Shoshone Station: The Galactic Consortium season 2

Episode 8: The Sting #7

Fox arrived at Lannister's office early the next morning, before the morning briefing. He found that Jack had beat him there.

They had not held a formal meeting yesterday afternoon. Instead, Haughland was offered a tour of the station, and Lannister had taken Fox's advice and invited Sarah and Leela to meet privately in his quarters. Fox had joined them for supper, and the ladies had seemed to find some common ground regarding sex trafficking.

Leela was already nearly as passionate as Sarah about the issue, speaking of how they needed to work to improve the lot of women everywhere and how they needed to make sure sex work was confined only to those who choose it of their free will. Sarah was so eager to have a new ally that she was able to agree to disagree on the morality of sex work and even tentatively agree that, if they could be sure the women weren't being forced into it, it was their own choice.

"Jack here is telling us that we should be prepared to lose this one," Lannister said with a dark look.

"The treaty is pretty clear, especially on our relationship with this new collective of Native people," Jack replied. "And the administration is leery of breaking it, for a number of reasons."

"They should be," Fox said. "And I've got an idea."

"A solution?" Lannister asked, his eyes eager and hopeful.

"Maybe not a solution, but an opportunity. A way to make some lemonade out of this."

Hope faded in Lannister's eyes, but he nodded. "And that would be?"

"I got to thinking last night. About some of the things they said yesterday. Particularly about the men who traffic women," he explained. "Leela is right. We're focusing on all the problems related to prostitution, except for the biggest one—the men who force women into it. What if we could do something about that?"

"Like what?"

"We aren't really losing on this issue. Okay, we are halfway losing."

"Halfway?" Lannister's eyebrow arched.

"If this goes through, it's no different than it stands now with the courtesans. We allow it on their terms, with licensed providers only. A pimp can't just bring a bunch of young girls up and start selling them. But what if they thought they could?" He held up his hand for silence. "Think about it. What if word got around that we were allowing select people to get licenses? That all they had to do was pass a basic interview."

"There's a lot more to it than that," Jack said. "And I don't think the administration is going to approve of us allowing Americans to do this on our side of the station."

"We won't be. They bring the girls up. We get some time alone with the girls. Interviews, basic medical exams. Long enough to let the women know they have a real out, if they want it. And if they give us a single reason to think they are being coerced by their pimp . . ."

"We can arrest him," Jack said, snapping his fingers. "You're suggesting we run a sting operation?"

"Exactly. Just let me talk to legal about it. Find out how much of the Consortium's legal resources we could put toward this. Depending on who gets jurisdiction, how much leeway they give us to do surveillance, whether or not the interviews are admissible evidence, I think we could get a lot of bad guys put away."

Lannister was nodding. "I like the idea of putting bad guys away. Okay, research it. Get back to me as soon as you can."