Tales From the Maid Wars Episode Four:
Captive of the Amazons

Sometime later, Helen slowly came to. The first thing the MASA officer realized was that she was tied up with packing tape. The young woman was sitting in a padded wooden chair. Her hands were taped to the chair arms; her feet were similarly secured to the chair legs. What must have been half a roll of tape was wrapped around Helen’s chest, pinning her back against the chair. Finally, a strip of tape had been stretched over her eyes, blindfolding her.

“ugh…” she groaned as a wave of disorientation washed over her. Her head ached from whatever drug her attackers had used to knock her out. Helen squirmed in the chair, but her efforts were feeble. She was still weak from the knockout drugs.

“Good…she’s awake.” Helen heard a voice speak nearby, a woman’s voice. She struggled to raise her head, listening around, trying to pinpoint her captor’s location.

“Who’s there? Why have you kidnapped me?” Helen called out, trying to sound calmer then she really felt. Like all MASA officers, she’d been trained to resist torture and interrogation. She’d just never thought she’d actually have to put that training to use.  

“Relax, Lieutenant Pierce…” a different woman spoke up. “We are not going to hurt you. In fact, we’re here to help you.”

“Help me? How?” Helen responded angrily. “By knocking me out? Tying me up?”

“We don’t know if we can trust you just yet. You are, after all, here to ‘bring us to justice’, isn’t that right?”

“You’re the assassins?” Helen said, fearfully. She clenched her hands into fists, straining against the tape holding them down, but the sticky bands held strong.  

“We prefer resistance fighters.” The woman replied. “We’ve been keeping an eye on you. You’re MASA, but you seem to care about finding those missing girls. We care to, and we want to help you. We know who took them.”

“Who?” Helen asked. She needed to stall for time, until she recovered from whatever drugs they’d used on her. “The Benefactors? To turn them into French maids is that it?”

“Yes!” The woman shot back, startling Helen with her passion. “The Fremps have been kidnapping human women for years! Thousands of them, to be taken back to their planet and enslaved! That’s why we attacked their mission, to find those missing girls and rescue them before it was too late, before they disappeared forever into the black hole that is the Fremps’ planet.”

Briefly Helen wondered why she was referring to the bot’s as ‘Fremps’. Navy woman that she was, Helen was used to the proliferation of acronyms, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what ‘FRMP’ stood for. “I take it you didn’t find them.” she replied, skeptically.  

“No, unfortunately, we weren’t able to make it deep enough into the mansion before security began to move in and we had to pull out. It was while we were heading for our exit point, we ran into the Robolord and his guards and we deactivated him.” Around her, the woman’s partners grunted in approval. “One good thing, though, we know the girls are still on planet. The Fremps can’t possibly move the girls off world now; with the spaceports shut tight and every ship thoroughly checked for us. We’ve been laying low, to avoid capture, waiting for another chance, but we can’t move until we know where the Fremps are holding their captives…”

“And that’s where I come in, I suppose…” Helen spoke up. “I see. But why should I believe you? What proof do you have that the bot’s did kidnap them?”

“Who else could have done it?” The Amazon replied. “Who else would have the ability to do something like that?” Helen was uncomfortably reminded of her own suspicions about the abductor’s impossible technology. “Trust me, if you keep digging long enough, eventually you’ll find out the truth. Just one more thing, whatever you do don’t trust anyone, especially the bots, unless you want to find out I’m right the hard way. They have friends in high places, in the government, the military…friends who will do whatever they can to stop you, if they find out.” The other women spoke up in agreement, bitterly denouncing the human ‘traitors’.    

“They’re all a bunch of insane conspiracy nuts.” Helen thought. “Not that that changes anything…” She sighed. “Fine, I’ll do it. Understand I am still going to do everything that is in my power to see you brought to account for what you’ve done. But first, I will do everything I possibly can to locate and rescue those missing girls.”

“I suppose that’s all we can ask.” The other woman said. “I hope that in the end you’ll see the truth and make the right decision, before it’s too late. Now…” Helen heard the ripping of tape. Before she could speak up or resist, one of the women pressed a strip of tape across her lips, abruptly silencing her protests. Helen squirmed, the tape holding her firm against the chair. “…the three of us are going to leave, and we can’t have you raising the alarm in the meantime. Once we’re safely away, we’ll alert the hotel staff to come and free you.”

Helen groaned into her gag in resignation, slumping down. She listened to the footsteps of the Amazons as they hurriedly left the room, shutting the door behind them. When Helen was sure they were far enough away, she began struggling, trying to free herself from her bonds. She pulled at the tape holding her wrists and legs to the chair with all her strength, but the sticky bonds held tight.

After a few minutes of struggle, Helen slumped down again, breathing heavily. She turned her head, pressing it against her shoulder.  Rubbing frantically, Helen began to work at her blindfold. Slowly, the tape began to peel away. The sticky side of the tape caught on her uniform, allowing Helen to pull it off. She winced as a few hairs came away with the tape. Looking up, Helen saw she was still in her hotel room. The lights were off, but enough light came in through a crack in the nearby window, she could see. The young woman quickly scanned the room, looking for anything she could use.

“There!” The MASA officer thought to herself, noting a nearby table. Grunting loudly, she threw her weight towards it. The chair slid a few inches in that direction. Helen paused a second, then did it again. Slowly, she made her way across the room nearer and nearer to the table. By the end of it, Helen was sweating heavily and gasping for breath.

After a moment, the young woman began to rub the tape binding her right hand against the hard corner of the table. Slowly, the table began to wear. Finally, when it had been weakened, Helen pulled against her bonds as hard as she could. The tape stretched, then tore. Helen gasped in relief as her hand pulled free.

With one hand free, it was a matter of moments for her to remove the rest of the tape keeping her bound to the chair. Not a moment too soon. Outside the room, Helen heard raised voices. The door lock clicked and it opened. On the other side, she saw several men and women wearing the hotel staff’s uniform.

“Wait!” Helen called out, tearing the tape gag away from her lips. “No one enter the room!” She jumped from the chair towards the door. “I want a forensics team here in ten minutes! Until then, the crime scene must not be disturbed!”

An hour later, Helen was pacing anxiously in an office at Security Headquarters. The forensic team Chief Werner had sent to the Hotel Imperial had found several unique DNA traces. They were analyzing them at this moment.

“I heard what happened…” Helen turned just in time to see Morris enter the room. “how are you doing?”

“Fine.” Helen replied, trying to look nonchalant. “I’ve gone through much worse in the past. Remind me sometime to tell you about the time I went undercover to bust up a pirate slaver ring on Gorr-ean II…”

“As a slaver?” Morris asked, raising an eyebrow.

Helen smiled, shaking her head. “Like I said, I’ve been through worse.”

“I’ll take your word for it…” Morris said with a chuckle.

“There was something I wanted to talk to you about, though…” Helen said. “…in private.” Quickly, she told him what the AMAZONS had told her at her hotel room.

Morris listened. “It seems utterly insane! The Benefactors have done so much for humanity, who could seriously believe they would do something like kidnap two dozen people like this?” he asked.

Helen shrugged. “I have no idea. Still, if not them, who else might have the technology to carry out something like this?” She shook her head. “Like you said, it’s unbelievable. I’m sure we must be missing something that would explain all of this. Either way, our course remains the same; find the missing girls and whoever…or whatever kidnapped them.”

Just then, the door to the office opened and a junior officer stuck her head in. Helen recognized her as Officer Brown. “Lieutenant Pierce, you’re wanted down in the main briefing room. They’ve almost finished analyzing the DNA samples; we should be getting the results in a few minutes.” The young woman said cheerfully, saluting. From the way she gazed at Helen admiringly, she might have thought getting captured and tied up had been part of Helen’s plan to catch the assassins all along…  

“Thank you. We’ll be down shortly.” Helen replied, returning the salute. She turned to Morris. “Well then, shall we go and find out who’s been causing us all this trouble?” Morris nodded. The two hurried to the lifts and took one of them down to the ground floor.

A crowd had gathered around the briefing room. With half the security force working on this case, they were all eager to find out the identities of the assassins they’d put so much effort into capturing. Helen got more than a few sidelong glances as she and Morris pushed their way through towards the door. The room buzzed with low conversation. She sighed. It seemed the story of the manner in which she’d acquired the evidence had made its way through the grapevine…

The briefing room was a large auditorium, rows of seats in a semi-circle. Opposite the large double doors was a pair of large view-screens. About half the seats were occupied by a crowd of officers. As Helen made her way down to the front of the room, she spotted Chief Werner standing at the front, talking with several of his advisors.  

“Ah, Lieutenant Pierce!” Chief Werner said, smiling as he saw her enter. “Sorry to hear that you were so…inconvenienced. But it all worked out in the end, right?”

Helen nodded. “It’s like you said, sooner or later they were going to get sloppy and…” she saw a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, the dark blue color of a MASA uniform beside the sky blue security officers. She turned. “Admiral Rolland!” Helen exclaimed, involuntarily coming to attention and saluting. “I…I had no idea you were on the planet, sir!” she stammered in shock.

The older man walked over to Helen, a sour expression on his face. “I just arrived. I took the currier ship over…and a good thing I did to! You were supposed to catch these vile assassins, not get caught by them! A bloody embarrassment to the whole service! Still, I suppose it worked out in the end. It seems you’ve finally managed to identify the scum, yes?”

“We are in the process of mapping the DNA samples right now, sir.” Chief Werner said. Helen struggled to keep from sighing in relief as the admiral turned his attention away from her. At that moment, a woman in a white lab coat ran into the room. She inserted a data chip into the computer. Information flashed across the screen. “The system is searching through the database, now, sir.” Werner explained. “We have the medical records of all citizens on Koat, not to mention the MASA registry of known criminals. If there is a match, it should find it quickly.”

A hush fell over the room as all the conversations died. All eyes were on the screen. Along with everyone in the room, Helen watched the screen, but something nagged at her, dragging her attention away from the database. There was something wrong. Her intuition told her there was something she was missing here…

“Of course! The Neutrino bomb!” Helen thought suddenly. “Back at the mansion, the AMAZONS went to extreme lengths to keep anyone from finding a DNA trace. But at the hotel, they didn’t seem to care. Sure, they hotel staff entering the room might contaminate the crime scene, but eventually we would have sorted out the false traces from their own.”

“Unless…” the mischievous voice in Helen’s head spoke up. “…unless they didn’t detonate the neutrino bomb. What if someone else did, to cover up any other DNA traces that Koat Security might have found, say: 24 women who had gone missing recently?” Helen shook her head, but the thought remained. Helen hadn’t even heard of a device like that, before the Benefactors told her about it. Hadn’t the unknown kidnappers shown the same impossibly advanced technology?”
Just then, the computer system chimed, interrupting Helen’s thought for the moment. It had finished searching the database. Helen turned back to the big screen, as the information flashed up. Quickly, Helen read the reports as they appeared on screen.

The first profile showed a girl, in her late teens, who, in the past, would have been considered Asian. She was wearing a grey jumpsuit with a number stenciled on the chest. Her straight black hair was shoulder length with straight bangs. The teenage girl’s age was given as 19. Amanda Chu, formerly a student a Grover Cleveland High School, in the capital city of the planet of New Oregon.

Three standard years ago, her mother and two older sisters had been killed in a highway accident. The poor girl had been admitted to a psychiatric ward, after claiming they had actually been taken by ‘Evil Metal Monsters’. A year later, she’d broken out, apparently with outside help. Shortly after that, she’d been spotted by a spy drone observing a terrorist training camp, tentatively linked with AMAZON.

The next one was a stern looking, older woman, wearing a MASA uniform with brown hair, cropped short. Sergeant Miranda Knotts, age 38: a former MASA officer, in the Conquistadors with extensive experience in special operations and covert ops. While on duty, she went AWOL, commandeering a MASA transport carrying military supplies, disappeared into a dangerous, uncharted sector of space, known colloquially as “Sherwood Forest”, the base of operations for AMAZON. A thorough investigation of all of  Sergeant Knotts’ contacts during her last leave uncovered evidence that the marine had been contacted with two agents with ties to the terrorist group and was recruited by them during that time.

The final report showed another young woman, with long red hair, dressed in civilian clothes. According to the report, her name was Nadia Keller, age 29, formerly from a mining station in the Moriat System. Believed to have been recruited by AMAZON five years ago, she was wanted for taking part in the hijacking of a Benefactor ship delivering agricultural technology to a remote colony.

Admiral Rolland turned to Chief Werner. “In light of this new evidence, confirming the involvement of off world terrorists in the assassination, I am hereby taking charge of this investigation in the name of MASA intelligence.”

“I accept this and place all the resources of Koat security at your disposal until such time as these criminals are brought to justice.” Chief Werner replied.

“Very good. Now…” Admiral Rolland raised his voice to address everyone in the room. “I want descriptions of these women placed in every security station, every street corner, everywhere! Anyone who has seen these three must report them to Koat Security at once! Anyone who fails to do so will be charged with aiding and abetting terrorism and arrested!” Around Helen, the assembled officers nodded in agreement.

“Alright, you heard the Admiral!” Chief Werner, “Officers meet with your regional supervisors for your new assignments in twenty minutes. Now, let’s get out there, and catch these bitches!” The room filled with the cheers from the assembled men and women as they rose to their feet.  

As the crowd of officers made their way out of the room to their assignments, Helen forced her way, against the flow, towards the front of the room, where Admiral Rolland was talking with Chief Werner.

“Admiral!” Helen said, stepping in when Werner turned to discuss something with one of his subordinates. “Sir…I want to request permission to continue my investigation into the disappearances at St. Joanne’s Girls Academy. I have reason to believe the abductions are connected with…”

Before she could continue Admiral Rolland turned, snapping at her. “Lieutenant!” he growled angrily. “I have already told you to leave that matter to the local investigators! I don’t want to another word about this, or you’ll be spending the next ten years working undercover on a deep space mining colony!”

“Yes…sir.” Helen replied, glumly. Stiffly, she saluted, turned and walked away. “Morris…” she said, leaving the briefing room.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“I need your help…”