The Bad Guys<br/>Shuttle Annie in the Landing Bay of Gramercy's Run<br/>Evening Watch<br/>Tagged:<span class="fixed-color" style="color:#ff0000"><b>All Big Damn Heroes</b></span><br/><br/>In the silence of vacuum, the Annie landed.  As per usual procedure the window overlooking the bay from inside the ship was covered by an armored shutter to protect the ship.  It would take several minutes to finalize the procedures and to fully pressurize the bay, allowing the inner hatch to be open.  There would be a two minute window of partial atmo, enough to live in but enough to keep the main hatch from opening to the kidnapper's ship.<br/><br/>Silence gave way to hissing as atmo returned to the hangar bay and after two minutes the personnel access hatch from the ship into the bay opened, allowing the kidnappers to file in, one of them pushing Mateo on a cargo sled.  They fanned out across the bay.<br/><br/>Thinking they had the upper hand, and drunk on the drinks and pleasures the money they almost had in their greedy hands would bring them gave the kidnappers tunnel vision.  Focused solely on the Annie they didn't even have an active search going for other craft and had even left the bridge unattended, their porcine greed and lack of discipline pulling everyone on the ship into or near the landing bay as if that would help them get richer faster.<br/><br/>Mateo lay on an industrial cargo sled, strapped down with wide yellow nylon bands like a piece of equipment but they weren't able to be slipped off, they were more to keep him from sliding off.  They'd stopped beating him at least but bruises, blood, and battered cybernetics showed Mateo had been through a brutal time.  He seemed conscious and aware if not exactly mobile.  A single guard stood near him, the wide barrel of a riot gun drifting between Mateo's body and wherever the guard happened to look.  It was an area effect weapon, intimidating to unarmored targets and it had a huge psychological terror for those who looked down its wide, fanned barrel.<br/><br/>Like the cowards they were, three other guards were gathered in a group near each other, almost directly across from the Annie's cockpit.  The side hatch was just visible to them but they wouldn't be able to see inside much.  A single guard stood opposite that, looking nervous in his body language and unarmed except for pistol at his side he kept touching. High up on the bulkhead above the three guards a lone man, his body language confident and aggressively arrogant, watched through the transparent window, armored shutters retracted, and a level above the exit from the hangar and behind several closed hatches, presuming they could even find a way up to him.<br/><br/>"Spread out you idiots," a voice called over the loudspeaker, the slight delay almost matching the words they could see the man behind the window.<br/><br/>"Bring out the debtor," he ordered, voice electronically amplified and booming across the hangar bay.  "Any fuckery and we'll shred the 'borg," he said and the man with the riot gun moved it to cover Mateo, finger on the trigger.