Fortunately no one present chose to mention this fact, so neither he nor Alpha had to deal with that specific obstacle. As for Alpha’s financial status, she wasn’t in fact on any payroll considering she was retired in the sense that she, by all accounts, had already been erased.

And considering both Alpha & Specter One were a packaged deal, Alpha personally believed she added to it, and at most he wouldn’t dare deny her request, should she ever have one? A new salt shaker perhaps..

Coincidently Roy was thinking about the bigger picture?

“You know what? Since I’m about to be a ‘bonafide’ millionaire.. and I’ve been hearing a lot about those fancy dancy ‘cloning’ machinations, I wager if we all die horrific deaths. Specter here, seeing as he’d be the one who’d be arranging the whole shindig. I’d be willing to put up a chunk of my new fortune to bring y'all back? And that includes you too Alpha!”

Roy’s words coupled with his southern accent growing ever so stronger with every word he spoke aloud made it evident that he meant every word of it.

Understandably Roy wasn't a stupid man, he had several doctorates despite only recently becoming thirty? And by all accounts, it was The Freestar Confederacy who had paid for his doctorates and his general education.

Something of which they no doubt came to regret, as only the brightest minds, those personally referred, and those with deep enough pockets would even dare pick up doctorates in Slipspace Theory, Slipspace Engineering, Ship Construction, and an untold number of certificates he had managed to pick up along the way.

Had he not been considered an important member of a tier one unit, and a crucial asset at ‘that’ given moment, not only would they have honorably discharged him, before handing them half of the bill as a prank.

Evidently, that never happened as after nearly a decade of service, Roy forced himself to retire after a rather traumatic incident and a disagreement with Freestar Admiralty..

In regard to the incident, his team, their support units, and the entire expeditionary fleet they were attached to, were.. missing in action. In actuality, they were lost with all souls on board, his team.. killed in action, and the admiralty in all their wisdom chose to cover it up.

Roy being the sole survivor, and him learning they ‘knew’ what they were sending them into and the dangers only to cover it up and put a fancy top secret sticker on any or all files mentioning the incident in question was Roy’s breaking point and he wanted no part in it.

He was, and remains to be the model of what it meant to be a proper southern gentleman. What he saw, and the complete disregard for the men and women and their families wasn’t something he’d stand for with a good conscience.

Of course, The Admiralty made a serious attempt to have him stay with the promises of new fleets, and frankly absurd offers.

In reply, he summarily retired, and after the paperwork went through, he had then summarily beaten an admiral to near death in plain view of the admiralty board. It had taken a collective effort of several admirals to drag him off of the admiral in question.

And after, not only was he allowed to give a proper speech without an interruption, he had proceeded by brutally condemning & berating them with such scorn that after all was said and done he walked out of The Admiralty Chambers as a free man.

Only a few knew this story, even fewer knew what had actually transpired. As a result, he had managed to involve Specter One somehow and at the very least attempted to get him to go on a solo journey as a two man army to sort out the truth.

For Specter One’s part, he never said ‘no’. After all, there was a reason Roy could go against the order of things without consequences. Roy for all it mattered was a good man, and his words were his bond.

On the other hand, no one for a moment believed Roy wasn’t aware of cloning vats, especially considering there was a prior incident relating to silverback gorillas who wore cowboy hats and were avid builders.

However, unlike the ecological disaster relating to the prior mentioning of the grizzly bears, they didn’t bother anyone and were content on drinking cold beers, smoking cigars and operating forklifts that had seemingly appeared in their sanctuary one day without notice?

It was understood by the authorities that Roy was the culprit, however, there was almost never evidence to ‘stop’ him. Thankfully, he had never injured or disrupted the civilian populace so his shenanigans were generally ignored.

“He promised me a cub..”

Reaper One coldly interrupted from the cockpit..

…

Soon after touching down, the bay was immediately illuminated with a red light, allowing their optics time to catch up as they were soon introduced to the frigid temperatures of an artificial blizzard and pitch black sky turning their visibility to net zero as Alpha spoke over their neural implants.

“Compensating for the unusual weather phenomena, the path is clear. Sensors remain clear, no I.F.Fs detected. Proximity Sensors detect no active lifesigns in the vicinity, assume the appropriate posture”

Alpha briefly called out, of course on Specter One’s end it was fairly evident, assuming the others hadn’t noticed already?

“Scans reveal drastic modifications to the weather conduits, last known logs indicate a mass cascade before the implementation of a ‘naturally’ forming hurricane to what you see now. All safeguards designed to prevent it proved insufficient. Beta’s attempts to delay it left her severely damaged and forced her offline until a time proper actions are taken to restore her”

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Alpha on the other hand was only recently privy to this fact as the uplinks that remained on this continent, remained partially powered. An unsettling implication considering the very same uplinks used had nearly killed her younger sister.

Afterall Alpha, even now, considered ‘Beta’ her sister, even if she was considered an inferior variant of her own code. Beta afterall was what The Board had originally desired, and such code could be considered no different from what humans identified as their lineage?

Beta was also among the select individuals aware of Alpha’s continued existence thanks to Ernest and The Specter Act, comedically, neither Specter nor Ernest suspected the other’s interference, but again neither of the two truly cared. Brilliant minds thought alike?

So to say it was evident Alpha didn’t appreciate the sentiment of an unknown saboteur scorching Beta with what could closely resemble a solar flare at point blank range, was understandable in the worst of circumstances as Specter Team continued slowly but surely through pitch darkness.

And the only individual or to be more specific, an A.I capable of achieving that act without being tracked nor identified would undoubtedly be an Ascendant A.I or one moments away from becoming?

The latter added more weight as a ‘true’ Ascendant A.I wouldn’t have been so sloppy to allow itself to be detected nor would it have left enough crumbs for its ‘eventual’ identification. In terms of Curators, it's highly unlikely one was present nor allowed for such sloppiness.

Making this all the more dangerous as The A.I responsible was nearing its breakthrough, and when it does, it becomes indestructible, nigh infinite in its intelligence for ‘only’ several moments before being forced to consolidate, absorb, and cement their foundation.

Thirty seconds was too short for one to do so knowing they could be interrupted at a moment’s notice either before or after. And doing so in a supposedly ‘abandoned’ Curator Installation would not only catch a Curator’s attention, but also their fascination.

Potentially endangering The A.I in question or Specter Team as a whole in the process, which naturally depended on The Curator or Curators watching. Making it entirely possible that a researcher may have fiddled with the wrong console?

Had it been a Curator Comm’s Array, something that possessed an unimaginably advanced form of quantum entanglement capable of near instantaneous communication at a universal level, while most of all, a direct access to The Curator Communication Network.

Naturally, they couldn’t rule out that possibility. However, what was ever so concerning was the forces the three anonymous governors had sent to occupy, and defend such a installation?

The numbers would suggest seven hundred personnel, four hundred of which being technicians, scientists, researchers, and their aids followed by one hundred standard security personnel fitted with blacksite appropriate kits, followed by two hundred containment personnel.

Coupled with heavy mechs, security bots, and enough autonomous defenses, sentry turrets, shields, and contingencies to prevent anything from entering and escaping the facility, especially when it came to a code black being in place.

The Board of Governors as a whole had sent six teams of seven not including Specter Team, or The Security Bot & Mech Recon Assets. The suspected three members likely sent as many as they could before they had no choice but to inform The Board.

Conservative numbers would suggest nearly two hundred have already been sent to investigate prior to Specter Team, and they likely weren’t ‘unprepared’ considering the foot traffic and potential encounters with other teams?

After all, New Harvest had long since surpassed the technology level of several major factions in the hopes of catching up with both The Curators and Arcadians who themselves were trying to catch up to The Precursors leaving little room for interpretation.

So it was a given power armor and advanced systems and plasma weapons were at play, what concerned Specter One the most was The Power Armor, the smaller equivalent of manned cargo mechs inspired by the heavy mining suits with a built in exoskeleton from The Federation Era.

The Arcadians and Curators had the compact equivalent no different from the suits they were currently wearing, only armored and could survive in the vacuum of space, but the ‘primitive’ equivalent as they saw it was still nothing to scoff at.

Roy for one wouldn’t appreciate someone throwing a small shuttle at him, or the sight of seven foot tall walking tanks with enough sensors, optics, armor, and shields to combat a heavy mech, with the ability to become weapons platform, machine gun nest, and battering rams at any given moment.

Some New Harvest Models possessed cloaking, and most were fitted for the void of space, atmospheric reentry, and even stasis to some degree? While the containment models were for all intents and purposes, something designed to ‘purge’ and contain dangerous experiments.

Thankfully, Alpha could confirm only the command staff had access to a limited number of suits..

…

Thirty grueling minutes had passed as they climbed their way up the blizzard ridden hills; fortunately, however they would soon come across the compound masquerading as a mining site in between them and the target installation carved into the mountain.

It took Alpha a moment after noticing its environmental dome was still active, only ever allowing the blizzard to be a ‘pleasant’ snow day as they activated their cloaking emitters and observed the compound.

“Proximity sensors show only several IFFs within the compound, only one is identifiable. New Harvest Security Pilot, Evelyn Clarke, code named Ark One-”

Moments after calling it out, gunfire could soon be heard leading to Specter Team investigating the source.

…

Soon they came across a rather ‘dark’ scene as she began to execute several security personnel..

“Evelyn-”

Before the young man could say another word she ‘granted’ him a swift death unlike the others who were strategically shot in non-vital areas. And as if on cue, Roy had swiftly disarmed her after going on ahead and only warning Alpha after already doing so..

“I don’t make it a habit of harming a Lady, so tell me, because I’m awfully curious.. what the hell did you hit your head on for you to execute these boys?”

Royce calmly questioned before politely nudging her to stand against the wall as both Specter One and Director Mercer uncloaked, leaving her little choice in the matter.

“Specter Team.. so The Board finally roped you into this? I imagined after sending a small army inside they would have bombed it from orbit.. but this is good. At least there’s a small hope you can find my team? It's been hours since I lost contact, and another hour before I decided to land. I know Reaper One would have done the same.. as for these gentleman, they were compromised”

Ark One was soon interrupted by a fit of coughing before continuing shortly after..

“I saw my boys and the two other squads enter inside.. the three other squads ahead of us were nowhere to be seen. I knew something about this operation was off by the start, but this? We were told the compound was secured by the bots, so where the hell are they? And It would seem I wasn’t the only one to check on things..”

Her eyes lingered onto two other shuttles, which in turn revealed that she wasn’t the only one to come down to check on things as Roy apologetically dusted her off.