What the locals made of their dinner guest streaming out of the garden gate with a gang of spacers was hard to know but no one was foolish enough to get in the way. They boarded the transport the spacers had provided. Sabatine didn't know if it was stolen and she hadn't asked. It was a large open cabbed diesel its white paint bubbled with rust that hadn't been sanded before the latest application. There was an attached trailer with three articulated sections. The trailer had been designed to haul produce in collapsible wire bins though the hardware and mesh was missing. Higgs was in the driver's seat, his hands gripping the ancient non-powered wheel of rubberized plastic, spacers climbed into the front and rear sections, leaving the central portion for the officers. Sabatine, Kaiden and Tilda took their places and the vehicle lurched into motion, the transmission screaming due to lack of maintenance or Higgs lack of experience, and they trundled down the cracked bitumen. Sabatine was not particularly pleased that Tilda was coming along, but she supposed there was no help for it, and she had lent them the projection unit. Sabatine crammed the commo helmet onto her head and accessed the sync function, a moment later the projection unit sprang to life, the hologram jounced and fuzzed on the uneven roads but it was good enough for her purposes.

"Judging from what the satellites picked up," she explained, displaying a loop of grainy imagery. The satellite network wasn't designed for this kind of work, but with the aid of the powerful computers aboard the Viceroy, even the simple telemetry and weather feeds could be sharpened to the point that a convoy of four vehicles could be clearly seen as it pulled into a stone walled estate high up in the hills. As they stopped the doors opened and a bound figure was dragged out of the cars and into the building. 

"They took Otis to this compound in the hills, it seems to have been abandoned until a couple of weeks ago," she explained. Tilda gave Sabatine an unreadable look.

"How are you doing all this?" she asked, gesturing to the image hovering over the projector, her face flickered with something between amazement and concern before settling onto the former. Sabatine's own expression was concealed behind her helmet. Did the woman worry that she could listen to her pillow talk or something? She supposed it might be possible though the thought filled her with disgust.

"RCN training is extensive," Sabatine lied, because she needed to say something, and there was no way she was going to show off in front of Tilda, that might imply that she gave a damn about a servants opinion. Truthfully RCN training in such technical matters was cursory, meant to be left to warrant officers and technical specialists, but Sabatine had spent years breaking down and rebuilding RCN equipment and had a better idea of its capabilities than the overwhelming majority of officers. Rolling back the footage had been a simple mater to. The archives weren't protected by any encryption beyond a simple alpha numeric password, something the astrogation computer on the Vickie had broken in less than a minute.

"The only road approach is long and winding," she explained zooming out so Kaiden could see the snaking road that lead to Port Benjamin.

"And it is high enough up in the hills that the sides of the mountains make a sort of natural funnel," she went on. It was a terrible tactical position, doubtlessly chosen for that exact reason. She hoped that Kaiden had some ideas about how to approach the problem.

"Why?" he asked unexpectedly.

"Its a defensible position..." Sabatine began but Kaiden shook his head.

"I mean why grab Otis in the first place, it isn't as though his terrible astrogation and indifferent rigging skills are going to be a crippling loss to the RCN." Sabatine nodded, feeling slightly embarrassed. Perhaps it was the rum she was still burning off or perhaps it was that she had been so focused on getting Otis back the deeper motives hadn't occurred to her. It wasn't as though he was a Captain or from a powerful family, so far as she knew his only political connection was a distant cousin in a low level defense post. His grades were mediocre, he had no money, no interest. The only thing about the midshipman that was noteworthy was the fact he was an RCN officer. It would have made much more sense to grab Kaiden, at least that gave them the possibility of ransom. The truck pulled off the road and onto the fringes of a grass covered sporting field. Higgs killed the ignition and they sat for a moment in silence.

"I have no idea," Sabatine replied, "but we can just let these yokels snatch an RCN officer off the street."