Posted by Civilian Seamus McKenzie (Future Citizen) in Earth - I’ll Make ‘Em An Offer They Can’t Refuse

(snip)

That made Cuyler pause, that wasn’t Revna, “Good music and something worth drinking isn’t Revna’s thing? That’s bull. But a problem for another time.” Cuyler grinned drawing out the wait because he could, “By virtue of your marriage to your oh so lovely princess you, my son, are now a prince.” Cuyler laughed so hard he almost fell backwards off the log.

Cuyler

Mike watched him laugh, took a drink, and then pushed him so he did fall off the log. “Laugh it up, Pops. Go on.” and he chuckled. “Just remember, Prince I may be, but that reflects on you. Don’t push it with the belly laughs, old man.” and he smiled and held a hand out to Cuyler.

Mike

Cuyler hit the ground flat on his back, legs still hooked around the top of the log and laughed…Looked at the bottle in his hand that he managed to keep upright as he fell over, that was empty. “HA! Not on me, sonny, she got the title from her mum, that’s all Helka’s doin’. You should see your face…” more laughter. “Hey where the bloody hell is Seamus? If I’m getting drunk with my son it should be both!”

Revna had been sitting in her Da’s office since they had returned, pouring over the files Tara had been sent. Revna was looking for two things. She was looking at the time stamps to determine when the files were recorded and collected but also the last time they were accessed. The records had been recorded over years, and that wasn’t surprising. What told her a mountain of information on this mysterious person was the last bout of activity. It had all been ordered, linked, filed, and organized right at 2 hours. Whoever had done this wanted Tara to be able to quickly come to the same conclusion he or she had without having to wade through all the information.

Revna also wanted to examine the communications to see if she could determine for Tara who the cousins would put up to replace her. That was also done for them. One Hamish McKenzie. She took the time to do a search of the records on Hamish…he wasn’t quite as bad a Argyle, or it appeared he was better at hiding it. If this didn’t work, she wasn’t sure how they, the Edman’s, would manage it, but they would take in all of clan McKenzie. They couldn’t be left to the likes of Hamish and Argyle.

She made a call, a favor, to an officer in Intel seeing if they could tell her who sent the files. They weren’t able to tell her anything. Their best guess was the files were on an air-gapped server and pulled from there onto a disk, and the disk was uploaded to her PaDD from a computer they can’t track because the id port designator is morphing every .13 seconds. For Intel to get the right number, their systems need .15. So she had them run a background check on the name Tara had given her - Capall McKenzie.

He graduated 2 years early, and then worked for a Cambridge professor that has ties to SF Intel on an unknown project. In the past 3 months, his behavior has been normal for the most part. But there has been a huge uptick in his research of clan history (both), individual records on everyone, the police report of Mike’s dad, financials of Mike’s dad liquor distributor business and Mike’s bar(s), and the finances of the cousins. But in the past month, he has taken great steps to move a lot of his personal holdings from family control, and has been much more sporadic in his communications with his family. Capall was the only one with the training and knowledge to do that.

Then she looked into his childhood. “Oh you poor lad. They’ve been emotionally abusing you for years in order to manipulate your genius, rather than see you for your own worth. That’s alright though, I see you and you won’t be left in the dark with those monsters.” She made a quick call to the comm she left with Tara, told her what she found and then went to find Mike and her Da....

About the time Cuyler started yelling about where Seamus was, Revna walked up and stopped. They were both drunk, her father was hooked backwards over a log where he’d fallen over, tickled over something because his roaring laughter carrying back towards the village, and Mike was…giddy? By the gods....well at least they hadn’t made it to the meadery. She knew those laughs though and she was really tempted to turn around and walk away. Instead she stood there, silhouetted at the crest of the trail, breeze blowing her hair away from her face, watching them draped over the log, laughing, and happy, except for the hang over they’d have tomorrow. She tried to bite back the laugh, but it didn’t work. “Mike! You didn’t save me any.”

Revna