Location: LA Tech Industries Main Arcology
Date: Year 2127 Month 12 Day 15
Aries Drach was sitting at his desk. He was reading a report on his neural interface. It seemed that the battle for the spaceport had reached an impasse. The corpo sections and arcologies had been spared the worst of the fighting as agreed.
The space battle had been won by Paragon and a blockade was in effect.
Two weeks from now the ships from his numerous black sites will launch and break the blockade.
The Paragon armada will be vanquished by the American corpo ships.
At least that’s what they will be selling to the public.
In truth, the fleet of the superpower will do an orderly retreat with their army. Half of the corpo ships will be going with them.
With the new highly advanced ships, Paragon will have the edge it needs to force back the Eastern Federation and get the best Lagrange point in the solar system.
In exchange, the US government and its army will have been crippled into subservience once and for all. On top of that Paragon’s newfound superiority will keep the Eastern Federation busy, which meant the American corpos could sweep in and get the second stable Lagrange point of Earth.
Despite Aries’s concerns about working together with the European megacorp, he had to admit that the payoff was worth it.
Aries rose from his seat and walked to the tall windows of his office. He stared down at the dark clouds below as he kept thinking.
Aries might not possess the resources that the two giants did, but he was still their equal. It wasn’t a coincidence that it was always him that had been voted as chairman by the board of directors for the last 20 years.
Ever since he had been in power he had kept the corpos at the very peak of cybernetic and scientific development.
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Even if it meant treating some gifted individuals as live test subjects. Or launching a campaign of terror against cyber vampires to create a supply of people that nobody would miss.
The suffering they’d have to endure was unfortunate, but necessary.
Thanks to the sacrifice of the few many will prosper. The living conditions of the average citizen had improved in the last decade. Poverty would be at an all-time low if not for this cold war with the government.
But that would end soon.
A better world would be born soon. He dearly wished that his daughter could be here to live in it.
The sound of a ping from his interface interrupted his musings.
It was a call from the vice chairwoman. He connected to it.
The suave voice of the woman sounded in his head, “Good evening Aries, I suppose you have not heard of the most recent development regarding the black sites.”
Ah, the usual power play. She just had to demonstrate that she was somehow privy to important information before him. He respected her for that. It’s why he kept her as vice chairwoman, and consequentially, why she supported him.
“No Laura, I have not. Care to share?”
She spoke in a clipped tone, “The black site with the first ships has been invaded by a group of Sentai gangsters, and an unknown party that is strongly suspected to be the agents of that woman. We are currently interrogating some of the gangsters that were captured.”
Aries spoke with some concern, “What of the site itself?”
“The intruders used the railguns of the ships inside the building, there was no saving the site after that.”
Aries’s heart wept at the words. So many bright minds worked there, some against their will, but they were all major contributors to the advancement of human technology.
He took a moment to gather himself and said, “That is truly unfortunate, we will have to redouble our efforts to find adequate substitutes for the lost personnel.”
“Are you not more concerned with how this might affect our deal with Paragon?”
Aries shook his head. “It is of no consequence there. At most, it will slow down the plan by a couple of days. We will just have to wait for the ships of one more site to be ready before playing out our performance.”
After no reply he asked, “Would that be all?”
Hearing the vice chairwoman’s persistent silence he inquired once more, “Is there something else you want to tell me, Laura?”
Being jolted by her name she replied, “Yes… In the spaceport we retrieved the holo images of the central holo dome before it was destroyed so that we could build a memorial in the future-“
Aries interrupted her, “It was my idea, no need to repeat it, skip to the point.”
“I think you should see this picture.”
After sending a holo image, she left the call without his prompting.
Aries arched a brow at the unusual behavior exhibited by his vice. He opened the holo image in his interface.
Six smiling people looked back at him.
A lock of red hair caught his attention.
The world froze.
Time lost all meaning.
A smile he could never forget had his entire attention.
She had grown so much, and he had not seen it happen.
One single tear fell down his cheek as he whispered her name.
“Rebecca.”