Phoenix Feathers, Part II

Chapter 9

Disclaimer: Joss is Boss, and…and…and all these ideas floating around in my head are mostly his doing. So it’s really just a lesser version of something that he could do much better. And I personally wouldn’t have any complaints if he did…

***

“You understand that these are very serious allegations against you, Doctors.”

From his vantage point at the front of the chamber, Andre Titus crossed his arms and watched Barnes and Mathias squirm over the Corvue screen. It was close to a week after the twin escapes on Osiris, and each passing day lessened the Academy’s chances for successful retrievals by an order of magnitude. The strain of the situation had aged Mathias perceptibly, a change which could be clearly seen over the Cortex by the dozen or so Parliamentary officials who were looking on.

It had taken Titus over a day to get through the tangle of bureaucratic procedural rubbish that formed a buffer between the Interplanetary Parliament and the ‘Verse. He had been bounced between different offices in a fashion more practiced than that of a professional Voidball team.

After proffering his credentials to a lesser government official for perhaps the seventh time, he had been taken aside to a small briefing room to be questioned. No sooner did his interviewer glance at his papers, however, than he was ushered from the room and deeper into the gargantuan building that made up the Chambers of Parliament. He was then brought before a uniformed man who appeared to have the proper clearance level.

Titus was greeted cordially by this officer, but as the Chief Supervisor told of the thefts at the Academy, he was told to shut up and was moved again. After being escorted by a squad of Parliamentary MPs to a small, disused room in the lowest levels of the building, the officer allowed Titus to continue his story, after which he organized the investigatory committee which Titus now found himself a central part of.

The senior Parliamentary minister