After Ji Ho was betrayed by Drake2173. We had little recourse. Our only play was to go to Luna and solve this case ourselves. Luther Connelly, Elizabeth’s husband had motive and opportunity and the perfect alibi; he wasn’t even on the planet. There was just one problem. The wait time to get a legitimate ticket up the Beanstalk was a couple of months.
Now Ji Ho as a cop could go on official business at the drop of a hat. He, however, was suspended. He had no assets that could get him a trip up, not without getting him in a whole lot a trouble with the force. We had to come up with another way.
I decided to contact my, on again, off again employer ZHIHN or /-|-\, as he commonly known as among my crowd, to see if had a way up. After I made the customary marks at our usual dead drop, he contacted me in chat. He was rather helpful, but not. He had a run heading to Midway Station half way up the stalk. His usual courier was good, but he’d throw it my way if I needed the ticket. One ticket, half way. Not very helpful. I asked about the job, though, since I planned on going up anyway. /-|-\ told me it was a simple delivery to Wilders Club and it paid well. /-|-\ wasn’t one to send me some bad packets, I was too valuable to him, so I told him I’d take the job once I found a way up.
It was Bishop who came through for us in the end. He had some old Weyland contacts he hadn’t burned. Contacts that could use a favor. His man on the inside was one of these guys involved in purchases and acquisitions for Weyland. Apparently, some factory company he had advised the board to ‘take-over’ on Luna, wasn’t panning out. The guy had a plan to get them back in shape and profitable, but a Cost Analysis Inspection team was scheduled to go up there tomorrow morning and he just needed more time. There were 3 people in the inspection team. If they didn’t make their trip up the Beanstalk he’d be happy. If we took their seats, win for everyone.
Lead inspector Jim Buchanan, and his two assistants Angela Fits and Robert McNamara. We had less than a day to stop them from going and to take their place. Kidnapping was out. Killing even more so. We aren’t bad people; we weren’t going to harm these inspectors in any way. The goal was to solve a murder not commit similar crimes. Time for some minor hacking.
I found that Jim Buchanan lived in SanSan and was taking the Red Eye tonight to New Angeles, his assistants were going to be on the same flight. So I quickly spoofed and airline message telling them their flight was going to be delayed a few hours. Rather simple really. Once they arrive at the airport they would have no time to make their flight. Good.
Meanwhile, Bishop got us access to a Weyland Facility as well as the files to ‘reprint’ our lost Weyland IDs. We’d decided to go in the middle of the night when the facility wasn’t fully staffed in order to deal with fewer people. While we waited I picked up the cargo for my little mission on the side.
On the way to the Weyland Facility, I engaged in a little social engineering and called the airline to “make sure my husband made his flight to New Angeles”. You see “The traffic in SanSan was just horrendous, and we arrived at the airport late. If I needed to turn back around and pick him up…” Well, sadly it seemed my husband missed his flight. Darn. The plan wasn’t the most fool proof, so I felt like I needed some insurance. I decided to call a Limo company. I had them send a driver to the airport to pick up the Inspection team. I talked to the driver told him they probably won’t show, but I’d pay him for his time anyway. If they did show however he should call me.
We arrived at the Weyland facility dressed nicely but looking disheveled. Our story? Well, were we an inspection team heading up to Luna in the morning, but the airline lost our luggage. Now Weyland had provided us with means to replace our clothing but we still had to print out new Weyland IDs.
The country hick running the place was more than polite and hospitable and a mite understanding of our plight. Just dag nabbit his blasted badge machine was broke… the darn thing refused to work. He had sent in a work order, but it wasn’t deemed high pri-or-i-ty so it was gonna to be a few days. While Bishop entertained the guy with his silver tongue and equally annoying southwest accent, I went to work. The machine’s firmware was fubar, it probably lost connection during an update and once it rebooted it had two partial systems running in conflict with each other. I quickly reset the thing to factory defaults and let it reconnect to the Network to get the updates it needed. Problem solved. The man running the place was awfully appreciative. I told him it was my pleasure. As our badges were finishing my com started ringing.
The shit had hit the fan. “you know those guys you told me wouldn’t show… well, they are in my limo.” The Inspection had apparently contacted Weyland and chartered their own plane after they got that notice of the flight delay. Beanstalk tickets were hard to come by, and they didn’t want to risk missing their ride up to the stars. Great. Just Great.
Time for plan B…. what was plan B? Did we have one? Well, kind of. The team couldn’t make to The Root. Time to call in a few more favors.
Ji Ho called a cop friend of his. Some women in narcotics he had a fling with when she was a rookie beat cop. He told her he had good intel from a CI that a large shipment of drugs was being transported via limo. It would be a great score for her and her team. Ji Ho hated doing it. He had very few friends on the force losing her trust would make it even less.
If only there were drugs in the limo.
Bishop knew a dealer. Someone who owed him a favor. But hell, kidnapping them was better than getting them convicted of drug smuggling. How do we delay them enough without getting them in real trouble? These were just normal folk, Weyland toadies sure, but they didn’t deserve their lives ruined just to get us up to the Stalk.
Well, simple. We don’t plant the drugs on them, just nearby.
Once the cops pulled over the limo we had Bishop’s man plant a modest stash of drugs at the scene, then approach the cops saying “hey man, I saw these guys toss something out the window man. like just before they finally pulled over…” Bishop’s guy didn’t mind. He found it fun lying to cops. He gave a false name, a false statement, and when the cops scrubbed these inspector’s backgrounds and found no links to drugs, well they go look back up their eyewitness and he’d be nowhere to be found.
That was the plan… and the plan worked. Remarkably. With our ID’s in hand, we headed to The Root and boarded a bean pod headed skyward.
My 20 Sided Life 