[Plot] Biker Chicks from Maldon

[Amy Chen]

"You want to do this here? The guards will be on us if there is too much noise here, and I'd hate to have to explain a dead body to them."

[Nika Novak]

"I don't want to do this at all but I will if you insist on pretending mercenary honor is a thing. Just give me the files and I'll be out of your hair."

[Amy Chen]

"You know I can't do that, Novak. You pledged loyalty. Loyalty means not asking questions."

[Nika Novak]

"Loyalty to House Karkov, not the King." she says with a smirk and kind of a dismissive wave of her hand that means the bolts in it are no longer aimed at Chen. On the other hand however she pulls out one of her restraining bolts and fires the two bolts so the nylon strap connecting their ends will catch around Chen's foot and staple it to the ground. With her (hopefully) hobbled, she spins around into a kick aimed at the hand holding the sword.

[Amy Chen]

Chen bends back out of the way of the kick, her spine bending almost unnaturally as she avoids Nika's attack. She IS stapled to the floor, however, and so her retaliatory slash with her sword, coming from high to low, is limited in range.

"From what I hear, House Karkov is no longer loyal to you," she quips back. "You would spit at your King so easily?"

[Nika Novak]

"Loyalty doesn't disappear just because it's no longer reciprocated. I know that's hard to understand for someone who's loyalty is bought."

Nika doesn't retreat out of Chen's reach, instead lifting her arm to block the strike. The immediate blow glances off her brace but the follow-through slices clothes and leaves a bleeding cut on her forearm. She follows up with a kick to the knee of Chen's immobilized leg.

[Amy Chen]

Nika's kick knocks Chen down to one knee. She responded by shooting out her other leg, trying to trip Nika up and send both women to the floor.

[Nika Novak]

Nika lands on top of her, trying to pin the hand holding the sword to the ground with one hand while reaching for another set of restraining bolts with the other.

[Amy Chen]

Nika was able to pin the sword hand, effectively taking that out of operation for now. That occupied one hand. Her other hand was occupied by grabbing for restraining bolts, which she would be able to do.

Unfortunately, Nika only had two hands, and that meant that her options for blocking the elbow flying towards her face were minimal, at best.

Also unfortunately, the thumping of the two women hitting the ground had alerted people over the comms, and armed guards were heading their way.

[Nika Novak]

Nika's head snaps backwards from the blow and with guards on the way it's time to stop playing nice. She fires the restraining bolt at Chen, but instead of trying to catch her wrist in the strap she just aims to nail both bolts through her shoulder and into the ground to staple her to the floor.

[Narrator]

Chen cried out as the bolts pierced through muscle and bone, pinning her to the floor. That left one hand pinned by Nika; the other pinned to the floor by the bolts.


And one door burst open with guards opening fire -- wildly, in a spray, as they were firing before the door was open to catch anyone standing up. Fortunately, both Nika and Chen were on the ground, so no one got immediately shot.

[Nika Novak]

Nika makes a grab for the USB stick and whatever loose papers Chen might have gotten her hands on before she interrupted her. And then she scrambles for the desk to tip it towards the door at the same time as she gets to her feet, eyes darting about for a window or unoccupied door.

[Narrator]

Nika was able to grab both the memory stick and a couple folders of papers -- who knew what they were, but if the Concerned Citizens wanted it, now Nika had it.

She was also able to tip the desk to the floor, and just in time for a spray of bullets to slam into it. A crossbow bolt whizzed past her ear; Chen had quickly used her free hand to re-arm herself, but her aim was shit due to being pinned to the floor and losing a bit of blood.

There was an unoccupied door leading somewhere else in the mansion; no guards were there yet, but that may only be a matter of time. There was also a window overlooking the lawn; it was a two-story drop without a lot of cover on a long run towards the edge of the property, but it was also away from the people currently shooting at her.

[Nika Novak]

Nika grabs two of the legs of the table. They're a bit big for her power to affect and being part of a larger whole always somehow made it more difficult, but she forces enough of it into them to make the table slide into the guards while she throws herself backwards through the window and one stomach-lurching moment later lets her power snap one of her braces into place, breaking her fall with a shoulder-socket-wrenching jerk. Probably dislocated. She can worry about that later. She breaks into a mad dash towards the fence.

[Narrator]

Gunfire. Gunfire and shouting.

That's what Nika hears through the haze of pain from her dislocated shoulder as she makes a dash for the fence. There isn't a regular exit on the back of the building, and the guards indoors weren't carrying long range-weapons, so it was mostly noise and bluster, at least until anyone from the front of the house could make their way over.

Then again, someone in the house was a good shot. The gunfire stopped for a moment, and then something impacted Nika's left calf just as she was approaching the fence -- enough to break her stride and hurt like hell, though she was working on enough adrenaline that she could probably still get over the wall on sheer determination alone. There was time for worrying about damage later; she had to get out and avoid what was bound to be a fairly active pursuit.

[Nika Novak]

Nika rolls through the stumble, shoulder screaming in protest but better than going down entirely. She still has one good arm to work with and that's hopefully enough. She stuffs the USB stick and papers into her pockets and uses the brace on her free arm to pull herself into the air. First straight up, then forward to clear the fence. She tries her best to stick the landing on one leg, but ends up coming down on the injured one as well. With no time to stop she glances around for the closest car she can find, punches out the lock cylinder with one of her bolts and drags herself into the seat. Before closing the door she allows herself a couple seconds to steady her dislocated arm, let her power flow into the brace and jerk it forward to re-set her shoulder. Better now than try to hotwire a car with one hand.

[Narrator]

The first car she finds is an old piece of crap; a far cry from the opulence of the Svozilov palace (and a far different dichotomy than you'd see in, say, Aniana). That did mean, however, that it was easy to hotwire, and it was less conspicuous in traffic than something nice from the Princess' private collection. She'd be able to get it started quickly enough that there was little chance she had been directly observed leaving the premises...

[Nika Novak]

Good old reliably shitty cars. She slams the car into gear and her foot on the gas. The faster she gets out of the immediate area the less likely someone will spot a license plate or car make. Once she's a couple blocks away she allows herself the luxury of looking at her leg to evaluate where her priorities should lie; putting more distance between herself and a lot of angry people or first aid.

[Narrator]

She hadn't been shot with a bullet. It was, instead, some kind of dart? With a slightly flashing red tip.

Tracker bolt. Had to be. Easy enough to get rid of, and it's a good thing she spotted it NOW rather than waiting until she had had more distance between herself and the palace. It did explain why cars were roaring in the distance, though.

[Nika Novak]

"Blyat!" she curses and reaches down to pull it out of her leg. She waits until she turns a corner and throws it at a passing car, hoping that's enough to throw them off her trail.

[Narrator]

The sound of cars screaming past her as she drove down several side streets indicated that yes, at least for now, that would work. Probably a good idea to make herself scarce, at least on the short term. And maybe she could start piecing together just what the fuck and who the fuck and WHEN the fuck was going on.

[Nika Novak]

She keeps going for a good twenty minutes or so until she's certain she lost her pursuers, occasionally glancing over at the documents tossed onto the passenger seat. Finally she pulls over in a quiet side-street and starts going through the papers.

[Narrator]

The papers, the dramatic papers she had gone through so much to get, the papers she had been shot trying to get, the papers who she betrayed an unknown and perhaps unknowable group of shady figures to get...

...turned out to be mostly a bunch of boring financial information! Hurray!

OK, so a lot of this was the general day-to-day records of the Svozilov's, which would be enough to make anyone's eyes glaze over, even if they were in accountancy. Transfers to and from various accounts, large purchases of expensive and gaudy artworks, dealings with the Sablinovas and Tomans which would be great evidence for a conspiracy to overthrow the King had they not, you know, actively tried to murder Katarina. Kind of superfluous to gather evidence at that point, when you think about it.

But Nika could flip through all of that fairly quickly, because surely, all that stuff would be on the USB, right? No, the point of physical documents is records of things you don't want a hacker getting a hold of; stuff too sensitive to be on the internet, so there had to be something juicy here.

Which is why it was odd that there was a big list of charitable donations here. Normally, these sorts of royal houses try to play up how magnanimous and wonderful they are at all sorts of things, not hide it in the back of a secret ledger. Especially someone like the Svozilovs, who had a reputation for being a bit stuck up and on-the-mount and the like; above and apart from their people rather than part of it. And yet, there were donations here to Symkarian Public Broadcasting, and the Brighter Future Society, and the Social Research Institute, and Concerned Women for Symkaria and the Symkarian Family Association...

Huh. Well, that was all very....much of a oneness, in that. The latter three were all very 'traditional values'-oriented groups. They were very much on the forefront of the anti-Western values push throughout Symkaria. It did tie in a little bit with them fighting against Katarina's girlfriend Jez as a figure in the royal household, so I suppose there's at least no hypocrisy there, but why keep it secret? And the former two were both early childhood education stuff, producing a lot of programs designed to entertain while educating and curriculum for teachers to help reinforce positive values and social competence from a very young age. Heck, Katarina had appeared on a few of them when she was very young. None of that was really something that needed to be hidden. Hell, King Stefan met with people from all of these groups on a semi-regular basis; there was no shame in any of that.

But wow, were the Svozilovs dumping quite a lot of money into them. In fact, that was almost a suspicious amount of money, being funneled through various organizations and shell corporations and the like. If they really were sending that much money, surely they'd want to make a big deal out of it, and yet they had seemed to go well out of their way to keep that quiet. And yet, month after month after month, the money was flowing.

Except for one month, about eighteen months ago. A blank spot on the ledger. With a handwritten note: "April report late. Victorious." It should, of course, be noted that the note was in Symkarian, but the word 'Victorious' was not, so was that a codename? An organization of some kind? Did Princess Lilith just like throwing in random English words on occasion?


The only other piece of information that immediately jumped out was significant costs for refuelling the Svozilov private jet, as well as maintenance. A lot more maintenance than should be required if they were just bombing around Symkaria. Nika didn't have a perfect memory of the travel plans for houses she was NOT responsible for protecting, but she probably would have remembered if the Svozilovs were globetrotters.

[Nika Novak]

A lot of travel and donations, codenames and skipped payments... They were clearly up to something but what exactly escapes her. Who or whatever Victorious is seems to be some kind of spy or source but on who? And why? The charities and organizations are clearly being used to obfuscate the money trail but are they in on it in their entirety? Aside from their general political and social stance, what do they have in common? Who owns or runs them? At least some of them have the public support of the Karkov's. How deep does this go? And what the hell is she supposed to do about any of this?

She carefully tucks away all the paperwork and looks at the USB stick. Why bother with electronic files if the potentially damning stuff is on paper? Maybe there's something else to this. She starts the car again and goes about finding an internet cafe or copy shop that's open to check the contents of the USB stick.

[Narrator]

A lot of travel and donations, codenames and skipped payments... They were clearly up to something but what exactly escapes her. Who or whatever Victorious is seems to be some kind of spy or source but on who? And why? The charities and organizations are clearly being used to obfuscate the money trail but are they in on it in their entirety? Aside from their general political and social stance, what do they have in common? Who owns or runs them? At least some of them have the public support of the Karkov's. How deep does this go? And what the hell is she supposed to do about any of this?

She carefully tucks away all the paperwork and looks at the USB stick. Why bother with electronic files if the potentially damning stuff is on paper? Maybe there's something else to this. She starts the car again and goes about finding an internet cafe or copy shop that's open to check the contents of the USB stick.

The electronic financial information are all officially above board and whatnot -- they're what the Svozilov's are officially, publicly doing. The fact that they differ from the hard copy is part of the point -- the Svozilovs were hiding their activities from the general public, but keeping records for...why, exactly? Their own reasons, one presumed. And the Concerned Citizens, whoever they were, were trying to steal this information for...why? Were they going to turn it over to the King? Why would King Stefan need more justification after they had attacked his daughter. Were they using it for blackmail? Were they some kind of secret police, off the books, so blood couldn't be tracked back to the Karkovs? Nika hadn't heard of such a thing, but then, I suppose you wouldn't go telling anyone else about your secret attack squad.

It doesn't seem like the charities RECEIVING the money is in any obfuscated; it's just that a lot of work had been done to obfuscate WHERE the money was coming from. As far as the charities themselves were concerned, they were getting lots of individual donations from a wide variety of sources; it wasn't all the Svozilovs. Or whoever was giving the Svozilovs that money, because as Nika checked the main books, she could see there was just no way that this particular royal house was just sitting on gobs and gobs of cash somewhere. If they were secretly sending this much cash somewhere, they had to be getting it from somewhere, and the official, main books on the USB couldn't account for that in any way. It was just...not in any sort of official record whatsoever; the physical paper was the only proof that it existed. And now Nika had that, which was interesting. If only she knew what to do with it.

As for the charities themselves, a cursory Google search wouldn't show anything in common about them other than their general mission at shunning Western ideals and desires. Hell, "There are no gay people in Symkaria" was practically the slogan of the Symkarian Family Association. But they weren't, like, terrorist groups or something, and while they may have had too much of King Stefan's ear at times, they seemed harmless enough, right? And they worked in different ways, too -- the Brighter Future Society was more about promoting positive role models and working with schools to help with cultural and social education, while the Concerned Women for Symkaria were more about pointing and shunning. The SRI were a bunch of data scientists; the SFA a bunch of religious moralizers...not a lot in common with methods anywhere along the line. The one thing they did have in common was that none of them existed before the civil war that brought Katarina's grandfather to power 50 years ago, but that wasn't too surprising, right? It was a fairly stark line in Symkarian history.

But the USB also contained much of the rest of the contents of the Svozilov computer; it wasn't just an excel sheet with some numbers in it. Chat logs, internet history, documents from the Svozilov's security team and their advisors, photographs and video clips -- quite a haul of, well, stuff, for someone who might know what they were looking for.

[Nika Novak]

Not much about the charities that Nika doesn't already know in some capacity. Hell, to a certain extent this is stuff she grew up hearing and never questioned. Until recently and especially now that traitors to the crown are supporting this cause it not sit right with her at all. She pulls up the security logs and supporting documents and starts looking for travel plans. Destinations, durations, anything she can find about the why and where of the Svozilov's use of their jet.

[Narrator]

Not much about the charities that Nika doesn't already know in some capacity. Hell, to a certain extent this is stuff she grew up hearing and never questioned. Until recently and especially now that traitors to the crown are supporting this cause it not sit right with her at all. She pulls up the security logs and supporting documents and starts looking for travel plans. Destinations, durations, anything she can find about the why and where of the Svozilov's use of their jet.

A lot of vacations, of course. For people who were funding dismissiveness of the West, the Svozilovs spent more than their fair share of time in Maria di Portofino, or Cote d'Azur, or Ibiza. Nika had accompanied Katarina and the Karkovs to a few of these places, but they weren't particularly their speed. It was more the speed of the Svozilovs and the Sablinovas...

Wait.

Nika scrolled through the data, and then she found it. A trip to Monte Carlo for two weeks. A trip to Lake Como for two weeks. And before that, Dubrovnik. Step for step, match for match with Prince Alex's movements before ending up in London and starting this whole mess.

But whereas the records Nika had had for Alex had him spending a full month in Dubrovnik, that's not what the Svozilov record showed. Not at all. They had spent two weeks in Dubrovnik, following the pattern, and before that...

...Well, the data was corrupted. That happened from time to time; nothing to worry about; the tracking system that could keep the heads of the noble households under surveillance wasn't always perfect. But it happened a lot to the Svozilovs, apparently. On regular intervals, stretching back years.

Code: Select all

TWVldGluZyB3aXRoIFZpY3RvcmlvdXMgaW4gdGhlIEZvbGRpbmcgQ2l0eS4=

The same code, every time. Gibberish enough to look like computer garbage to anyone encountering one message, but repeatedly? Over and over? That was suspicious.

[Nika Novak]

Nika stares at the gibberish for a while. This is not exactly her expertise, but it looks like computer gibberish and that probably means a computer can ungibberish it. A quick search later and she's determined it to be written in Base64 and decodes into

Meeting with Victorious in the Folding City.

Which confirms her suspicion that Victorious is some kind of codename. As per usual her gut feeling jumps to Dr. Doom. Victor von Doom. A coup supported by Latveria that pressures Katarina into resolving it by marrying Doom. Now that is beginning to make sense. Who knows what the Folding City is but the exact location doesn't matter as much as the connection. If she's right about it, but it makes too much sense for it not to be. It's not proof but it's something. Now if she could find evidence of who Victorious is...

[Narrator]

No such luck; not here, at any rate. It's quite possible the Svozilov's themselves did not know who Victorious was. Nika would have to go elsewhere for that information.

Or, one supposes, she could ask the woman herself. The meetings with Victorious were on a regular schedule. If she could figure out where this Folding City was, she could simply show up herself and diplomatically request some information. Kinetic bolts to the forehead were diplomatic, right?

Of course, Nika had no idea what the 'Folding City' was, either, so that was a different problem.