It should have been pretty easy here. When Jake went into the US Marshall service, his training had pounded into his head the importance of obtaining warrants. The good old fourth amendment, back in the states, had spawned a virtual sub culture of the damn things. You had search warrants, arrest warrants, and more than one type of each. You had surveillance warrants and no knock entry warrants and warrants for seizures and even different kinds for drug busts. There was nothing even remotely like that in the Arch. Here, nobody gave a damn about an individuals rights unless he had enough firepower to make them for himself.

That was why it agitated Jake when he could not get at the information he needed. What he was discovering was that this colony had it’s own system of checks and balances. He should have been able to just walk right up the airport counter, flash his badge, and get whatever he wanted. He had the gun, he had the power, he had the authority so, why wouldn’t they show it to him? It was simple. There was a German, standing by the counter, with an even bigger gun. That’s why Jake decided not to even try at first.

Well, Jake was not going to give up that easy. He just needed a plan first. He sat down on one of the cheap bench seats, by the concourse window, and pretended to read his phone. He also had to put the thing on silent because Norm had already called him twice and sent more than a few texts. The only result of all that communicating was that Jake realized he was going to have to check the word filter on his text app. He was surprised at what kind of language it was letting pop up on his screen.

Jake realized that all he had to do was sit and think. Something always came to him. This time was no exception only, it was not the kind of ‘come to him’ that he had expected. This came via an attractive thirty something year old brunette. Jake actually recognized the woman and, unfortunately, she recognized him as well.

She introduced herself with a big smile. Jake found it ironic in the sense. She acted like there actually was some one on this rock that would not know who she was, “Deputy Barton, I’m Jessica Walsh of A-N-T news.”

Jake thought about that for a minute and then asked, “so you’re an ant now? Congratulations. I thought you were with that other station, what is it?”

“Oh,” she shook it off, “no I got a better offer. I changed jobs last week. Long story.”

“Well,” Jake nodded to her, “you’ll have to tell it to me sometime. Right now I’m a little busy.”

“Oh,” the woman acted so accommodating but, Jake knew one or two things about reporters. Having grown up in his household, there was no way he could not. What he knew was that just about every way they acted was, just that, an act. They also never asked for much until they got there foot in the door, “I was just wondering if you could, maybe, give us a few sound bytes?”

Jake seriously thought about lifting up on his side and farting but, this was not the place to make a scene. Instead he tried to think of the fastest way to get rid of her. Then he linked one problem with the other. “Tell you what Jessica…”

“Jessie,” she quickly replied. “When I’m not on the air, everybody calls me that.”

“Jessie,” he said with a smile and a nod. “Are you going to be at the ceremonies over at the palace later today?”

She looked like that was a silly question, “well of course. We just came over here to Riggins, this morning, because it’s family day. You know, there’s always some family reuniting here so we figured we could catch one.”

Jake raised a brow to that, “really? How did that work out for you?”

From the look on Jessica’s face it was not too good. She did perk up a little, “there was this mother and daughter, really early but, well…” Jake waited for it and finally had to gesture to get the answer, “the daughter shot us a bird and walked off.” Jake actually chuckled and surprised himself that it was for real and not just being polite. Jessie did try and clean the story up though. Jake supposed that was her job after all. The reporter blew the incident off with, “she looked like a hoodlum, anyway, so no great loss.”

Jake was keeping one eye on the reporter and the other on the German grenadier that was currently flirting with the woman behind the reservations desk. The guy had a cup of coffee in hand and the woman looked a little annoyed by both the German and his constant habit of sitting the cup down on her clean counter. Even more important was that the German was starting to show some of the side effects of drinking too much java juice. He looked like he might have to pee.

Unfortunately the two main uses of the male reproductive organ can quite often become contradictory. You wait long enough and the bladder function will usually win but, Jake did not feel like waiting that long. The ticket agent was doing her damn best to be polite to the heavily armed and armored storm trooper that was constantly hovering around her. Jake suspected that it was the size of the gun on his shoulder that was mostly responsible for that. If the guy thought he was getting lucky then this could take hours.

So, Jake decided to go with door number two, “tell you what Jessie. You want to interview me?” Her hand went right for the record button on the razor thin camera hooked to her ear. Jake waved her off, “not now. This isn’t exactly the place.”

Her spine stiffened a little and she had a funny look on her face as she said, “oh I see. You want something in return. Uh huh.”

“Oh brother,” Jake stopped and considered the irony of his words before going on, “no not that.” He nodded to the German, “think that guy over there could tell his story about how he’s missing his loved ones back in the fatherland?”

Jessie looked to the German and studied him carefully. When she looked back to Jake she had a wicked smile on her face, “you need a diversion. My, my, Deputy, you are more naughty than I gave you credit for. I have to admit, pretty original too.”

An eyebrow raised on Jake, “oh?”

Jessie just had that air of, “isn’t it obvious?” What she wound up saying was, “yeah, you have to be the first guy that has offered an interview, like this, and not just wanted to jump my bones.”

Jake looked her in the eye and had a sheepish grin, “so you’ll do it?”

After one more glance at the German, Jessie developed another wicked smile and said, “hell yeah. Watch a Kraut get fucked instead of me, this might even be fun.”

Jake just sat back and watched. The girl was good at her business and probably not a bad reporter either. The way she flirted with that guy made Jake think back to his early days in uniform. If he was still a young trooper and that walked up to him, acting like that, he’d be a goner. For that matter, she was doing a pretty good job on his older self now, and all the way from across the room!

Fortunately for Jake, with age comes a little bit of self control. Jessie Walsh had the Kraut gone in under a minute. Jake was at the desk a few seconds later, and flashing his badge. The ticket agent looked relieved to see Jake. She also studied his badge and asked, “oh, are you with those people out on the north shore?”

He nodded and replied, “yeah that would be us.”

The ticket agent looked kind of nervous and said, “well I don’t know if we’re allowed to give you guys this info or not.” Jake was starting to get a bad feeling. Then the ticket agent perked up and said, “but I noticed you talking to Jessica Walsh over there.” Her voice was almost a whisper when she asked, “did you send her over here to get rid of.. You know?”

“Yes,” Jake said, “that would also be us.”

The woman winked, “I’ll give you what you want.”