Gabriel Tam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gabriel_tam) wrote2006-07-22 09:17 pm
gabriel_tam) wrote2006-07-22 09:17 pm
(no subject)
It's early in Londinium's morning, just before dawn. Gabriel Tam is sitting at a desk in his and Regan's apartment. Coffee is at hand, largely ignored; he's currently bent over two laid-out sheets of digital paper in front of a Cortex screen, tracing one finger down each page and looking back and forth between them as he compares something.
"Ship model," he mutters aloud, "registration number, port-of-origin... wait, this isn't right..."
His lips tighten into a grim line.
"There." Fury flashes in his expression as he sits back, glaring at the terminal in front of him. "Got you, you bastard."
With a quick tap, the file in the background is brought to the front.
Name: Jeffrey Budd. Social Control Number: 2443-8936-0047-2298. Location: Massena. Profession: Transport laborer, certified Class-III shuttlecraft pilot.
Just like the shuttlecraft that had ended up in the cargo bay of Serenity. Wash and Kaylee had seen to it that Gabriel had received all the registration codes and identifying marks that they could strip from it -- falsified and real-but-hidden, both.
Reading over the file, he notes that Budd hadn't had much of a family. Besides his wife (Margarethe Budd, deceased), there was mention of three children-- and a sister-in law, citizen of Londinium.
Talitha McDermott, evidently, has just increased her family by adopting three abandoned minors from foster care under an Alliance-sponsored educational program. A few senators had spoken highly of it in a newsbit some years prior, when it was originally founded.
There's more, of course. By the time Gabriel Tam leaves for Parliament, all the many pieces, so carefully and assiduously collected over the past weeks, have finally fallen together. The picture they form is clear.
Scientia potentia est, knowledge is power, and now he has the leverage he needs. Shortly after arriving at his office, Gabriel has arranged a meeting for later that afternoon.
It seems he and Senator Fred Atwood have some things to discuss.
"Ship model," he mutters aloud, "registration number, port-of-origin... wait, this isn't right..."
His lips tighten into a grim line.
"There." Fury flashes in his expression as he sits back, glaring at the terminal in front of him. "Got you, you bastard."
With a quick tap, the file in the background is brought to the front.
Name: Jeffrey Budd. Social Control Number: 2443-8936-0047-2298. Location: Massena. Profession: Transport laborer, certified Class-III shuttlecraft pilot.
Just like the shuttlecraft that had ended up in the cargo bay of Serenity. Wash and Kaylee had seen to it that Gabriel had received all the registration codes and identifying marks that they could strip from it -- falsified and real-but-hidden, both.
Reading over the file, he notes that Budd hadn't had much of a family. Besides his wife (Margarethe Budd, deceased), there was mention of three children-- and a sister-in law, citizen of Londinium.
Talitha McDermott, evidently, has just increased her family by adopting three abandoned minors from foster care under an Alliance-sponsored educational program. A few senators had spoken highly of it in a newsbit some years prior, when it was originally founded.
There's more, of course. By the time Gabriel Tam leaves for Parliament, all the many pieces, so carefully and assiduously collected over the past weeks, have finally fallen together. The picture they form is clear.
Scientia potentia est, knowledge is power, and now he has the leverage he needs. Shortly after arriving at his office, Gabriel has arranged a meeting for later that afternoon.
It seems he and Senator Fred Atwood have some things to discuss.