Cassandra: Baiting the line

##OVERLAY BTY_0013..................... ENABLED
The hotel lobby was a large, airy and opulent place, dominated by the domed
diamondoid crystal ceiling and the view of space outside the base beyond, in
particular: the impressive ring system around L'Amour, one of Eroticon VI's
three gas giants
Behind the reception desk, Ulysses Freud, the duty manager was taking payment
from a departing rock star and two of his current favourite hangers-on, when the
comms terminals chimed discretely.
Wishing the departees a bon voyage Freud slipped onto the stool in front of the
terminal, straightened his bow tie, teased the ends of his impeccably waxed
moustache to attention, and smiling cordially, hit the call answer button
"Good afternoon" he began "You have reached The Fourth Base Hilton. My name is
Ulysses Freud, how may I..."
He trailed off into silence when he recognised the caller
"Uhh... Your Majesty" Ulysses recovered himself sufficiently to try and bow as
deferentially as being sat on a stool would allow
"Hi Ulysses" Queen Brittany chirped "I'm hoping to make it to Fourth Base
tonight, and I'm looking for a place to leave my stuff while I go party ...So I
was wondering if you had anything available that would be fit for a Queen?"
"Of course your Majesty" Ulysses replied smoothly, his fingers moving expertly
over the booking interface "Will your usual suite be acceptable? It's available
for the next few days..."
"Oh, yeah! Deffo!" Brittany grinned "Bit of a hush, hush visit though, so don't,
you know, go rolling out the red carpet or anything..."
"Of course not ma'am, the merest idea hadn't even begun to speculate. Shall I
reserve the Paris suite for the next few days?"
"Yeah, that'd be great. I'll be meeting Royal Ambassador Niples later on, so if
you could let him in if he turns up early, then that would be great too."
"Certainly ma'am. That's booked for you now"
"Oh, and I've sent one of the household staff ahead as well, could you arrange
to let them in too?"
"Indeed your highness, what name shall I let reception know to expect?"
"Umm..."
Cass quickly leafed through her recently appropriated collection of ID cards at
the other end of the line, and selected one at random "Regina ...Butcombe?"
To his credit Ulysses didn't even raise an eyebrow
"Thank you ma'am, I'll tell front of house to expect Ms. Butcombe. Will that be
all?"
Cass pulled a face reminiscent of a vacuous airhead lost deep in thought for a
few seconds
"Nope. I ...think that's it"
"Wonderful; and to which account shall I charge this ma'am?"
"Oh..." Cass waved her hand dismissively "The usual one. I'm the Queen. I don't
actually carry money"
"Indeed" Ulysses replied dryly "Thank you once again for your patronage your
highness. And if I may...?"
"Uh... yeah?"
"God save the queen!" Ulysses stood, and thumped his fist over his breast
"Yeah, yeah, yeah" Cass hurriedly cut the connection and pulled a cig out,
sparking it up to smoke in contemplative silence for a few minutes, marvelling
at the ease at which people were taken in by a few software tweaks
Finally grinding the cig into the overflowing ashtray, Cass pulled the handheld
out again
"Right" she murmured "Let's see to you now, shall we Seymour?"
It didn't take long
The Ambassadors comms system had been compromised some days ago and, for all of
its alleged state of the art encryption, had yielded its secrets with only
minimal effort once Cass had expended some time reverse engineering the keys it
had unwittingly passed through to the similarly compromised comms grid.
Pulling up Queen Brittany's numbers, Cass temporarily blacklisted them; it
wouldn't, after all, do to have Seymour calling Brittany to give her a piece of
his mind, and blowing the plot right open, so a temporary bar on any
communication between the two of them would suffice nicely
Working quickly but methodically, Cass finished her final checks and engaging
the Brittany overlays once more, turned to the main monitor
"Hol? Record this, for me would you?"
"What's that then?" Holly swam into view on the main monitor
"Hi Seymour" Cass started "Now, I know you're not going to like this much, but
I've decided to sack Little Cheftonia off for a bit, and do a royal visit thing
to go and take in those famous Flesh Pits of Fourth Base. I was, like, sooo
boooored I just had to do it; but now it turns out that you and the rest of the
Blue Dwarf crew are here too! So, if you fancy meeting up before I go out and
get violently drunk on Bacardi Breezers and wind up shagging a pleasure GELF or
something even weirder, then let's do it! I'm staying in the usual Paris suite
at the Hilton, so shall we say 7:30 tonight? See you there sweetie"
Cass blew a kiss and stopped recording, playing it back a few times and spending
time fine tuning the message before finally trickling it over onto Seymour's
comms voicemail via multiple sources though the slave system
It wasn't ideal having to leave a voice message in the hope that Seymour would
pick it up, but there was the chance that Seymour might suspect that there was
something amiss if he chatted live to Cass even with the Brittany overlays in
place, so this was safer
With any luck he would pick the message up before too long and make his way over
to Fourth Base in due course, but if he didn't: Cass figured she would just have
to cross that bridge when she came to it; but at worst it would likely mean
delaying her plans and scaling her operations back for a bit, on the off chance
that Seymour had suspected anything untoward; although were that the case, Cass
consoled herself with the knowledge that even a competent team of techs would
take weeks to unpick things enough to identify even the edges of the slave
system, by which time she would have long since dismantled what evidence there
was
Looking around the room and running her fingers through her hair, Cass took a
deep breath, and started pulling together the kit that she needed with her: A
wad of cash, the handheld, a few different ID cards, including the unfortunately
named Ms Butcombe's, and a few other pieces of miscellaneous and entirely
dubious use; although frankly the pair of handcuffs and the ball gag weren't
going to raise any eyebrows where she was going
Before long she was showered, packed, polished, dressed in her decent clothes,
and hurrying purposefully down towards the shuttle bays to join the Fourth Base
exodus in defiance of the Captains orders