Freelance Traveller

profiled by Ken Murphy

This article originally appeared in Issue #012, December 2010, of the downloadable PDF magazine.

Inspector (Ret.) Edwina Dennis (UPP 877986)
Human Female 5 terms Age 38
Former Police Inspector
Handgun-2; Grav Vehicle-1; Small Watercraft-0; Vacc Suit-0; Computer-1; Brawling-2; Persuasion-3; Intimidate-1; Legal-2; Admin-1; Forensics-1; Tactics-1; Streetwise-2; Linguistics-2 (Arabic)(Chinese); Climbing-3; Geology-1; Spelunking-2

Edwina was raised in Fujian, a busy, overcrowded, pollution-choked industrial city-state on the Southwest side of the massive Hafh as-Skyn mountains, with its 8 km high cliff face that stretched some 40 km of the mountains’ length, and which ran down the length of the northern continent almost to the equator on Najd (A676A44-C). Najd in general, and Fujian in particular, are renowned for producing some of the finest blades found in human space.

One day while helping out at the family Gyro stand after school, Edwina was shocked to find thugs harassing her father. It somehow had to do with money. The argument escalated, and suddenly her father had been smashed in the face.

And just as suddenly a trio of “Fujian’s finest” were there in their streetworn armor and scuffed helmets, tackling and handcuffing the criminals in a flash, then reading them the cursory Act of Arrest before none-to-gently hustling them into a nearby Police grav wagon (‘Careful you lot, don’t bump your heads!’ THUMP!THUMP!).

As two of the officers wrestled the last of the thugs toward the hatch to the Police sled, the third officer, a Sergeant, rifled through the criminals’ pockets before pulling out an enormous wad of credits. Peeling off a good cm’s-worth of large bills, the grim sergeant put them into her dad’s hand, telling him “Not to worry sir. I doubt if these gentlemen will be bothering you again.” Then, with a wink to Edwina, “Why, it shouldn’t surprise me one bit if all four of these louts were sent to a Penal Batallion.”.

Edwina never noticed what ever happened to the rest of the wad of bills. But one thing she did know was she wanted to help.

Ten years later, she was walking a beat in her neighborhood as a new Patrol Officer—her heavy Police grav bike, a Henry 349, parked a block or two away, ready if she should call.

Edwina (“Ed” to her friends) could recall having drawn her service weapon on only three occasions in ten years; attributing it to basically reasonable people wanting to come to a doable resolution. Of course, her powers of persuasion should not be dismissed.

On the fourth occasion, Patrol Officer Dennis was herself shot; a gauss pistol ripping up her right leg while responding to an attempted armed robbery. The wound was successfully treated, but the perpetrator was never caught.

On becoming a Patrol Sergeant several years later, Edwina was assigned to a wagon, supervising two Patrolmen.

One day, with an armful of lunch wrangled for her crew, waiting in line in the Mercado and making small talk with other customers, Edwina was on-scene when a pair of junkies came in, wielding shotguns and demanding everyone’s money, mad-dogging and threatening them.

Dennis tried reasoning with the dope-fiends, only to be hammered by a blast from a heavy, homemade shotgun which blew through her greave to shatter her leg. Knocked to the ground in agony, Ed pulled her service weapon and fired from the floor. A heavy gauss round entered a cm above the shotgun-wielding thief’s right eyebrow, and blew gore all over a pair of terrified customers.

The other thief dropped his weapon as he ran, but Edwina’s crew, leap-frogging forward until inside the Mercado; quickly dropped the runner with a butt stroke to his stomach from the driver’s heavy SAW.

A month or so later, as Edwina got used to her new, enameled, robotic right calf and foot, and did deskwork while waiting to be cleared in the Mercado shooting, Internal Affairs finally came back with their verdict—a “good shoot”, meaning that Sgt. Dennis acted within department guidelines and with good reason for her actions. ‘Neighborhood Girl Makes Good’ makes for an excellent public interest story, and Fujian’s Ruling Council would be foolish to miss such an opportunity. Patrol Sergeant Edwina Dennis was awarded a Citation for Meritorious Conduct and promoted to Inspector. An image of Edwina is her dress uniform receiving the citation is sitting in a place of honor at her father’s Gyro stand.

Edwina has since retired on disability. She now works part-time in a gunshop, and spends some of her downtime socializing at one of several police bars. She drinks sparingly, and will sometimes be chided for nursing her drinks. She also loves playing darts, but has absolutely no aptitude for it.

While she enjoys Gyros well enough, having grown up with them, she is really a fan of pattymelts.

Although she can no longer participate actively as she used to, Edwina has always found caves and geology fascinating, and enjoyed climbing since being introduced to it in middle school.

Inspector Edwina Dennis (Retired) is a big woman, 1.9m and some 120 kg, with wide shoulders. Her dark hair is kept in a simple pageboy. On cold nights she’ll still wear her heavy, uniform jacket (the “Police” panel across the back having been removed). She carries her old service weapon in a shoulder rig, and a telescoping truncheon in a pocket.

She is currently waiting to hear back from the SPA on a possible job.