Mistakes were made.
Posted on Sat Apr 18th, 2020 @ 4:51pm by Security Johannah "Mack" Shepard & Skyplex Administration Scarlett Wilson
Mission:
Bright and Shiny things
Location: Deck 3 - Laotze's Shinon Barbecue
Timeline: Following Formal Greetings
The lift ride was decidedly long, one because of the infrequent trip up from Deck 17, the second was the awkward silence in the lift between Scarlett and Juni Hart. Scarlett was typically quite gregarious and found it easy to talk to people, but this conversation felt a bit strained with the gravity of the impact of the contracted deal with Blue Sun. Still they were going for food. Scarlett could do food. The lift chimed on the Hub level, its doors opening a a wide plaza of exotic trees and plants broad walking areas, tables and places for people to conduct business outside the chrome and plastic of most space stations. Deck three with its high atrium well into deck 2, was an almost sacred space of nature. Around the edges of the plaza were the dominant number of eating establishments on the Skyplex.
Scarlett led the small group around a large planter of deciduous trees to a brightly decorated restaurant with decidedly ethnic asian architectural motifs. "I really enjoy this place. Fine Shinon cuisine."
Juni frowned in anticipation of a suggestion she might like something exotic to eat. Fresh, plain and identifiable was her preference.
"Very decorative", she noted, following a server to a table covered in garish designs and unrecognisable fruits.
Scarlett gave a nod to the server clad in a red traditional Shinon robe. The young woman produced menus for the group allowing each time to settle themselves. The dining room was made up of five circular tables spread across the center of the room bordered by small booths along the walls. The aromas of exotic spices permeated the establishment.
Scarlett looked across the table at Juni. "They have a fabulous combination lunch on the last page of the menu. Their sushi is to die for. We import fish directly from the St. Michael fisheries. No protien replacements here. They have a delicious plum wine too if you are interested."
Juni took it all in - the decor, the ambience, the downright unnecessary luxury of it all. Plexies really didn't know they were born.
"Wine sounds good. I'll take the fish, but cooked, and plain as it comes. Can't be too careful."
She sat back in her plush chair, enjoying the comfort even as it troubled her utilitarian sensibilities, wondering how long before she could politely bring up business.
Scarlett looked quickly across the menu. Cost was really not a factor when entertaining a guest of the calibre of Blue Sun, still it was habit. She placed the menu down and signaled for their server. A young woman in a floor length Kimono waved back and made her way to the table.
"Nihou, are you ready to order Miss Scarlett?" the server inquired.
"Yes, we would like a bottle of your best plum wine, and an order of pot stickers. My guest would like the Tilapia fillet, unseasoned and the buddha's feast.. I will have a spicy dragon roll with a side of kimchi."
The server gave a slight bow gathering the menus and went off to enter the order in the terminal.
Scarlett smiled at Juni. "I suppose you will want to inspect the requested space. Just out of curiosity, and for security concerns, what exactly are you going to be making on our station? The PR folks would love to tell the sector that we are the home of Fruity Oaty Bars."
A voice suddenly interrupted them. "Did you ladies want a refill?" Scarlett turned and looked at a young man in an all black button up shirt. "No, we have not been served our drinks yet. Thank you." she responded curtly. The service on the station seemed to be slacking off a little.
"No problem Miss, I will go check for them at the bar for you." he responded giving Juni a close look over before turning and walking back towards the kitchen area.
"Creepy much." Scarlett stated to Juni. "Kids get hired fast when a lot of ships are in port."
The busser stopped and passed something to a large man with a scarred face standing by the kitchen he nodded and slid in to the kitchen. The exchange did not go unnoticed by Scarlett. A moment later a server brought them their drinks from the bar. Scarlett smiled and said kindly, "Who's the new busboy? He seems to be right on top of things. Wanted to give us refills before you got here with our drinks."
The server looked puzzled. "This is my section, nobody should be helping you except me." he responded putting the plumb wine down in front of the ladies.
Scarlett frowned. "We might need to get this to go." she said to the server before turning her attention directly to Juni with all seriousness on her face. "Get your stuff, we are going."
The sound of a commotion could be heard from the Kitchen, a commotion followed by a roll of automatic gunfire. The doors to the kitchen flung open and three persons in black burst into the dinning room. One fired a volley of shots into the ceiling of the restaurant. "Everybody heads down and hands up!" he shouted. Scarlett kicked the table over to make a barricade between her and Juni and the kitchen.
Mack had taken a detour to pick up her bag with the rest of her gear from the ship she'd arrived on. She didn't quite trust them not to take off with it. She had some clothes, personal items, weapons, all of which fit in the bag she'd carried since graduating from an Alliance military academy around a decade and a half ago. She'd torn the Alliance patches off of it when she joined the Browncoats, but besides having a lived in (or more accurately: lived out of) look, it was is great shape. She got a room at the hostel with a secure locker in it and stored her gear there, then headed to Deck 3 to find Scarlett Wilson. She was in near Laotze's Shinon Barbecue when the shooting started. She immediately drew her pistol and took cover. The shooting came from inside the restaurant, but that didn't mean there wasn't someone watching the street. Mack carefully scanned the area outside of the restaurant. She didn't see anyone she felt stood out, but she was new here. Either Mack was missing something, or there wasn't anyone, which meant they probably planned on exiting out of the back and working their way through the back corridors to... presumably a ship, but Greenleaf was fairly large. Mack supposed they could try to hide somewhere.
Mack slipped the optic she used for precision fire out of her pocket and used it to take a look inside the restaurant. She saw three people in black armed with what looked then and had previously sounded like automatic weapons. Mack sighed. She ejected the 10-Round magazine she usually carried in her pistol, put it away, and inserted on of the four 20-round magazines she usually carried in mag pouches on the light ballistic/stab vest she routinely wore when working, or really when going anywhere armed. From an inside pocket of in the skirt of her longish coat, Mack pulled out the detachable stock for her pistol and attached it to the grip. She left the selector set to semi-automatic. The miscreants in the restaurant would be throwing enough lead around rapid fire. She would have to be more precise. Lastly, she pulled a suppressor from her coat and attached it to the muzzle of her sometime pistol, now carbine. She made sure she had a round in the chamber and made her way to what looked like the entrance to corridor behind the restaurant. It was locked. Mack swore, then pulled out her encyclopedia. She waved Trish in the Marshal's Office.
"Trish," she said, quietly but without whispering. Whispering carried farther than quiet talk. "I really need you to trust me and open the back corridor entrance near Laotze's Shinon Barbecue. Looks like it's... D3-42LSB. There are at least three armed people inside. They have automatic weapons and they've fired off one of them at least once. I need to get in around back, and I need to do it before you'll have time to get here. Miss Wilson's in there, and a passel of other folks."
Scarlett had ducked behind the table and was making sure Ms. Hart was safe and unharmed. She reached for her Cortex device from its pouch on her hip, but it wasn't there, nor was her father's 9mm tucked in the back of her jeans, she was wearing the too tight skirt and powersuit to greet Ms. Hart. She always told her father dressing up for people was impractical. This was a fine example of that. "Tian di wu yowng!" she cursed, struggling to rip the constraining pleat of her skirt to allow her legs to not feel bound together. She whispered over to Juni as the firing stopped. "I'm going to do something stupid. Can you wave the Marshal's office and get a team down here?" She closed her eyes for a second before popping up from the table, her hands in the air.
"Hey! Yes you three. I expect you know who I am. I can make whatever you are trying to accomplish here go much smoother, but would it be crazy to ask for a little cooperation?"
The man with the scar walked up toward her table. "Yeah I know you. Don't much care. We want your Blue Sun friend." he growled back pointing his rifle at Scarlett.
"I get that." Scareltt said reassuringly, "but you aren't going to get much of anything if we don't talk to folks on the outside."
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"Mack, what the hell did you walk into down there? I am opening up the read door. Security will be there in a minute." Trish's voice came back over the wave.
Mack could hear the latch on the door snap as it unlocked.
"Thanks, Trish!" Mack replied quietly. She was quietly through the hatch before the guy on the other side had a chance to react... mostly. As he brought his weapon to bear, Mack quickly assessed that he wasn't Security and then put two rounds through his face.
"Shénme mā de??" Mack heard someone to her left say. A woman this time. Mack pivoted right, again quickly assessed this person was up to no good and put two rounds through her face, the detachable shoulder stock of the Shanxi Type 25 bucking against her shoulder.
The suppressor had muffled the sounds of the cartridges Mack had fired. There was no one else in the corridor. The extremely high pucker factor part of this that had fallen into Mack's lap, namely walking into the back corridor and not getting killed, was over. Now came the only slightly less difficult and dangerous part: Entering the restaurant and dealing with the thugs in there without getting herself or any bystanders hurt or killed. Mack carefully opened the backdoor and entered into the kitchen and was assaulted, not by angry thugs, but by the smell of barbecue and other Shinon specialties. The aroma's made Mack's mouth water.
Mack moved quietly through the kitchen until she came upon one lone thug guarding several frightened members of the kitchen staff. He didn't see her yet and in fact had his back to the door. Mack almost shot him in the back, but Security was supposedly on the way and she'd already killed two people... then the guy started to turn around.
"Tā mā de," she whispered, and shot him, too, again in the face. She wasn't sure if they were wearing ballistic vests and she didn't intend to find out the hard way. The hostages were all sitting on the floor, so when her bullets blew out the back of the man's skull, they slammed harmlessly into the wall above their head. Mack motioned for the kitchen staff to be quiet and to get out of there. "Ānjìng! Chūqù!" They didn't argue with her and they quickly and quietly filed out the back door. While Mack made her way quickly towards the dining room, where she heard someone issuing threats...
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The scarred man marched up to Scarlett and threw a hard punch at her face. She turned slightly with the hit, but it hurt. "Nee tzao se mah da je da?" he cursed at her. "Only thing I need is that woman and I got people taking care of the rest."
One of the assailants stepped closer, keeping his gun poised on the restaurant patrons. "40 seconds. Grab her!"
"I know, I know." He turned back to Scarlett who had a small streak of blood coming from her mouth. "Step aside or I burn you down now." He brought the gun to bare directly on her head.
TAG Scarlett, Juni, Bad Guys
"You might want to reconsider the life choices you've made that led you to be in this situation you're in now," Mackensie Shepard said from the position of cover she'd quietly found where she could see all three assailants. "I killed your friend in the kitchen and the two in the corridor and I got no problem killing you. See, the thing is, I came here to ask the redhead for a job. I'm hoping to be Greenleaf's Chief of Security. Now, if I let you kill her, that doesn't make a very good impression, does it? So here's the way this is going to go. I'm going to count to five. I'll give you one and two so's you can make your mind. On three I'm going to shoot you over there on my left, on four I'm going to shoot you over there on my right, on five I'm going to kill the one in front of me. Everyone ready? Good. One... Two..."
---
Juni swore silently. All she’d wanted was a gorram free lunch, courtesy of the skyplex. Why did things never go smooth?
From the sound of the man’s voice, and the dull thud as some part of him forecfully met with a softer part of Scarlett Newman, Juni knew she’d need back up, but even as she reached for one of the insurance policies stashed in her inner pocket, she heard the welcome interruption of the apparent would-be Chief of Security.
A little encouraged, she nevertheless continued to retrieve a Griswald from its pouch of three. The pressure sensitive anti-personnel grenade, approximately the size of a AAA battery from the distant past of Earth-That-Was, fitted easily in her palm, as she prepared to arm it and throw it over the table. Of course, it would potentially damage Scarlett as much as the attackers, but that was unavoidable collateral damage at this point.
Leaning slightly back to take the throw, she realised she had line of sight to the erstwhile new security chief, and opened her hand to show her the thin, shiny grenade nestling there. Juni wasn’t sure she’d recognise it for what it was, at that distance. It was designed to be easily concealable, infamous for its ability to be pushed into an apple or similar, to lay in wait for an unsuspecting enemy to bite into.
She was counting down, as Juni prepared to add to the carnage about to be unleashed. She’d release the grenade when Mack fired the first shot.
---
The scarred man with the beard shook his head slightly at Mack's intrusion. "Jao gao. Aint the time for a bushwhacker rent-a-cop." He started to spin on the count of two. He pulled the trigger of his rifle the line of bullets tracing toward where Mack was positioning herself.
The second man, who had offered Scarlett and Juni refills, jumped for nearby cover. The third following his boss' lead opened up with his gun while turning, firing into the restaurant from the opposite direction.
Scarlett did as her father had taught her and dropped like a deadbug to the floor at the sound of gunfire opening up. She was in the open, unarmed, surrounded by hostiles that were now shooting up her station. She swept her leg around, slightly constrained by the skirt she wore, and took the scarred man's feet out from under him.
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Mack saw the saw the grenade right before she ducked behind the cover she'd found. Dropping to one knee, she called out "Three!" and shot the miscreant on her left, just like she promised, two in the chest this time to get his attention and then two in the face. "Pop it!" She shouted, hoping the woman with the grenade would hear her and know what to do.
---
Juni didn't need telling twice. She released the tiny button on the Griswald and let it go, throwing it over the table towards the last known position of the chatty man who'd whacked Scarlett. As she hunkered down in anticipation of the grenade's impact, she punched the emergency button on her datapad, sending an alert through to the marshall's office. Better late than never to get a team down here, she figured.
The Griswald flew over the tipped table and landed beside the scarred man. His rage was burning towards the young woman that just dropped him to the ground, but the dimiutive mine now bouncing to a stop next to him certainly got his attention. "Gosa!..." he mumbled as the tiny device beeped and exploded.
Scarlett felt a variety of sensation as she was suddenly thrown by the shock wave of the mine at the same time drenched by what had formerly been the scar faced man. She had not expected that result and sat their for a moment figuring what had just happened while the man's guts dripped off her face.
Two assailants down, the other had taken up cover in a nearby booth with two startled restaurant customers that were now sitting with the gunman between them as he fired in Mack's direction.
Mack noticed that the counter she was hiding behind was getting pretty badly shot up. In fact, there was a small hole, just large enough for her to slip the muzzle of her Shanxi through with enough room to line up the sight. So that's what she did. The grenade had taken out the one that was supposed to die on 'four', so Mack whispered "Five," then shot the bastard in both kneecaps, causing him to drop to the floor. That done, she jumped over the now mostly destroyed counter and ran up to the shooter and kicked his gun to the side and then kicked him in the head, ringing his bell and disorienting him.
Juni's wave got an almost immediate response, due to Mack's previous communication, but almost instantaneously for Juni. A voice boomed over a loudspeaker. "Attention person's in the restaurant. This is Skyplex Security. The building is surrounded. Put down your weapons and surrender at once."
Trish, Mack thought. I really hope you told Security I'm in here and on their side.
"My name's Mack Shepard!" She called out. "I'm a licensed security contractor, number J-MKS-Omega430. Bounty Hunting and Courier work mostly. The shooters are down, but I'm covering one. You secure him, I'll lower my gun!"
As part of her agreement with her father to stay as far away as possible, he'd arranged for her to get a contractor license so she could take official work if she was of a mind to, and therefore be less likely to take as much questionable work, some of which would call attention to her family connections and cause even more embarrassment than her resigning her Alliance military commission to fight for the Independent Colonies had. Mack had originally thought that was self-serving of him, but she'd since come to appreciate it. The license had both gotten her work and gotten her out of a few nasty scrapes with the Alliance. Hopefully it would give the security grunts outside the restaurant a moment of pause.
Scarlett kneel on the floor of the restaurant, wiping the blood from her eyes on her blood soaked suit jacket. It didn't help much, but it did let her look upon the carnage surrounding her. "Jao gao." she stated with a degree of resignation. She turned back to the table she had been formerly sitting at, which lay on its side cracked in half by the blast of the Grizwald. "Ms. Hart, are you alright?" she called out to Juni, albeit her own appearance clearly showed nothing was alright.
Looking a bit like a scene of a low budget horror wave with too large a supply of ketchup on stage, she looked around at the shattered restaurant. "Everyone please stay still. The danger is over. Security officers will be in to provide aid and get you all home safely." As she spoke a line of security officers in light body armor and weapon's drawn filled into the restaurant. She let her arms droop for a moment. The officers circled in on Mack and her prisoner. They kept their weapons pointed at both of them as one of the constables processed the license number she had called out. Scarlett walked up to the circle of officers. "This woman saved everyone in here. The one she is guarding is one of the shooters." The Security officer near her gave her with a look of shock at her appearance. Her ears were still ringing from the Griswald. "I know, I feel about the same." she muttered to him. "Can I get you anything Ma'am?" he asked the administrator. "Just make sure everyone is alright. We will sort through what the hell happened here later."
Scarlett slid through the phalanx of officers to stand next to Mack. She looked at the man that had posed as a busboy. "Get a medic to look at this piece of gosa and get him out of my sight." She turned her blood soaked had towards Mack. "You said your name is Shepard. Thank you Ms. Shepard. How did you happen to walk in to save the day?"
Mack handed Scarlett a clean handkerchief and then went through the process of breaking the Shanxi down from a carbine to a pistol while she talked. She removed the detachable stock and suppressor and put them both away and replaced the nearly empty 20 round magazine with the usual 10 round magazine she carried most of the time, and then holstered the weapon.
"Funny story," Mack said "I mean, it would be if not for all the gore and such. Anyway, I was on my way here to drop off a prisoner and collect the bounty when I saw on the cortex that you were looking for a new Chief of Security. Um... in the interests of full disclosure, these guys weren't the first bodies I caused to be dead on your station. After I handed over my prisoner, he made a move on one of the deputies. I had to shoot him. The prisoner, not the deputy. Anyway, the other deputy said you were busy right then, so I asked her where to get some lunch and she said here... and then these folks decided to shoot up this fine establishment, which didn't sit well with me, so I decided to intervene. You and your friend alright?"
Scarlet gave Mack a grim smile as she wiped some of the blood from around her eyes with the handkerchief she offered and pointed over her shoulder, "I'm not sure about her, but I've been worse."
Juni shrugged off the attention of an officer offering her a hand to get up, and surveyed the damaged restaurant.
"Zao gao", she muttered, making her way over to the dockmaster and the sharpshooter.
"I think the interview went well. You still want the job?", she asked Mack, interrupting them.
Scarlett turned her blood red head towards Juni, wondering when she became authorized to speak for the skyplex, but before she could say anything, a great commotion could be heard out in the streets. People were running past the restaurant shouting. Scarlett turned her attention to a nearby security officer. "I just went to have some lunch and everyone goes crazy. What's going on out there?."
The officer tapped on his commpiece and listened for a moment. "Looks like some kind of riot in the lottery queue. Not really sure just yet."
Scarlett looked back at Mack. "Looks like Interview part 2. Shall we go see what's going on?"
"Sure," Mack said. "I've only shot seven people today and killed six. I prefer to shoot people in multiples of ten on any given day..."
