun into a tight roundhouse kick that, had she not used the impact to achieve a slight separation, would have landed with enough force to knock her down, likely for good.  His foot was so close that she felt the skin of his heel brush against her left eyebrow.  His inability to connect gave her the opening she needed; she forced her muscles, now pushed nearly to the breaking point, to move her back in close proximity to her opponent, and she thrust her right arm under his passing leg, while simultaneously snap kicking the back of his opposite knee.  He went down hard, instinctively putting out his hands to protect against slamming his face into the floor, and she added her own weight; rolling up to put her padded elbow up to the back of his head.
     "You're dead, Kenjirō-san."  She said, as she bounced back to her feet, and held out her hand to help him up.  "The fancy roundhouse was a bit much.  Although I will admit, if it had landed, you'd be peeling me off the floor."  She added, bowing to him in return for his own, slightly deeper, bow before she took a small step back and strode off the tatami.
     He regarded the woman who had recently taken over the post of senior commander of the Darkaellan Imperial Guard detachment assigned to the embassy on Minotaur.
     "Indeed."  Was his only reply.  There seemed to be little point in debating the obvious.
     She walked over to the bench along the dojo wall, and reached for her towel and water bottle.  She rinsed the gumminess out of her mouth and then drank, pausing to pour some of the cool water on her head, quickly wiping it away with her towel.
     She could feel the subliminal pressure of Kenjirō watching her as she took off the tunic of her gi to inspect the spectacular bruise forming on her left upper arm.  She was accustomed to people staring at her behind her back, so long as he didn't do it to her face.  The memory of what had precipitated those stares suddenly rose to the forefront of her thoughts with a clarity sharp as a freshly stropped razor.  If only she had been as quick witted dealing with the Emperor's eldest son, as she was in the dojo.
     She decided that the injury didn't warrant a trip to the embassy's infirmary; it would be uncomfortable, but not debilitating, and her duties today were limited to organizational matters, so she had plenty of time to get it checked out later.  She put her tunic back on, threw the damp towel into a basket along the wall for eventual collection by the domestic servants, and grabbed her gym bag, turning to her sparring partner and second in command.
     "Kenjirō-san, get the other unit leaders and their seconds together for an operational briefing," she quickly consulted her optical implant's chronometer, "at thirteen hundred hours, and have the stewards set up tea and biscuits.  I'm going see if Satoshi Hayashi can be convinced to give an intel report on the newly installed director of the Space Enforcement Agency.  First, however, I am going to have a well deserved bath."
     Kenjirō seemed to consider her words for a moment, then offered a short bow of acknowledgement.
     "An excellent idea, Commander.  A good soak should put you in a much better frame of mind to deal with that eta, although I, personally, would wait until after."  He said, in an acid tone.
     "Just remember, Kenjirō, that man wallows through the abundance of mongrelized burakumin beyond these walls so that we don't have to.  He is, by that metric, a far better person than either of us, and his commitment to the security of the Imperium is ironclad."  She admonished him gently, before leaving the dojo.
     She stepped out of the building in which the dojo was located, and into the sweltering heat and humidity of Níngjìng Bay's late summer.  As always, she couldn't understand why anyone would voluntarily emigrate to a world like Minotaur; Darkael was cooler at the equator than the Bay was in its - so called - warm temperate zone.  Minotaur's tropical and equatorial regions were almost completely uninhabited, due to the fact that the average daytime temperature at this time of year was in the high 40s to low 50s Celsius, with around ninety-five percent humidity.  Darkael's equator rarely got above 35°C, and then only in the lowlands near the coast, the seasons were less extreme as well, due to the planet's shallower axial tilt.
     There were, however, some aspects of life here that were unexpectedly pleasant.  The gravity was about seventy percent of what she was used to, which was a good thing, because the air, although it had a slightly higher percentage of oxygen, was still much thinner than that to which she was accustomed.  She had endured about a month of acclimation before the embassy's doctor had cleared her for light duty, and another two before she was allowed to take on her regular duties.  As a result, she had done a fair amount of sightseeing after she'd landed.
     The southern tip of Níngjìng Bay had a white sand beach nearly five kilometers long, with what someone had described as "...firing the sickest, glassy right-handers in the universe!", which apparently was a reference to the waves upon which people went 'surfing'.  The idea of immersing herself in open water was terrifying at a level very near instinct, and she had been horrified by the sight of dozens of people sitting on their surfboards waiting for a wave.  For someone raised on Darkael, the notion was quite simply suicidal; the marine life on her birth world was incredibly dangerous, and found humans to be very much to its liking.  As food.
     One species of sauropod, called a Dracūl, which resembled a two to three meter long cross between a komodo and a giant horned lizard, was always found in or very near lakes and rivers, and had been known to kill people and Terran livestock, even when there was local prey closer and more accessible.  Dracūl (the same for plural and singular) were solitary and extremely territorial, and on the island of Acarsaid Mòr, where the Capital was located, they had been hunted to near extinction.  Needless to say, swimming was not a very popular recreational activity back home.
     Here, on the other hand, the planet's oceans, while teeming with life, were actually less dangerous than Earth's, and she found that she had a knack for surfing.  She had also discovered that there was no shortage of willing instructors from which to choose (although she was ultimately forced to admit that they were less driven by a desire to teach, than to get her in bed).  Their interest was more due to novelty than anything else, since there were probably less than a thousand Darkaellan subjects on-planet, and virtually all of them were employees of the embassy and their dependents.
     The embassy itself was large enough to accommodate all Imperial subjects in an emergency, but most took advantage of the Imperium's very generous housing allowance for embassy staff, and found private residences in the city itself.  Even so, the embassy covered a roughly square area of approximately 24 hectares, with three main buildings, and five smaller buildings for support services.  The buildings' exteriors had been constructed of locally sourced materials, and the work had been done by local contractors.  The interiors, however, had been made of both local materials, and others imported from the homeworld.  Most of the embassy's internal communications and data network had been built on Darkael and shipped here, but some of the most sophisticated components had to be brought from Earth.  As a result, the embassy had some of the best communications security on the planet.
     The grounds had the well manicured look of a Japanese garden, complete with an ornamental rock garden with its typical raked gravel, and bonsai trees.  The design of the building that housed the Honorable Bruce Addison Stirling, ambassador to the HIA, combined aspects of highland Scottish and Japanese architecture, and it blended in well with the other buildings.
     The confluence of Scottish Highland and traditional Japanese culture was no accident.  Darkael had been settled by a curious mix of Scots, Northern Europeans and Japanese, all of whom had a shared history.  They were all descendants, relatives, or associates of the seven families who had served as retainers and partners of the MacMullen clan.  Some of those relationships went back to the sixteenth century, but more than a century of relative isolation since the Exodus had caused some cultural dividing lines to blur into nonexistence, and others had ossified into impenetrability.

-----

     Shevaughn Turlington - her grandfather liked to call her 'Chevy', and the nickname stuck - was trying to organize her thoughts while soaking her tired muscles in the embassy's private spa bath, when an outside call came through to her comm implant, which meant that it was from someone with a lot of authority, and some heavy encryption; Imperial Guard communication implants couldn't normally be used with outside service providers, unless the originator used military grade encryption protocols.
     The call carried a Hyperwave ID code that she recognized instantly; it was a recorded message from an Imperial Guardsman who had been inducted at the same time as she.  It was short and to the point.
     "Hey, Chevy, I thought you might want a heads up:  Three Navy ships are headed out to Novy Sevastopol through the Minotaur locus.  The lead ship is being commanded by none other than Admiral Teiji Sakamoto.  Two of our merchant ships were apparently taken by unregistered privateers, so the Imperial House has decided to enforce the laws against piracy that the Baryshev Industrial Combine clearly won't.  Ki-o-tsukete, Chevy, and good luck."  The recorded message ended abruptly, as FTL communications were insanely expensive, and nobody wanted to spend more on their limited bandwidth than was absolutely necessary, although, since it had been invented by DTI, the Imperium's official business tended to go at a massive discount.
     She decided to share the anxiety of having someone like Admiral Sakamoto on their way.  With any luck he'd just pass through, but she would have to be ready, just in case he decided on a personal visit.  She activated her comm and pinged Kenjirō.
     "Kenjirō-san, I've just received a back channel heads-up from an old friend, letting me know that Admiral Teiji Sakamoto is going to be passing through the system.  Pass the word, I'll elaborate further during our ops briefing."  She said, as soon as he acknowledged her call.
     There was a long pause, which wasn't entirely unexpected.
     "When you say 'passing through', you don't necessarily mean a personal visit, right?"  He said, warily.
     "For my own sake, if nothing else, I hope not."  She replied with feeling.  "There's not much we can do if he does, so quit worrying about it, we still have a job to do."
     "Yes, Commander.  I'll pass the information to the other team leaders.  I'm assuming you will be informing the ambassador?"  He asked with a trace of sly amusement.
     The Right Honourable Bruce Addison Stirling, Ambassador to the HIA, was a grand nephew of Lord Clarence of House Stirling, one of the seven Noble Houses that served as governors of various territories throughout the home system.  She had to admit that the man owed his position more to guts and brains than most of his contemporaries, and that, suave and cultured though he may be, he was a ruthless as a dracūl when it came to protecting the Imperium's interests.  He was also less doctrinaire in his own way than many others who were born to service and privilege.  He was approachable, yet managed to maintain a professional detachment; he treated his subordinates with respect, while never losing sight of the fact that they were subordinates; most importantly, he seemed to know his limitations, and was capable of deferring to another's expertise when it was required.
     In short, Ambassador Stirling was the perfect boss.
     "You may safely make that assumption Kenjirō-san.  Although I'd be surprised if he doesn't already know."  She answered, before cutting the connection.
     The news that Teiji Sakamoto was on his way filled Chevy with a vague sense of apprehension.  The Admiral was an ardent isolationist, and arguably the best flag officer in the Darkaellan Imperial Navy; he had been an instructor at the Naval Academy, but his views had been cause for some concern, so he had been promoted, and given command of the 3rd Fleet.  She wondered why he had suddenly been given a detached squadron and a mission to a technically neutral station system, but the implications, like a Darkaellan winter, were chilling.  She suddenly found herself incapable of relaxing, despite the heat of the water in which she was immersed, so she climbed out of the bath, and reached for her robe.
     Some days, it just didn't pay to get out of bed.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 31

     Station systems existed for only one reason: Commercially valuable resources.  New Detroit was one of the oldest of the station systems, a solar system with no chance of ever hosting Terran life in any but the most tightly controlled of artificial environments; but it was a major trading nexus sitting in a system that contained one of the most commercially valuable materials known to man:  Kreshnium.
     Discovered accidentally by a xenogeologist on a survey mission through the system, Viktor VonKresh was lauded by the scientific community for his discovery of a substance that pushed the 'faster than light speed limit', once thought to be unbreakable, higher than ever thought possible.  Seven years after his discovery, Dynamic Technologies Inc. revealed that they had found a way to incorporate it into their next generation of FTL drives.  New Detroit's charter was drawn up within days of the announcement.
     The station had originally been designed as a twin taurus design with a rotational gravity, but the advent of gravity polarization technology had caused the design to be altered significantly.  The station, when viewed perpendicular to its long axis, looked amusingly like an old railway train axle with one large wheel at one end, and a smaller wheel with six balls around the axle next to it at the other end.  This design placed the habitation area all in the same plane and made it possible to have a very open space to live in.  The larger of the two quickly became known as Topside and was reserved for the station's commercial and administrative needs, open areas to supplement local food production as well as green areas for recreational pursuits, and naturally these areas became an attractive place around which to put housing for the people working Topside.  The smaller wheel became the industrial center for the station as well as efficient housing for the labourers, technicians, shipyard workers and maintenance personnel who were needed to keep the station running, and keep the shipyards in business.  It became known colloquially as Low Town, and it quickly became the place to find any form of diversion a person could want; bars, brothels, and dens of vice of every kind became common to the point that it became easier to tax them, rather than try to put them out of business.
     DTI had been one of the original investors in the station, but their interest was always seen as peripheral to a colonial charter; the system had a resource they wanted, and they were willing to invest to get it, but no more.  Their investment included a number of very quiet suggestions to the original board of directors about how to make New Detroit self-sufficient, including an offer of very low interest loans from the Darkaellan Imperium for developing an indigenous ship-building capacity.  There had been a number of deals made between the board and DTI, the most important of which was that DTI would get to purchase refined Kreshnium at a reasonable price, and and in return they would prioritize their FTL drive production to supply the local shipyard's needs.  They also brought in trained technicians to do the installation and maintenance of any FTL units.  This last was seen by many as an insult, an implicit distrust of New Detroit's ability to maintain the Drives themselves.  The truth was far more complex, since DTI had good reason to suspect that their proprietary technology would be a huge target for organizations like the Cartel, who would just love to get a massive leap forward in their own FTL R&D programs.  The status quo had been maintained, however, and most of the fears that a foreign monopoly on FTL technology would result in high prices, secondary costs, and artificial supply shortages to boost demand (and prices) turned out to be unfounded.  DTI and the Imperium made FTL drives cheaper and faster than anyone else, and within a dozen years had a market share of FTL drive production of about 90 percent, the last holdouts tended to be military SpecOps, or clandestine manufacturers, catering mostly to smugglers, pirates and other outlaws.  Most people didn't realize how much the history of this one massive station had been influenced by a state which was now widely viewed as a pariah by most of the people living outside of it.
     The irony of all of this was not lost on Petrona Hamasaki.  She had acquired a finely honed sense of historical irony in her present occupation as an investigator in the offices of the Minotaur branch of the United Systems Police Force.  The USPF had been her own figurative run for the border after her career in the NDPS had come to a explosive, screeching, grinding halt.
     She had been right, had done everything by the book, and had made certain that what had turned out to be the last official arrest of her career, as an officer of the law with New Detroit Public Safety, had been beyond reproach.  The fact that the Darkaellan woman she had tried to detain had been working for DTI's own private security unit shouldn't have mattered to anyone, after all, the NDS Legal Code did not provide outside contractors with any special immunity from prosecution.  DTI's security people had to obey the law just like anyone else, and she had deliberately committed an act of lethal violence on no other grounds than suspicion, and the ststion's Judiciary Board had refused to prosecute her for it.  Petrona's attitude towards the Imperium and its corporate subsidiaries - like DTI - had been as cynically hostile as anyone else's, and her indignation in the face of such a betrayal had been indecently volcanic.
     And now she sat in a small office in the large, block-like UniSys building in the Old Quarter of Níngjìng Bay.  The last five years had certainly been educational, that was certain; any lingering antipathy she might have felt over the official charges of insubordination and the unofficial advice of her former lieutenant, and boss, that she quietly resign before she was loudly cashiered, had been washed away, and replaced with something like pity for how badly informed about the realities of interstellar commerce and politics she had been.
     Her current boss, a man named Julius Benedict Harlow (Special Agent in Charge, Níngjìng Bay), had sought her out, and made her a job offer working for UniSys.  JB (as he preferred to be called) had made it clear that the offer was one likely to make her even more unwelcome than she already was in law enforcement circles, but she would have the authority to "...Stomp on anyone's dick if they get in your way."  To say that she'd been enthusiastic would have been a lie, but she had to eat, so she had said yes without really thinking about it.
     Her prejudices about the USPF had been as poorly informed as the ones she'd had regarding Darkael and DTI had been (what she now realized was just popular bigotry), and the learning curve in her new job had been challengingly steep.  She had come to understand the incredible difficulty of maintaining law and order across interstellar distances, and how one system's laws could conflict with another's to the point of laughable absurdity.
     Case in point:  A businessman from Jefferson finds out his 17 year old daughter is consorting with a man "of unsuitable nature" - ie. wrong skin tone, ethnic background, and religion; a triple threat - and has his private bodyguards beat the man with a thumb-thick rod and warn him, in accordance with what is scripturally acceptable common practice on Jefferson, that he would do well to move on.  The man who is beaten doesn't take the hint, and convinces the girl to elope with him on a ship to a new star system.  The father of the girl then sends his agents to find the girl and bring her home, since a girl of her age is not considered a legal adult and cannot make a legal contract of marriage to a man of whom her father does not approve.
     "Needless to say, JB,"  Petrona said as she explained events to her boss, "these guys just don't seem to grasp why the Alliance considers their actions kidnapping, and try as I might, it was a wasted effort.  I'd have had better luck explaining gravitic systems engineering to them.  Their case doesn't have to go through a UniSys Criminal Court hearing though, since they were forthcoming enough to admit that they put that girl's husband into a coma from the beating they gave him."
     JB gave her a sceptical look before asking, "Was that before, or after you advised them of their rights under interstellar law?"
     She couldn't help the Cheshire Cat grin on her face and said, "After.  They knew they had a right to silence, and legal aid, and they talked anyway.  Frankly, I don't think they took me seriously, it might have something to do with the fact that they come from Heardsfort County on Jefferson."
     "I don't get it, Pet.  What's so different about Heardsfort County?" JB asked while reaching for his cigarettes.
     "It was settled almost a century ago, primarily by what I personally would consider 'insanely conservative' religious fundamentalists; they don't allow women to enter most professions - especially law enforcement - and generally don't encourage them to live independently.  I think they thought I was your secretary."
     JB managed to avoid choking on the smoke from his cigarette as he laughed out loud, "And since you had done your due diligence, you didn't bother to enlighten them?" he finished for her.  He got a wink of her eye by way of response.
     JB started blowing smoke rings at the ceiling's air circulation vent and watched as they got pulled away to be filtered and recycled in one of the building's hydrostatic air systems.  Petrona had come to realise that this meant he was deep in thought, and waited for him to finish working out whatever was occupying his mind by removing the dust cover from the cranial interface port behind her right ear and plugging in her wireless uplink node.  She still got a thrill out of using the virtually unlimited access that UniSys agents had to the planet's public network, although here the office was a closed system that had to be accessed with a direct hardline connection.  Her first order of business was to check her private message in-box, there was little of interest aside from the ubiquitous vids of her younger brother's pet cat doing something dumb or cute.  Her brother was planning on going to university outside of their home system, he had a burning desire to go to a real planet and see what life there was like.  She wished him well, because she had a pretty good idea that her mother would be doing everything she could think of to keep him on New Detroit.
     It made her feel a bit homesick, but there was no way for her to go back without her past coming back to haunt her.  In her weaker moments, she wondered what would have happened if she'd gone public with the information in the official arrest record - of which she had kept a copy.
     Nothing good, probably.
     Publicly, her father had been outwardly stoic about what had happened, as Japanese always were, but the man had been as comforting as any parent could be expected to be in private moments between them.  She missed her father; the two of them used to meet for lunch on the first day of the month, just the two of them, no matter what.  It was their own private tradition.  Noboru Hamasaki's family were part of the Japanese exodus from Earth, people who had gotten tired of the rising ethnocentrism of their homeland's politics and increasing social pressure to be 'more Japanese'.  Her mother's family were mostly Hispanic, with a hint of Norteamericano in the family tree somewhere; not that any of them let it show.  She hadn't spoken to her mother since she had resigned from the force in disgrace, and left for Minotaur.
     'Both of us too proud.  Hispanics to the bone - as always.' Petrona thought to herself as she watched Joaquín's feline behaving badly. 
     JB's voice brought her attention back firmly to the subject at hand.
     "I think it would be in our best interests to ship our two wayward Jeffersonians back to local custody along with a sealed copy of their admission of guilt to you, as well as your own investigative report, and then let them handle it.  They admitted to beating that man to within a millimeter of his death, and they had to know that would be a crime anywhere." He stubbed his dwindling cigarette out in a little sand filled ashtray that sat on the right corner of his desk.  "Want me to make the call?"
     "Nah, the gang over at Bay PD has to get used to the idea that I can make them choke on their own work sooner or later."  She shut her 'link down and removed it, replacing the dust cover as she put her desk terminal on-com to place the call to the local Níngjìng Bay Police office.  She wished all of their cases could be resolved so easily, but that just wouldn't be in the Universe's nature.  Considering how her career had developed in the last few years, she knew that every easy case was followed by half a dozen real bastards.  That was tommorrow's problem, however, today's easy work meant that she could have a little fun, and she was really looking forward to a few drinks with the team, and knocking those pins over at the bowling alley.

Monday, August 10, 2015

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 30

     "Why the hell not?"  Alex demanded hotly, as she got up off the bed.  "I can't believe that you won't trust me to understand, so at least have the decency to say why!"
     Alex realized that she was losing her temper, but right now she just couldn't find the available detachment to care.  If Dirk wanted her to back down, then he would have to meet her half way, and explain why he had refused to tell her what they had discovered on the colony ship.
     She had waited in nail biting anxiety when the survey team had gone silent, and her mind had forced her imagination into some very dark corners.  It had never occurred to her that she might still be in the dark after everyone had made it back safely.  The idea was uncomfortably novel, and on a ship with a crew the size of the Jester's, it led to all sorts of wild gossip.
     She just wanted the truth, but it wasn't coming from Dirk as she'd hoped.
     "I can't,  Alex, I just... can't.  I won't insult your intelligence by telling you that it's for your own good, but I am going to ask you - beg you - to trust me when I say that telling you wouldn't put your mind at ease."  He said imploringly.
     Alex stood there, arms crossed in front of her, and considered what she had just heard.  The idea of him begging for anything, even her trust, was so totally unprecedented that she was momentarily dumbstruck.  She tried to think of an appropriate response, but her mind just kept spinning in circles, and the silence between the two of them stretched out uncomfortably.  She decided to give it one last try.
     "You want me to trust you, yet you don't seem to want to trust me.  How is that fair?"  She demanded, frustrated with her inability to sway him.
     He got up off the edge of the bed, crossed the room, took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes.  He did it so suddenly that she jumped involuntarily, and the look in his eyes was one she couldn't readily identify.
     "It's not fair, Alex, but I give you my word that knowing the details won't make it better.  Ask me for anything else, but let this lie.  Please?"  He pleaded in near desperation.
     She looked at him for several moments before the gravity of what he had just said finally registered.
     "Anything?"  She asked in disbelief.
     "Anything."  Dirk affirmed, relief in his voice.
     "OK, Marine," she said coyly, "if this plan of the Captain's works out, we are going to spend our bonuses to take a long, well deserved, vacation.  Deal?"  She paused long enough for him to respond.
     "I promise.  Anyplace in particular you had in mind?"  He asked, smiling.
     She couldn't believe her luck, and she exploited the opening.
     "Yeah:  Home, to Nova Sol.  I'm going to introduce you to my parents.  Oh, and you will indulge my public displays of affection."  She smiled, and patted him on the cheek before crossing to the door to the bathroom, leaving him standing in the middle of the room, with a stunned look on his face.
     "Wait, you - what did - I can't - just...  Wait... Your parents?"  Dirk stammered incoherently.
     She turned back just before closing the door.  "Bet you wish you'd told me what was on that colony ship now; but I really think my folks are going to enjoy meeting you."  She said, with a teasing edge of malicious enjoyment.
     Seeing the look on his face, she almost felt bad for him.
     Almost.

Monday, August 3, 2015

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 29

     Rollie was in his usual hiding spot, in EEV Number 12, smoking one of his dwindling supply of real tobacco cigarettes.  He'd just left the meeting that had taken place in the Captain's office after having been segregated from the rest of the crew for more than two hours.  What conversation had taken place had been largely one-sided, with the Captain explaining why the survey team could never, under any circumstances, reveal that they had gone on board the ARA colony ship.  He had to admit that, if he had known - hell, if he'd suspected - what was on it, he never would have volunteered to go in the first place.
     With his cigarette held between clenched lips, he reached into one of his work jacket's inner pockets and pulled out a scuffed metaplast case, little bigger than a small matchbox.  He considered what he was about to do once again, turning the case over and over between his fingers, as tendrils of smoke drifted across the close interior of the escape pod, where it was pulled into the life support system's air recycler.
     He slid his right index fingernail under a faint recess in the case's surface where its two halves joined almost seamlessly.  There was a faint click, and the case opened smoothly to reveal the carefully arranged data storage cards, twelve in all, each one in its own slit in the case's foam insert, and a special adapter to allow him direct access to their contents through his cranial interface.  He removed the adapter from its slot in the foam, pulled out the built in CI jack, and unwound its threadlike connection cable.  With the ease of great familiarity, and without removing the cigarette from his mouth, he laid back on the crash couch and connected the jack into the interface port behind his ear.  He then removed a tiny data storage card from the case, and inserted it into the adapter, closed his eyes and pressed the small power button.
     The sensation was of having one's mind suddenly feel like it had just expanded in volume a hundredfold.  He felt as if he'd instantly stepped into a massive room in his mind; although they were small - barely the size of a child's fingernail, each card could hold a frighteningly huge amount of information, somewhere around 50 Terabytes.  The one he had selected was empty, although not for long.
     Rollie selected all of the POV images and video he had recorded through his cybernetic eyes, and copied them to the data chip.  He wasn't a scientist, but he knew enough of the basics to be able to make visual records of what might be important, and he had done just that.  The data card was packed with imagery of the bodies of the cybernetically enhanced GMHs, and of the lab technicians, surgeons, and researchers; basically everything that would be of interest to any competing entities with deep pockets, and a burning desire to see ARA Corporation's black ops R&D.  He'd recorded hundreds of still images of everything, from document hardcopy, to lab equipment, and even a random piece of jewelry that had been drifting amidst the charnel horrors they'd found.
       Once the copying was completed he accessed his cyberoptics' file cleaning program, and purged all of the original recordings from their on-board memory.  He gently removed the data card from the adapter and returned it to its slot in the small case. He removed the CI jack from the port behind his ear, allowing the thread-thin cable to wind itself back into the adapter, and placed it back in its own slot in the foam, then closed the case and put it back in his jacket.
     Reaching into another pocket, he pulled out the only object brought off the ship. 
     He had smuggled out the small piece of jewelry, vacuum sealed in a mylar bag; the single image he'd recorded of it hadn't been transferred, just wiped from memory.  Up until now he had only been able to give it a quick look, but here in his private hideout he could take the time to examine it more thoroughly.  It was a small piece, made of artistically engraved platinum, about five centimetres long and ovoid in shape with an elliptical stone inset into its surface.  The highly polished stone was like nothing he had ever seen before, it had swirling colors ranging from indigo to deep navy blue with occasional small gold flecks along the bands of color.  All in all, it was an amazing find, and it would likely fetch a good price on Minotaur.
     He was acutely aware of the danger involved in keeping the information contained on the tiny card in his possession, but Rollie was a firm believer in the concept of being prepared.  The images and video he'd saved were potentially the biggest goldmine he could have been handed, with a price tag attached that was essentially a blank check.  He doubted that anyone suspected that he'd taken the liberty of recording their entire trip through the ARA ship, because nobody had specifically asked him if he had.  Truth be told, however, he would probably have denied having done it anyway if they'd asked, but this way, he didn't feel like an asshole for lying about it.