“I’m here under a reservation with name Wardwell.”
“Oh yes, there’s a woman whose already there, follow me, I’ll take you to your table.”
Hoegenakker was in Liberty, at a Newark Station restaurant. under false papers, but Rhianne still knew who he was. She knew he was working for the government, she just didn’t know he went unlawful, and betrayed his own country and assassinated an ally. But that didn’t matter. Hoegenakker just had to get money from his old college friend.
Before he met his current wife, Hoegenakker had Rhianne in his life. She was the skinniest person he knew because of all the ****ing drugs she would take back when she dated him. He didn’t respect himself much back then, he thought he was just lucky a girl was into him. And then he joined the military and broke up with her because he finally realized how to have a sense of self esteem. So he cut this toxic waste of a person out of his life.
She looked a bit fuller now, not just skin and bones anymore. It had been almost two decades since they last saw each other.
They embraced, and they had a friendly chat. But none of that mattered. You, as the reader already know what you need to know. That Hoegenakker and this banker, Rhianne Wardwell, used to date in college. You, the reader, can imagine their melancholic chemistry seeing each other after nearly two decades.
He pulled out a bottle. She refused, she no longer drank alcohol either, but he insisted. He said it was a bottle of tea after all. How harmful could it be?
So she asked the waitress to pour it into her cup while making silent, bright eye contact with him. They were both genuinely happy with one another and where they had finally come in life from their insecure university days. She took a small sip of the tea, and then down the whole cup. Something was different...
This wasn’t her. She could tell. She didn’t down an entire cup of tea after taking one sip. And it was supposed to be hot, but it was cold. Why didn’t she register this? Its almost like she blacked out for a second and then realized what she had done. This isn’t…her usual behavior.
“Mattis, what is this?”
“It’s a G6.”
“For ****’s sake Mattis how am I supposed to know what is.”
“That's a private jet that the rich used to fly back at ancient Earth. They named a drink after it.”
He wasn’t smiling.
“Why’d they name a drink after a private jet?”
“It was a luxurious jet." He stared at her dead in the eye...he was waiting. This was just the beginning.
"So a few of these boys from some rap group called the Three-Six Mafia, named a drink after it. Probably to show off their lifestyle.”
He still wasn’t smiling anymore, and she noticed. It started to feel weird. Awkward. Anxiety was returning to Rhianne’s heart in a way she hadn’t felt in 15 years.
“It’s not making me feel luxurious Mattis, does that part kick in later?”
“It isn’t making you feel luxurious because its Vodka mixed with cocaine and heroine, Rhianne. That's why its called a G6.”
He pulled out a cigarette to smoke as she dropped her cup on the floor.
Rhianne just relapsed, she tried puking in the bathroom of the restaurant to get it out of her system but it was too late. She broke down sobbing, two decades of hard ****ing work, brought down by a ****ing whom she thought she could trust. Guessing it was his way of getting back at her for making his life hell when she was a junkie.
It wasn’t even her fault. She didn’t do anything wrong. She did everything right. She just trusted the wrong person. She wanted to just slash her fucking arteries with anything sharp she could find in that bathroom, but she was too scared. She didn’t want to go through withdrawal again...staying 2 years clean at least could feel like multiple lifetimes. Her mascara was all over her face and her hair undone. She puked a little bit more, but involuntarily this time.
Hoegenakker gently kicked the revolving door open and blew some smoke into her face as she stared into his eyes wondering, why, repeatedly. Why would he do this to her. On the outside she was broken. On the inside, she was shrieking like a god damn harpy with knife throwing whatever she could all over the place to manage her stress.
What if she just tried to kill him? What if? But she got scared and stared back at herself in the mirror. And puked some more. Because she was a junkie again.
“Listen Rhianne. You know I work for the government and I know who your old suppliers were. I sent the LPI anonymous tips so that they could round them up.”
Rhianne needed another hit. She hated herself so much but she didn’t care, she just needed more, the brain-fog didn’t matter. More, more, more, more! And this betraying piece of sh** just turned in her old suppliers!?
“I can get you what you need. And I know you need it.” He headlocked her against her will and injected more heroin into her system. She stopped crying; she was becoming calmer. She was higher than a ****ing kite.
“I’ll get you more, but I need you to start siphoning money off of your firm to where I tell you too. I'm also gonna need whatever economic data, like modular bases, and contacts you have in Bretonia too. ”
“Okay” she said softly. Resisting would just bring more pain, going back to her addiction…sure it’ll hurt, but maybe it won’t? Maybe it will just be fun and games again? She ****ing needed it to be fun and games and not the hell she really knew it was going to be.
Hoegenakker spent months trying to organize a distraction. He had everything he needed except for manpower and firepower. The money, from blackmailing the bank, the intelligence he collected thanks to his own training; became worthless. Everything was covered, except for a god damned software update.
The software update that allowed modular bases to be nearly indestructible by allowing their armor to be multiplied to the nearly the same level as a regular station. Only the most organized of navies and fleets would be able to destroy modular bases now.
The Hessians agreed, and then ignored him. The commune were even more unreliable, making big promises, but his own contacts stated they weren’t reliable. He had all the resources in the stars except for manpower and firepower.
And time would run out at some point. The longer it takes to plan and execute an operation, the higher the chance is it gets leaked. He knew Rhianne, who had recently become the Chairwoman of Interspace Commerce, would go after him. She had just become one of the most powerful, rich and well-connected women in Sirius and she would tie up her lose ends. Guess she managed to stay off the drugs this time. He rarely heard from her, even if he had the kind of dirt that could humiliate Interspace and destroy her career.
He couldn’t run around from base to base anymore, evading anybody he believed was following him. He couldn’t tell if his paranoia was getting the better of him, making him see threats where they weren’t.
But worst of all,
He found it difficult to sleep again. He failed to take action.
It was about survival now, and he needed to strike back. Tying up loose ends wouldn’t be easy. If he assassinated Rhianne, it would draw too much attention. An assassin murdering important individuals throughout Sirius? The authorities might be ignoring him now because they can’t draw any connections. But that would change should he overstep his welcome.
His options weren’t good. So he made his peace. He pulled out an old book, a rather dusty one he kept on himself. In it were phrases about the afterlife and how to live someone’s life as per the laws of god that were bestowed upon humanity to follow. He had always been a religious man, it was why this Bretonian superweapons project drove him mad. It had nothing to do with these laws on living life, but his moral conscious was rebuilt through these laws written in this old book, with a broken spine. He spent too many years fighting the drug trade during his time with Marine Special Operations Command [Access Dossier]. He saw things that he didn’t need to. The distress is what led him to follow these laws. It’s what rebuilt him into a functioning soldier.
But now it wasn’t enough anymore.
He needed to go all in. Even at the cost of his own life.
The one thing that made planning his next move easier was his willingness to die to end this superweapons project. He didn’t need to plan for an escape, or a contingency, as he shook hands with the junker who sold him the equipment he needed.
At Invergordon Station, he purchased makeshift satellites. They were old, but they could get the job done. He also found a useful datapad with some crucial technical guidance in it. Radiation absorbent materials and iron ball paints. They were rather common during the pre-Sirius days to keep spacecraft signatures on radars low. It was paint specifically coated with tony round hills throughout the “skin” of whatever object it was painted on. The tiny spheres? Those were carbonyl iron, or ferrite. Scanner waves would induce molecular oscillations from the alternating magnetic field in this paint, which led to the conversion of the scanner energy into heat. The heat is then transferred to the spacecraft and dissipated. The iron particles in the pain were obtained by decomposition of iron, pentacarbonyl and were supposed to contain traces of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen.
Or in other words, he needed to head over to the nearest IMG base immediately. Good thing they were considered terrorists in Bretonia now, he could work with them openly.
The technique was to use electrically isolated carbonyl iron balls of specific dimensions suspended in a two-part epoxy paint. Each of these microscopic spheres was coated in quartz (silicon dioxide) as an insulator through a proprietary process. Then, during the fabrication panel process, while the paint is still in liquid form, a magnetic field would be applied with a specific Gauss strength and at a specific distance to create a magnetic field patterns in the carbonyl iron balls within the liquid paint ferrofluid.
Or in other words, if he used this technique to paint the satellites, their signatures on scanners would be so reduced they would become practically undetectable on a computer screen. Only the naked eye would be able to see it. A cheaper alternative to a cloaking device which, made immensely loud noise when cloaked anyway
And so the satellites were painted, and deployed upon Bretonias planets and systems, New London and Cambridge. He knew what to look for, a large hadron collider. It was just a fight against time. Would Rhianne or the authorities get to him first? Or would he get to the superweapons program?
Finally, after several weeks of scanning entire solar systems, he had found it. The hadron collider. The newly colonized and still relatively uninhabited Planet Cambridge had seen an influx of refugees from Leeds, but it was still sparse enough that it made sense that the BAF and SIS would move the project here. It was within an underwater cave to make it difficult to detect from orbit. In fact, it was underwater and underground. But he was trained exactly for this.
So he attempted an atmospheric entry instead of the docking rings where he would have likely been identified and arrested. His spacecraft flew in and “crash”-landed in the water where it floated while he switched into his gear. He’d have to spend a few hours diving downwards but he was prepared. A suit specifically designed to withstand high levels of pressure found underwater, the necessary weapons and diving equipment. And so began his reconnaissance dives. He located the hadron collider while diving and redirected the satellites in Cambridge to scan the area in further detail and create plausible 3-D models of what the interior would look like.
And then, he was ready. The final dive, the one to take him into this station and blow it up so he could finally fall asleep peacefully again.
He dived down, one last time. However, there was something that was off about the reconnaissance. It was empty, no guard or defensive structures were in place. Perhaps as a measure to keep the hadron collider hidden without alerting any attention.
At the entrance of the base the water was drained out and he took off his pressure suit gear and armed himself with a submachine gun and a simple anti-personnel RPG. This would be a lot better if he had a team. No one should ever launch a raid without somebody else having their back. Having 360 degrees of vision is one of the first things they teach upon enlistment in the military, and you can't do that without someone watching your back. He didn’t have that here, so it would be blind luck if he managed to get out of here alive.
Except there was no one there, the base was abandoned.
So he interfaced his neural net computer with the base’s systems to find out what happened. Was the project fake? The documents he captured from the SIS operators at Munich were real, he verified them. This couldn’t be a misinformation campaign. But he let the crude decryption program he had run.
Most of the files available from the facility were deleted, a possible counter measure in case outsiders found out about the program. It was possible that this was why the cyber defences were weak, they simply weren’t needed now that most of the files were deleted.
The lights in the facility were barely working, water dripped everywhere as metal developed rust and water froze in the corners of each room and laboratory; piling onto it iced germs and bacterias. This facility had not been maintained for months.
After 3 days of scouting this empty facility and scanning through its remaining files, Hoegenakker caught an unwelcome break. All remaining files of the facility were beamed off to an address at Manhattan. Everything made sense now. The project may have failed or been abandoned but it was to be continued at a different location. It was time to go back to Liberty.
Of course, he still needed to plant explosives throughout this damn death factory of a hadron collider.
Hoegenakker took off from his spacecraft floating in the oceans of Planet Cambridge; and as he did; thunderous waves appeared at the ocean, caused by high powered explosives. The facility was destroyed, but it was also a fluke. There were no guards or defences there. He would have needlessly caused death and destruction if the Hessians had carried out their promise to siege the modular bases of Cambridge so as to provide the BAF and SIS with a distraction. That would have made it harder for him to sleep. Sometimes; all you need; is to get lucky.
After two weeks he finally landed down on Manhattan with his fake identity papers. The address was a nice little Condo in downtown Bloor Street. Which was strange, why would classified military documents about a superweapon be sent a … condo? Even if it was a safe house it seems like a huge breach of security. But it was where the last remaining information on the Bretonian hadron collider superweapon's project was beamed to, so he had to go. It was the last loose end where he might find his answer. He equipped himself with a small pistol sized SMG this time, hidden underneath his coat as he took the elevator up to the Condo’s floor. He had already pulled off the blueprints for the condo from the Neural Net and knew it inside and out.
When the elevator opened he pulled out his weapon and there was a man sitting calmly at the sofa who looked back at him. His arms were relaxing on the spine of the couch but his eyes were alarmed as Hoegenakker pointed his gun at him. He looked like a Rheinlander.
The Rheinlander didn’t bother putting his arms up – he was clearly an intelligence operator or a Special Forces operator of some sort. Did Hoegenakker get f***ing punked? Was this some BDM or MND misinformation plot the entire time? The unanswered questions were the greatest height of irritation he had experienced throughout his life.
He stepped closer to the Rheinlander before demanding for his surrender. But he remained silent, staring back. So he put a bullet in his leg.
While the Rheinlander was in pain, Hoegenakker searched around the condo for a computer or any neural net device and found a secure datapad. He ran a crude decryption program to figure out what was in it while keeping his eyes locked on the Rheinlander. A second later another man, possibly Libertonian came out of the bedroom with a handgun and began to shoot back. The decryption program continued running while Hoegenakker held his ground during the firefight. There were no grenades or knives here. It was just a race to kill before the ammo ran out.
Half an hour later, every painting and photo in the apartment hanging from a wall came crashing down to the floor. Virtually every glass window was shattered and furniture overturned and with bullet holes. The lights weren’t working anymore and the condo was dark with only the lights of the spacecraft flying outside reflecting back in. And Hoegenakker was shot and out of ammo.