MALGEIRGAM, MALGEIRU
The massive spaceport dwarfed the suburban outskirts of the city with its impenetrable walls and towering spires. The air buzzed with the sound of engines revving; a steady drone that echoed off distant mountains on this brilliant night skyscape like thunder rolling across endless plains. Moving a frightening volume of people and cargo every day, it was the busiest hub of interstellar travel in the Malgeir Federation.
The line of Malgeir snaking into the spaceport was marked with new blue and yellow paint. The port had recently been shut down for days and finally reopened with a myriad of new security measures due to a bombing conducted by suspected Znosian infiltrators that destroyed a pair of shuttles and killed scores of civilians. All passengers were now required to pass a thorough security screening, one that was compounding the chaotic inefficiency of the port’s operations.
Speinfoent, his rear paws rhythmically tapping in thinly veiled impatience, was stuck amidst this slowly inching serpent of a line. He’d been cautioned that the queue would be long, but he didn’t think it would take literal hours just to get through the outer security checkpoint.
Though his destination was the Navy fleet, as usual, the first leg of the flight was entirely contracted out to civilian spaceliners. He would need to take a short flight up to a commercial hub station in Malgeir orbit, where a shuttle would be waiting to take him to the Oengro. Supposedly this was a more efficient use of resources than direct flight shuttles, but Speinfoent suspected that the savings to the Navy budget were not exactly the reason why certain procurement officers were so enthusiastic about promoting this rare cooperation between industry and defense.
At last, he found himself at the front of the queue, standing before overworked officers who were equipped with fancy scanners that seemed to blink and hum with every move, checking every passenger for contraband and dangerous devices.
“ID please?”
Having observed the procedure while waiting, Speinfoent was prepared: he quickly produced his Navy identification card.
After scanning the card, the officers’ expressions turned from one of boredom to one of nervousness.
“Wait here,” one of them said, pulling him aside. They talked into their communicators with excitement, looking in his direction as the distraction held up the security line. Several passengers behind him started whispering, sensing that something wasn’t right.
Speinfoent’s heart sank. He had just started contemplating an escape plan when two uniformed personnel promptly showed up with loaded rifles and eager expressions. Their badges and demeanor said Home Fleet Marines, and he didn’t want to find out whether their public reputation for loose discipline and quick trigger paws was authentic.
After some time, one grabbed him on the arm. “You’re coming with us, Delta Leader.”
“Am I under arrest for a crime?” he managed to squeak out. “I have a—”
“Just come with us.”
And that was all they said before they roughly lowered a black bag over his head and shoved him into a pulled up vehicle.
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It wasn’t a long drive. Speinfoent knew he was still somewhere in Malgeirgam. But as a recent immigrant to the planet, he didn’t know the city well enough to know where he was being taken from just the change in directions and sound of traffic outside. The smells seemed to indicate they were heading away from the city, but that was all he could tell.
The vehicle eventually came to a stop, and he was taken out and led indoors, down some stairs, and into a cool room. As the black hood was removed from his head, he blinked in confusion as his eyes gradually adjusted to the bright lights outside. He glanced around before seeing a sign stamped in bold into the top of a table in front of him:
Property of Home Fleet.
Do not remove from Malgeirgam Base.
Well, that’s one mystery solved.
He looked up at the creature across the table. His jailer’s nametag read Pincrio. Piuncrio’s black, unkempt fur did not stand out among the misfits and ill-disciplined members of Home Fleet, but his uniform was clearly custom-tailored: there was no way the Navy had stocks of standard issue uniforms with this round a waist. Crumbs of meat fell onto the cheaply made table as the dangerously obese officer carelessly munched on a slab of jerky.
Speinfoent squinted. Pincrio’s rank badge showed he was a beta leader.
Hope glimmered in his heart. A beta leader was high-ranking enough to get him snatched from a spaceport checkpoint, but not nearly high-ranking enough to disappear him forever.
“Finally found you, Delta Leader. Took us a while too,” Pincrio said to him in between mouthfuls.
“Am I being charged with a crime?” he replied, still slightly disoriented.
“Theft, bribery, and treason,” the interrogator replied cheerily.
A feeling of disappointment washed over Speinfoent. That more or less described what he technically did by stealing that payment chip and using it to pay for secret Defense Ministry documents. He just didn’t expect them to find out who’d done it that quickly. Apparently, Home Fleet’s well-known incompetence didn’t extend to their diligence in tracking down stolen money from their precious slush fund.
“I still have rights, you know?” Speinfoent almost whined.
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The overweight officer sneezed once, spraying more crumbs onto the table. Unexpectedly to Speinfoent, this didn’t seem to faze or bother him. He replied nonchalantly, “Good. You know your rights. That saves me having to read them to you.”
That’s a good sign, Speinfoent thought, this officer is at least willing to follow the rulebook. Speinfoent upped his boldness. “If you have arrested me, I would like to call a lawyer to be present at this interrogation.”
“Absolutely, and there’s no need for a call. You already have a lawyer,” his interrogator smirked to Speinfoent’s confused dismay, then spoke into a microphone pinned to his lapel. “Show her in.”
Speinfoent’s lawyer was a bookish female in her early thirties carrying a sleek, light blue briefcase. Her brown fur matched his, marking her as someone likely from the bloodline of one of Malgeirgam’s elite families. Her slim, athletic build put her sharply in contrast with the plump slob on the other side of the table.
She sat down next to Speinfoent and set her datapad on the table.
Presenting her business card to him, she briskly said, “My name is Fleguipu, I’m an attorney on retainer for Eupprio Tech and you are now my client. Shut up and let me do the talking.”
He began to ask, “Did Eupprio send—”
She shushed him quickly and looked at him impatiently. “What did I just say? Keep your snout shut if you want to get out of here.”
Appropriately chastised, he leaned back into his chair to watch her work.
“Good advice there. You should listen to your lawyer,” Pincrio said, nodding sagely with a stupid grin on his face.
This beta leader must be missing a few screws, Speinfoent thought, or he was absolutely the worst interrogator in the world.
Fleguipu rolled her eyes and started, “Shall we?”
“Right to business? Let’s get started, then, lawyer,” the interrogator said. “Delta Leader Speinfoent, you are charged with theft of a Home Fleet payment data chip, bribery with the stolen data chip, and treason for accessing and removing highly classified data from the Defense Ministry Archives.”
Fleguipu put her paw on Speinfoent’s shoulder, as if to stop him from an expected outburst. She replied, “Naturally, you have rock solid evidence for all this.”
“Indeed. Our case is airtight. We found the data chip on his person. For the bribery charge, we detained the archivist he bribed at the spaceport and have the fully signed confession from him, as well as video footage from the Archives. And while we don’t have the exact data he stole, our forensics experts just found out where a copy of the classified data he stole was transmitted, and they are on their way to recover its contents.”
Fleguipu said, “Let’s deal with the theft charge first. The item was recovered, and presumably you successfully reversed the alleged transaction.”
“Yes, but about sixteen hundred credits were already spent and couldn’t be retrieved,” Pincrio said, leaning back and crossing his arms and paws.
The lawyer fiddled with her datapad and said, “We can offer two thousand credits to drop the theft charge entirely.”
“Deal, plus the sixteen hundred for restitution, of course. The bribery charge, however, will cost your client twelve thousand to drop,” the crooked beta leader replied with zero hint of irony.
Fleguipu's eyes narrowed. “Ten thousand.”
“Eleven.”
Fleguipu worked on her datapad for a moment. “That’s acceptable on principle. Your treason charge is absurd though. What you have, at best, is Misuse of Government Property, which starts at three hundred credits.”
Pincrio shook his ears. “No way, lawyer. Mishandling of Classified Documents starts at ten thousand credits. And I could separate the charge for each document. You should ask your client how many documents he stole.”
“Give me the room.”
“Fine. Take your time.” The interrogator stood up with some effort, which caused some of the jerky crumbs on his uniform to land on the table. He waddled out of the room.
Fleguipu looked at Speinfoent. “So… Eupprio must have forgot to mention that last part to me. How many classified documents did you end up taking?”
“Over a million,” he admitted, his voice dry.
“Dammit. What did you need a million documents for? Wait, don’t tell me… Ugh.” She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “You folks never make my job easy. I see why he combined it all into a treason charge now. It would be far too much effort for that lazy leech to charge you individually for each document.”
“Wait, are they really going to drop my other charges for mere credits? Even the bribery charge?” Speinfoent asked, eyes wide.
“Yes, this is how they do it here in Home Fleet. It’s not like the civilian courts or what you see in the movies. Get used to it.”
“I knew they were like… this. I just… didn’t realize—”
“Hey, don’t get all idealistic on me, pal. I went to law school for four years for this; how do you think I feel?” she replied curtly.
He held up his open paws as if to pacify her. “What about the treason charge?”
“That one is a little trickier, but I think our friend Pincrio here just wants a big payout. There’s no way he has the legal authority to get into Eupprio Tech servers to go fishing for your documents. Probably hasn’t even bothered to fill out the court order request form yet. Sixty thousand should be more than enough to get him to drop it.”
“But that’s still a lot of credits,” Speinfoent protested. “I’m just a Navy officer. I don’t have that kind of money saved up!”
Fleguipu sniffed indignantly. “Eupprio said as much. You can’t normally even afford to be in the same room as me. That’s why she’s paying.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, and she says you owe her another date. Apparently, she doesn’t want to visit you in prison.” The lawyer looked him up and down twice before rolling her eyes. “I don’t know what she sees in you, but what she does with her money is not my business.”
Speinfoent reddened. Trying desperately not to continue that conversation, he asked, “How did Eupprio know I was arrested to send for you?”
“Hah. Funny story that. A few people at the spaceport saw you get bagged by the Home Fleet goons and posted the pictures on the communications network. And someone who saw it recognized you from a video they recently saw of you with Eupprio in her apartment—”
“Alright, alright, I get it,” he said hurriedly. “Should we call the officer back? Since your time is so valuable.”
“Fine by me.” Fleguipu pounded twice on the door loudly. She shouted out, “Hey, Beta Leader, get back in here.”
Pincrio ambled back in with a deeply annoyed expression and slowly sat down.
Fleguipu started, “You have nothing on the treason charge and we both know it. We’ll give you thirty thousand just for your trouble—”
Pincrio interrupted her, shaking his head reluctantly, “No deal, lawyer. I just got word from higher up that we’re keeping the delta leader a little while longer.”
Fleguipu rolled her eyes again. “Fine, I’ll up it to forty for that creative excuse.”
“No, really. This one comes straight from the top. We need to hold him for longer. We have no discretion to drop any of these charges.”
“What are you talking about? We just agreed to fourteen thousand for the first two charges. Look, how about you come up with a figure for the last charge and we go from there?”
“I’m sorry.” And for a second, the corrupt beta leader did actually look apologetic. “Strict orders. Please understand this does not affect our other arrangements with your firm, only for this particular client.”
“Like hell it doesn’t! Why is Speinfoent different?”
“They didn’t tell me. I've got nothing to do with this. And personally, I have to say this is really unusual,” he insisted, waving his paws around. “This came from the Home Fleet Commander himself. And you must leave now.”
Speinfoent watched him escort the protesting Fleguipu out of the room and slumped down into his chair.
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ATLAS, LUNA
S.83920 Republic Defense Authorization Act 2123
Status: Approved for Senate Vote by Committee (12-0)