<div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Prologue</div><div class="spoiler_body"><em>A little over 2 weeks ago...</em><br/><br/>The alert that popped up on his terminal caught his attention immediately. It was meant to, being colored an unmistakeable shade of purple. With a slinking feeling he tapped the alert and read the details of his operation, details that analyst shouldn’t have. Which could only mean that Oni had pulled that analyst in to fact check and assist in operational planning to end his operation and take him into custody. Unfortunate the analyst hadn’t been pulled in sooner, and odd that so <em>much</em> of his operation had been uncovered before <em>any</em> of his suborned analysts had been pulled in. That was bad, but it also boded well because while a lot of the operation was here, it all seemed to be local to the Infinity. Nothing from before his stationing on board a few scant weeks ago, nothing about his channels of distribution… All of which suggested whatever tipped ONI off had to have happened right around the time he’d joined Infinity on it’s search for Forerunner artifacts… The same search that had ended up at Requiem with all the chaos that had entailed.<br/><br/>Time to analyze later. A triple check to make sure none of his failsafe accounts and plans were on the list, and then a few coded messages and it was done. He was officially out of the black market arms distribution, his latest shipments cancelled and the payments refunded. Said shipments would now be on a particular freighter within an hour, and with all the ships coming and going in preparation for the mission to chase John 117 to Halo Installation 003, it’s departure from earth orbit should go unnoticed. Another message to trigger a payment to the ONI analyst that tipped him off, and another to cancel the debts the others owed him with a small payment for all the information they had provided, and he was almost out. He looked around his cabin wistfully, but the only things he could reasonably carry were things like his personal sidearm, the depleted Type 1 Energy Weapon hilt that had come oh so close to killing him all those years before, and a few other personal mementos that could fit in his pockets, and his personal data pad were all he could take. Then down to the Pelican bay.<br/><br/>The pilots were all used to seeing him. He’d established the routine when he first came aboard, of checking almost every shipment personally. That meant a lot of being ferried back and forth between UNSC Infinity and the various freighters and frigates that were his logistical assignment. The fact he was usually willing to wait until a pelican was headed in that general direction with some bit or piece for a delivery usually helped, and that he’d managed to divert a few choice shipments of fermented beverages to the pilots off duty areas meant by now all the pilots were more than happy to have him as an off the records passenger, sometimes even arranging a special off the books flight just for him when a particularly problematic shipment issue came up. Since 3 crates of his contraband were still on Infinity, and now had orders to be transferred to the Miser’s Misfortune for out-system delivery there wouldn’t need to be any special arrangements. Just show up, ask the pilots if anything was going the right way, then hop aboard the right pelican as an unofficial passenger. No electronic trace, he’d just disappear off the Infinity.<br/><br/>It was a shame they hadn’t waited three weeks to catch him. He had a week long Pelican flight certification coming up and had arranged for one of the Huragok-modified slip-space pelicans to go 'missing' for his personal use. A shame, but that’s just how the chips fall sometimes.<br/><br/>Then his data pad chirped again. One of his now-former clients, in appreciation for fleeing ahead of the ONI investigation before she would get caught too, had an end distributor she was unsure of, and wanted checked on. He shot off a quick reply, and a few minutes later received a data packet with information on one ‘Chubs’ and what operations he <em>should</em> be conducting, his ports of call, and even that Chubs had let Ashley Bates’s local factor know he would be hiring some new crew members soon…</div></div><br/>He should never have agreed to do this favor for Ms Bates.. Sure she now owed him a favor, and sure Chubs had let him sign on, and sure he’d even managed to keep Chubs's greasy paws off the 'junk' that made up his special inventory, but the man was greasy swine, and a poor business man to boot. Overweight and obnoxious, he regularly lied to his crew and his customers, and often cheated both out of their right dues. Fortunately the override codes Ashley had given him as he was leaving Earth were good, so Roger had the run of the ships systems. He watched on one of the ships cameras as Chubs cheated another client. Which would be his undoing in this case… Not that Chubs had any clue that the ‘client’ that sent him the most recent message didn’t exist, really all that mattered was exactly how predictable Chubs was.<br/><br/>As the com beeped with Chubs’s incoming message Roger was compiling the initial deal with these ‘Ohana Rebels’ and the fake counter-proposal into a message and sent it off to Ashley’s local factor, along with details on how Chubs would come to be stranded on Falaknuma colony. While the lost inventory, both Ms Bates’s and his own, would be a setback but not an impossible loss. Once the message was off to Ms Bates’s factor he beamed an acknowledgement back to Chubs, and went in search of a forklift.<br/><br/>An hour or so later the two crates had been moved to block 4, which courtesy of some creative re-shuffling of inventory contained a couple of two tone hunks of metal, some (suitably shielded) spare fuel rods, a couple of strategically placed explosives, and all 4 cases of Roger’s special inventory. After getting the second one placed just right he leaned up against one of the crates he'd just moved, and seemingly talking to himself said "Not long now. Maybe 48 earth hours tops. I hope these folks are what we’re looking for, but the mess that’s going to be made isn’t going to leave us much in the way of choices. Oh yeah...” Roger then wandered over to one of his crates of ‘special inventory’, and producing a backlight proceeded to rummage around for a few minutes tossing seemingly random little blocky odds and ends around the bay. With a murmured "Aha!” he pulled a stumpy, almost cylindrical item out of the crate and stuck it in one of his pockets, leaving the bits and pieces where they fell and re-sealing his crate before returning to his cabin to continue monitoring the ship.