Written in 365 Parts: 166: Goose Lake

Krennar walked into the large room of the lake house to find three people already waiting for them. Drick was dressed in a tight fitting one piece jumpsuit with a slim utility belt. Marsh was dressed in simple green fatigues, functional and loose fitting without being baggy. Rodero had come in a cream tweed double breasted suit, canary cravat, laced cream coloured suede shoes and a bright red tartan mohican above a ginger bearded face with mirrored sunglasses.

Krennar glanced out of the broad windows that filled one wall of the room. They looked out onto a wide veranda that was over the edge of the lake. In the distance a v-shaped wedge of geese came slowly into landing on the lake bringing up thin lines of spray. The geese did not settle into the water, instead they started to skate upon the top, performing some elaborate dance with sprays of water, flips, twists and turns. The geese were walking on water and performing ballet.

“Interesting construct,” Krennar smiled at Rodero, “is that just for me?” They indicated the geese outside.

“Yeah,” said Rodero, “I thought you’d appreciate it.”

“You should have used swans.”

“Why?”

“Look it up.” Krennar turned to Drick. “I assume I am here for a very good reason? I also assume you are going to tell me you had something to do with the assault on the Volstron Compound?”

“Oh,” said Drick sweetly, “were they attacked?”

“Don’t play innocent, Drick, it doesn’t suit you. Can we go back to the aggressive sociopath please.”

“That’s not a nice word.” Drick smiled, “But I guess I deserve it for the bullshit answer.”

“You did, and so?”

“Yeah we were there. But I am not admitting to anything at all. Fortunate bystanders is how I will answer any question. There is no evidence that I was in their compound. I believe that if you check traffic footage, that was collected by Volstron themselves and transferred to Judicial Central during that assault, you will see that I was outside. I was clearly seen by a number of bystanders. I even had a brief chat with a robot sentinel guard who was preventing people from getting too close.”

“Well that’s nicely convenient.”

“Isn’t it just,” Drick smiled broadly.

“So why am I here?”

“We need your help,” said Marsh.

“And I need you to transfer some data to the Judiciary and I don’t want them knowing where it came from. You represent a number of people, hell you could even use it for a bargaining piece.” Drick paused. “Some of it will likely be of real interest to Hooper but I don’t want to pass this to them. They are using an, as close to a by the book, approach to nail their quarry. No need to directly muddy the waters with material gained somewhat unserupticiously.”

“Is it obvious that it may have been gained in an illicit manner?”

“Depends,” replied Drick. “Can you cook up a story that involves direct transmission traces of internal calls between Volstron and Judicial Central involving illicit obtained encryption devices? Where the information was obtained from Volstron’s own deep archives.”

“Not likely,” said Krennar. 

“Then best not to use it that way.” Marsh added.

A puzzled look suddenly came over Krennar’s face and uncleared almost as quickly. “Are you telling me you have access to Volstron’s deep security?”

“Not any more,” said Drick. “But for a short while we had access to their entire internal network and servers using a high ranking security clearance. The highest ranking. We might have made a copy of a lot of information while we had that access.”

“What the hell are you going to do with it? Once people find out the price on your head will skyrocket and that data will have an even bigger reward, whichever way it is sold.”

“Don’t stress. The first part of that isn’t as much an issue as they don’t know I took it. As I said I have an alibi, a government intelligence recorded proof of location. I was interviewed, as just stated, by a sentinel droid, outside the building, whie it was being attacked. I also will not be holding on to the data. It is going to some other associates. I just have taken a few specific pieces for my own usage.”

“And what usage is that, exactly?”