Caught Silver-Faced[]
“Hold up, Woodswoman..we have another one to add to your refugee transfer.”
The Horrorwoods transport crew(wo)men looked up from their study of the shipping manifests and the cargo being transferred in both directions between her ship and the Ghost Rider vessel it was docked to. They looked at the two dark-clad Ghost Riders and the biostasis canister, beaded with fresh condensation, floating behind them on a gravity-skid.
“What, another disappearance? Another witness stumble over one of your ops and need to be vanished?”
“Would we do that to you?”
“Yes. There was that tour bus...”
“Okay, I’ll grant you that one. Bad timing. They shouldn’t have seen the cruiser.”
“And the junior intelligence analyst?”
“It was either kill her, or blow the entire network infiltration operation! But this one’s voluntary!”
“I might actually believe that if it wasn’t for the fact that we came aboard early and saw her being dragged into the biolab.”
“..You saw that...?”
“Heard the heels drumming on the hallway floor...”
“Ah, we had to hurry through procedure. She couldn’t move as fast we can, being only human.”
“Is that why she was handcuffed?”
”So she didn’t hurt herself. Some of the fleshies get confused easily under the effects of the stasis prep drugs. They get...jumpy.”
“And the gag?”
”They hurt themselves screaming. Bite their tongues yelling.”
“And the spreader bar and lack of clothing?”
“They soil themselves. Makes cleaning them up easier before we slip them into stasis.”
“Right. Can’t drug them well before?”
“Look, we don’t enjoy doing it, but the alternatives are even less enjoyable or acceptable.”
“Is that why you’re dressed up like the robot police from ‘THX1138’?”
“...you know that movie...?”
“Another Ghost Rider I know shared her entertainment files with me. Good thing too, otherwise I’d have thought we had an attack of Agonarii on your ship.”
“Okay, okay, Droma and me were having a little fun messing with the snoop’s head before we brain-fuzzed her.”
“Before you then dumped her in our backyard?”
“Before we then dumped her on you. Now you going to take this one?”
“Well, after you went to so much trouble canistering and crating this one, I don’t want to know what the alternative is if we don’t. Useful skill set on this one?”
“Intelligence agent.”
“Another yehol-fowl farmer then. Lovely. When are you going to send us some civil engineers, doctors, or holistic pharmacists?”
“Doctors and naturalists don’t break into our warehouses and operations bases in the middle of the night with laser cameras and comp-cracker hardware.”