Bullshit and Lies || Roger

[Abigail Gunn]

She'd told Vitale she was going to do it, and she was going to. She hadn't gone on a manhunt for him, though---not right away. She'd gone to her quarters, blissfully alone. It was there that she stripped out of her gear and laid it aside, then paced her floor with her arms crossed. It wasn't helping anything, but it wasn't hurting anything. Demato was back there putting pressure on Corvey, and even without being present, he was exercising that same phantom hand on her, constricting her neck, pushing for information. In a certain respect, she could relate to that man in the chair. He was at the mercy of strangers, with tension twisting in his guts, uncertain whether or not he was going to make it out of this alive. At the very least, she had Vitale Demato de Cordoba, who was going to be a really great damn comfort if she ended up in lock-down en route to Persephone.

She should have just shot Sutton. She should have shot Sutton the second she saw him, told Vitale that she thought she'd seen a gun. It wasn't like he was going to take the time to check. He would have been one more cadaver on a pile of them in what would have been a necrophiliac's paradise.

She dropped onto her bunk, hunkering down low, resting her elbows on her knees, interlacing her fingers and looking at the floor between her feet. It was a weird sort of comfortable, as if she was bracing herself to be bludgeoned and had only to curl forward to guard her head. She was totally at a loss for how to even begin. Somehow her first thought of, Hey captain, you know how Knox is an asshole and everybody hates him?, didn't quite make the cut here.

She thought about it, of what she'd said to Vitale, and how distant a man Roger was. He didn't put himself on a buddy-buddy sort of level, or at least she didn't get that feeling from him. That was probably largely her fault, or her preconceived notion about him. From the moment she'd read his file, he'd struck her as a serious, no-nonsense man, and more or less a law-abiding citizen. At this point in her life, she didn't really have much of a sense of self. She had a calculating manner, what needed to be done, what the next step was, who she needed to align herself with, who was closest to the heart of the matter, what she needed to be to make that next hurdle... and somewhere in the course of that, she'd really and truly lost her sense of right. She had no real idea if she'd be considered a lowest of the low narc, or... well, anything else. It was a closely held secret... but it hadn't eaten her up inside.

Her next stop was Roger's office. Well, to split hairs, her next stop was Vitale's bunk for a couple of shots of the whiskey he thought he'd hidden expertly. Then, a brief stop when she ran across Nate in the hallway to tell him no more than, ”Tell the captain I need to see him as quickly as he can. I'm going to his office.”

Whether it was something about her tone or the absence of anything personable in her expression, Nate complied without argument. Then, true to her word, she went to wait for him, leaning back on his desk and crossing her arms. Unless she opted to start the conversation with I'm starting to think Vitale is a compulsive liar or delusional, she really couldn't think of what she was going to say. She didn't see the end of the tunnel. Maybe it wasn't a tunnel. Maybe it was a sarcophagus.

Maybe there was no light.

[Roger Davis]

As Roger walked out of the infirmary and the debriefing of the new girl, Esmay, he was stopped by no less than three people on his short walk across the ship. First it had been Luther right as he stepped into the hallway, then Jericho as he went through the galley, and finally Nate as he got near the bridge. Each directed Roger to his office where Keller was waiting for him. As he went, each person seemed more urgent about it with Nate making clear that it should be his very next stop.

They had just gotten back from a dangerous operation and hadn't debriefed yet, but what could be so important? None of the three messengers had the answer. Roger had just been with a strange woman they'd brought aboard the ship hearing her life story and deciding what to do with her. They currently had a Cobalt officer down in the brig presumably being beaten senseless. Both seemed a bit high on the list. And when they'd debrief about the mission it would be all together instead of dragging it out one-on-one. What was so damn urgent? Had they alerted someone or done something that could lead Cobalt directly back to the Peerless? Was this why Keller had been oddly absent when Roger arrived in the infirmary?

Davis already had a slight headache thinking about it as he climbed the ladder up to the top deck. The captain entered his quarters first rather than going straight to the office and the waiting gunhand. Trux picked his head up, gave a wag of his tail, and then laid back down in "his spot." Clearly the dog had been very concerned about the mission. At least he hadn't left any little presents all over the room for when his master came back.

The silenced five seven from the mission was quickly swapped out for Roger's favorite 1911, and then the captain moved to the side door. Thus, rather than enter from the hallway, the captain came into his office near the back, right by the desk. Keller was already there as expected, leaning up against the desk as she waited. "You can take a seat." he said as he came through the door, the basic pleasantries of a meeting. "What is it, Keller?"

[Abigail Gunn]

It would be an exaggeration to say she jumped a mile high when the captain entered from behind his desk when she'd been watching the door. She actually had a second of being startled and frightened which, frankly, hadn't even happened when she knew she was going into a floor with armed guards as the sort of person that occasioned their being armed. There was no saving face, so she just exhaled, and with it, deflated back into a chair in front of the captain.

There was a good minute of silence when she just looked at Roger and wished he was that guy. The one that made conversation, that talked until you just about had to fake the death of a close family member to get away from him. He wasn't. He was all beard and serious eyes, that real rugged sort of quiet that made you think, I bet that guy has bathed with a splintery wooden bucket.

There was no sarcasm in the moment. She was silent, deadly silent, and pale for that minute. She wished she was one of those people who fainted conveniently. That would have bought her time and beauty sleep in one go.

”Davis, I don't know how to tell you this. Hell, I wouldn't be if Vitale hadn't made me.” she started. As far as she knew, since Vitale hadn't told her otherwise, Davis knew nothing about the ordeal aside from the snow that accumulated in the air between herself and her partner on the way back.

That man was about as subtle as an orgy of deaf people.

”When we were clearing a floor, we ran into Sutton. I killed him while Vitale was questioning him. Fact is, he thought I was a fed who'd arrested him before. And I had. Arrested him before.” That wasn't entirely coherent, but it was truth enough, mangled as it was in a forced confession. ”My name's not Rachel Keller. My name's Abigail Gunn. I didn't join the Syndicate for the platinums. I joined it because I -” she felt like she was going to choke to death right there, but didn't for the simple fact that she couldn't afford the hesitation. ”I was investigating the death of my father. His name was Samuel Gunn. And, all roads led to Onas Knox. I've been planning to execute him since well before I ever set eyes on Persephone, if I could've proved it beyond doubt.”

She said it all very clearly, and very quickly. Davis didn't strike her as someone that had the patience to wait, and there was no protocol for this. If they'd been on 'seph, she could have skipped town and then ditched the whole gorram rock, but fact is, nothing left this ship that they would have been able to see and intercept. There was no overboard, unless it was out an airlock and into a sea of airless nothing. She'd been gauging Davis's reactions since she'd first started speaking. To say he wasn't pleased was an understatement.

”I'm not a plant, I have no Alliance backing, and I've broken so many federal and local statutes it's un-gorram-real,” She bit the knuckle of her left index finger briefly, a little pressure to relieve the same, then continued, ”I'm not a threat to the Peerless. I didn't even want to be shipped off world. My fight ain't with any of you.”

[Roger Davis]

It was a long while before Keller actually spoke. Roger just took a seat and waited. Every second that ticked by only compounded the growing weight he felt. He had no idea what this was all about, but in the short time he'd known her he didn't know Keller to take her time like this with anyting. Choked up and unable to speak because she hadn't formulated the right words or some emotional reason was tying her up? Had they replaced Keller on the mission with a lookalike? Actually, now that Roger thought about it, Rachel did look different.

Finally the gunhand started. At least she spoke even if there was little actual information as she tried to preface what was to come. At least it explained why Vitale seemed off during the ride back to the Peerless. Something had happened, something that they didn't feel comfortable saying in front of everyone else... something Keller wouldn't even talk about in private if she had her choice.

They took out Sutton, the chief scumbag behind the operation, and then... wow. Roger's brow furrowed and his mouth tightened. As the story continued to flow from Keller, no Gunn, that original weight became heavier and heavier, the mild headache was becoming skull-splitting, and his right leg began to twitch under the desk. 'God damn it. It's always something.' They just had a near flawless mission and now here this unknown woman was taking a huge stinking dump on everything.

Gunn followed her brief reveal with some quick ass-covering and then went silent. For a moment Roger remained silent as well as he contemplated what she had just said. Keller was actually Gunn, a former fed who had assumed a false identity to infiltrate the Syndicate. To most, that would be enough to earn her some kind of horrible traitor's death or something. She was a snake waiting to strike, earning their trust only to hit them when they were most vulnerable.

However, Roger wasn't most, and he looked at what else he knew from the brief information she'd given him. She was a cop, presumably a righteous one, at least to a point. She'd taken down slave traders and she was investigating a murder. Hell, Roger had been a cop for a time. A border world deputy wasn't identical to a federal officer, but it was the same line of work. She also was investigating the death of her father, a righteous cause if ever there was one. It would be hard to fully imagine, and Roger wasn't going to pretend that he "understands" what she was going through, but if anything would turn him from law enforcer to law breaker, it would be such a quest. And although she was going after their bread and butter, Onas Knox, she still wanted proof first.

What hadn't Gunn done? She hadn't sabotaged this last mission. She hadn't killed anyone in the Syndicate, even Knox when she probably had the chance on several occasions. She hadn't silenced Vitale when he was told who she was. Redeeming as all that was, she also had done quite a few things that were not forgivable in the eyes of the law to get to where she currently was. If she truly were a plant then they were taking a huge gorram risk giving her a license to kill.

Don't let all of that above thinking fool you. What kind of a Roger post would this be if there wasn't mention of how he doesn't trust her? She'd lied... lied for years. Sure, she seemed incredibly frank now, but this could all just be a second lie or half truths. Vitale would be brought in to corroborate and then they'd run background checks on everything to see if there really was an Abigail Gunn who looked like Keller and how her father died. You just can't f***in' trust anyone these days.

Surely Gunn was dying over across the desk, figuratively and possibly even literally. After those few seconds of processing this wave of information, the captain took a deep breath to ease growing frustration. Finally he asked, "What have you got?" Most likely not what she was expecting. "What led you to Knox and what are you still looking for?" It had to be some serious lead if she created an entire new life to follow it, yet all these years later she still wasn't absolutely sure it was him. Far be it from Roger to keep a daughter from her vengeance.

[Abigail Gunn]

She almost wished there was a cricket to chirp ironically in the silent background. Roger's face had gone from angry to pensive. She felt like a gladiator who'd gone through hell and a simple turn of the thumb from Davis would be either her salvation or that Off with her head! moment. At least he hadn't drawn on her yet, but in terms of impromptu execution, the night is still young, as the saying goes.

”What have you got? What led you to Knox, and what are you still looking for?”

Side-stepping the fourth wall, I can't begin to put words to the sort of confused relief and comfort that single seventeen syllable statement brought her, but what kind of Jules post would this be if I didn't describe it as tasting the rainbow? It was in that moment that her expectation of having a very personal view of how Davis executed traitors changed into something... else. A total lack of expectation, simply because hers had been blown out of the water.

”An officer from the Burnadette branch of the Interpol that I worked with brought me a case file on Knox. My father was Alliance Interpol. I knew he was infiltrating an organized crime ring when he went missing. I know he was eviscerated and shot in the throat. And, I know that that's almost identical to Knox's method of executing traitors,” she hadn't brought her case file on Knox into the black, namely because she didn't have adequate means to hide it. It was in her apartment on 'Seph. It wasn't any new news, so to speak, on Knox, mostly dates and locations, pictures of important heads of his organization.

”Onas traitors to his organization executes by eviscerating and throat-stomping. He does this personally. He can't aim a handgun for shit. But these are people who are in his pocket and cross him. His norm would have been to have an undercover agent shot and try like hell to keep the body from being found. Maybe dismemberment, putting pieces or the whole thing under cement for a nice new parking lot somewhere, or sinking it in a lake. He'd not an in-the-open cop killer because it's bad for business, and a good way to get his ass on the radar.” That did leave the option that her father was a shining example of a traitor in the form of a dirty cop, which she didn't believe, but she knew Davis was no doubt latching onto the idea as she spoke. She loved her father to death, but she wasn't a naïve and sentimental enough person not to check on those leads herself.

Being as corruptible as most humans truthfully wouldn't have changed the man in her eyes... and wouldn't have swayed her from her quest for revenge.

”I know what that sounds like. I can be a character witness for my father, but... in case, I've checked bank records, investment records. Unless he had some second family on some podunk little shithole on a somewhere, he was either the cheapest bribe in the history of the feds, or I'm right in that respect. Knox doesn't do cash transactions. At all. The guy probably hasn't seen a platinum in the last decade. His money is electronic, laundered through a B&C Construction, Inc . Or so my banking records as an independent contractor for a construction company say.”

She hoped that Davis was listening to her. She hoped that something was getting through. She couldn't help but remember what Vitale had said, about how Davis reminded him of a big brother or something. She'd agreed with him in that respect, that the man seemed to be an all around decent, respectable guy.

"What I'm looking for.. is something solid. An admission, someone to talk about it in front of me, something... Or even something to the contrary. Another direction to go. So far... I've gotten neither."

And that was the truth of the matter. Some days, she felt like she'd end up retiring from the Syndicate before she got a break. While Onas wasn't an innocent man of a lifetime's worth of other crimes... she couldn't execute him if he was innocent of this one.

She'd never killed an innocent, and she wasn't about to start.

[Roger Davis]

Her story didn't sound right. No, it's not that she now sounded like a liar, but the captain wasn't believing that Onas was behind this. Roger was no expert on the Syndicate or Knox, but he'd had ties with the old Tavares Syndicate and was employed by Onas for a grand total of two weeks now. What Gunn said about Syndicate SOP and Knox in general seemed to fit with what Davis knew.

Overall it seemed like a botched attempt to copy the Syndicate or merely a coincidence. Onas Knox wasn't a kind hearted man, but as crime lords went he was probably among the kindest. He was also one of the wealthier and smarter bosses, playing the system and working efficiently. Gunn was right that he didn't kill cops unless he had a damn good reason, and even then they would just disappear instead of being found like that. The calling card was also wrong. It was similar, but off.

With all these flaws is was no wonder Kel- Gunn had spent so much time trying to find harder evidence. Sure, there were probably a hundred reasons that this could be the work of Onas and the Syndicate. Maybe they just rushed the job or got the wrong guy or one of a hundred other possibilities. But these possibilities were all remote. Even the likely that someone would bring up in idle conversation that cop they killed however many years back and provide enough detail was near zero. Yet any possibility was something for a vengeful daughter to grasp at.

"They find him on 'Seph? In Teporatz?" Roger asked. "Your friend in Interpol tell you which group he was infiltrating?" It was probably too much to ask to receive "yes" answers to all three, but a man could hope. Locations could be helpful but were far from definite and of course body could be moved. An undercover agent likely had his file locked as well, privy only to the most senior eyes in the department. It was actually fairly silly for Roger to be asking questions like he would blow open the entire case after Gunn had been living it for the past few years.

[Abigail Gunn]

”Redacted,” she replied. It was a single word, but it carried more weight than the Peerless cargo bay was capable of holding. It was bitter, and angry. ”The 'powers that be' had redacted locations and names in the reports. When they caught me going through them, they raised the security clearance on the whole gorram file.” It represented hours of pouring through quarterly reports from her father, looking for any references to hold onto. She'd gotten used to her father's monotone and professional writing voice, his narrative, and in some way, she'd imagine herself going through the experiences and hearing the conversations, tailing the stricken names he had. She'd tried to look for anything in his reports and compare it to news feeds from the sufficiently developed locales because, let's face it---the big fish didn't swim in little backwater ponds.

And Samuel Gunn had baited big fish.

”My source pointed me to Onas directly. It took a little while to confirm Onas's reputation when it came to dealing with traitors. Everything else was so right, so dead on. Even the method of death was so close to Knox.” She trailed off at this point. She lifted her left hand and bit down on her thumb nail, just holding it between her teeth thoughtfully for a moment. She couldn't lie. Speaking it out loud to Davis, it made the whole thing sound more suspect that it had ever been in her mind before. She just kept imagining it from Davis's perspective, or trying to think about how he'd see it. She didn't want to drop Becker's name because, frankly, she didn't want him to be hunted if she ended up with a bullet hole between her eyes, but... she almost wanted to tell the captain who it was. Her last action was not going to be effectively putting a hit out on Becker, if this was, indeed, one of her last living acts.

”I had pictures of his heads of operation. Those are, for the most part, accurate. Onas's profile was, for the most part, accurate. Reports of who he was dealing with, pretty well spot on. I can vouch for that. I did some---inventory work, for a bit. I've met everyone in those pictures face-to-face.” She released her thumbnail long enough to say what she did, never moving her hand far from her face, more thoughtful than nervous in her manner. Finally, she did lower her hand, looking more focused toward Davis. ”Fact is, I was close enough that I could have put arsenic in his coffee filters and been living on Paquin a hell of a long time before now. But, I'm going to execute the right man. Not the almost-right man.”

[Roger Davis]

When it came to government documents most of the best stuff was highlighted in black AKA crossed out with permanent marker. It seemed that was the case with Gunn's evidence as well. What clear evidence she had contained enough circumstantial evidence to provide probable cause for an investigation, but the cop in Gunn knew that wasn't enough to convict... and pass a death sentence.

The strongest evidence she had was apparently from her unnamed source, the guy who presumably had seen the info before it had been redacted. Or he knew a guy who knew a guy who saw it. Too bad you couldn't really get away with casually asking your criminal coworkers questions about a dead cop. It might have been easier to get the information out of the higher-ups at Interpol than from those in the Syndicate. Unfortunately torturing senior Alliance personnel was frowned upon by some, but tell that to Corvey downstairs.

Davis sighed heavily. In the course of thirty minutes he now had three people of concern on board. Corvey was getting the shit beat out of him downstairs. Then he had Esmay who he knew nothing about aside from what she had shared. Finally he know had a professed fed standing before him. Before long the entire damn ship would either be locked up, guarding someone, or looking into someone's background to confirm what they claimed.

"K-, Gunn, you're confined to quarters until further notice." the captain finally announced. More like "until I figure out what to do with you" but of course that wasn't the captain-ly thing to say. In truth, Roger wasn't sure what was going to happen. He sympathized with her, likely more than most, and she hadn't done anything aside from joining the Syndicate under a false name. Unless her story turned out to be absolute shit, she wasn't getting shot or spaced or whatever. However, it was yet to be determined whether they'd dump her on the next world they hit or not.

Immediately after passing temporary sentence on Gunn, the captain pressed down a small button on the desk. "Cordoba and Vanderbosch to my office." he ordered over the intercom. One to interrogate separately on the matter, and the other to see Gunn to her room lest she get any ideas about stealing a shuttle or something.

[Abigail Gunn]

She just nodded slightly to the captain when he rendered her temporary verdict of confinement, a very easy gesture that silently affirmed, Yeah, I'd confine me too. She couldn't blame the guy for it. For all the Peerless knew, she was a stepping stone to the Peerless men taking communal showers next to men who were trying to imagine them in pigtails and thong leotards with no tights. She hadn't blamed Vitale from the second he'd turned his rifle up to her head. Empathizing hadn't kept her from thinking of killing him and saving herself this trouble, though. And empathizing wouldn't have kept her from considering stealing a shuttle. Ultimately, though, it would be useless, since it would destroy all of her credibility and make it more likely she'd be outed to Onas.

She'd have given some bounty hunter prick a hell of a run as quarry, though. That's for gorram sure.

It's funny the thoughts that go through your head in the most serious of moments. Here she was shortly after being sentenced to “house arrest,” and all she could think when Roger paged Vitale and Luther was, Pffft, Vanderbosch. What a name. The second tendency of a person was to imagine everything as a worst case scenario. It was human nature to do so. She'd been imagining an execution since the moment Vitale had grudgingly lowered his weapon, and even now, looking at the very frigid exterior of the captain, she felt both relieved by his calm and in no wise comforted about her lifespan. The truth was, though, that death didn't really scare her.

She knew well enough that they could only kill her the one time. No matter how you spun it, when whatever made her Gunn gone, it was done. That's kinda how shit works in the biological realm. You couldn't resuscitate a soul, a mind, everything that made a person. She dreaded pain and torture, but even that paled by comparison to taking away the status she'd worked so hard to earn. She'd wanted to be in the midst of the men with the answers, and she'd worked her way up to being one of the necks that turned the head of the hydra that was B&C Construction, Inc., that major enterprise of which was, of course, the starship super trade.

Davis wasn't really an easy-to-read guy anyway. He didn't come off as relateable. Respectable, but not relateable. He was the sort of guy who had to chisel away a few icicles before he could take a piss, which was a very crass of saying that the man seemed, to her, to operate on a whole other wavelength. That wasn't bad, by any means. She almost wished she operated in the same way. If she did, if she thought like he did, and on some level, it was probably true that she did... she wondered where he'd be in this situation. Davis seemed to follow his own code for morality that had jack shit to do with law, which Corvey's bone structure was becoming accutely aware of in his custom-made suite aboard the Peerless. Would he have ended up a syndicate man? Would Onas be dead by now? Would he on the other side of the desk from whomever the captain of the Peerless was, or would Vitale's brain be on the floor back on Santo?

The 'verse may never know.

[Deleted]

Vitale had been sitting with Jeri for almost fifteen minutes when the intercom went off, summoning him to Davis' office. Jericho asked what that was about, and Vitale admitted honestly, "I don't rightly know. Can't be good."

"Well here," She said standing up, and fixing a cup of coffee for Davis he supposed, as he had his own, "It's late, and this might help him cheer up." Anything to add to her 'cute factor'.

Vitale took the offering, and nodded to the kid, then made the short trip to the Captain's office. He met Luther on the way there, and he gave him an odd look as to the two cups of coffee. Vi rolled his eyes, and addressed it first, "One's for Davis."

"Awww, that's cute dog. But I don't see any flowers..." Luther quipped.

"It's from Jericho."

"Uh huh, whatever you tell everyone, I can keep a secret." Vi rolled his eyes, and Luther asked the big question, "What's all this about?"

"I don't have a clue." It was as honest as Vitale was willing to get at that time. Luther had a different idea.

"I saw her earlier, asking if Jeri had seen the captain.." Vitale nodded, "You think she told him about the whiskey?"

The what? It took Tali' a minute to figure out where that even came from, and when he did, it was so ludicrous, he almost laughed. "I dunno bud, could be anything. I don't think she'd give us up though, kinda all in that one together." That calmed the knot in Vitale's stomach a bit, even if the notes of dread just crept right back in. When they got to the office, Luther opened it, and was given fairly clear orders to take Keller to her room. Luther exchanged looks with Vitale, and anyone could see, this wasn't over stolen beverages. But nothing other than affirmation was given. Gunn and Vitale exchanged a short moment before she left, enough to where Vitale got the feeling that she meant, Told you I would. After the door shut, Vi walked over and set the cup down on the Captain's table, and simply added, "From Jericho," Not that he needed to clarify to this man whom had sent it, but after Luther's jokes, he kinda felt heterosexually obligated. Then he stood by, and waited saying simply, "I can assume what this is about?"

[Abigail Gunn]

It was an eternity of waiting. Davis being there, her being there, kind of avoiding staring at him but with nothing else to do or say. It's not like she could continue the conversation. So, how about that treason? It was almost a relief when she knew Luther was at the door... but behind him stood Vitale. Luther barely got into the room when the captain gave him the very concise order to escort her to her quarters and keep her there. Luther's eyes went wide, but he just nodded, more or less at a loss for what to say. He knew it was serious at that point. She was looking past him, at Vitale, to whom she gave a ghost of a smile that was gone quickly. She'd spared him, and done as he asked, laid her life before him, and then before the captain. To say her actions were “good faith” actions might have been pushing it, since she didn't feel all that much faith in what would happen, but she'd left it all to Vitale and the Captain. She didn't know what Vitale would tell him. Hell, she didn't know what Vitale even wanted to see come from this, where he expected or hoped the trail would lead... if he even hoped at all.

Gunn moved past wordlessly, and seriously. As soon as the door was closed behind her, Luther wasted no time in asking, ”What in the pristine fuck did you do?”

”I've been fucking the captain, and he's kinda pissed at me right now. Nothing major.”

Luther laughed, but Gunn didn't. She felt mirthless anyway. She didn't crack a smile, just looked at him rather dully. She lead the way back to her quarters, with Luther following behind her scratching his head, mouthing the words 'For real -?' but not actually asking. Knowing Keller as he did... the jury was still out on the seriousness of it. She was probably joking, though...

Probably.

[Roger Davis]

It took a minute or so for the two men to arrive. The top deck was pretty much only the captain's quarters at this point with most of the rest of the space empty rooms. That meant both men had to come up from whatever they were doing on the lower decks which created a somewhat awkward moment in the office as the two sat in silence. Their conversation had come full circle from the initial silence before the confession now to silence after sentence had been passed.

Luther and Vitale entered together. The mechanic clearly had no idea what was going on. His face showed a mix of confusion along with slight fear that he might be in trouble for one reason or another. Vitale of course seemed to know what this was about but he too appeared somewhat confused, unsure of what was about to happen and possibly even what exactly had been said before he arrived.

As the two were crossing the threshold, Roger wasted no time in issuing his orders. "Escort Keller to her quarters." he said, clearly addressing Luther. He also continued to use the fake name that the crew would know as he spoke the brief orders. There was no sense in giving the rumor mill a head start on this thing. "No one in or out without my express permission." He added. "Not even Matheson." After a brief moment of maybe shock or surprise and then a few glances between the three crewmembers, Luther led Gunn out of the room leaving only the captain and Vitale.

Roger remained seated and stone-faced behind the desk, waiting for the other two to go sufficiently far down the hall. However, before either man spoke, Vitale reached out and placed one of two cups he was carrying down on the desk. It was "from Jericho" not that he had any doubts about that before it was said. Now wasn't the time for little gifts or coffee, but Roger couldn't help but crack the slightest of grins and then shake his head. What was a girl like that doing on their ship? Roger knew the answer to that one actually. Perhaps the more appropriate question was how a kind girl like that was part of the Montgomery clan? Roger knew her more distant relatives better (Kyle, Harper, and then Jonas in that order) but none of them seemed like the make-you-a-coffee-to-brighten-your-day kind of guy. The way Vitale had gone about delivering the gift was just icing on the cake.

"I would think so." Roger replied after Vitale spoke. He took the cup in one hand and gestured to the now vacant seat across from him with the other. "You can sit." he said in a way that implied the gunhand had little choice in the matter. It really was turning into the previous conversation, but now with a different person across from him. Hopefully the story would come out identically as well. That's what a stint as a lawman had taught him at least and why he was questioning the two separately.

"Some fairly troubling news from Keller." he continued. "I supposed that's what "everything's all right" means." the captain added, quoting their brief exchange during the exfil. He rapped the table with his fingers before ordering, "Tell me everything."

[Deleted]

"Some fairly troubling news from Keller. I supposed that's what "everything's all right" means." Davis said with a crisp tone, "Tell me everything."

Well, at least he wasn't berating Vi for not putting Gunn in cuffs and dragging her up here first thing. Vitale looked around for a moment, collecting himself. Everything was a lot, it wouldn't take that long, but man, you can't make this stuff up. Vitale started with, "I'm gonna skip to the good bits for now, give you the full debriefing later. Other than 'job well done' and a few other bodies though, not much to say." Vi paused here a moment, then took a breath, and raised his hand in the way people do when they're reaching for an answer, just, right in front of him, hand opened a bit, then, he sort of closed it and just dove in. "Before we began the mission, Keller and I'd decided everything. You know, every possible outcome, who'd take point, who'd check rooms, who'd hold a prisoner, how we'd deal with gunshot wounds. Everything. Now, amongst those decisions, was suits. The way we saw it, if you're in a uniform, you're a walking target. You're in a suit, you're a field day. Even a suit at a receptionist desk, could have been a boss doing anything after hours so, our agreement was, don't shoot the suit."

Her Vitale entered into a very specific testimonial of the events of the night. He'd never had training on this from the Syndicate, but years of telling stories at the bar were channeling through him now, with the exception to no beers, no impressed women, and no exaggerations. When he got to the end of the first section, six minutes had passed. The Cobalt dude was dead, and Gunn and he were going down the hall. Vitale stopped and drank his coffee and answered some quick questions to his best memory, fact check he supposed. Then, he went into the second portion, which, was how Gunn pulled her gun from his belt, got the drop on him, then the security guard got behind him, and he was humped. Then, Gunn saved him with a, very, difficult shot. Even for Davis. Then, he kept her rifle, but allowed her to keep her pistol while they cleared the shuttle pad, and then the rest was history. And Davis must have thought he was done, but Vitale raised his hand, "There's, a little bit more."

But, it wasn't just a little. Gunn had explained half her life to him, and details were fuzzy. It can be hard not to add in tidbits of what 'you think happened' to reports, that much Vitale knew from the Alliance. Not that Davis was some Alliance L.T. or even tried to be like them, but Tali' wanted to keep this as professional as possible. Part of him, a big part, was honestly rooting for Gunn. He hadn't said it, and he wasn't going to, but that was the deep truth on it. "She came down to address it right after the first round with Corvey. Off the subject, I may have rushed the second round a bit to be sure this was happening, but we are on schedule with him, and I think the third round will go very smooth. Gunn came in and I put the panic bag back on Corvey's head, and right there boss, she explained it all. I feel, like it was the plain truth." And Vi went into the last portion, every fact he could remember. This was very important to be specific over. It wasn't telling Davis what he'd been through, but simply what he'd heard. He didn't lie, embellish, or omit anything, just the facts, as that old Alliance cop drama goes. The one where the detective kept getting the pet duck back. It only aired two seasons...

The point at the end was, Vitale had given Davis a ton of information, but not his own opinion. Now that Davis had the facts, Vitale asked for this chance, as much to defend what he thought was right, as to cover his own ass. "I wanted, believe me I wanted, to bring this straight to you. But hell, she had me dead to rights, just last night, six, seven times. She could have shot me the moment she shot Sutton. She could have shot me in that hall, let the guard drop me, and claim I was a casualty, and who would have been the wiser?" That last part was really what irked him most, and he said so. "So before I came up here and ignited a which hunt, I wanted all the facts. And then after, I wanted her to have the chance, to come to you first, and show her metal. So..." Vitale sighed. This next part was really the most important part of the whole conversation, it would be the key, the cornerstone, and it, was the shortest part for Vi, and the only question.

"What are you're orders?"

[Roger Davis]

After a brief moment trying to organize all of his thoughts, Vitale launched into the full story. He talked about the plans for the operation, how things went down, the exchange with Sutton, their own little standoff, the remainder of the mission including several other near death incidents, arrival back on Peerless, interrogating Corvey, and basically everything else leading up to him walking in this office. It was fresh in the man's mind, the events of the past few hours, and the speed with which he rattled off so much information meant he was telling the truth, a story which fit pretty well with the one Gunn had told. It's not like Vitale had a reason to lie anyway.

"You did the right thing." Roger concluded. "The mission comes first, and you made the judgment call that dealing with this could wait an hour." Maybe as a commander it would have been better for Vitale to come to him immediately once back on the ship, before taking Corvey to the brig, but as a man he understood wanting to give the accused the chance to "turn herself in."

What Gunn had done, however, was not so easily brushed aside and forgotten with two sentences of reassurance. Vitale's story was backing up what she had already said and now he had the man's opinion about the events as well. Gunn didn't seem like a threat to the Peerless. She had the chance to contain the situation multiple times but had chosen not to. She had the opportunity to kill Knox as well but had held off. No matter what her name was, how long it had been, and what she might have done to get where she is now, Gunn was still a cop at heart and was doing her job on the ship as best as she was able.

"We wait and see." Roger announced to Vitale's question. "She stays confined to quarters and nobody is told a thing yet." Not that the crew would be oblivious to what was going on. They just wouldn't have an answer. "You and I will both dig into her story. Is there really an Abigail Gunn? When did she leave the force? Who was her father? Where is she now? All the questions to check her story." Two men meant redundancy in the process, and it hardly seemed fair to dump even more on Vitale alone. "If her story checks out then we'll talk again, tell the crew, and make a decision. Until then, nothing is certain."

As a final thought, Roger reached into his pocket and withdrew a small information card. "From our other new passenger." he said. "Gunn is the priority, but we need to check her out as well, one Esmay Willows." For some reason the captain doubted that either of them would be getting any sleep tonight. Indicating the card in his hand, he explained, "She pulled this before she went on the run. All sort of data on her research as well as other Alliance projects. Check her research for congruity with her story, and see if there is anything in there that might tie to Marcus Lee. Everything else goes back to the girl in case she needs something to hold over the Alliance."