K-054: Live Session Summary Part 4, Gateway, Toran City, The Government Building

Oliver is given some settling time. His quarters are a nice little basic apartment – it’s comfy, not huge, but it has a bedroom, tiny kitchenette, bathroom, study, living area. Compared to a lot of places people live, it’s palatial by comparison. His office is a bit of a cubby hole, but adequate for his work, and there’s a high window that lets in natural light.

A man named Brian takes over a lot of the interviewing; sometimes it is Commissioner Justine, sometimes it is Brian, occasionally both. Sometimes they just leave Oliver to write things out on his own in his office.

He is asked a lot of questions and gets into detail about specific things he’s done. He is asked about all of his childhood and his ma and his da; asked where he has worked; who he has worked with; asked about things in the Dominion. They seem to be trying to get an extensive picture of everything he knows.

Oliver opts for a policy of ‘mostly honesty’, he feels he has a sense of which details are less important, which ones are more important, and chooses to relate from his eidetic memory accordingly. He is upfront about his education, his parents, his heritage, even about his experiences with the terrorist cell, though he asks to take a break a couple of times during that part.

The only things he attempts to conceal – successfully he believes – are that the Legion recruited him to spy on the Vizierate, and that he sent his handler, Legion Under Sub Officer Felicity Lazar-Opes, a copy of the Argyle Notebook.

Brian is curious about how he feels about leaving his family?

“It’s difficult,” Oliver responds, “but we barely spoke anyway. I spent a lot of time where I didn’t really talk to them while I was operating against the government and messages are slow and it’s hard to keep in touch, and ma’s busy with work and da’s busy with…Bul Bowls. So it’ll be a challenge, but it’s not catastrophic.”

“Your mother’s a naval officer?” Brian re-confirms, for the nth time.

“Yes.”

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“I don’t think so. She got the same story as everyone else. I was upfront with her that I was here to chase somebody. So that’s what she thinks I’m doing, and if I don’t come back, she might think I’m dead. Who knows?”

“That’s a bit cold.”

“That’s realistic.”

Brian makes a note on his pad; Oliver can’t see what it is.

  

  

In a different interview Brian is interested to hear about Oliver’s time at GRRAS, Vizier Frederick and related matters.

Oliver is again honest about his thoughts and experiences.  Oliver says that his opinion is that Frederick seemed to be, “one of those ego-driven guys who was mostly doing this on the down low to get higher up, either politically or professionally or something. Otherwise he would have been open about why he was trying to find Argyle and the importance of finding government secrets with his colleagues, not with our deniable mercenary crew and questionable Vizier leader.”

Brian asks, “What was your take on Vizier Dicard, your team leader?”

“Thinks he’s more competent than he is and thought that accepting a special assignment might get him somewhere.”

“And you mentioned a Navy liaison?”

“Yes, that was the retired pilot, pulled out of Legion retirement for whatever reason to fly the ship.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Anyone who’s been in the Legion can be reactivated, but it’s uncommon.”

“I would have thought the Legion had no shortage of pilots?”

“He probably did something during or after his career that they had something on him, because again they were buying silence and servitude with money and threats.”

Oliver reflects that he never found for sure if they did have anything on Alan.  He stops and thinks, searching his memories.  He considers Alan’s professional piloting abilities, having shared ships’ Control with him, a team of two flying the Snark and the Maldemar, Oliver operating comms and scan while Alan was pilot and navigator (mission leader Dicard’s limited skills and ‘Watch Officer’ qualification essentially irrelevant). Oliver considers that, when Alan was flying the team in the shuttle down to the ground, doing docking manoeuvres in the ships, even flying the civilian Aerostat in the face of AA-fire – he is very good, a highly competent flyer. However, in terms of performing the Navigator’s role – plotting the jumps through hyperspace and figuring out what path the ship has to fly, Oliver considers that Operations Under Commander Master Pilot Alan Halcyon is barely competent. The team didn’t die and got where they were going, so Alan is obviously not totally without ability, but there were several instances of slow jumps, sloppy jump exits and long normal space transits to make up for poor jump performance. Having seen merchant Master Pilot Jennie Senth in action by comparison, Oliver suspects Jennie would have Spanial in hyperspace before Alan had finished logging into his NAV station.

He responds, “He’s a fighter pilot, combat pilot – not really a space transport pilot. “I mean, it’s not it’s not unheard of to reactivate a Legionnaire. Maybe they expected some type of issue and they needed someone who was competent in combat flying, or he was the easiest person to get because maybe the Legion wouldn’t give the Vizierate an officer to do something like this.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Brian responds.

  

  

In another interview, Oliver is reciting from his memory, makes a reference to Marshall Bock, and Brian follows up – it’s not a lead Oliver has thought much about connecting the dots on, until Brian asks him about it.

Oliver says slowly, “Operations Staff Commissar Marshall Bock, I assume that’s a house name and I don’t know his given name, is the head of Legion Intelligence Services in Octant 6. He was who Under Commander Halcyon reported to, and he was a former patient of our team physician, Doctor Fromm, though Fromm refused to elaborate further due to doctor-patient confidentiality.  When I was talking to the MaPaCoA board, and the other board members asked the Legion board member questions about Halcyon, our Legion Liaison, and the Legion files apparently said that questions had to go through Bock. When the Legion board member did ask the questions, we got a message back saying that Bock’s response was ‘terse and unhelpful’.”

Oliver reflects that he knows Alan was assigned to the sixth fleet while he was active, meaning he worked in Octant Six. He also considers that Engineer Erin fell afoul of the Legion and was ‘saved’ by the Vizierate after an undercover legionnaire died in a gunfight on her engineering deck; Bock could well know about that.

Oliver speculates, “So, Bock might have been the guy who was picking us – the Vizierate team – out for Vizier Frederick. Interesting.”

 

  

They ask Oliver a lot of questions. They want to know about Vizier Frederick’s offices at GRRAS, ask briefly about like the people in the offices like Melody, about GRRAS and how it works; they ask about Nanny.

“She was mostly just a liaison for us really. She just told us what to do for a bit when Frederick couldn’t be bothered with us.”

Brian follows the trail a bit, asks briefly about Vizier Mallory Harrison when she comes up, being another Vizier; he doesn’t spend too long on Mallory.

They ask Oliver specifically what he knows about Vizier Sardo Ohare, before Oliver mentions him, are curious if he knows anything about that person.

Oliver says he knows who Ohare is – ‘Argyle’s mentor’ is how Oliver describes him. Oliver says he knows that Argyle worked for Ohare when Argyle was at MaPaCoA. He knows that after Abbas Lozenge-Sok supposedly died in a vehicle crash and became Willard Argyle, Ohare took a trip to Aaran’s Pride, where he died and the circumstances of the death were classified. He has evidence that Ohare took with him and dropped off Lozenge-Sok/Argyle’s girlfriend Lyanna on a backwater outpost in Octant Four on the way.

“You said Aaran’s Pride was where the Vizierate forcibly recruited you, yes?”

‘Yes,” says Oliver.

Brian makes a note.