Date: October 31st, 2400
United Nations of Earth Sphere
Gulf State of Flordia, Cape Canaveral Metroplex
Asp Aerospace RND Complex - Exploratory Division
How the next few seconds played out would determine whether the heist would be a complete success or an abject failure. Four of the other five mercenaries hired for the job had secured the data on their assigned assets, leaving Andre Kasango as the last. This wasn't his choice; the other four worked in less secure parts of the Asp Aerospace Complex and managed to slip by with the other workers on their way into the Canaveral Metroplex for Halloween festivities. He had intentionally taken the late shift, covering for a "colleague" who had come down with a rather bad foodborne illness around lunchtime. Whether or not a smuggled-in strain of salmonella liberally sprinkled on the worker's salad had anything to do with it remained a mystery.
Andre was within the belly of the beast, so to speak. His assigned sector was in the exploratory division of the complex where all manner of R&D was done for the purpose of space travel. It was an absolute treasure trove of research data in engine design, aerodynamics, terraforming procedures, and, most importantly, faster-than-light travel. Copied within the proprietary storage cassette employed by Asp Aero were the designs for a brand new starstream gate, the main method for FTL travel across Sol. While he didn't have a complete understanding of the mechanics of the gates themselves, he knew that they produced wormholes connected across vast distances to allow starships to jump from point A to point B in the system. These journeys could take as little as eight minutes from Earth to Mars or just over an hour to reach the farthest reaches of settlement on Saturn.
Naturally, only organizations like the United Nations of Earth, the megacorporations that dominated society on Earth and the Corporate Colonies, or the so-called Free Colonies of the Jovian Sphere, out near Jupiter's moons, could afford to run and maintain these gates. Yet, based on the specs he was able to briefly read, the designs Asp was working on could prove to be a game-changer. Starstream gates required a considerable amount of power to operate and, therefore, were built on the larger side. Furthermore, their operational status depended on their location in an ever-rotating solar system, which could knock out the most efficient routes for months or years. Constructing more gates was an ongoing process, but throw in the relativistic wake left behind by ships being propelled across the stars, and you'd see the problem. More ships going through the starstream meant more opportunities for accidents. Larger ships traveling in realspace at sublight speed could be thrown off course, and smaller ships outright destroyed by an errant wake.
Worse yet was what happened with the JS Schumann back in 2324. A Jovian Sphere vessel had suffered a reactor malfunction while in the starstream, resulting in the ship exploding mid-journey. That was not readily apparent to the gate control center on Deimos, which opened the gate at the Schumann's scheduled arrival time. Pieces of the ship shot out at high velocity, narrowly missing the planet Mars, except for one fragment that slammed into the Martian surface with an explosive yield of approximately 58 megatons, equivalent to the old Tsar Bomba of the 20th century. Luckily, it hit an uninhabited part of the planet, but it was enough to drastically slow down the construction of new gates. Folks figured there were enough as it was, and a little delay on shipments due to gates being out of range was a sacrifice they were willing to make.
What Andre was downloading, however, was a possible solution to the hardships with starstream travel. Not only would the Asp gate be far cheaper to produce than contemporary gates, but it would also contain an AI system to monitor the drift of all starstream gates in the system. This would allow for the most efficient course charting at any time but also link together the gates under one centralized system. Currently, each gate is owned and operated by independent control centers which could charge their own fees and be selective over who or what goes through them. How all potential parties would be convinced to agree to work together was hard to see though. The CEO of Asp Aerospace, Unktehi Asp, was a shrewd operator, and the few times Andre met him at corporate-sponsored events, he had been charmed by the man's charisma. Still, getting feuding governmental bodies like the UNE and JS and distrustfully paranoid megacorps to back a central authority for gate travel would be a tall order. If they could all get along though, everybody stood to gain something by a more unified solar system. Both the UNE and JS might reconsider diplomatic relations if transporting troops for either side might be easier in order to avoid full-scale war. Corps would have more opportunities to ship goods across Sol regardless of gate positioning. Perhaps most importantly for gov and corp alike, this could signal an end to the monopoly of control pirate groups in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Out-of-range gates forced vessels to not only venture through the field itself but were easy prey to scoundrels in waiting.
Politics notwithstanding, Andre's only concern now was getting the data and making sure it made it to their client along with everything else lifted from Asp's systems. He was unsure how hard his compatriots' jobs had been in securing their information, but Andre was putting all the skills he developed as a cryptowarfare specialist in the Central African Republic's NetOps to the test. Andre would have preferred jacking directly into the system, riding the waves of the Asp complex's intranet within its local ARCH server, rather than working an old-school keyboard and monitor, but he didn't have the equipment necessary. He would've also been a sitting duck even if he was prepared, his comatose body whose mind raced across lines of silicon and bytes in the digital sphere becoming a vulnerable target for lookie-loos. Regardless of the method, he had to carefully navigate through several firewalls and make nice with Basic AI security systems constantly verifying he had permission to move data off the server.
Finally, the storage cassette made a beautiful ping sound and detached from its slot, a successful transfer job complete. He'd have liked to transfer the data to a more conscious data shard he could slot into his neural interface, but Asp Aerospace, like any corporation, trusted nobody. All data management was performed with proprietary hardware and software strictly regulated to work internally. So tight was the security, in fact, that a cassette in the exploratory division would fail to work in agricultural lab systems only one building away. As it was, the cassette was nearly the size of his forearm and would be a challenging object to smuggle out. No security breach notifications had been issued, so his partners clearly found a way out. He'd manage.
Placing the cassette into a secure tool case, Andre departed the exploratory complex into the crisp outside air. He walked across a large open hexagonal courtyard that connected the six branches of the complex together. Behind him to the south was the Exploratory Complex, his home base for the last several months. To his right, facing the southwest, was the Agricultural Complex, a facility that put crops and livestock through strenuous extreme conditions to find the heartiest foodstuffs for future colonization. Above that was the Defense Complex, a shared site with the PMC used for security on the base, Eighty-Sixed Solutions. The iconic skull with an 8 and 6 in each empty eye socket was a feared mercenary symbol the world over due to their willingness to complete any high-risk contract with ruthless efficiency, but just why they were bought up recently by Asp remained a mystery to him. The remaining facilities were dedicated to the corporate side of Asp, the Admin Complex where executives and their lackeys pushed paper and Mission Control for manned operations across Sol. That only left the maglev terminal that shipped employees back and forth from the facility to Canaveral City towards the southwest. It was also the only way out that didn't involve a long walk or swim.
The mission clock ticking away on his retinas indicated he still had time to catch the next train back to the city, so he opted to take a breather. The Mission Control staff constantly cycled in and out for shifts to ensure ongoing flights operated by Asp were monitored. It was the one part of Asp that never slept or went on vacation. Andre leaned against a concrete wall bearing the Asp logo, an image of the planet Earth with an ouroboros wrapped around it. Above it bore the motto of the company, "Going Boldly Beyond Because Nobody Else Will."
Andre chuckled at the motto, a very ambitious statement for a corp whose primary purpose, as far as he could tell, was shuttling rich elites on tours of Mercury and Venus. Providing out-of-touch corpos with more cents in their wallets than sense in their heads the chance to tan themselves in Mercurial orbit didn't really seem to be "going boldly beyond" in his book. And yet all the work he and his crew saw going on did force him to give Asp some credit. Pleasure cruises in the stars may be the company's bread and butter, but its CEO had a passion for space that couldn't be denied. Evidently, someone else appreciated their passion as well.
Suddenly, Andre heard a faint buzzing and felt a small prick on his neck, which he slapped with gusto. He groaned as he wiped the tiny smear of a mosquito on his slacks, the one part of home that just happened to be part of the Gulf States as well that he'd sooner wish to forget. Rain was beginning to trickle down as the main doors of Mission Control opened with a large group of technicians and operators evidently ready to enjoy the Halloween festivities racing towards the maglev terminal. Andre joined the crowd at its halfway point and became another part of the mass of humanity. Soon, they were facing down the screening gate that acted as the entrance to the maglev terminal; two guards and a combat drone sat as sentinels to the freedom from workplace drudgery it represented.
The two guards were decked in grey OTVs, or Outer Tactical Vests, with two ballistic plates for small arms coverage. Facemasks similar to the Eighty-Sixed Solutions logo obscured their faces and likely held behind them a suite of software giving each guard a wealth of telemetry and monitoring data. On their right arms were retractable shields with heat-dispersal tech that could open up to serve as riot shields and reduce the effect of incoming plasma weaponry. At the ready, each had a Colt MC99, a rifle descendant from the M16A1 of the 21st century valued by mercs for its ease of modularity that allowed for the nigh-universal use of off-brand components. Sitting pretty between them was a surprise, a New African Union Warthog combat drone, its quadrupedal frame supporting an autocannon that was famous for tearing through numerous PLA tanks during the Afro-Sino War of 2254. Hidden in the side, however, were a set of "tusks" that could spring outward towards the front with heatsink tech that made them superheated in a matter of seconds. Pity the poor vehicle, or worse, person caught between them.
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All this and more his retinal scanners conveyed to him at a distance, an extra precaution so any cybertech they may have been sporting wouldn't immediately detect his probing scans. What his scanners also showed was his possible way forward. The security gate was a large doorway projecting a cascading brilliant blue holographic light from the top to the bottom of its frame. In theory, anyone carrying any items in the database flagged as verboten would light the offender's outline in red and send a powerful electrical signal to either tase the mostly organic or overload those with more chrome than bone in their bodies. Andre found that he could easily access the mechanisms of the machine, a sign it was likely constructed by the local government and therefore not up to snuff like Asp tech would've been. He couldn't just shut the machine down, but he could quickly use a remote hack to set up a timed delay of the scan to let him pass. Giving himself ten seconds, he worked his way further up the crowd and towards the gate. His heart rate slightly went up as he passed the gaze of the two guards who briefly sized him up and then returned to the larger crowd. Had they been focused on him, they might have caught the two-second flicker in the holo as he passed through empty space to the ticket terminal.
Finally able to breathe a sigh of relief, he pressed his Asp ID on the terminal and was given a free ticket back to Canaveral City. The mission clock continued to count down in the corner of his vision as he made his way through the station. Plenty of Asp employees were already getting their Halloween revelry on at the various bars and restaurants established to separate Asp employees from their hard-earned income, but ultimately provide stress-free spaces to decompress and build relationships among the workers.
"Ha'lo, Andre, is that you!?"
Andre turned to the bar where the question was asked. He saw one of his "corpo friends," not a "merc friend," from the complex, a Swede named Johannes, sitting at the bartop and beckoning him inside.
"Yeah, Jo, it's me, just getting off a shift coverage for Watterson and heading home," Andre replied from the doorway.
"Come, sit, have a drink with the rest of us."
"Sorry, friend, but I'm beat, and I'd like to get home before the rain really gets pouring. Next time for sure, though."
"Okay, Andre, next time. I'm going to hold you to it!"
The merc gave a mock salute to the obviously inebriated Johannes and resumed his walk. He hated lying to Johannes, but he knew there wouldn't be a next time. Once he and the rest of the team regrouped, they would be going back to their respective places of origin, hopefully far away from any reprising eyes. Then it would be off to the next merc job and the next and the next. What made this job harder was how long he had been undercover. Usually, he preferred quick jobs, easier to make few attachments or get rooted down unnecessarily. However, Canaveral City was a bustling metropolis with great people and lots to experience. Every now and then he began to think he really was working for Asp Aerospace, which would look great on any resume. Johannes and plenty of other staff treated him warmly when he first arrived and showed him the way Floridians, naturalized and otherwise, lived. Assuming he lived long enough to retire, maybe he'd return to settle down. Merc life rarely led to that opportunity, unfortunately; plenty of former brothers from his military days found that out the hard way.
The maglev arrived just as he descended the escalator down to the platform below. A menagerie of corporate suits and hasilty costumed ghosts and goblins packed themselves into the train, latching onto any open seat like a vulture to a carcass. Andre didn't mind standing, easier to stay on the bounce in case things went sideways. The train doors closed, and off they went, speeding away at 350 mph from the site of the former Kennedy Space Center. An alert signaled to him that the train would arrive at the Commercial Center at Cocoa Beach in around 5 minutes. Andre used the time to go over the final stages of the operation. He'd situate himself by a pre-determined café waiting for retrieval. This would be facilitated by a small bomb going off in an unoccupied office tower, causing panic in the streets and emergency response vehicles to swarm the area. The four mercs who left ahead of him should by this point have the stolen AV ambulance they acquired recently on standby; he'd ping them to land near him and climb aboard. After that, there was a rally point where they would drop their prizes and board a stealth craft that would shuttle them back to their homes.
He was so busy running all the possible scenarios for their exfiltration that Andre failed to notice the man who filled the open space beside him. Nothing was said at first until the man in a heavy Texan drawl piped, "Trains an odd spot for an exit interview, but I think we can work something out."
Andre turned to see a smiling Asian man with a bushy jet-black handlebar mustache and shoulder-length hair flowing from a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. The man wore a grey trenchcoat that did little to hide the fact he was armored up like the security guards back at the terminal. Something hard and metallic was poking his side; Andre didn't need a creative imagination to know what it was. The man was Terry Xiong, head of Eighty-Sixed Solutions. His smile evoked a warm sense of southern hospitality, but the sidearm pressed firmly against him made Andre's blood run cold.
"Usually when someone is fixing to quit, they at least ask for a reference or two," Xiong remarked, "Suppose this ain't the kind of quitting where you need 'em, right?"
Remaining as collected as he could be, Andre said, "I think you've got the wrong idea, sir. I'm just heading home."
"With Asp Aerospace proprietary tech in that case of yours, with who knows what's on it? We don't do take-home projects at Asp, you know; orientation covered that little tidbit."
The Commercial Center stop was fast approaching, but Andre felt he might have to make a request to get off early. He scanned the train's internal systems and found his way to the main brake mechanism. A lot of folks on this commute were about to get hurt, but he pushed that in the back of his mind and sent a command to stop immediately. Andre gripped the nearest pole as the train jolted to a stop, Xiong briefly lost his balance and provided Andre the chance to remotely hack open the nearest door. Sprinting out of the chaos, he found himself in a free fall three stories as the train had stopped on a track suspended under a roadway. Luckily, biotic implants in his legs almost by instinct detected the fall and sent cushioning support throughout his limbs. It wasn't enough to completely make his landing pain-free, but he was spared any broken bones. After a tuck and roll, he carried his momentum into a sprint towards Commercial Center, taking every available shortcut he could find via a tactical map pulled from his neural interface.
Thanks to the effects of a lactic acid inhibitor biotic also coursing through his system, he was at the exfil point within three minutes without breaking his stride. Not taking any chances, he continuously scanned the crowds on the lookout for Xiong or any other Asp security forces that might be in the area. There was no way Xiong just coincidentally happened to be on the same train he got on; he was being tracked somehow. Diagnostic scans of his neural interface detected no malware, so he wasn't hit with any digital tracker. He couldn't rule out being hit with something too sophisticated for his scanners to pick up; a corp like Asp likely wouldn't spare any expense to hunt down anyone guilty of corporate espionage. Andre was about to run a second scan when an explosion echoed from above.
His eyes went to the pre-designated building where the bomb was supposed to go off, but to his horror, he saw a medical AV falling like a stone from the sky instead. Crowds rushed to get out of the way of the vehicle and its debris as the machine slammed hard into the ground, sparks flying as it twisted and spun across the Commercial Center's plaza. Andre scanned the AV, already knowing that was his ticket out and his companions were not walking away from that crash. As he took in the scene, he felt a heavy thump at the back of his head, causing him to black out.
Andre awoke with a splitting headache, his vision struggling to focus as his retinal implants powered back on. Looking around, he could tell he was on the rooftop of a skyscraper some distance away from the plaza, and a column of smoke from the crashed AV hung perhaps a mile or two away. When Terry Xiong's form came into view, he immediately tried to get up and run, but there was no sensation in his legs. In fact, as he cast his gaze downward, he quickly gasped in disbelief that his legs were gone.
Xiong turned toward Andre and whistled a sharp phew as he said, "Hey, look whose awake? Good. 'Pologies for the street amputation, but 'yer tendency to bolt left us with 'perty few options."
"You bastard!" Andre shouted as he tried lurching in vain toward Xiong.
"Wasn't me who done made you a Lieutenant DT; you can thank my associate, Hector."
Still fixated on Xiong, Andre didn't see the figure who hoisted him by the back of his shirt and viciously tossed him against an AC unit. The man who did that was massive, at least a head taller than Xiong. Tell-tale metallic lines ran down his arms and face indicating cybernetic enhancement, and the sheer amount confirmed it was extensive. This man, Hector, also sported piercing yellow eyes that cut through the rain and dark like a lighthouse over a foggy bay; in a way, he felt transfixed by them. Quickly, though, he realized that none of his internal cybernetics were operational, and even his enhanced eyes only displayed visual information the typical human eye could see.
Xiong came strolling up to Hector, smiling as he gazed at his eyes and then back to Andre. Kneeling down to Andre's level, he said, "Can't take your eyes off those two rays of sunshine, right? 'Ol Hector is packing a premo suite of cryptofighting tech in those eyes of his. Hopefully, you realize how absolutely screwed you are so you'll start listening to what I've got 'ta say."
"If you think I'll give up info on my contract, you're wasting your breath," Andre replied defiantly. "You may as well kill me now."
"Well, slow 'yer roll because that's part of what I've got to chew over with you. See, you got two choices. The first is to spill what you know and verify it on this data chip so I know you ain't lyin' to me. Do that, and I'll pop you right here and now and spare you an agonizing death."
"Sounds tempting."
"You say that, but considering option two is having Hector here haul you off to his personal interrogation chamber back at HQ and torture the info out of you, I think you might want to consider it sincerely. Trust me, Hector is very good at makin' folks wish they were dead and keeping 'em alive so they don't check out early."
For nearly a minute, there was silence between the three men, the downpour now filling the empty air. Finally, Andre looked straight into Xiong's eyes and snarled, "Go to Hell!"
Xiong laughed as he rose up and shook his head, "Right, well don't say I didn't offer an easier way out. I hereby inform you that your services for Asp Aerospace are officially terminated. He's all yours, Mr. Villalobos."
For a brief moment, Andre tried to be brave in the face of the brute strolling up to him. That all melted away in an instant when the giant grasped his neck and hoisted his torso up effortlessly. The burning yellow eyes of Hector Villalobos were the last things Andre saw before his vision was cut for the last time.