We entered one of the jamming rooms, as they were called. The room itself did not have a jamming field within, but rather around it. The walls of the room would act like a Faraday cage and allow electronic devices to function within, while the field outside would prevent any electric signal from either entering or exiting. Whatever went down in the jamming room stayed in the jamming room.

A rectangular table that could comfortably fit six people stood in the middle, with two sofas along its length and two chairs at the ends of the table. I went to the opposite end of the table and sat on the chair putting down my new drink, we went for refills first. It was going to be a long discussion. The others also settled down, with Jun seating at the other end, Alex and Batou on one of the sofas and Revy on the one opposite to them.

Jun spoke first. “Before you share whatever big idea you think you have, I would like to make a toast.” He turned to look at Revy. “Revy, congratulations on surviving one year with us, and with all your limbs intact too! If you continue like this you will outlast our previous fifth member.”

We all raised our glasses to her and congratulated her.

She drank along with us and then just had to ask. “How was the person before me?”

Before thinking, I almost reflexively answered “He wanted to be a cyberdoc. Set up his own clinic and all, while making some money with merc work. A good man that always wanted to do what was right, and now he’s dead because of it.”

BANG

Alex banged the table with her fist “Jack! What the fuck!” She shouted while glaring at me.

I held her glare.

I did not want to have this discussion again.

I looked away and simply said, “He would have made a great doc.”

He should have never become a merc though, look where it got him.

“He certainly would have been among the best doc’s out there. May he rest in peace.” Batou tried to diffuse.

“Rest in peace.” The rest of us echoed him, Revy a beat behind us.

Jun was looking at me apologetically, a rare sight. He cleared his voice and turned back to Revy. “As you know, it’s a bit of a tradition of ours to share about ourselves with the rest of us after every year spent together.”

We were all pretending that nothing happened a moment ago, and I was glad about it. Despite being convinced of my words, I did regret saying them.

Jun continued talking “While we are all curious about your background, you can choose to do like Batou and share things like how you are into crappy novels.”

A common interest in crappy novels is how I and the gangster first became friends.

Revy hummed “You’re curious about my background? Considering how often you lot take bets I’m guessing there are some on me.”

There were.

She continued “Tell you what, if you share your bets, I’ll share some info about my background.”

“I will go first.” Jun started “I bet that you were a wealthy refugee from the Eurasian front.”

She rolled her eyes “Did you think I was a Russian princess?”

Jun grimaced “I regret my premature decision, you obviously are not refined enough to be wealthy.”

“Oi.” She showed him the middle finger. “What about you two?” She turned to Batou and Alex.

Batou spoke first “I bet that once you became of age you left your adoptive family and embarked on a journey to find your real parents, eventually you ended up in LA and had the misfortune of meeting us.”

“It wasn’t misfortune, and that was awfully specific. Don’t care about winning?”

“It’s not always about winning.”

Revy noticed Alex was staying quiet and looking at her drink “What about you Alex?”

Alex looked up, and then away while saying “I said you were a rich, spoiled girl that ran away from home.”

Revy laughed “I’m not rich.” said the most cybernetically enhanced person in the room. We all looked at her. She squirmed a bit “I’m not spoiled then?” we kept staring. She pouted “screw you, people.”

She then gave me a questioning look.

“I said that you were a corpo spy.”

Her look became flat “Oh no, you found me out. How will my bosses live without the intel that I gathered from staying with you nobodies for an entire year.” She dully delivered.

“Bets were done a long time ago.” I defended myself.

She stared at the ceiling for a while, then she looked at us “I’m adopted.”

Batou pumped a fist.

Jun poked him “That does not mean you won, we are all still on the running. Well, Jack might as well hand over his money already.”

I turned to Revy “Just never confirm any of their theories and I’ll owe you one.”

“Not cool Jack,” Batou grumbled.

We spent the next several minutes bickering and chatting, the atmosphere becoming cozy.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

I stood up, getting their attention.

Jun sighed “I can feel the ghost of my arm and an incoming headache for what is next.”

I looked at his synth left arm, impossible to tell the difference if you didn’t know. “It’s not that bad this time,” I reassured him.

“That’s what you said last time.” They all whispered.

I smiled, moved my chair a little more backward to have more space while standing, and started speaking.

“I know you’re dying to hear what I’ve got to share, but I’d like to give you a recap of the space race. I know that some of you already know everything about what I’ll cover.” I said that last part while looking at Alex. “But let’s make sure that everyone is on the same page.”

I sent a ping to all of them through which we connected our neural interfaces to each other, making it so that they could see any hologram I showed.

With the shared neural interface, I opened a 3D holo image of the inner solar system. The 3D models appeared over the table we were sitting at. With the sun in the middle. Earth's and Mars’s orbits were delineated by two blue ellipses. Along each of these ellipses, there were two bright red dots. One ahead of the orbital path of the respective planet and one behind.

I walked around the table while pointing at each red dot. “The reason they call this a space race is because of these four stable points in space. Also known as stable Lagrange points. Anyone who can build a space station on any of these points will be able to control much of the traffic of the inner solar system. However, not all these points are equal in value.”

I went towards the dot that was ahead of Earth’s orbit, and I grabbed it with the thumb and index finger of my chromed right hand. “This point right here is the big one, it will allow oversight over much of Earth’s spacecraft movements as well as controlling the movement from Earth to Mars. Traffic from Earth to Mars is already a thing and will only grow once the new ships are done, the Martians will be very dependent on importing critical supplies they cannot produce for a long time yet.”

“We already know who is likely to get this spot.”

I looked at one of the walls of the room and with the neural interface I summoned a map of the world on the wall. Many colors delineated different nations, and two of them stood out from the rest. A dark green color covered all of Europe, western Russia, the Middle East, and a good chunk of northern Africa. While the rest of Asia, Russia, and Oceania were glowing a dull yellow.

Batou spoke up at the sight “I still can’t believe that the Asian nations put aside their rivalries to create the Eastern Federation.”

Revy tilted her head “With a megacorporation like Paragon International encroaching on them they didn’t have much of a choice.”

Batou shook his head “You weren’t there. Back then many thought that they’d rather die than join hands.”

Alex rolled her eyes “Batou, you’re in your thirties. Don’t talk like an old man.”

Jun smirked “You are only saying that because you will be thirty soon. Feeling old?”

“Watch it. Unless you want to cosplay as a blind samurai.” She growled.

“As I was saying,” I returned their attention to me “This spot will undoubtedly be taken by one of the two giants.” I squished the red dot in between my fingers and it popped out of existence. Then I pointed a finger gun to the other stable point in Earth’s orbit. “The loser will most likely go for that one.” I shot and the red dot was blasted away.

“He’s having way too much fun with this.” Jun declared to no one in particular.

I ignored him and looked at the remaining two dots in Mars's ellipses. “Leaving the two Mars stable points.”

Revy raised a hand “Why don’t Paragon and the Federation go for those two as well?”

Alex answered for me “They cannot, their war between each other makes it a logistical nightmare for them to go for one base. Let alone more.”

I nodded “This leaves only three potential racers that have the resources to build a space base.” I raised three fingers and started to list. “The American Corpos, the US government, and Mars. The three of them are fighting for their survival, if the US government loses, they will never free themselves of their dependency on the corpos and they will take over the US like Paragon did with Europe, on the other hand, if the corpos lose the government will be able to turn the table on them. If Mars can’t take either of their stable points, they will never truly be independent of Earth. In other words, this race is a big deal for all of them.”

I took a moment before sharing my not-exactly groundbreaking theory.

“I think the corpos have been hiding the tech they invented and have already been secretly building ships for some time.”

“Heard that one before,” Alex commented.

“Yes, but I have some evidence to back up my argument.” That got their attention. “Let’s imagine we were the top executives of LA tech industries.” Everyone groaned. “Yeah, yeah, I don’t want to imagine being a slimy suit either, but for the sake of the argument just do so. Ok, so one of our science teams just discovered the tech that lets us build some fancy ships. How do we keep it secret from everyone else and start building them?”

After a few seconds of silence, Jun spoke up. “Kill all those that know and are not needed for building the ships. Force those that are valuable to work on the project and keep them under watch in different black sites with jammers set up so that they cannot communicate with the outside. Add any further personnel needed to work on the project in the black sites and use all close family members as hostages to encourage secrecy as extra insurance.”

Alex hummed “They’d probably try to clear the records of all those involved. Well, not eliminate outright, that would create a glaring hole in their data that would be easy to follow, they’d probably try to misdirect anyone looking into them with lots of false data that one would have to sort.”

“Hide all the money involved too,” Batou added. “Also, the transport of goods to the black sites. I heard that spaceships are quite resource hungry.”

I looked at Revy just in case she wanted to say something as well. She shrugged while sipping at her cocktail. “I got nothing to add, but I guess you’d need a big space to hide the ships.”

“Yes, well.” I cleared my throat “I was thinking similar things, though admittedly not as extensive as your answers. Anyways my first piece of evidence is that one of the close colleagues of Dr. Eva Fallow, the alleged inventor of MSG, claimed that she never worked on a similar project. This supports our theory that they are hiding the original inventors. My second piece of evidence is the big gang’s sudden rush for resources and manpower.” Jun quirked an eyebrow but stayed silent.

I looked at him and asked, “What did they tell you about the reason for the takeover?”

“I know only because my mother is a minor leader of Sentai, as I told you before it has to do with the space race. She did not know anything else.”

I remembered old Kai’s remark on the space race. “Someone higher up the totem pole also confirmed that.”

“Still don’t see how that is any evidence.” Mumbled Revy.

“The gangs have no direct stake in the Space Race, I think that the Sentai know what the corpos have been up to. They need the resources and manpower to locate and assault the black sites. Then they can sell the ships to the highest buyer and make one hell of a profit.”

“Mars then,” Alex said.

I nodded “Mars is an extremely wealthy and extremely resource-starved society right now. They are selling their advanced medical tech. Yet they can’t buy the materials needed to build both a station and the ships needed to build it because they’re being boycotted in an attempt to make them the losers. This means they will buy the ships from anyone for an exorbitant sum.”

We all stayed silent for a while, digesting the information. Batou broke the silence “This is convincing evidence, but it’s all circumstantial. It’s just a gamble like the other time after all isn’t it?”

“What’s life without a little gambling?” I responded.

“What is your plan then?” Jun interjected.

“We look for the black sites, and sell the info to Sentai.”

“That sounds, quite reasonable for you.”

I crushed his dreams before they could settle. “We then join the gang’s raid and steal one ship ourselves, selling it for billions of credits to Mars.”

Jun made a face, then after some consideration sealed our fates. “My arm is itching, but it’s not every day that we do billion credit jobs. We are not leaving this room until we have the skeleton of a plan.”

This was going to be a very long night.