by Gary Swaby
She now stood outside one of many doors. Station Sixty was like a giant disk surrounded by six mini disks. Each of the mini buildings had a long concourse pathway connecting it to the central building. Each of the mini buildings were referred to as nodes. Chiaki was currently on node four.
She had considered landing beside the main building, as that was the most logical place to find the mainframe; but it would also have the tightest security. She figured it would be easier to try her luck entering from one of the nodes and navigating the concourse. It would allow her to scout the main building.
The door leading into node four was secured with a combination of biometrics and a scanner that would verify a marines’ access. Chiaki could have tried to crack the door in the usual way, but she wanted to try something else.
“Time to put this arm to the test.” She raised her new arm and balled the fingers into a fist to strike a pose of dominance. She then walked closer to the door, but the weight of the arm almost put her off balance. “Damn, I gotta get used to this.”
She paced around, looking for the doors’ cabling. With this being such a high-end station, the cabling was hidden from sight. She just needed to find a small gap in the wall that would give away where some of the cables were housed. After keeling down, she noticed a small chipped crevice beside the bottom of the door.
“Ah ha,” she said. She flicked her synthetic little-finger to activate a flashlight. The light from her finger revealed tiny gaps in the surface. “Looks like this entire panel opens up; there’s probably a tool that opens it. I just need to find where it’s locked.”
Chiaki located the point where the panel opened up after crawling along the bottom of the wall for a few feet. “Tobi, play some Nujabes,” she said. “I need some background music to kill this awful silence.” As the jazzhop sounds bled into her earpiece, she lifted the cap on her index finger—which had one of her purple claws attached—and using her nerve endings she was able to make a multi-tool slide up from the finger. She selected the tool she needed and popped the panel open.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” said Tobi in her earpiece. She was also wearing her eyepiece, so Tobi had a clear view of everything she was doing.
“Duh! I lost an important part of the human body, you know. I gotta at least enjoy my overpowered bionic arm as compensation.”
A thick cable ran along the bottom of the wall, going much further around the building than the length of the panel she had just opened. But Chiaki wouldn’t need to go any further than where she was. Using one of the other tools in her finger, she sliced the cable open. The security system attached to the door let off a loud horn sound to indicate that it had gone offline. Luckily, it wasn’t loud enough to alert anyone; but if someone happened to be watching a live feed of all Station Sixty’s security devices, they might notice that that it was now offline. She had to be quick.
Chiaki made the multi-tool slide back into her finger and she sealed the top of it again. One of the other useful features of the arm was the ability to hook cables into her knuckles. This allowed for the arm to become a temporary adapter, and with her built-in holographic Comm-link, the possibilities would be endless for a hacker.
She fed one side of the cable into the end of her knuckle that her index finger was attached to, and the other end of the cable at the opposite side. A light pulsated from the inside of her forearm to indicate that a signal was found.
“Tohato,” she said. It was the word she had set to quickly launch the holographic Comm-link. The word happened to be her favorite Japanese snack. The holographic screen beamed up from her wrist, stopping a few inches from her face. “Align vertical,” she said, telling the Comm-link to display vertically along her arm. Keeping the cables in place meant that she couldn’t bend her arm to use the Comm-link as usual.
She used her organic hand to navigate the Comm-link and access the door’s signal through the cables. It took her three minutes to mess with the doors’ binary and activate the opening mechanism. Soon, she had successfully bypassed the security system and the doors shot open.
Now, if Chiaki simply removed the cables from her knuckles, the door would be stuck open and would be unable to shut. She needed to be able to shut it once she got inside to cover her tracks. Thankfully, the arm also had a nifty cable fusing feature.
After typing in the settings on her Comm-link she heard the fusion taking place at the top of her palm. A green icon blinked on the Comm-link screen when the procedure was complete and then she arced her wrist down to pull a panel open at the top of her synthetic palm. She removed the cable that was now fused together and placed it back into the wall. She put her palm back together and got up on her feet.
“Tobi, stop the music now,” she said. Concentration would now be needed.
Chiaki had made her way to the main disk of Station Sixty. Sneaking her way through node four and past the concourse had been light-work. She’d encountered drones along the way and she’d dealt with them by firing mini-EMP balls from her palm. After hacking one of the drones, she’d been able to see the locations of all other drones in the facility, and she’d done her best to avoid their paths. She’d also learned that four androids spent their entire day walking through all nodes, and that their patterns were rescheduled each day. She hadn’t been able to find any Intel on the locations of the marines on the premises, but she was sure they’d be lurking somewhere in the main building.
Chiaki was pressed against the wall, under a security camera, staying out of its line of sight. She observed her surroundings closely, looking for any obstacles or hidden traps. A security android was scheduled to walk through here in twenty-five minutes. It would circle the entire floor, enter every room and continue up the building, repeating its inspection across all six floors.
The area Chiaki stood in was a wide cylinder lobby, allowing her to peer through the windows of three large areas. One was a kitchen, one was a room full of computers, one a conference room and there was a fourth room that was completely walled off, preventing her from seeing into it. Looking up to the floor above, she could see cabling running vertically up the walls. With this, she guessed that the mainframe was on the top floor. At the center of the lobby was a solid white pole that went all the way up to the roof of the building. Railings connected to the pole on each floor.
The camera above her turned at ten second intervals, covering three directions: left, forward, right. Chiaki waited until it had just faced the direction on the right before she crept left and found the stairway going up.
Twenty minutes later, Chiaki had made her way up to the sixth floor undetected. She’d also located the mainframe, which was inside a dark room full of technical equipment; similar to the sever room she’d visited in New Yoy.
Chiaki was immediately on edge from the darkness upon entering its twin white doors. The server room back on Yoy had had enough lighting to take the edge off, but here she felt like an evil darkness was swallowing her. She called for her Comm-link and activated the light strips built into her skinsuit. She had them set to the same shade of purple as her claws, but she decided to change them to a lime-green hue that would allow more light to bounce around the room.
She located the mainframe terminal and connected the retractable cable that was stowed on the side of her shiny new arm. She went to work taking down the network’s security; using Starfade to penetrate firewalls.
“Man, you’d think this would be more difficult to hack into than some random data center on an uncharted world,” she said.
“True, but you do have most of the tools needed to hack English language systems already,” said Tobi. “Not all hackers come prepared with pre-written code I’m sure.”
“Are you saying I’m great, Tobi? Because it sure sounds like that,” she smiled.
When she’d bypassed all of the terminal’s security, she stared at the screen for a few seconds. This was it, the moment where she might finally learn the truth.
She hoped that the answers would be here, and that she wouldn’t need to find another Alliance data center. She opened up a search window, opting to use her Comm-link to control the interface. She then typed her brother’s name…
Kura Nakayama
A small animated magnifying glass indicated that the system was searching for any and all data that held the name. All kinds of intelligence documents popped up, from identification records to his planetary lease of Flade—which was now in her name. Chiaki even saw her own records popping up.
“Jeez, no matter how hard I work to scrub all records of myself from existence, they always find a way to gather more data.”
“This is why Commander Pearson was so clued up when he came calling,” said Tobi.
Chiaki carefully looked through all the file names on all the records that had popped up. She even opened up a few files and skimmed through them. Her eyes became glossy as memories of her brother replayed in her mind.
There was one filename out of all of them that caught her eye.
Jonathan Flurick in Relaun
For this document to be showing up in the search results, it meant that her brother’s name appeared somewhere within the document. Chiaki opened the file and began skim reading.
We thought that allowing Flurwick to assemble his own team to raid New Yoy would bring satisfying results, but little did we know that Flurwick carried the same genetics of the ancient galactic race that had birthed the Thundercloaks. Somehow the Thundercloaks realized this and this led to Flurwick abandoning his mission objectives.
“Serves you assholes right,” Chiaki said. She continued reading.
After analyzing the data we recently secured from New Yoy, we can now fill in the gaps of what happened during Flurwick’s time there. It was a man known as Narbeth the Traveler that identified Flurwick as a descendant from Yoyvis—a planet erased from existence. Sometime after doing so, Narbeth told Flurwick about the lost powers of the Yoyvis people. These powers are considered magic abilities that could only be performed by the Elves and humans of Yoyvis. Narbeth claimed that these powers were casted away into a hidden realm called Relaun, and that the powers could be reclaimed should a descendant go back there and find the Celestibus.
Flurwick stayed on New Yoy for many days, ignoring all communications with the Alliance, and soon he’d made an agreement with Narbeth that he would use his resources as a marine to enter Relaun and reclaim the Celestibus. Flurwick had officially gone rogue and was working against the wishes of the Galactic Alliance.
But another individual on New Yoy went behind Narbeth’s back.
Chiaki skipped a few paragraphs ahead, to avoid re-reading what she already knew. And then she read the passage that changed everything.
Flurwick now had conflicting thoughts on his trip to Relaun. On one hand he could follow Narbeth’s plan and enter Relaun to reclaim the Celestibus and bring magic back to the Milky Way, awakening magic inside all species with Yoyvis genes. Or, he could follow the new tip he’d been given and attempt to find the Death Shard that would allow him to absorb the Celestibus and become the only being in the Milky Way with the ability to use magic.
Without a doubt, there isn’t a being alive who would resist the latter option. But Flurwick needed to know that there was truth to what he was being told. The Elf that tipped him off about the Death Shard had mentioned that there were ancient scrolls on Earth, and he was absolutely correct.
In Earth year nineteen-twenty-two some artifacts were discovered in Egypt, along with the discovery of of an ancient Egyptian tomb were artifacts with symbolism that matched nothing else discovered within Egypt. These were confiscated and locked away, staying hidden in a British museum for centuries.
It is not known how much knowledge Flurwick had on the scrolls’ whereabouts, or what the scrolls showed, but we know trough Comm-link tracking that Flurwick visited planet Flade a number of times, seeking help from the hacker, Kura Nakayama, to locate and find these scrolls.
Chiaki’s jaw dropped. “What?” She read through the next few sentences at an accelerated speed.
Kura Nakayama accepted Flurwick’s request and while his operation to steal the artifact from Earth was commencing, Flurwick flew back to New Yoy to keep up appearances with Narbeth. Exactly five days later, Flurwick went back to Flade to retrieve the scroll from Kura, at which time he murdered him and all of his staff in cold blood to cover his tracks.
Each time Chiaki re-read that last sentence she stopped breathing, causing palpitations as tears streamed from her eyes. All this time, it was an Alliance marine that had claimed her brother’s life. Not a gang, not a bounty hunter, or someone who’d been on the receiving end of a hack. It was the Alliance all along. Maybe it wasn’t an order from the top brass, but it had been done at the hands of a marine. That was enough for Chiaki to blame the entire organization. Worst of all, the murder had been unwarranted. Jonathan Flurwick had wanted to prevent news of this mysterious scroll from getting out, but Kura would never have exposed a paying client, unless they’d given him reason to. The ruthlessness of it enraged her. Her bionic arm shook uncontrollably on the desk as she failed to control her nerves.
“Nova,” came Tobi’s voice. He may only be an A.I, but Tobi was programmed well enough to understand human emotions. He was aware that Chiaki was in a state of deep hurt, and he’d adjusted his voice so that it was slow and soft spoken as a result. “I know that this isn’t easy to process, but if you keep reading, there’s something you may wish to know. I’ll let you get to it in your own time.”
“Xièxiè,” she sniffed. When she’d composed herself enough, she continued reading through the document. It went on about how Flurwick had recruited a unit of marines. The unit consisted of two twin brothers with the surname, Cunningham; and a promising young marine named Natalya Carrick that he respected. Flurwick then set up the entryway to Relaun on an uncharted world named Nurvoa. To achieve this, he’d used technology provided to him by Narbeth. It spoke about how Commander Pearson had learned of Flurwick’s insubordination and had tried to prevent the news spreading throughout the organization.
Pearson had called for an operation that would have two marines enter Relaun to prevent Flurwick from succeeding and bringing chaos and disorder to the Milky Way. The Galactic Alliance feared not being able to regulate magical abilities, should Flurwick’s or Narbeth’s plans succeed. They opted not to tell the two marines the entire story, instead making them believe they were following up on the disappearances of their fellow marines. One of the marines, Brandon Wardson, had a medical condition and the other was a trouble maker with no real future in the Alliance. Pearson had figured that both men were expendable enough not to be missed for however long it took them to confront Flurwick—should they even succeed. Chiaki’s arm continued to rock against the surface.
Eventually a gap in the document appeared, and below the gap was a new entry that had been added just three days ago.
The days we feared are among us now. Earlier today, Lieutenant-commander Jonathan Flurwick returned from Relaun. As suspected, he emerged on Nurvoa where he’d first entered the realm. With him, he had the Celestibus in a container and a solid piece of black crystal that we now know to be the Death Shard. Commander Pearson was standing by with the Lapwing. Flurwick was seen attempting to begin the procedure to absorb the Celestibus.
Seconds later, Natalya Carrick, Brandon Wardson and some beings who had existed within Relaun emerged from the same ripple that Flurwick had re-entered the Milky Way from. The two parties fought; with Natalya Carrick now appearing to be aligned with her ex-lover, Brandon Wardson. The Drekarth, which are the native species on Nurvoa also assisted in the fight.
It seemed Flurwick had the upperhand, exercising his new abilities, until Pearson’s Lapwing descended from the sky. Flurwick was keen on avoiding any contact with the Galactic Alliance and decided to flee. In his haste, he left behind the Death Shard and one of Wardson’s companions retr
ieved it.
As of now, we have opted to capture Brandon Wardson and his two companions from Relaun. They are currently being held in Trador as we cannot risk them interacting with any media outlets and blowing this story wide open before the Alliance has regained control. Separately, Natalya Carrick has agreed to co-operate and will work with the Alliance to locate Flurwick. Our objective as of now is to find Flurwick and make him see sense in working with us. With the Death Shard now in our possession, we have a bargaining chip with which to lure him. Commander Pearson has scheduled a meeting with top brass to discuss this matter, along with the fear of magic abilities that are now assumed to be awakening all over the Milky Way.
“What on Earth is going on right now?” said Chiaki with disbelief. The extent with which the Galactic Alliance wanted to control the Milky Way sickened her. They didn’t care that a mad man with dangerous abilities was now on the loose, or that clueless Yoyvis descendants all over the Milky Way might be unknowingly waking up with new abilities. All that mattered to them was that they were in control, and not anyone else.
Chiaki pulled her arm away from the terminal, yanking the cable from it as a result. She slammed her synthetic fist through the screen, not really knowing why she was doing it. She was feeling and not thinking. “Flurwick and Pearson; they’re both dead. I don’t care how but I’m going to be the one to end them both.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” came a voice behind her.
Chiaki’s stomach leaped up to her chest as she turned to face Vraxen.