It often surprises people to learn that I can't vamp worth a damn. A large part of the art of winkling information out of people without their noticing - or otherwise convincing them to tell you what they know they shouldn't - is the self-confidence to that says, subconciously, that you are someone worth impressing like that. That's something that develops over a lifetime, not just in a few years... and during the period where I would have learned that faith in myself, if this were my natural face and body, I was, well, a fat white guy.
Kinda hard to project sexy when the greater share of your hindbrain is convinced that a low-cut top would mostly end up revealing hair and lard.
So, no. I don't do humint. Even dressed as a potato Stace is better at it than I am. Which is why, once we were finished eating, I gave her a kiss and left her chatting with the two girls in the next booth over about the best way to put together a 'real' senshi uniform.
(For the record: They're all wrong, though Stace is closest. Take a full body suit with thermoptic camo, the best protection you can get, and the fit of an ultralight space suit - ie, somewhere between spandex and a coat of paint - add armored reinforcements on gloves, boots, and upper chest, then add bows and a little frilly skirt while tuning its colors to match either the desired pattern or the skin underneath.)
And while she was networking, I started groveling through Magellan's lift and shipping records. It was just as painstaking and time-consuming a task as you'd expect, but surprisingly interesting.
Like, for instance, tracking the twenty-eight day cycle of chocolate imports across the years since Magellan opened. Or the accident responsible for the sudden hike in gas prices that had derailed my last trip home.
What I wasn't expecting to find was something like a schedule of regular shuttles labeled 'Drug Runner 919' or something, and I didn't.
But.
The DEA's data on the street spread and method of production for the drug left two real choices for its makers.
1. That broadleaf was being harvested and then shipped offplanet for processing. This was the harder method to stop once found, since it meant that the labs that actually produced the drug could be literally anywhere in the solar system, but the tonnage of material it required moving every year was staggering - and would be noticable, one way or the other. If it were spread out through many individual shipments, there'd be rumors and such for Stace to pick up. If it went out in only a few large loads, then they'd be clearly visible in these records.
2. That the production lab - or labs - had actually been put on the planet's surface. Since the air temperature at ground level was still enough to clean an oven, that would've required some serious environmental gear, which would've needed to come down all at once. Ships that big landed on Venus proper somewhere between 'rarely' and 'never', and checking for such would produce a short list of possibilities to follow up in more detail.
Of course, if it had been a stealthed ship, or if the records had been altered, or if that trail was just too cold to identify, then we were just about shit outta luck. In the pure and unadulterated form, you could fit a year's worth of production in a single large suitcase - good luck tracking that.
As it happened, it didn't come to that.
Hm. Not the last of what I've got written, but I'm kinda sick of typing for the moment.
Ja, -n
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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"