“Mik, I confirmed with the contractors, they’re not coming. They claimed that the shipment was hijacked and refused to do the work if the materials were replaced.” Darcy says with an edge of panic in her voice.
She’s been working almost non-stop for three weeks, and this was supposed to be the last few days of her hectic rush of base prep. She’s on station with the base built and the furnishings installed, but the distributed dish components needed a team to install that we didn’t have the expertise for.
“No worries Darcy. Take the rest of today and tomorrow off. There’s gotta be some bullshit going on.” I cut comms with June Bug I.
“Kitty, can you run that response and see if we were in system for that reported hijacking?”
“The date reported we were in system and the ship was not even in space that day. The space-port logs show an emergency docking hours after the reported hijacking time, but I’m certain that with a little digging it will show that the Busy Wrench never left the port.”
So it begins, Volkov. >1MC/Sergeant Rickman, please report to the cockpit./
I search through the routine message traffic, and the normal give and response from Orbit Authority is unusual for the Wrench. This job seems to have been finished by someone that has never piloted a ship. A cursory review would never pick it up, but the normal give and take for a flight controller and pilot isn’t there.
“Reporting as ordered Marshal.” Rickman appears in the hatch.
“Sergeant, I need you to do perpetrate some offense. Any moral quandaries?”
“What crime needs investigating?” Ah, he wants a legal reason to do it. Fine by me.
“A contractor claimed my gear was hijacked and that they can’t do the job we hired them for, nor would they do it if the gear was replaced. There are traffic control discrepancies as well as in flight signal deficiencies. I want proof that space port logs on Twilight were doctored and that the Busy Wrench never attempted to deliver my equipment.”
“So the contractors reported Piracy, in this sector?” he grins and shakes his shoulders out. “Alright, Kitty, show me signal traffic that routinely circumnavigates the planet and we can get to work.
He starts using a personalized HUD interface and I stop paying attention. People that use shorthand while interacting with data confuse me from the get go. I arrange the gear to be deposited in place by the Matrix, spending the extra money for the service so I don’t have to deal with a similar delay, which I will tell Darcy about after we have evidence of where my original gear went.
When twenty minutes elapses and Rickman hasn’t flinched in my direction, I ping kip to display my messages and correspondence.
Senior Marshal,
The Consuls have reviewed the civilian service uniform and approved your recommendations. A uniform budget has been applied to service for the acquisition of the first set of uniforms across the Marshal service.
We appreciate your continued excellence and professionalism.
The Forum of Consuls.
Fifteen credits in transfer to my account. I laugh at that, but for kids just starting out, every credit counts.
/Kip’s status report: This is the first report since your promotion to Senior Marshal.
/You have advanced several skills including: Bravado, Diplomacy, Magitech Integration, Administration, and Small Arms.
/Your adaptation-based Talent has modified your cranial interfaces.
/You have leveled up from executing
You passed on the mid-mark gift right? And I think I want one of my module points to go toward altering my implant interface like Kismet suggested.
That will take two module points and yes, I deferred. Also, I saw a very interesting variant on a transfiguration module that I want you to have. You focus on mental adaptation, but if we develop your physical adaptation, you could increase your gee threshold to 18 without much trouble.
Okay, I’m interested, 12 to 18 is a huge jump in upper limit, and most of it will be vascular I’m sure. Buy it, Kip. You convinced me.
KIP! We talked about shapeshifting!!
You’re still wrong. Shape shifting doesn’t mean losing your identity. Transfiguration at its basic is improving yourself physically. Only RP folks and specific Tracks handle full body transformations. Plus, you could be a were-man or merely alter your hormones on purpose without medical help.
Imagine surprising Penny with enhanced canines for gripping her while . . .
Enough KIP! Fucks sake. Despite being a major selling point, there is no reason to get smutty on me. Can we cue that up as a test? How long does it take to transfigure?
Glad you asked. Soft tissue, a few hours. Bones and complex systems, days or weeks. This is not magical shapeshifting . . . yet. If you absorbed a shifter, we could take their one shape and likely augment to maintain partial changes.
That would take an interesting convo with Jenna, or a serendipitous interaction at some point in the future. Yeah, okay. I’d like to wait until my tier three slot opens, but I could sacrifice either of my current sapped Talents for more adaptability. Bah. Kip, thanks for thinking things through and having my interests at heart.
“Gahlee! Skipper, we have a mess in this situation. You maybe want to bring the two fireteams into this.”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Give me the skinny Sergeant, then we can have a confab.”
“Copy. Space Port authority definitely doctored the records and I have the ID stamps to prove it. I also managed to slip into the Busy Wrench’s data before some defensive hacking made my life difficult. However, I spied the data IDs for the shipment that was confiscated and reclassified and the location is in an industrial district recently purchased by an off-world business.”
“Kitty, contact Kismet and start the transfer of two exo-suits and drop pods to my shuttle. Pickup two hours, no, make it three hours and three pods with the remaining fireteam to my Marine squad in them. Kip, run me some scenarios where we can send the pods and have us deploy at the warehouse at the same time the pods.”
“Is there a reason we can have them Jump out as we land? It would look a lot less like an infiltration of the planet and more of one-upsmanship of a corporate rival.” Kitty checks in.
“Thank you for bringing a voice of reason to this. Though the exosuits are a bit much as well. Kitty is an autonomy-capable gunship, a squad of Marines should be enough to secure the warehouse.” Rickman chimes in.
“Mmm, you might be right, there was no evidence of violence, or anything more nefarious than bribes and falsified reports.” I take a deep breath and swear off the new stims I’ve been taking. I haven’t been handling this . . . what Kip is calling ‘Imposter Syndrome’, anyway, it’s been keeping me up with worry. Maybe I should talk to Penny and ask her to take me off the sector.
Mikeala. I mean this with the utmost love, but chill the fuck out and realize there is a middle ground to be right and needing to be replaced. We were great at this job before the terms changed. You should concentrate on what you’re afraid of and focus on doing the job you’re good at.
“Alright, advice heard. I still want people geared up in the exosuits ready to deploy in case the Mob has dug in since I last talked to Volkov. Kitty, is there anything better than a shuttle-like re-entry approach?”
“No, Marshal, nothing that’s worth the price given our current parameters. I did a search of your old contacts in the Civil Patrol, and most of them either got reassigned or took an early retirement.”
“Empress’ toe fungus, that’s some heavy handed bullshit.” Kitty sends me the pertinent info, “Huh, it seems they were at least treated as fairly as this goes. Rural postings, relocation allowances, the works.” I take a deep breath and exhale. “Kitty and Sergeant, thanks for the reality check. Kitty, good work on searching down on my former contacts. This sets the tone of our response to a secure the area and inform the authorities of our findings.”
->K] Do you still want me to inform the Kismet that we want those exosuits? [<-
I chuckle at her well-timed delay.
->M] Not that I want you do make a habit of this, but thanks for helping slow this down.[<-
->K] It’s my first month on the job. I’d hate to explain to the Empress why I let her girlfriend kill herself. [<-
->M] You think she heard me swear about her toe fungus?[<-
Kitty titters in my brain and I’m glad my near overreaction could be a bonding moment.
***
Descending to the roof access of the warehouse using the thrusters on my armor, I realize more why Kitty and Rickman were so intent on tempering my response. The first is the extra capabilities that Kitty has and the team multiplier of having an offensive counter-intelligence guy on my side is. The second is that if the gear fit on a small freighter, the warehouse likely wouldn’t be as big as it looks on the schematics. Three, and most importantly for a raid with projectile weaponry, the area was busy even at night.
Kitty is blocking outbound communications from the site and our two fire teams of Marines are lining up at two of the entrances waiting for Rickman to tell us if their security has an audible alarm.
“If the ship can intercept any silent alarms via aether communication, I don’t see anything more integrated than this token system.”
Kitty sends a ping in confirmation and we’re go for seizure. “Time to go. Subdue is our priority.” I breech the door lock with my pulse rifle and switch to a shotgun with a gel non-lethal round as I descend the metal staircase to the catwalk system in the building. Rickman follows after me as we double time to the management office in the corner.
We crouch under the windows as we move, trying to keep our steps as quiet as possible until I hear shotgun blasts from below. Rickman and I rush the rest of the way to the door and he counts down the door opening. I rush through and see a man sitting behind a desk with a pistol raised so I pull the trigger and feel a round punch my shoulder while I pump another non-lethal round into the man as I rush him.
My second shot hit him in the forehead, crossing his eyes and causing him to lower the pistol. I’m on him before he can aim again and taze the shit out of the rotund office worker before pulling him out of the chair and hogtying him with shrink cuffs.
“Office clear.” I say as I pull the man into the corner so that Rickman can get to work on any files we may care about.
“At what point do we get to switch to lethal, Sir?” My Corporal asks.
“Your armor should be rated for small arms fire, so anything not that.” I ping the group with a request to populate hostiles on the battle map and see that with very little effort I could use the catwalk to drop in behind them.
With a short 5-count, I step off the railing and my team pins them down with rifle fire. I blast my thrusters on top of one man to slow myself down and to knock him over, while firing gel rounds into two others. I hit the ground and run at the last two, taking a shot to my chest before I can taze them with my gauntlets.
“Move up and detain.” I hear from the Corporal while I reload my shotgun. While I use my last pair of shrink cuffs, the rest of my team comes around the pillar and crates to secure the rest of the combatants.
“I can babysit if you need more time to clear the warehouse.”
“We were only about half finished, so we should keep moving.” The Corporal replies and directs the two teams to spread out.
Time to search pockets and phones I guess. I put all of the electronics and weapons I find in a subcutaneous storage device and the few bits of paper in a thigh pouch. The guy I slammed into with my thrusters looks much worse than I originally thought, so I jab him with tier one regenerator and immune boost pens and flag the local hospital for a burn victim pickup at an unsecured facility and attach an external scan and the two med IDs that I used.
You know we could just take him in ourselves.
Nah, if a state-sponsored subcontractor wants to be involved in these shenanigans, state-subsidized health care can be involved too. I just wanted to make sure he doesn’t die, as setting too hostile a precedent would escalate this slap fight to a war.
Kip, can you scan the crates if I walk around the warehouse?
I can read their ID’s and correlate it with the expected manifests for those IDs. It would take Kitty’s sensor array to penetrate the crates.
Well, guess I’m hoping that the communications parts have the same IDs as when they arrived. I head the opposite way that the two fire teams went to search IDs and then Kip chimes in that the rest of the team has compatible devices that he can co-opt. Our ‘misplaced’ equipment ends up being at the very front of the warehouse near the segmented hangar door.
“The warehouse is all clear, Sir.”
“Thanks Corporal. Sergeant, wrap up the office and lets get these crates loaded.” He sends acknowledgment in mic clicks.
->M] What are the chances you can slide your butt in here, Kitty?[<
->K] If I don’t land with stilts for the ramp, there should be plenty of room. You’ll have to load through one of the docking hatches, however.[<-
I’m sure I saw a forklift that can manage that. I struggle slightly with the hangar door until Kip chimes in that I need to turn the control group on and use the cabled controller on the other side of the door. I’m sure Kip and Kitty are having a laugh right now.
My fighter companion slides in as smooth as you please on the ripple drive (which uses positional anchors in the fabric of space) and touches down with her nose hanging out of the warehouse.
“I don’t suppose any of you saw some a-grav loaders in your search?” I ask the gathered Marines. They shake their heads. One of them volunteers that they know how to operate the fork that they passed. Within a couple of minutes, the Marines are loading the crates we had ordered on to our ship, with the hope of hiring techs from another system, or that Sergeant Rickman can stack up a few epiphany.