Mission 001

[Tricoteuse]

Julietta Andressi pushed her fashionably-large, round sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. She adjusted her headscarf, making sure her large, dark curls had not become tousled, and smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt. Her associate, Jules Hingman, inspected his shoes.

They stood in the midst of a hot, sweaty, grouchy crowd of tourists, outside the comital palace in Augustgrad. The building itself was nothing revolutionary in Shirithian architecture: baroque ornamentation (lots of gold-leaf acanthi) layered thickly over fanciful Gothic-revival turrets and miniature buttresses. Ceremonial guards in "authentic historical costume", carrying halberds which closely resembled those used in a recent film about the life of Raynor II and which looked as if they might successfully cut a loaf of bread if forced, flanked the large, white, gilded doors.

Julietta surveyed the edifice with palatable disdain. "How pompous," she muttered to Hingman, not taking much care to avoid being heard. "The Shirithians have no idea of restraint, do they? That gold leaf will be the first to go. I'm sure there's plenty inside, as well--it ought to be completely expunged. Melt it into bars."

Hingman, precise and methodical, took a black, commonplace notebook and ball-point pen out of his breast pocket and jotted down, in a script consisting primarily of neat, printed capitals: "Gold leaf--melt down." He replaced the notebook and pen, clasped his hands in front of him, and cleared his throat. Julietta adopted a similar pose, but folded her arms in front of her.

After some minutes, the doors opened, and a group of harassed-looking tourists, attired chiefly in cargo shorts and inexplicably-fashionable former gardening shoes, shuffled sleepily down the two-way exterior staircase, and moseyed away from the palace. The building, if it had been a person, would have felt like the socialite who, at a party, is obliged to talk to rather boorish acquaintances, and is suddenly relieved of their company.

As the group of corpulent, poorly-dressed sightseers trudged through the courtyard, they seemed to part company before Julietta and Hingman, and to join together again after passing them, as a herd of bison turns a large rock into an island during a stampede.

Realizing that the ignorant bison tromping out of the palace would create quite a mire upon mixing with the mob now surging up to enter, the two of them began pushing their way forward, toward the door. The tour guide--still wearing a smirk of satisfied triumph, no doubt gained by answering more than competently the idiotic questions of his last gaggle of patrons--demanded eight erb admission from each of them, which he received. Julietta and Hingman then stepped into the entry hall, a huge, rectangular room which resembled the interior of a particularly-luxurious Faberge egg.

As far as they could be discerned, the walls themselves where white. Impossibly-twisted, snaking gold sconces were stuck into the walls at intervals, between wooden, Corinthian pilasters, covered in gold-leaf, which reached the ceiling, and nearly lost their writhing capitals in the opulence of the crown molding. The molding formed a sort of frame around a giant, Mannerist ceiling mural, which was vaguely reflected in the shining marble floor-tiles.

In the midst of this stood a little booth and an odd sort of portal made out of off-white plastic. It was a metal detector and a cheap cubicle desk, at which sat a very disinterested security guard. He gazed dully as Julietta and Hingman passed through the detector, and waved them on when nothing caught the machine's attention. "I told you you'd thank me for getting the plastic measuring tape," Hingman said, speaking for the first time in hours. Julietta chuckled.

"I wonder if we could take that mural down in pieces, and sell it to someone?" she pondered aloud. Hingman recorded his associate's idea in the commonplace notebook.

They proceeded through several more chambers, here and there pausing to measure a doorway or the height of a window. This went unnoticed in secondary rooms where nothing of particular importance was displayed, and where supervision was not as strict.

In the state dining room, however, they alerted suspicion when Rufus Alton, refrigeratoresque security head, overheard Julietta listing what sounded like the approximate value of various objects in the room (e.g. "Silver goblets, 1000 erb each") to Hingman, who seemed to be adding the figures up. Rufus decided to follow them awhile.

The crowd moved into a state sitting room, decorated in yellow damask, with dark wood furniture. Julietta made the remark that this was the only worthwhile room she had seen thusfar, and that it oughtn't to be changed. Hingman made a note of it. "This was clearly decorated by a non-Shirithian."

Hingman nodded his agreement. He was inspecting the upsholstery on a particularly pretty sofa when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a very large man in a moderately-priced suit walk in. Hingman lifted his wristwatch to the level of his eyes, and angled its reflective surface to get a better picture of the man. He noticed an earpiece and a rather brutal expression. He quietly alerted Julietta to Rufus' presence. The two of them moved nonchalantly back into the crowd, as far as they could penetrate without making a scene. Thankfully, the mass seemed to be moving into the next room--the throne room--which would be large enough for them to lose the security chief.

The group split into three general camps upon entering the large, blue chamber: those interested in the paintings, those wanting to view the thrones, and the majority, who all had to pee and were resolutely headed toward the doors which led out into another hallway and some public restrooms. Julietta and Hingman joined the third group, slipped to the front, and managed to hustle out of the throne room and duck into the "Family Rest Area", whose door they bolted upon entering. "These bathrooms completely mar the aesthetic," commented Julietta, as she climbed on top of the EasyBaby Diaper Changing table and removed the cover of the ceiling air vent. "They are to be removed." She handed the cover over to Hingman, pulled herself up into the duct, and then crawled a little way down. Hingman entered next, replacing the cover. The two began to feel their way along, periodically squinting through the slats in the ceiling registers, until, finally, the desired room was reached. It appeared to be empty, so Julietta pulled the cover up and they both jumped down into the count's personal office. Hingman replaced the register. He measured the entrance to the duct.

"Two and a half square feet," he noted. "About big enough for a marine to crawl through." Julietta concurred. She took the tape from Hingman and began to measure the length and width of the drapes. As soon as this was finished, the sound of a turning doorknob was heard. Then, someone began to push and pull aggressively at it. Julietta braced the door with a chair, and filched some pens from the count's desk. Hingman forced the window, and the two of them climbed into an apple tree which grew close below. They climbed down into the back gardens, and made their way quickly to the fence.

Rufus kicked open the office door, breaking the chair which had been lodged against it. With a bellowed cry of "Move, move, move!" a squad of security personnel fanned out across the room, and found themselves pointing their pistols at nothing but the wall.

Julietta and Hingman checked the street, and then scaled the fence. Hopping down to the street, they set off for the nondescript hotel at which they were staying, exchanging a celebratory high-five.

"If security in this place is that pathetic, the operation should be a piece of cake," observed Hingman.

"Indeed," agreed Julietta. "Speaking of which, did you see that red velvet cake in the hotel restaurant? It looked scrumptious."

"Yes," concurred her associate. "I fully intend to eat some, but we'd better take care of business first."

"Quite right." After relaying the entirety of Mar Sara's defense information to their superiors, the rest of the excursion was thoroughly diverting.

[Andreas the Wise]

Exciting ....
(probably not in my competition though, if they only stole a few pens)