Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who packs the paper schematics
The thin man in the uniform of the Collaborative Administration (a Collaborator officer — who says our new cyclopean space overlords don't have a sense of humour?) sits down on the other side of the table in the interrogation room, having allowed a certain time for the arrestee to reflect.
"So," he says, drumming his fingers on a paper file, which is pure theatre; one of the signup benefits of the Administration is an alien infosphere hookup spliced into your retinal nerve. "Ariadne Patricia Jellicoe, yes? Disappointing company you keep, for someone from a good family."
"Have I been arrested for the company I keep?" Ariadne says lightly.
"You were picked up in the company of two individuals known to the Administration, in mech vehicles, outside the security exclusion zone surrounding the Primary Administrative Storage Facility—"
"So you already admit I wasn't in breach of a security zone."
"In mech vehicles—"
"Are those illegal?"
He looks at her with lizardish eyes.
"My good family retains good lawyers," Ariadne remarks, holding her hand up to the interrogation room's glaring light and inspecting her manicure.
"Your friends have already had much to say, Benson," the thin man gloats. "You're familiar with the Prisoner's Dilemma, yes?"
"Never had much edumacation, squire," Benson says agreeably, thumbs hooked in the waistband of her oilstained jeans. "But Umbra's a talker, all right, ain't she? And her classy friend, well, I dunno. Guess if you let her get started, maybe, but I'd say there are better uses for that pretty pink mouth."
"You're not a stupid woman, Benson. Do you want to go down alone for this?"
"Can't say I've ever had the flexibility to do that by myself," Benson says. "That sweet little classy friend of Poppy's, though, you know what I'm saying? Whoo!"
"You are saying Ariadne Jellicoe was knowingly involved in your activities?"
"Well, gosh, squire, I might not be an angel, but I know what consent means. I'd call her enthusiastic, is what I'd call her. Positively talented. Not her first time going down, you know?"
"But you do confirm her awareness of criminal untertakings?"
"I dunno that I'd call her mouth a crime." Benson tilts her chair back a little, face dreamily thoughtful. "A sin, definitely—"
"Your mech vehicle has a large block of encrypted data in its storage, Umbra Valk," the thin man says, elbows on the table, fingers steepled. "Really. You are out of prison for only eight months, and you plot a heist on the Primary Administrative Storage Facility? Foolishness."
"Heist?" Umbra says throatily, and looks theatrically around. "I don't see any heist happening."
"And you never will," the thin man hisses, cheeks stretched with the smug width of his mouth.
"So if there's no crime, what am I being charged with?"
"You — and your old criminal associate Benson, and your new recruit, the poor young girl — will be charged with conspiracy to criminally infiltrate and ransack the Primary Administrative Storage Facility. Attempted theft. Sedition. Our computing facilities are cracking the data as we speak; your possession of blueprints is the only evidence necessary—"
There is a knock at the door. A younger aide enters, bends to murmur to the thin man, hands him a printout, hastily exits.
"I hold the executive summary of the decrypted data," the thin man says, and holds it up to theatrically read aloud from it.
There's a pause.
"Yes?" Umbra says, gesturing for him to continue. "What data, exactly, was in my possession for my...picnic?"
"The complete canon of seventy-two old media television series. Seven thousand music tracks. Twelve playable sequential curations of said music, each entitled a numbered variation on 'Hot Fucc Playlist'." The thin man's hand is trembling, his face slowly contorting. "One point two million short texts comprising fanwork exegesis of inter-character relationships of the fictional figures within the televisual shows, mostly pornographic in nature. Initial statistical analysis for steganographic data hiding is substantially below the evidentiary threshold for further investigation—"
He slams the printout down on the table.
"We had a mood going," Umbra says. "Rich girls like a little atmosphere."
"I WILL SEE YOU PUBLICLY EXCRUCIATED," the thin man says, shaking with fury.
"That was easy," Benson says cheerily, after the impound flatbed has unsmilingly winched their mechs to the ground and driven away.
"Nobody knows how to do police work any more," Umbra says. "Thank god architects still know their business," she adds, as her mech's left kneecap whines open to reveal the long, thin hidden compartment in the machine's shin, packed full of document tubes; "talk us through the blueprints again, Ariadne?"