//this story is not so much RP as it is just a story. Its core is based on disco & fl lore but with various liberties taken. Not in any way to be confused with official-compatible lore. If this story becomes interesting enough I may try to RP some of it out. Any feedback via Feedback Thread is appreciated
1.
The quiet Nebula glistened in the back door of Liberty Space. Coordinates 35365, 59724, 58945 (3.5.5. in short) was an exciting area. It was the open secret of the universe, guarded only by the most advanced in detect – and – destroy systems. The region was always unusually empty, rumor has it that in orbit of the local sun were the headquarters of the Libertonian weapons research division of Libertonian intelligence – a gigantic space lab comprised of several tens of battleships in formation – cloaked and always on the move with additional stealth technology to hinder detection. Yet even an organization as advanced as Libertonian intelligence had its flaws, as the crew of the Jamais a la maison learned when in the process of gathering scrap for repurpose. Normally Junker crew would never allow their captain to take them into such risky business salvaging trash in a highly restricted area where there were serious penalties for being caught, but these were desperate times for the maison.
They had just tractored in what seemed like a salvageable space toilet when out of the corner of Lespion Frensi’s eye, he saw what seemed like a blinking light. Except this was no ordinary blinking light, it bore the resemblance of a distress beacon’s visual signals.
“That blinking light” he pointed, “move the camera in closer”
“Si monsieur” Answered Brothe as she clumsily directed the camera drone at the beacon’s general direction, and flew it closer.
The camera drone approached the beacon, but as it moved closer, the camera feed suddenly turned to static.
“We lost the feed.”
“Stated Brothe the obvious, I want it back now!” Commanded Lespion
Brothe tapped the controls once, then twice. Then she swerved the ship around at the beacon’s general direction and stared outside the window. The camera drone floated helplessly in space, and it seemed fairly close to the beacon. Brothe tapped the controls some more, but there was no movement from the drone.
“Well?”
This day was starting to aggravate Lespion. He tapped his comm to call Feterno, and a space suit in the distance moved its arm to respond: “Sup”
“What’s your progress with that hunk of metal you have there?”
“Almost.”
“More, please”
“Almost done”
“and?”
“Well it should be worth quite a bit. We just need to detach the worthless bit from the worthwhile bit, and then check the worthless bit for any worthwhile bits I might have missed, and then I’m going to call my mother and tell her I love her, and breath and exhale and then inhale again, and then send neural signals to my lungs until my suit’s air recycler malfunctions and you have to abandon my suffocated body in Narnia to a space lion who has magic - “
Lespion cut in: “Well! Well - we’re leaving, so don’t take forever.”
“kay.”
The transmission ended, and Lespion sat himself at the controls. Brothe leaned over curiously glancing at Lespion’s monitor as he set a course that went in the general direction of the beacon.
“Why?”
“I was planning on leaving the beacon alone, but now that my camera is over there, I’ve decided that it’s best for me to go retrieve it.”
Brothe studied the captains face for a while, then: “Why?”
“That’s a class 7 camera drone, you know how much one of those things cost? That’s right, now don’t make me deduct that from your pay.”
Brothe turned to her console and checked her credits balance. Then she shook her head, and sulked into her seat.
Outside backgrounded by a mysterious thick blue mist, a grappling hook shot out from under the maison and reeled in another piece of scrap, followed by the fumes of the maneuvering thrusters of two space suits heading back in.
Then the maison’s impulse engine stuttered as it attempted to increase brightness, and as soon as the stuttering stopped, the ship began moving away, towards the beacon. Navigating carefully as if tiptoeing with maneuvering thrusters performing the occasional course correction, the maison moved through the field.
2.
“’If you go fast enough you might just catch it’, good riddance!” exclaimed Lespion as the maison sped towards its target. With an ever increasing spit of flames pouring out of its cruise engines
“Monsieur, we intercept in hundred ten seconds, think” said Brothe as she read off her readings
“There better not be any problems with that tractor Feterno, because incidentally if you haven’t noticed we’re also headed right for the sun and at this rate of acceleration we’d have a pretty small time frame to pull out before we get corona’d”
“Sready.”
“Hundred seconds.”
“Well we’re at least moving faster than that thing, but not fast enough, BROTHE!!!!”
“Already past limit monsieur, not oui go faster”
“Whose brilliant idea was it to completely destroy a failed experimental vessel by sending it at the sun with engines running again? This better be ***** worth it!”
“forty seconds”
The sun seemed larger and larger as the experimental vessel came nearer and nearer, and the captain repeated “come on come on come on come on” impatiently while Feterno tapped his fingers on the tractor controls, leisurely whistling.
The experimental vessel came into view. It seemed incomplete – after all, it was literally a bunch of weird useless-looking components duct taped to a high output engine, asymmetrical and completely un-aerodynamic.
“fifteen seconds”
“What is our current speed and distance from the ponr?”
(pon-ruh: point of no return)
“You don’t want to know, monsieur”
Lespion gulped. And she was right – he did not want to know.
“Tractor range in five, four, three, two, one… maintaining le parallel course and speed”
“Tractor out.” stated Feterno as he swiftly engaged his controls.
A series of grappling hooks shot out from under the Jamais a la maison and struck the experimental vessel, embedding themselves onto its various structural points.
Feterno: “Experimental Vessel secure.”
Brothe pulled on her control stick as the Junker ship’s maneuvering thrusters blared to turn the ship around.
Looking out the sun-proof window and psychologically feeling the blazing heat of the 3.5.5. sun, Lespion started sweating: “Get us out of here, Brothe.”
As soon as the ship faced away from the sun, Brothe quickly flung all throttles forward, but the sun was still getting bigger.
“We need more deceleration, Brothe!”
The maison started shaking under the force of its quasi-powerful engines tearing against the brutal force of the experimental vessel’s high powered engines which were still thrusting towards the sun.
“You know, it would be a great time to activate that emergency acceleration thruster right about now, Brothe!”
Brothe cracked the glass casing for the emergency acceleration controls with her bare fist, and then picked up the conveniently placed hammer beside the emergency acceleration controls and smacked the big red rubber button with the hammer, making a squeaky noise.
The ship simply shook even more violently.
“Inadequate” stated Feterno as he sighed disappointedly.
“WHY AREN’T WE SLOWING DOWN” screamed Lespion like a scared little girl, panicking beyond the levels of hysteria as the maison continued plummeting towards the sun.
No atmosphere? Ferrari.
The propeller is the greatest invention of all time.
levels of hysteria as the maison continued plummeting towards the sun.
A forth seat in the ship which none of you inattentive readers payed attention to spun around and the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen gave the following thoughtful analysis: “I think the problem is with that big engine that is pointing its thrust the opposite direction.”
Lespion, whom by now was sobbing in his own palms, looked up, face blushed clear red from the crying: “What.”
“All we have to do, is to get rid of that engine, disconnect it from the rest of the vessel ” She smiled, eyes looking straight at you with the most radiant warmth that could melt a heart of tungsten, a blend of youthful energy and beauty dissipating the “***** SHOOT IT ALREADY!!!!!!”
Startled, currently unnamed sex object squeezed the tip on her phalliatrigger and the first barrage managed to miss the engine and demolish some of the possibly useful parts of experimental vessel, but the second barrage remedied the situation, and blew the engine into a billion pieces, give or take a billion.
The l’Ane lurched less-backwards and pressed the crew of the maison really damn hardly against the back of their seats, the ship shaking horribly from all the deceleration with the structural integrity index whimpering to the extreme force.
“Now to find out if saving that guy was really worth the risk.“ said Lespion as he headed towards the cargo bay alongside the rest of the people on the bridge.
The cargo bay is a spacious amount of enclosed space designed to contain cargo, coated with a specially strengthened walls and a state-of-the-refurbished internal force field cushion inertial dampener to ensure the welfare of whatever cargo there was, and right now it contained several bits of the mysterious experimental vessel they had.
Brothe slided her fingers (from the wounded hand) alongside the edge vessel’s blasted hull smearing some red over it as Feterno examined the thing through a nearby monitor.
“Great shooting, *****” muttered Lespion as he stared at the loot, “Feterno report.”
Feterno stared at the readings on a nearby monitor, then stared at the salvage for a while. He then operated some controls, then took a deep breath, as if contemplating. He then did some calculations, finally: “Quarter mil.”
“All this for 250k, I don’t believe it. You know, I would have gladly accepted becoming a soldier or even a gunship captain, but nooo the crown just had to draft us into the Junker espionage sector, and now we finally do something remotely related to espionage and it turns out to be almost worthless. I won’t accept this. I can’t!”
The captain kicked the vessel so hard he hurt his foot, as Kari tried to comfort him: “At least it’s enough to resupply and repair our ship plus a few extra, right?”
The captain had grabbed a nearby strut, and swung it repeatedly, futilely beating against the experimental vessel’s reinforced exterior and with each swing, he yelled out a word: “Aren’t – You – Content!”
“At least I’m not beating a dead ship.” Retorted Kari as she climbed into what looked like the ship’s cockpit and fumbled around. “Found it!” A hand shot up from the cockpit, holding a data chip.
“That’s just a data chip.”
“What if it contains secrets, captain? We should open it up, see what’s inside.”
“What if it contains a virus, or a signal which gives our position away?”
“I’ll make sure.” Feterno swooped by and took the data chip from Kari. He then fiddled around with some controls as the captain, Kari and Brothe dropped what they were doing and stood around Feterno to observe what he was doing.
Soon, Feterno reached a result, and part of the display started filling up with random data. “That’s it” he said, indicating that there was nothing more he could do.
Lespion: “What is it?”
Kari: “Looks so random to me.”
“Let me try.” Said Lespion as he took over.
Lespion struggled some more with the controls as the display continued to be random. “I tried every method of interpretation I could think of, the file just won’t read!”
Frustrated, he tugged on his hair, grinding his teeth and shaking in anger.
“Hold up,” Brothe pushed Lespion aside and smeared some more blood on the controls and then soon the random visual signal transformed into a huge amount of numbers. “There, monsieur.”
Lespion: “What is it?”
Kari: “Looks so random to me.”
Feterno: “Hmm…”
Brothe explained: “It is actually e…Si, all I used was le secret file master key, it is le test of basic knowledge, makes sure normal burritos cannot open secrets.”
Lespion: “Very good Brothe. Now you might want to get that hand fixed. Feterno, see if you can’t figure out what this crap means. I’ma go set us a course outta here.”
The ship seemed to teem with life again, and the crew with their newfound purpose, eagerly proceeded with their tasks
3.
The lighting in the cargo bay was slightly dimmed, and only Feterno, with a cup of coffee in a nearby cup holder, was up and working.
On top and slumped over the experimental vessel face down was a sleeping beauty with a warm, wooly blanket covering her coverables, sex dripping from her slender legs in a glossy finish.
4.
Still the cargo bay, Feterno seemed to be finishing up on his work. Lespion walked in energetically, clearly awake after a good space-night’s sleep and slapped Kari on her ass, causing her to let out a short scream as she toppled over to the other side of the recovered vessel. She stood up, and wrapped the blanket around herself in a fashionable manner. She came to Lespion and Feterno, and Lespion inquired to Feterno’s progress: “How are we doing?”
Feterno: “Almost…”
Brothe had come by as well: “Monsieur, le ship ready manifique….”
Then she noticed Kari’s legs as well as the bit of white-ish stuff now painted on the experimental vessel. “Kari, si when us ESPNol mademoiselles get da gravy we clean ourselves than leave it around, capiche?”
Kari called up a nearby console and activated a few controls, soon enough a hose automatically began spraying a gaseous spray at both the ship and her legs, wet and tender under the watery cleansing, so pure and pleasing to the sight.
Lespion: “Feterno. I mean, are we there yet, Feterno?”
Feterno hit a key and suddenly there came the sound of a transmission from scrambled static: “…Tango Alpha two one…”
Lespion instantly reacted: “Turn it off, turn it off, we’ll be detected on their channel!”
Feterno: “We’re just recieving.”
“oh.”
The transmission: “… four we’ve completed our scouting run, cloak fuel status is A-ok. Heading back to base.”
Then another transmission: “This is Three One-One Control to Tranquiliser Operative Theta-Two, be ready to intercept the following orders.”
The receiving end: “This is Theta Two, go ahead.”
“Standby for package transfer.”
Lespion nodded at Feterno, and he started rapidly messing around with his console.
Feterno: “Got it. Decrypting.”
The receiving end: “Package received, Theta-Two out.”
Suddenly there was a spark from data chip, and then it exploded like a flashbang, paralyzing everyone in its disintegration.
Lespion stumbled around for a surface to hold onto as he commanded: “I think we’ve had enough spy work for one day. Brothe, get us the ***** outta here, now!”
“Si monsieur” spoke the shadow of the hunky woman, stumbling towards the vague direction of the cockpit.
As the captain’s sights cleared, he could hear the charging of the cruise engines, and pretty soon the ship launched into acceleration.
5.
A nebulae in the solar system of Kepler, where our all-too-familiar l’Ane emerged from a jump hole which closed behind it, disappearing, likely forever.
Out on the bridge, a door opened as Feterno walked in and accessed a nearby console. He looked grim.
“Brothe, set a course to Ames. Oh hi Feterno, what is – oh.” Said Lespion as he stared at the display which Feterno had just manipulated.
On the display, was a wireframe rendering of a strange looking device rotating – a reverse radar dish with several mechanical parts in its center, with a gun-like barrel encasing in a transparent dome bearing a purple dragon egg inside. Below it, the caption “R.A.I.N.”
“Brave crew of the Tranquiliser, this will be your only transmission until objective Delta has been achieved.
Radical Astronomy INduction Device, or the Rain device for short.” read Kari off the description in her sweet voice, “The latest in superweapon technology developed by joint Liberty-Bretonia researchers that produces devastating outcomes at minimal collateral, RAIN is an advanced tractor beam that has a nominal range of over 15 AUs, with the strength to accelerate over ten thousand teragrams of matter to incredible speeds, most importantly guide the – maximum 40000 separate entities into different points of impact on any target with precision of 50 centimeters and unmatched accuracy compared to contemporary projectile weapons. Created in response to Gallic threat, the RAIN is to be transported to Ile-De-France system orbit in a cloaked vessel, where the threat of the weapon will induce a surrender or the very least cease fire from the Gallia government, preventing further loss of life in the Sirian-Gallic conflict.
“This mission to top secret which is why you have all only just been briefed on the purpose of your missions on each person’s individual neural reciever. Once you’re fully fuelled, we wish you good luck on objective delta and safe journey into Gallia, may we in this bold move calm the galactic conflict once and for all. Signed, - both Queen Carina and the President Jacobi themselves. What this- I can’t read this. Fett, what’s this garbling after the signatures?”
Feterno tapped some more controls, then listed the possibilities to Kari: “Noise or content.”
Brothe: “It’s probably jus’ noise, decrypting noise result of heavy encryption. I read about it somewhere.”
“No.” Lespion: “It could contain more secrets. Feterno, work on it. Man, with all this information we’ll be rich and RIPPED!”
“Yeah” agreed Kari
“Shut up woman. And come gimme some of that ass, Fett’s not the only man around here you know.”
“He’s got me, and you got Brothe.”
Brothe winked creepily at Lespion and he decided it was best to let the crew do their jobs in solace and silence, for a change.
The clouds of the nebulae floated by as the maison cruised through it towards Ames Research, a Zoner space station in the center of the sector often acting as a resupply base for anyone who had the credits, though those dealings never progressed beyond rumors.
The l’ane hailed the station, and soon was moored.
Brothe, Kari and Lespion had the job of negotiating repair as well as ammo prices with the greedy Zoners, while Feterno continued working on the possible compound encrypted transmission from their intercept.
While studying an analysis of the maison’s damage, the Zoner engineer began curiously making inquiries to which Lespion had to pull the space-man’s 5th amendment to get him to shut up. The morbid questioning was making him nervous, and while Zoners weren’t known for their shadiness the type weren’t exactly clean of criminal activities either. “Never trust a Zoner”, a phrase which Lespion picked up when he first arrived at Sirius. Zoners are not a single organization, they each have their individual agendas which makes them plenty dangerous and at times much more effective at their tasks than the normal Joe. Such effectiveness unfortunately also extend to activities such as bargaining, and before long Lespion had his virtual wallet stripped of real credits, not that it did not also get them an extra week’s supplies or so but it somehow just felt over-priced.
Of course, Lespion had a feeling that without Kari smudging herself against the Zoner like a cleaning cloth on some bad stains, the price asked would have been much higher.
Lespion had it all planned out: Stay at Ames until the heavily encrypted message was decrypted through existing knowledge, then sell the information to the government right before the cloak ship enters Ile-De-France orbit, thus space-peace will still be achieved and at the same time Lespion and his crew great profits in the selling of the information.
So the ship had been restored to a partially respectable state, and Feterno began working on the message, even with the occasional help of Brothe and Kari in the form of knowledge and sex, respectly.
In the meantime, Lespion made a visit to the Ames Research Station bar to test the waters for the price his current information could fetch.
A holographic display artistically conveyed the message “Bar” to every would-be patron, and as Lespion passed the door he felt his weapons holster lose weight. Frantically he patted his waist, then spotted a sign at the entrance: “Zoner Intelligent Weapons Safekeeping Service active, thank you for your cooperation.”
“Ugh.” Lespion felt naked.
Zoner and Junker stations were both neutral installations in-discriminatory hosts towards criminal and lawful alike, and often one will find himself in the same bar as multiple rival criminal factions. Zoners and Junkers kept the peace on their stations slightly differently: Junkers were slightly shadier characters, employing mercenary guards in military grade powered armor and neural activated weaponry with orders to resolutely settle all conflict, their mere presence a brutal deterrent towards anyone thinking of causing trouble. Zoners had a more diplomatic solution, partially due to the immense wealth contributed by the shady wealth of rich Zoners. In an attempt to maintain a non-shady image, Zoner bars are equipped with non-lethal crime prevention technology, from the “Weapon safekeeping service” which removes all firearms from patrons automatically through a complex search-and-transport system, to its overkill “Violence suppression beams”, a multitude of low cost emitters scattered across the bar equipped with aggression detection technology and enough networked power to painlessly paralyze-neutralize an entire regiment of large buff soldiers, able to penetrate all armor and mobile personal force fields in existence.
He got to the bar: “One Gal- em Rheinbier.”
The bartender: “A gallon?”
“No, just one.” Lespion slipped over a couple pieces of space cash, whatever the amount it was obviously more than the price and tip combined.
The bartender nodded understandingly as he passed over the drink.
The captain leaned over inconspicuously: “I’ve got some intel.”
The bartender, whom by now Lespion had noticed the name tag “Dennis”, handed over a composite multimedia display medium (or more commonly known by them spacers as “paper” and to us as “space-paper”) which indicated that the tall gentleman on the far side of the bar, a skinny figure with heavy duty space-glasses (model U-579 utility Wearable Computer cum image intensifier) named “Kandy Krush”, was the go-to information dealer in the bar. A regular Lane Hacker (space nerd pirates who hack space-internet), he was the representative of the Lane Hackers, offering lower-than-market prices along with some attractive extra incentives such as piracy exemption across the Hacker-Molly-Outcast-Rogue-Hessian network for anyone who makes trade.
Then there was Loga O. Cepter, a Corsair woman usually in the center-side benches (but currently out pirating), looking to get her band of cannibal pirates into the intelligence business. The obviously synthetic nosed pirate (interesting story by the way- apparently her starving mother had to cook her nose to stay alive during a siege of her hometown base) was an old timer in terms of space piracy with a small fleet of extremely skilled crew, but new in the spy business and obviously unpredictable, often offering much more generously in payments of stolen goods for information. A giant red asterisk hovered blinking above his name however, further access of the marker indicating the pirate’s tendency to indiscreetly murder any information seller afterwards in an event of “accidental piracy” to retrieve their “stolen” goods.
Finally, there was the lone Freelancer named Siegfried Packer sitting right across the adjacent seat to Lespion, an outcast of Junkers after being busted for smuggling counterfeit software from a Lane Hacker base. Even though people in general avoid him due to his unreliable history, he still has a few contacts and acts as middle-man in trade negotiations. People who are gambling in dealing with him can expect a fruitful reward (less fruitful when Siegfried gets his cut of the bargain, but still fairly decent deals financially speaking) but only after a heavy time investment in a test of skill and wits, during which they may or may not put their lives at risk in trade negotiations with the contacts, which would likely occur outside the protection of the Research Station.
Lespion opted for the Freelancer, figuring the familiarity and similarities between a Gallic Junker and an ex-Junker might give him a bit of leeway.
He took his drink and sat across the choice: “Siegfried Packer?”
The Junker stared up at him, first for a split second bewildered, and tired. Then, suddenly realizing the business, he sprang upright and insta-smiled: “How may I help you good sir?”
“I have some business. Intelligence business. You think you can help me out?”
“Why sure, sir, I’d love to help. Buying or selling?”
“Selling.”
“Ah, that’s a 10% cut.”
Lespion raised an eyebrow, as Packer covered his mouth: “Whoopsies, did I just say that? 10 percent? Forget I just said that. Let’s talk business, no need to worry about the cost we’ll figure it out later. What’re you selling?”
The captain took a sip, and maintained the poker: “Military intelligence, something huge.”
“Something huge, yes? Lots of people come to me saying they’ve got something huge-“
Hey baby, I got something huge.
Insuppressible high-pitched laughter from a nearby bunch of space whores was interrupted by some random patrons across the section: “That was one person, it was six months ago, you completely passed up some gate codes that would be valid for the next twelve years.”
“And you begged the guy to give you a cut for the ‘motivation’ you gave him that led him to sell the codes elsewhere.”
“Hah!” they laughed as they chugged down their drinks.
“Like I said,” Packer continued acting unphased but nevertheless revealing his uneasiness, “I have a great and long history of experience in dealing in intelligence. What is it? I’ll try to give you an estimate.”
Lespion put down his Rheinbier. With a hint of dramatic flair, he raised one hand as a closed fist and another hand the shape of a beak, then gestured the beak sweetly landing a peck on the fist and the fist subsequently exploding into a palm with a terrifying mouthed “Kabooshhhhh…”
“That kind of intelligence.” Grinned the space-frog.
Packer stared at him, with the look of a betrayed teenage schoolgirl. His voice was literally shaking: “Did those damn Outcasts put you up to this?”
Lespion looked at him bemused: “No… monsieur?”
“That was terrible Gallic, you flower asshole. Very funny, not. That cup looks empty, CAN I GET YOU ANOTHER DRINK???” the angry ex-Junker looked like he would launch into an actual attack on the slightly surprised captain as he reached for the glass, but instead he froze completely before he could even stand up, a light pink hue shimmering on him like he was a chem-light.
A waiter hurried over to their position, and indicated towards a glowing pink hemisphere on the ceiling, clearly a violence suppression beam emitter: “He is in stasis right now, it would take at least an hour for the paralysis to wear off. Shame about the seat though, real nice view of the Xeno den now has to stay occupied by that delightful person until the effect wears. Still, boss says we save more than twenty thousand a month purely on the credits we don’t have to spend on repairs and replacing broken utensils, so I guess the cost is worth it. May I get you another Rheinbier while you wait for him?”
Lespion wasn’t about to wait an hour for this jackass. He re-consulted the space-paper he got from the bartender and headed towards the Lane Hacker.
No atmosphere? Ferrari.
The propeller is the greatest invention of all time.
6.
“The name’s Krush, Kandy Krush. And you are?”
“Frensi. Lespion Frensi, you may call me Lespy.”
“Alright Lespy, I assume you didn’t come here to praise the technological achievement on my head that is the U-579 Heavy duty Wearable with 378 picometre picoprocessing units and autoregenerative power supply, inverse phase multiband infiltration modems and our completely flawless software produced by the finest programming bots active since the first generation of Lane Hackers? Of course I know: Kabooshhhhh.” The nerd reproduced Lespion’s prior actions as well as facial expressions.
“Like watching a mirror right? Integrated muscle and skeletal enhancements, operates with or without a computer, can replicate any pre-recorded or programmed actions, we got custom combat enhancements installed, aiming assists to martial arts, the all without a single day’s training.”
Technology was restricted in Gallia- even for criminals. Lespion, despite being a qualified Gallic Junker captain, was still slightly fascinated. He continued watching as Krush selectively replicated his every action since he entered the bar. The space nerd, mouth acting separate of his body:
“I suppose you’re new around here, everybody knows that we’ve thoroughly bugged the place. The Zoners know removing the sensors is a waste of time so they don’t even bother. Hell, even we would have trouble getting rid of those resilient things which we joke can survive a supernova, but that’s not far from the truth at all. It would take at least a decade’s development of the anti-bug hardware, and that is only if we wanted to. So far, not Ageira, not even Libertonian intelligence. Sure they can try to counter the bugs but they can never really get rid of them.”
“That is all very interesting,” Lespion obviously was not paying any attention to the tech-talk, “but how do you maintain your position while re-enacting me moving around?”
With all those sensors on the space nerd, it’s a surprise he hadn’t noticed Lespy’s disinterest in his nerd stuff and therefore took no offense: “That’s no secret, I believe the guys who programmed the algorithms found the method of creating the illusion of limb movement without equivalent displacement in some ancient choreographed body flexing entertainment known as moonwalking. The same two dimensional musical recordings was apparently important enough to get on three of the five sleeper ships. What a waste nobody listens to those things anymore, at least some good came out of it. Anyways, the intel?”
“Huh.” Lespion snapped out of his trance.
“Lespy. What do you have for me?”
Lespion leaned forward: “This is something that could change the entirety of Sirius. A while back my crew and I saved a janitor while salvaging the Nebula in 355. We found him in a life pod suffocating, it seems that he carelessly flew his garbage truck into a ship faring that disabled his janitor-class paper shields upon impact and cut through it like hot fire to ice.
When we opened the hatch, he thanked us. In return we violently asked him for any more thanks he could give us, and he told us of an unmanned experimental vessel set to be launched to the sun to be completely demolished for reasons, and said we might get something useful from it, ensuring us that the risk was minimal, as there was no actual guidance unit on the ship. Minimal monitoring, it was your average failed experimental vessel destroy all physical evidence thing and security was lax.
So we risked the Ja – the (he forced himself an American accent in raping of his beloved ship’s French name. He’d taken a habit of minimalizing the knowledge of his nationality, for while he was pretty sure the Hacker knows his identity from all the analysis from his nerd gear, he often figured the fewer who knew of his Gallic-ness the better. Xenophobia was among the less uncommon reasons for blatant murder) Mason – that’s my ship parked right there” he stopped, pointed at the mooring fixture and took a break for a sip from his glass. Then, “we risked the Mason, chased the vessel down and salvaged a communications receiving and decrypting chip, and in using it we intercepted this message that- “
Lespion lowered his voice to a whisper under that which the common human ear could possibly decipher under the conditions of the bar noise: “Liberty and Bretonia is going to end the war with Gallia using a cloaked battleship, and this fancy new weapon that’s basically a powerful long range tractor beam which will somehow enter Ile-De-France orbit, and threaten it into surrender.”
The sound amplifiers in Krush’s cyborg ears caught all of it.
Krush moved his eyes a bit in thought, then he said: “That is extremely valuable information Lespy. You must have the evidence?”
Lespion: “I have the specific transmission, 100% genuine stored verbatim with my people.”
Krush produced a figure: “We are prepared to offer you ten million credits and 5 year unlimited cross network piracy exemption in exchange for the proof, if you really have it. The deal will be completed and credits transferred upon confirmation of the intel’s authenticity.”
Granted ten million was not too bad, certainly covering most of the expenses the maison would have for the next year, especially the reduced risk in traversing trade lanes allowing the captain to take up some lucrative transit jobs.
But he had crew to take care of, not only their salaries but their hopes and dreams of going home, and of the usual wealth and riches which the meager 10 million credits was incredibly lacking in.
Lespion looked at Krush, then spoke: “In addition actually, there was a garbled bit at the end of the transmission which my crew thought was decryption noise, but I was pretty certain it contained some additional encrypted transmission which could be worth much more, perhaps more than 10 million credits?”
“What’re you suggesting?” asked Krush as he raised an eyebrow.
“I’m suggesting,” stated Lespion, “that we – yours and my people, work together in solving this little riddle and if we get something new, perhaps you could revise that offer?”
Krush sternly: “You do realize that we Lane Hackers, for all intents and purposes, are still commodity liberators. Once we are out of the Zoner nerf-zone and if we decide you have wasted our time, consequences will be severe. And you will definitely not get any of the incentives we discussed earlier.”
Without second thought, Lespion stood up, extended his hand and smiled. “It’s a partnership!”
Krush tapped his glasses, then, without standing up, “Noted. My colleagues will initiate further communications to proceed with this collaboration.”
“Great, I’ll have my crew bring over the transmission in an hour.”
Lespion left the table for the exit, slightly bewildered by Krush’s lack of courtesy yet satisfied that him and his crew were finally going to get paid. As he walked through the exit, he felt his weapon plop back into its holster – and knew that everything was going to be just fine.
7.
The Lane Hacker freighter, a Dromedary (A common freighter used frequently in the borderworlds), was docked in one of the station’s docking bays. From the outside view it was evident that the light cargo ship had seen its share of action with its clearly repaired hull and the amount of stitches so numerous the freighter might as well have been a ship of Theseus.
However as soon as Feterno entered the freighter, he could see that the dinky outside appearance was just a deception, for inside the ship was a relatively small, yet in no way claustrophobic workspace with its walls lined with computers and various technical equipment well suited for a wide assortment of illegitimate purposes.
The lane hackers escorting him nudged their weapons in his back: “Don’t move.”
After a while, the taller one of the hackers: “We got the transmission, we’ll take it from here. You’re welcome to contribute, as per the agreement. Just don’t get in our way.”
8.
“How did it go?” asked Kari
Feterno: “Transmission.”
Soon enough and before she could ask him to elaborate, a transmission came with the taller hacker whose ID read “Samuel Yognov”.
“So, did you find Feterno useful-“
Lespion was cut off by the Hacker: “There’s little time. We haven’t managed to decrypt the noise which is in fact an encrypted transmission, however we have been able to ascertain a timecode in the file container, basically something big is going to happen very soon, we just need to find out what. However we need an equipment - ”
“what- “
“No- leave your questions to the end. Anyway, we have determined that this intel may be worth cracking, and besides we have been eyeing the new computing systems for some time now. However, given the emergency of the situation –“
At this point he noticed that the Maison’s crew weren’t paying attention. They appeared to be sniggering. Yognov’s electronic iris dilated a bit and identified, from a reflection from a reflective object which he could see in the transmission, that Brothe had zoomed a monitor in on the particularly entertaining blemish on his face which, when viewed as closely as they were doing so right now, appeared to be a flaccid penis.
The chemical reserves on him instantly began dropping as a calming agent was being injected generously into his bloodstream, keeping him from agitation. He instantly transmitted an annoying scratching sound and regained Lespion’s attention instantly, Brothe immediately returned Yognov’s image to its original state.
“There is a convoy scheduled to depart from Planet Denver within 20 minutes carrying just that equipment, while you were busy laughing we’ve prepared some nice EVA combat suits for you on our high speed interceptors, since you’re the closest thing we have to expendable troops. Here’s how it going to happen: We will mobilize a wing of Dagger class interceptors as well as your l’Ane which we are installing an AI to temporarily take command of, as well as the liberty of refitting it with weapons as well as new thrusters suited for the cause.”
Lespion startledly turned around to see a hacker – having somehow bypassed his computer security system – chipping away at his ship’s computer casing with a rusty old peripheral beside him, ready to install it.
“You will each be carried in the cargo hold of a Dagger, and be launched during the many dive-bombing passes infiltrate the transport while your fancy ship – the Maison”, he said in a perfect French accent, “Will serve as distraction as well as a shield buster ship – don’t worry, the AI we’re installing is a Ligents class computer with an excellent track record of completing its task before its destruction. If this mission succeeds of course, you’ll be able to buy a ship 10 times better and still have credits left to spend on other things.”
“Of course, we can’t just blow up the transport as it is Ageira protocol to destroy sensitive equipment upon imminent defeat, and we’re really just after the technology, not the equipment itself, and the Ageira employees are no good to us dead. We mobilize in 5 minutes. Any questions?”
“Why us?” asked Feterno, “You’re the ones who have the combat implants and the superhuman overallness.”
“These implants on their own are worth 80 times that of an EVA combat suit. Plus as I said before, you’re expendable on so many levels, we can’t compete.”
“Right.”
The hacker installing the AI tapped Lespion’s shoulder: “This way.”
9.
A dagger class light fighter/interceptor is a high speed fighter craft with extreme acceleration and maneuvering due to its multiple directional thrusting capabilities, and although armed with light armaments it can still be quite deadly and is almost unhittable by linear projectiles, especially when piloted by implanted cyborg nerd pirates. The Lane Hacker’s variant naturally contains a superior computer system and more precise weapon design. The Dagger being the light fighter it is, has limited cargo capability, as well as seating one person in its cockpit, it can barely hold a human being who is wearing an EVA combat suit in its cargo hold.
A trade lane is a space railroad that transports ships at otherwise impossible or difficult to achieve speeds by accelerating them within an artificial gravity well, typically used within the same star system due to the relatively short range of its effects. Once it is disrupted (or the ship leaves the trade lane by “dropping out”), the artificial gravity well is reversed and (especially if the ship is in the middle of the trade lane route), the ship undergoes massive deceleration which, if not pre-anticipated and preprogrammed in the inertial dampener, could cause intense G-forces as dampening the G-forces associated with trade lane use requires re-routing most of the ship’s power to the inertial dampeners and for a short time straining it to up to 1000% of its typical operational capacity.
Jump gates, jump holes and jump drives use entirely different technology, basically creating wormholes that shortens the distance travelled severely.
While there is no sound in space due to lack of atmosphere, ships and EVA suits typically have built in sound systems linked up to their scanning systems synthesizing sounds (eg. Nuclear engine or impulse engine or a Photon beam or even an Ak-47) based on scanned data as a way of informing the ship’s occupants of its external environment – of course you can’t hear a drifting ship or its weapons 100 km from you, even in atmosphere - don’t be silly. However even in the future human beings have ears, and having audio information is a good way of avoiding the cluttering of visual cues on your HUD.
EVA combat suits, in addition to standard Extra Vehicular Activity functionality, also contains handy features such as automatic weapon kickback compensation for projectile based weapons as well as higher thrust than conventional EVA suits due to its use of future monopropellant rather than conventional low thrust renewable energy sources. Goes without saying, they are sleeker or bulkier depending on variant, and come with higher capacity personnel shield generators. They also do quite well in gravity, acting as an exoskeleton to support its own mass as well as the user’s motion.
Also it is my philosophical belief that in the future we will be able to fully satisfy everybody without the bloodshed and prejudice and oppression associated but peace would be no fun for a novel now would it?
No atmosphere? Ferrari.
The propeller is the greatest invention of all time.
10.
4 Daggers and an l’Ane blazed high above the trade lanes towards the direction of the distant blue dot of Planet Denver, engines grumbling by the ship’s thrust as it hummed across the space .
“This is a very precise operation,” explained Krush over encrypted coms to the space-frenchies sardined in the cans, “We have to intercept the trade lane at the precise moment the convoy passes through, and disrupt the ring just after the forward escorts have passed through and hopefully their reaction times will be slow enough that they will take a while coming around. We cannot simply wait by the lanes as we will be detected - we must take them by surprise.”
“20 seconds to intercept, disengaging cruise engines” reported a pilot as the bright tail of the ship’s engines dissipated and the fighter began drifting.
“Remember, the image description of the objective equipment will automatically show on your HUD when you are near it, there will be further instructions once its container if any is scanned by your on-suit scanner.”
Two shadows –the forward escorts - whisked by as various beams of bright light shot out of the ship’s weapons, converging on the trade lane structures like a reversed tracer shotgun blast, sparks flew from the trade lane’s energy field as a large space-train – a Bison – and two Libertonian “Guardian” very heavy fighters came into view, taking form from specks of black smudge.
Tractor cables shot out of the Daggers onto the trade lane rings as they blazed their engines in reverse to stop their drift. The Daggers were flung around the trade lane structures as it continued to accelerate, the crew’s faces red with the g-force straining on them as it slowed the light fighters from excess of 10 thousand kph of relative velocity to zero in a few seconds, and as soon it stabilized, the fighters released the hooks and began their strafing run, weapons ablaze as it chipped away at the shields with the help of the l’Ane’s shield buster weapons, shots converging at the engine’s weak spot while dodging the uneffective anti-fighter weapons.
“Of course, advanced transport shields. This is gonna take a while, sit tight” reported one of the pilots.
The tail of the Bison began sucking in space-matter in charging its cruise engines, and the Guardians had begun engaging the Daggers hoping to distract them.
The Daggers formed a formation, and using their superior maneuverability, landed at the tail of one of the Guardians and as one got a thrust disruptor missile into it, the rest of the Daggers took advantage of the Guardian’s reduced maneuverability and concentrated fire on it, and before long the Guardian’s shield bubble had collapsed with a comical synthesized pop, the Daggers sent a few shots into it’s engines and guns then having successfully disabled the ship, veered off to focus fire on the second Guardian.
Having detected that the Bison had almost fully charged its cruise engine, the l’Ane sent a few propulsion disruptor missiles at it, and the Bison expectedly dropped countermeasures, but just as it seemed to start cruising a bit a missile had finally hit it, and the bison lost all of its accelerating momentum, the crew clearly panicking as the guns couldn’t seem to decide between shooting with its low damage-per-second weaponry at the l’Ane or to continue unsuccessfully suppressing the Daggers, who had by now disabled the second Guardian.
The Bison’s shields had popped, and the Daggers veered around once more, sending missiles and more gunfire into its engine, destroying its hope of escape as it drifted, the l’Ane taking a parallel course suppressing its regenerating shields as the Daggers began dealing with the Bison’s trouble turrets.
“The distress signal is being jammed, but don’t expect it to last. We estimate you have 5 minutes.” Said Krush as the Daggers launched the Combat Suited Gallic Junkers at the Bison. The under hatch of the light fighters opened as gleaming armor came into view, flexible yet sturdy armor along with the thruster packs, as well as crude and old fashioned but effective oxygen tanks in the back, surrounded by ammo, shielded fuel tanks and a portable shield generator underneath.
Gas started pumping from the eva suit’s thruster as it bolted out of the Dagger’s hold, four angels of piracy with white EVA wings heading towards the Bison armed to the teeth with ammo-based weaponry (which do not divert additional energy from the shield, computer, exoskeleton and heat systems).
“Remember, break in, grab the chip, and then get the hell out.”
The suits landed on the surface of the Bison, suspension leg systems creaking under the landing.
“Brothe, take the lead. Kari and Fet take our flanks, I’ll take the rear.” Commanded Lespion, as they took up positions.
“According to my HUD, the best breach point is right up ahead, let’s move it.”
The three took up formations and began walking forward, when Lespion: “We don’t have time for a subtle approach ladies and gentlemen, let’s get this done!”
“Alright” said Feterno as they jumped away from the Bison, and as the distance increased to where they had a clear line of sight to the breach point, the Hackers flew in for another strafe, shooting at the breach point, weakening it while the Gallic Junkers moved towards the breach point, both Kari and Feterno arming their space-RPGs mid drift, then firing it, while huge expels of RCS thrust compensated for the kickback.
The space-RPGs did the trick opening up the hull of the Bison, huge specks of random crap flying out of the hole, the incoming EVA combat suits strafing to dodge these outcoming projectiles as bullets followed them from the pressurized cabin. Wait-bullets?
2 figures wearing civilian level space gear carrying space-SMGs were shooting up the breached hole, holding onto a solid object from inside to prevent themselves from propelling outwards as they attempted to defend this newly built entrance to the ship. It wasn’t surprising that the defenders couldn’t hit a thing, because all they had to go on were the barely visible blinks of suppressed white smoke that grew larger each time it had blinked.
The already active RCS thrusters from the Gallic Junker’s packs just howled more wildly as they blasted away, the combat suit’s aiming assistance helping them neutralize the defenders neatly as they slipped through the hole one by one, clearing the corridor of defenders who couldn’t stand a chance mostly because they didn’t all get to their personal life supporting suits in time.
“This way!” Led Brothe as she bounced across the Bison’s insides, artificial gravity still being active as they, with superhuman strength, the rest following with a less funky jog because they didn’t enjoy the killing as much because they aren’t bloodthirsty maniacal beefcake.
As they came across a turn, the on-suit sensors sensed movement on the turn, so naturally the team just barged right through guns ablazing, murdering everyone and brushing away the space grenades that just bounced off their shields like rain on a windshield. It wasn’t exactly a tactical situation… Until they were ambushed at an intersection by several security officers who appeared out of nowhere with space Light Machine Guns firing loud deafening shots of explosive rounds, badly straining the Frenchie’s shields as they struggled to target security officers who had cloaked before the combat suits could get a sensor lock on their heads.
Without thinking (because the suit did it for her), Brothe grabbed a grenade from her own pouch and detonated it right in the vicinity of everyone, knocking off everyone’s shields but also disrupting the security officer’s cloaks as their own suits emerged from the purple glow, slightly off balance but prepared.
Coincidentally because the UNIVERSE and GOD works in mysterious ways, a quick count of the defensive forces revealed that there were actually 4 security officers, each armed with a similar looking, sleeker yet slimmer EVA combat suit, and without further cue, the pirates picked a target each and ran up close to it while switching to their space shotgun, pumping a round right into their chest plate, a quick shimmer from the security officer’s shields indicated that their shields had been disabled due to the close proximity of the blast. However the officer’s suits had compensated for the blast with its own thrusters so they weren’t knocked down, and they began a counterattack with extreme agility, punching and kicking.
What followed next was a seemingly long melee fight sequence between the 8 combatants consisting of quick and complicated martial arts routines, sometimes 1 on 1, sometimes coordinated efforts, all in a swift and beautiful rhythm combining every single fighting technique ever invented adapted to the available gear they had as moves and blocks swung so fast that adrenaline had to be induced to the camera – I mean the combatants – in order to slow the fight to a watchable level, obviously since aside from Brothe, everyone else in the party didn’t know jack ***** about hand to hand fighting and were basically observing as the suit and the temporary interface with their neurons did all the work.
I cannot get into specifics, but rest assured it was a thrilling and complex fight scene that would remain in the audience’s participant’s memory for a long time, but after 10 seconds of real time fighting which somehow seemed more like minutes of awesomeness, and assisted by a huge rocking blast coordinated with the Daggers and the l’Ane outside shook the ship violently. This coordination, not unanticipated by the security officers, opened up an opportunity for each of the frenchies to conduct a finishing move: Brothe had regenerated her shields, and with her enemy on its back, and she flung herself on top of it, bashing the components of the suit’s back right through the victim’s back, busting the officer’s spine as it rolled to face up, composite shards and metal pieces and blood coming out the front of its armor.
Feterno grabbed his foe by the legs, kneed on it to break it, and then bashed Brothe in the head with the unlucky soul, breaking his everything else as a light squeal - which wasn’t really a light squeal but the sound was heavily diminished by both his intact suit’s sound dampening properties and Feterno’s Chinese opera in the background. He’s space French, he doesn’t need a reason to be weird.
Brothe stumbled back into Kari who we find out only now that incidentally has the most unsexy female fantasy armor of all time due to its seemingly unique buff-chested and “beer belly” design of having most of its storage tanks and equipment in the front. Her neural interfacing headgear – which incidentally she’s also the only one to have visible headgear other than the standard Spacegle Glasses HUD system, and metal the wires morphed her face from what it was to basically a pig – with an emphasis on her nose which was hooked right up by the nostrils in an ugly, yet surprisingly comfortable manner.
She snorted as she unnecessarily summoned all her might into compounding with and channeling Brothe’s momentum right at her target’s balls with her wide barreled space-cannon, the sharp superheated barrel jamming right though his groin armor as blood leaked through, shrieking in agony as something seemed to be pumped through the hand cannon, right into his torso.
Kari unplugged her bloody hand cannon like a power socket, and flashed its barrel side in front of a recovering Brothe’s face revealing a glossy yellow now reddened paint job with the marking:
Agony Aunt Grenade Launcher MK II
With a illustrated instructions underneath of a cute little girl causing giant flowers in the area she aimed at, the future space-paint also alternating between images showing the differences in projectile arc between firing under gravity and firing in 0-G.
With a splat, Kari’s victim exploded, some of the pieces including a de-sphered eyeball landing onto Lespion’s suit and helmet staring right at him like a bug begging for mercy on a windshield. Lespion paused in horror, staring at Kari wide eyed and completely oblivious to his actions as his suit swung one of its rocket nozzles into his also horrified opponent’s helmet with such force that the glass cracked open as well as knocking it down, and then he backed up to the fallen and suffocating guard and teabagged him, for a moment the image of his frozen expression and actions bearing uncanny resemblance to the glorious victories of gamers past.
The dying however was not dead, and with his last breath he drew a grenade, difficultly urged his fingers towards detonation while everyone was still staring at Kari, but the redshirt in the worn blue suit could never complete his suicide bombing as Lespion’s rockets fired, rocket flames appearing out of the nozzle and blasting the failure’s face in. Incidentally the rocket also lifted Lespion up it being a rocket n all,
No seconds were further wasted as they got up and resumed their running, trying to shrug off the encounter. A second later they had arrived at a door labelled “cargo bay 9” but which according to their intel was secretly an entrance to cargo bays 1 through 5 as well as fragile cargo bay 8, which they reached without further major issues.
No atmosphere? Ferrari.
The propeller is the greatest invention of all time.
“Two minutes” reported Brothe unnecessarily as they breached fragile cargo bay 8 with a space C2, killing absolutely nobody who was in the cargo bay, however they still conducted a weapons sweep of the place before their sensors produced the most likely locations of the piece of equipment.
“Let’s split up. I’ll take locations Alpha and Echo, Brothe you take Bravo, Fett and Kari take Charlie and Delta. We have 90 seconds, chop-chop.”
They split up, going through the aisles and junk in the ship’s cargo hold, keeping their eye out for the equipment’s signature.
Lespion reached Alpha first, and picked up the highlighted item – a flat white piece of porcelain like material which the scanners revealed was emitting a fake signature. The suit then instinctively flung it out as the decoy exploded mid-flight, a small but powerful shockwave conveniently flinging Lespion to the direction of location Echo.
“Trap.” Gasped Lespion.
Brothe walked into a particularly open aisle suited for her body shape as she stared right at a hefty crate blocking her line of sight on the object that was potentially the piece of equipment. She heaved the crate aside with one fell swoop, revealing a gasoline based engine sealed within a shield – but not the scanner jamming type of shield, so Brothe did an intense scan on the object, just as her suit instinctively made her rapid-fire her automatic on the engine, killing the shield quickly and then blasting an inconspicuous wire, whereby a fancy holographic interface with the most elaborate graphics hovered over the machine of ancient technology and revealed a stunning truth: Defensive measures disabled.
“Defensive measures ledisable, senioritas” Reported Brothe on the radio.
Sounds of fumbling came through the audio feed, and finally Kari’s voice: “I got the thing!”
“Good, let’s get outta here.” Said Lespion.
Moments later, a blast ruptured on the other side of the Bison’s hull, and 4 EVA suits flew out from the gaping hull breach into the waiting open end of the Maison’s cargo bay, which caught the crew then closed to swerve around and flee from a successful hit and run operation.
Behind them, the Ageira Bison’s damage control systems had extinguished the fire as part of its damage control process. The whole encounter lasted a mere 4.5 minutes.
11.
Gathered around in a dark room, hackers huddled around the small box forming a closed circle.
Knowing that all scans indicated whatever it was could not harm them, Samuel Yognov picked up the small box, and swiped his finger on its touch sensitive surface. There was no response from the cube, except for a notable loss of dust on it.
Like a doctor performing a surgery, Yognov put the cube in his left hand and extended his right palm, the hacker beside him handed him a scalpel.
Yognov held the cube between his fingers, touch sensitive face up, and dug the scalpel into the edge. Calmly and steadily he made his cut around the edge, eventually cutting around the touchpad to remove it, revealing what was inside the cube: a small piece of paper.
Yognov slipped the small piece of paper into his handheld scanner, and the LED on the scanner turned green.
“We have the technology. We can rebuild it. We’ve rebuilt it. We’re getting a decryption on the noise now. Get the maison.”
12.
Feeling fairly proud of themselves, the easily impressed maison crew had come to the hacker ship for debriefing. Lespion had been so confident he strapped his gun to the holster more secure than he normally would, he wouldn’t need it because everything was going to be dandy.
“Well,” motioned Krush to his monitor, “here’s what we got.”
The transmission decryptyed in front of their eyes.
Kari read: “Top secret Liberty Security Force directive, confirmation code Romeo dash two bravo Zulu six, this order is for your eyes and your eyes only.
The president and top strategists have come to the conclusion, based on the expert analysis of the brains in 355, it is determined that the mere alleged presence of the Tranquilizer is inadequate of a threat and will not be sufficiently persuasive for the Gallic crown to cease their assault on Sirius in midst of their winning streak.
Unfortunately Queen Carina’s psych profile has proven passive and unwilling to engage in resolute action, as Liberty is the guardian of the universe we are morally obligated to make the decision for her and all the innocent lives.“
Kari was shaking, and skimmed the next paragraph as she took a deep inhale before she continued:
“Upon arrival at objective delta, you are to engage in takeover of the Tranquilizer. After you have secured the Bretonian crew, you will demonstrate the RAIN device in order to send a clear message to the Gallics.
The planetary coordinates of your target are as follows:
Three nine dash zero nine five nine six two nine three six three zero five five mark one two five dash eight zero seven one eight nine nine four one four zero six two five, impact radius fifty kilometers.”
Kari gulped, but no one told her to read on.
“The target was selected for its significance and population, half of the place is military installations. There is to be no hesitation as it is absolutely crucial that the mission is a success and the Gauls know we mean business.
The war has to end by any means necessary.
Destroy this transmission upon reception, you will receive no additional communications until our victory.”
Ending the message was the LSF insignia and the words Analyze, Influence, Conserve, and the signature of the director Liza Brandy.
Before anyone had a comment, Feterno waved his piece of space paper – currently labelled “map of Gallia” – in front of the crew’s faces.
Lespion took the piece of paper, Krush’s emotion sensors immediately registered something.
The crosshair on the map was labelled 39.0959623693055, 125.80718994140625. When Lespion zoomed in, hundreds of icons of people’s faces popped up. Above each face, “in contact”. Beside each face were names. Hundreds of names and faces: Etienne Barrand, Ferdinand Pruette, Gabrielle Rochette… but then when the map was over a specific house, there were the names: Gervais Frensi, Jean Frensi, Agnes Frensi, Bastien Frensi… The face of a 4 year old girl, the face of an 80 year old man, the face of a 30 year old brother… the face of family.
“Your adjusted payment of 120 million credits has been sent. The Jamais a la maison has been added to the list.” Krush said.
Yognov handed the quiet Feterno a small chip type storage device: “This contains your Lane Hacker receipt and the new transmission verbatim. You might want it. For what it’s worth.”
The Gallic crew stood there silent until Krush took the initiative and led them off his ship.
“Nice doing business with ya, Lespy. Safe flying.”
A friendly pat on the back, and Krush left them to their own. Lespion loosened the strap on his holster.