Jet Jaguar and the Kentucky Cat - Day Three - Part One
Day 3
October 19th 2013
Little Watch Inn
Near Frenchburg, Kentucky
Ruth arrived at the Inn carrying a large folder, she headed for Jet’s door. Jet was already awake. Ruth knocked on the door.
“Yeah, I’m awake,”
In fact, she hadn’t slept. Most of the night had been spent on the interwave trading emails. And watching motorball highlights. She opened the door, still looking strangely fresh.
“Morning,” she said.
“Mornin’” answered Ruth, looking half asleep. “I was looking over some police reports... on a hunch ... and found something interesting.” She held up the folder, “I was going through the records available shared state wide between the police districts. While we get a trickle of people going up, they always get treated as a missing persons case until they or someone else reports them safe.” Ruth sighed, “How ever there are ones that never get cleared, but handwavium was found on site. The thing is, the area around the robberies and those sightings has a unusually amount of such cases.”
“Wow... you think there’s a connection?”
“Maybe, there has also been a unusually high number of crooks who have just fallen off the map in this area as well.”
“Well... Can we mark them on the map here?”... the map still laid out on the table beside Jet’s pad. “Maybe there’s one near Mountain Valley,”
Reading from her folder Ruth market the points out on the map in red pen.
“That’s a lot of missing people,” commented Jet. At least twenty at a glance and one near Mountain Valley.
Ruth then marked all the points for those who’d been located in a blue pen. Just one, centred on Little Watch inn.
“Yeah, it’s a lot,” she said. “And it’s our fault for not noticing them sooner, but state policy is not to follow up disappearances if handwavium’s involved.”
Jet looked sour,
“Well yeah... but the Governor thought we were wasting too many resources chasing up fen who turned up in orbit a few weeks later. Resources which at the time, we best allocated to real missing persons.”
“Which makes sense,” Jet was ashamed to admit.
“I think this whole thing is beyond just robberies now.”
“I’ve got to report this in. If they’re kidnapping this many people on the ground.” she put her hand to her face, a dread chill running through her body. “At least twenty innocent people kidnapped, catgirled or murdered... that’s not going to stay quiet.”
“Maybe we can nail down these guys first before bring down the US gov on them.”
“That’s going to look like we’re covering it up if we try to handle this ourselves.. And if we get the US government involved, the whole of fenspace will get blamed for it. Fuck,”
Jet sat down, pensively staring at her pad. “Fuck” she swore again.
“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Ruth sighed.
“Just damned full stop.” a beat. “I’m going to have to call this in. Twenty potentially dead people.. We’re still going to have to stop them but.... this is going to be a media nightmare. And what’s the US government going to do?”
“Commentators will turn red and have a screaming fit like they do with anything handwavium related. The government’ll be little better. It depends on what they understand”
“It’s your government. I don’t know.” A deep breath. “If this comes out before we find them, then we’re going to lose them for good. They’ll run for orbit. We lose any leads on where the victims are. We lose any leads on who they’re working for. We’re going to find them and bring them in, and when we’ve got them, you turn them over since you’re the law. ”
Ruth nodded, “That would work.”
“I’m going to need a few minutes to send this back. Then, I’ll check out a few of these sites,” she put her finger on the map, “Do you want help from Fenspace, or do you think you could handle the meat element of this, while I take on the Cat?”
“I’ll need help, don’t even know what these guys have for hand weapons.”
“I’ll put it in and see what they say... but something like this is going political as well. Worst comes to worst and we can’t spare anything, can you get any SWAT or anything like that? ”
“Yea I’ll have to pass the word on to the Governor, he actually likes the fen. It’s why he asked you guys for help first before having to go up his own chain.”
The cyborg gave her a suspicious look, born of a certain political cynicism, “We can’t keep this from him. There’s a difference between armed robbery with handwavium, and twenty five missing people.” This is above my grade, she added mentally. I don’t know anything about politics.
Jet paused to get a hold of her thoughts. How did this work in RP? Just keep going, don’t sit around twiddling thumbs waiting for orders.
“Alright... um... I want to be able to take them down as soon as I get a package from Fenspace... something to disable the zoid. It should arrive maybe tonight, or sometime tomorrow. Try and get something ready by then, can you? I want to take these bastards down.”
“I’ll get onto him while you get on with your reconnaissance flight. I’ll feel better talking to him about this if I can tell him where these sonsabitches are,”
>>From: Juliette2@grunthal.fen
>>To: alitagally@grunthal.fen
>>CC:
>>Subject: Kentucky Cat [Development]
>>Right, we have a bigger problem here than just a mecha Cat being used to commit robbery.
>>trooper Ruth just brought to my attention a number of missing-persons cases around here. At
>>least twenty-five. As there was handwavium involved, the police department assumed they
>>were fen who’d launched and not thought to check in, so assigned them a low priority.
>>These cases are all gathered in the general area of these three banks. If there’s a correlation
>>between this, and the robberies... then that’s far more disturbing. At best, they’re being held
>>hostage but somehow I doubt this. Most likely they’re gone, dead or catgirled or god knows
>>what.
>>Dead Americans on American soil. I don’t want to overreact on this, but as far as people
>>down here are concerned, that’ll be 20 people killed by fen. This could lead to a Cam Ranh
>>situation between Fenspace and the US Government.
>>This isn’t something that’s going to be hidden...Ruth is going to inform the Governor, and
>>see what can be done on this end. At least to let them be in a position to assist, and we can’t
>>be accused of trying to keep secrets. The governor made the request so he’s already involved >>before this, but what
>>happens now is his decision.
>>I’m not sure what to do. I understand that Black Rider is delivering a package later tonight or
>>sometime tomorrow. At that point, we should be in position to bring them down. I would like to
>>do this as soon as possible, either with local police or Fen forces, but if you think I should wait
>>for help then I will.
>>Taking down the Cat would be no problem... but now there’s the possibility that there’ve been
>>casualties, that’s going to change the politics of this and I don’t know politics.
>>-JJ
Jet boosted high, accelerating up to near five hundred kilometres an hour. She skimmed the bottoms of the clouds, still lingering after last night’s storm. About six hundred meters or so, according to her own altimeter.
High and fast enough to not be seen easily.
It felt good to fly in an atmosphere again, the rush of a air tugging at her armour being something she missed out in the void between planets. Below, Daniel Boone National forest was a thick green carpet of trees rolling over hills and gullies.
That’d be fun to search. This place was huge... a search area nearly as big as the midlands back home, and much more sparsely populated. Three small towns, in three small counties, each as big as a county back home.
Flying under VFR rules, and far enough away from any airport, she was alone in the sky. Her radar could see a few bigger aircraft landing at Lexington, about sixty kilometres the the West. A light aircraft of some sort chugged up out of Stanton and a few big jets were flying a couple of kilometres above.
It was thirty kilometres down to Campton as the cyborg flew. Jet could see where the bank had been. Work crews clustered around the wreckage. It was a bigger town, the seat of County Wolfe, if she recalled correctly. All the town’s hit were county-towns... did that make a difference in the US?
Jet circled at a safe distance, looking down into the pit where the vault had been. Just like the other two, only a little bit cleaner. There was more of the building standing... to the point where you could recognise that it might once have been a bank. Jet circled a few more times, swinging out wider and wider, before following the tracks the Cat left as it escaped. She could see the spot where it’d been picked up.. in what had been a horse paddock.
Just like the photographs... it looked like the cat’d been carried away in some sort of frame.
Jet leaned into a turn to the Southeast, angling herself towards a point marked on her GPS... just to the east of her search line. She grimaced as she saw the tree-cover thicken. That was one thing the map didn’t show.
State Route 378 ran roughly East-Northeast, winding along a narrow stream along a steep valley. In her mind, she plotted out a circular area to search, centring on Joe-Ward Fork road. She throttled back on the engines in her boots, running slower on one thruster. Slower, but much quieter too. Even with it at full throttle, her back shielded the ground from the sound. And 400kph was still faster than just about any car in existence.
It’d be damned bloody hard for anyone to spot her, unless they were specifically looking for her. And then it’d just be ‘hard’.
She turned herself into a search pattern, zig-zagging across the line between both sightings. She ran along each valley, banked around, then headed back along, dipping down out of the clouds only long enough to get a good look. Then she repeated, to make sure it was right.
It was tedious work... passing over a few homes nestled in the woods. Above the wind roar, Jet thought she could make out gunshots... coming from the south. Shooting at her?..... Right, America, she realised. Someone was just out hunting or something.
A gun-range flashed beneath, attached to the back of a shed with a few cars parked outside. Jet banked around again, rolling into a sharp turn over the top of a ridge to run down the neighbouring valley. As she turned, something caught her eye... almost like a shadow crossing the ridge.
No... it was a line of fallen trees... climbing up from the valley beneath her across the top of a sixty-metre ridge. She followed it with her eyes as she turned... it reached towards Joe Ward Fork, picking its route carefully.
There was only one thing she could think of that’d make that line. It was the hardest thing for her to do, to stick to her search pattern. Half her body wanted to just chase along it... but she had to stick to the pattern.
It was down here... that was the main thing. It was in the area.
Another track, this time more wandering. She could see it cross over itself, before chasing along a valley floor. It crossed a stony track. Jet smirked as she saw pawprints crossing the road. A thrill of excitement ran through her frame... it was practically within spitting distance.
Reaching the end of her run, she banked and turned North once more, angling for the Fork road. She chased it across the stream, following a dirt track that’d been churned up recently. The valley forked and she banked right, chasing the road.
At the end... a picnic area.
“Shit!” she spat, pulling herself up, gaining altitude to drop her overland speed. Up above the clouds, she wheeled over, aiming for the left fork of the valley. She’d run down that heading South... then carry on. Another line of broken trees snaked down into the valley below, aiming for a yard.
Jet flew along the ridge line, focusing in on the yard. She had less than a second to take it in. First, what looked like belching blue oil smoke. Next, an office block, the door open and someone being pushed outside. A catgirl... Jet realised sickeningly, the man behind her had a gun to her back. At the entrance was a trailer, surrounded on four sides by what looked to be old cars welded to some sort of framework, the exact same size as the crop markings. On it, was a quadruped, covered in in a tarpaulin sheet.
Jet saw a flash of yellow paint. Arching her back, she pitched up vertically into the clouds, roaring out of sight of the ground. Jet swallowed bile.
“Fuck me not a catgirl machine too,”
She felt sick for a moment. Twenty-five missing people, how many of them had gone through it?
She flagged the point on her onboard GPS. 37° 40' 17.94", -83° 17' 43.38
Catgirl machine. She felt a chills run through her body as she climbed above a thousand meters. One last high speed pass to confirm. She looped over in the air, lighting her boot thrusters once more. Like a bullet, she shot forward, the sound barrier shattering in front of her. It felt like punching through a sheet of paper.
For a brief instant she saw the yard again... at the end of an overgrown dirt track. The catgirl was looking up. The Zoid was still there, parked on its trailer. That had to be it.
Jet broke through the clouds again before anyone on the ground could hear her sonic boom. She banked North hard, kicking herself forward to her top speed, making a beeline for Fenchburg. She could feel the shockwaves spilling off her body. They tickled her fingertips, and started to heat her chest, shoulders and wingtips.
It was like flying through an oven full of reeds.
Sixty kilometres back to Frenchburg. Her top speed was somewhere just shy of 1400. About three minutes flight time. The longest three minutes of her life almost. A couple of kilometres outside Fenchburg, she cut her engines, letting gravity and drag take over.
Friction burned at her shoulders and forearms as she pitched up, increasing her surface area as she fell. Below 200kph, aiming for a point she used her own engines to brake down to a gentle landing in the car park.
Alex watched her come down.
“Wow,” the kid breathed. “I wanna be a flying person too! Do you have any handywave?”
Jet blinked, “What? No!” she lied. “And your ma’d kill me,”
“Aw please. I wanna be able to fly like you. That was so awesome what you did and...”
Jet locked the kid outside, pulling her room door shut behind her. If ever there was a recipe for disaster, it’s a single-digit kid with access to handwavium. Jet found the vial she’d brought with her, and hid it carefully... somewhere far out of reach of even the most inquisitive eight year old.
The kid knocked. Jet ignored. She took her helmet off and put it on the still unslept-in bed, checked the messages on her pad. BlackRider was arriving at 02:00am local time, or thereabouts. Nothing telling her to stop.
Mentally, she selected the frequency of the comm she’d given Ruth, applied the correct encryptions. Snapping out her wings, she adjusted the two antennae on her back slightly. It’dve been best to do this outdoors...however Alex was still lurking and the signal attenuation inside a wood-framed building wouldn’t be too bad.
“Trooper, Trooper, this is Jet. Do you read?”
She waited for an answer.
>>
Ruth sighed. Governor Paule T Frite was going to have a -cow- when he heard the news. It appeared she was expected at his office as she was waved right through to his office, the secretary not even looking up from his Facebook.
Inside his office, Governor Frite sat framed by the US flag and the State flag, behind a desk loaded with papers. He looked up from them as she entered.
A severe looking man sat opposite the Governor. He was the police commissioner, Colonel Dupont.
“Sergeant Ruth... Not good news I take it?” he said.
“No sir,” she shook her head, laying the folder out on the desk in front of both men “This isn’t just robberies sir, well...” the short explanation “...we’ve had a lot of missing people in the area which we didn’t follow up because...well... that’s policy when handwavium’s involved.”
As the KSPD’s handwavium crimes division, she knew it well.
His gaze darkened “I know, that was my decision.” The Governor cut in. The unasked but still obvious question being ‘why are you bringing this to us?’
“I think there’s a correlation. This is more than just some armed robberies. I...” she swallowed a lump, “I think there’s a possibility that those responsible for the thefts, may be responsible for the disappearances.”
Frite opened the folder to a copied map, disappearances highlighted in the area around Menifee, Wolfe, Powell, Breathitt and Lee county’s.
“You see sirs, they’re all clustered around the robberies. ”
The Governor grimaced, closing his eyes for a moment, before opening them to stare right through Ruth. His grey-eyed gaze gave her chills.
“Bastards,” he said. “I want these people nailed to the wall.”
“What have you got on them?” questioned the commissioner.
“We’ve got a search area... marked on the map,” she pointed to it. “Our guest is flying over the area as we speak. She sent a message to her superior outlining the situation,”
“I know. I’ve already been contacted. Fenspace has offered to help.”
“And...”
“I’ve told them already. I don’t want to drag my State into this war they’ve got going. I can’t have them fighting on our land, with my apparent approval... it’d be political suicide.”
“But sir..” Ruth started to protest. Fen would have more experience handling crimes like this, she wanted to say.
“No buts.” he shot her down, “I’m the Governor. They were kind enough to warn us of the problem, but this is our jurisdiction, and our problem to solve.” A shiver in his voice, he was biting back on his anger. “They are our people who have been taken. These bastards are criminals and terrorists in my State, and they will be arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned by the people they’ve attacked.”
Commissioner Dupont shook his head as a warning. Don’t push this Sergeant.
“And our contact?” she asked “She’s expecting a piece of equipment from Fenspace capable of neutralising the cat.”
“She’s in.” the Governor answered “The only other options for taking it out would be to call in the Army National Guard, or make a request to the Air Force for assistance. If she can take it out without having to use heavy ordinance, then she’s welcome.”
Ruth was about the speak, when the watch on her wrist started to beep. A voice tickled her ear.
“Trooper, Trooper, this is Jet. Do you read?”
“Ah... “ she flushed, a little embarrassed.
“Phone Call?” questioned Dupont.
“Sort of. It’s Jet. I might have to take this.... it’ll be important,”
The Commissioner nodded.
“Jet Jet, I hear you loud and clear. I’m in the Governors office. Over.”
A claim.
“You found them?”
A correction
“At least that’s the main thing. Where were they”
A slow, deliberate answer.
“Got it. 37° 40' 17.94", -83° 17' 43.38.” she repeated. It appeared on her watchs display as she spoke.
“When are you expecting your...uh.. equipment?” Had Jet actually told her what it is called?
Another answer.
“Right, twelve hours. And how are they getting it here?”
An explanation.
“What?” Ruth stuttered in disbelief for a moment. “Alright.” she glanced over to the frowning Governor, “I’m going to have to end. I’m in the middle of a meeting. Over and out,”
She cut the channel.
“Well? questioned Frite, raising an eyebrow.
“We’ve found them,” she stated, smirking. “At least, we’ve found where they’re storing the cat,”
“Good. And the missing persons?”
“Our contact didn’t say.. She would’ve just made a quick overflight.”
“Get the information off her.” Dupont continued. “Sergeant Gally Ruth, you’re to be our liaison between our Contact and the State Police. You still report direct to me on this, not to your Captain.”
”Yessir,”
Haynes was going to pitch a fit alright.
“Remember, your Contact’s a guest in our jurisdiction, she has no authority or power here. When the arrest happens, it will be handled by the Special Response Team. Understand? ”
“Yessir... but, she has offered to help take down the Cat. She’s expecting a special piece of equipment to help.
“Good. Make sure she understands it as well.”And good work Sergeant.”
“Yes, Good work,” the Governor added.
“Thank you sirs,”
“Dismissed,”
Gally found herself smiling as she left the governors office.
>>
>>From: Juliette2@grunthal.fen
>>To: alitagally@grunthal.fen
>>CC:
>>Subject: Kentucky Cat [Development]
>>The cat has been found, at a local yard. Coord’s 37° 40' 17.94", -83° 17' 43.38. It’s stored in
>>the open. They also have some sort of lifting frame for it, manufactured using 4 handwaved
>>saloon cars welded together. No sign of the other vehicles, or their home base.
>>Disturbingly, I can confirm the presence of at least one catgirl. Either she’s been brought
>>down from space somehow, or they have a catgirling machine onsite.. If there’s even a
>>chance of a catgirling machine being present, we’ve got to go in and shut it down. This may
>>give us a lead on the missing persons. Hopefully there’s something salvageable of them.
>>Trooper Ruth is still meeting with the Governor. She should return inside the hour with his
>>orders.
>>-JJ
Jet Jaguar and the Kentucky Cat
Jet Jaguar and the Kentucky Cat - Day One
