Starship Armstrong - Season 2

Part 79 - The Trial Of Dr. Kang (XV)

Gibson arrived in his office, neatly hung his jacket on the floating novelty AG hook on his door (the only reason he tolerated the frivolous thing was because it was a gift from Misha), and instantly realized that a stranger had been there.

Various belongings and papers on his desk were askew. Gibson was very particular about how he kept his office so he recognized this immediately, but it took his mind a moment to work out just what, exactly, was wrong.

A pad had been moved and it was now misaligned with the desk. This had thrown several pens out of whack. The evidence drew his eye to the other side of his desk, and he walked around to look. Here he found the final outrage: the bottom drawer of his desk was left open. Open!

Sitting in the drawer was a crystal bottle full of translucent red liquid. Gibson grabbed the bottle, held it up to the light to inspect it, and darkened.

Gibson took off immediately, bottle in hand, to go find his boss.

He found her sitting in her office with the door open, surrounded by a few other of the junior associates who were working on the Kang file. They all had drinks in their hands and were laughing calmly. Gibson marched in without knocking on the open door first, and unthinkable breach of protocol coming from him.

"This is Martian Elysium," announced Gibson, brandishing the bottle.

"Technically all Elysium is Martian," said Ms. Jahangir "It's named for the region. Offworlders just call their red brandies Elysium as a marketing thing."

"That could be a good case for someone in private practice," said Patel, one of the associates.

"What is it doing in my office?" demanded Gibson.

"I believe the custom is what's known as a gift, Xenophon," said Nguyen, another of the associates.

His cheeks were flushed from drink. Disgraceful.

"For who? From whom? For what?" Gibson continued, still worked up.

"For you," said Jahangir, her voice dripping with gentle condescension "To celebrate the big case."

"We've never done anything like this before," said Gibson "It's inappropriate. We are not allowed to accept gifts or favors under any circumstances. And you still haven't told me who it's from."

"It's from me, okay?" said Jahangir, suddenly serious "It's from me. I bought it because I'm a nice person and I thought this win was something worth celebrating. But if you don't want it, if it's too inappropriate for the great Gibson in his ivory tower, then just give it back to me. I know a lot of good lawyers who also worked very hard on this case who would be happy to drink it."

"Take it," said Gibson, placing the bottle on her desk a little too forcefully.

He marched back to his office, retrieved his jacket, straightened a pen on his desk, and left.

His coworkers were already pouring themselves snifters of Elysium.

* * *

Someone in Gibson's line of work, even as upstanding a citizen as Xenophon, inevitably acquired certain contacts within the underworld. For the first time in his career Gibson reached out.

There was an especially large and well-maintained park visible from the window of Gibson's office. Now he was waiting in that same park on a cold bench. It was past midnight, and the man his contact had set him up with was late.

Finally Gibson saw a dark figure emerge from the night. He stood immediately.

"Are you Myung-Ok's friend?" he asked.

"That's me," said the man, smiling.

He was much less intimidating closer up. Scrawny and unkempt.

"Did you get it?" asked Gibson.

"Oh most definitely," said the man "I traced the sender and pulled the log off the originating node. It was just like you guessed: there was a much longer message. Someone tried to erase it on that end too but you can never really erase something from the T-Net. You know how information is; it wants to be free."

"Save me your hacker philosophy. Play the call."

"You're going to love this," said the man, handing a pair of earbuds to Gibson.

He played the call. Gibson didn't love it at all.