Patriots Chapter 2

*Date: 3 Months/One FTL trip to Earth later*

The large female sighed happily in relief as she flopped back onto the bed in the small room. A grimace crossing her face briefly as the bedframe complained at having to support her huge bulk.

“I’m glad we got through the spaceport security. I admit I was worried our gear might be spotted by the scanners that the humans were using.” She said in Enkanti as the male worked to set up some of their gear.

“I wasn’t worried about that, the Humans are smart, but our tech is still a fair bit ahead in that regard. Our spoofer did the job, and they never noticed the hidden compartments on their screens.” The male wasn’t exactly paying attention to the conversation as instead he was focused on getting the fiddly antenna set up. The communications box small and low power, but it was still strong enough to get a signal to the embassy where it’d use a carefully hidden back-door in Dlamisan Foreign Office protocols to hijack a small portion of the bandwidth on their FTL relay to send text messages back to Intelligence. While it wasn’t as good as a full holographic set it would be more than sufficient for a deployed tac team and the reduced need for long duration signals would make it much harder to detect.

The female just huffed as she lay back on the bed, her eyes sweeping the room they were now in. It truly was nothing special, a typical sort of hotel room for a mid-level business representative. The sort of hotel that could be found all over both Earth and Dlamisa. The ubiquity helping to ensure that they didn’t stand out, either by spending too much money and looking rich, or too little and making people wonder why two Dlamisans were ‘slumming it’ as the human vernacular put it.

After a few more minutes of rest and watching her partner finish setting up the com gear and running a quick test sequence she took a deep breath and spoke. “So, what’s next?”

“Well, we start our mission convincing this Bailey to quit with his schemes so the process of integrating the Humans slows down.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? We’ve been on planet for about 12 local hours now and we’ve already seen news reports about him. It’s obvious he’s got a mixed security detail of both Humans and Dlamisans protecting him. We’d set off a lot of alarm bells in both governments if we approach him directly.”

This gave the male pause as he stopped to ponder. “Good point.” The male paced the room a bit and then sat down in one of the chairs near the window. The canine-like alien shifting uncomfortably as his tail had nowhere to go. “Stupid human design.” He muttered before returning his attention to the task at hand. “What’s your recommendation?”

“Well, I’m no business genius sent here to secure alternative revenue streams for my clients, but as your official security detail it may be easier to focus on the Embassy itself and the Ambassador.” Referencing the cover story as part of the suggestion.

“Bailey is no doubt a very smart individual with a lot of hidden ambition to do what he’s done in just a few short years but he’s still just an academic researcher. There’s no way he has all the contacts he needs back home just on his own. He must be getting assistance from someone as politically clued-in as the Ambassador and other members of the diplomatic staff.”

“That much is obvious but why bring a baseline fact like that up?”

“Well, if we focus our attention on the Embassy staff we keep our influence in house to our own government. The Humans shouldn’t find out about it, and the only way the staff will have to complain is back up their own chain. At which point it’s between the Foreign Office and Intelligence to sort out.”

The male nodded. “And it avoids the Human government from getting any reports from Bailey’s security detail directly. For them to find out about it, someone in the Embassy would have to give the data to the Dlamisans on the detail and then they would have to share with the Humans.”

“Exactly, it’ll slow down that communications chain dramatically and buy us time to work without the Earth gov sniffing around as well.”

The male grinned. “Sounds like a plan, first thing tomorrow we will be going to the Embassy so I can have a conversation with the Ambassador on behalf of my ‘clients’. Along with my security detail to make sure they know I’m not to be trifled with.”

“I think I can make sure they’re aware of that.”