by Aer-ki Jyr
The confiscated rifles were the same make as the weapons produced in Colorado, meaning these had either come from that facility and were only now cycling out through distribution channels, or that The Word had another operational facility churning out the crude knockoffs. Regardless, their presence on Mars indicated that The Word definitely was operating elsewhere in the Solar System, just as Agent had attested.
When David opened up the Director’s message he saw it came in parts, the first of which was an update on the Russian confiscation, which had apparently disappeared from records…along with all of the weapons. Davis was working with higher up Russian officials to track down where the weapons had disappeared to and how the data files could have been altered, but a side note from him suggested that the Russian security forces on station must have been affiliated with The Word, for no official transfer of the weapons outside of their custody had been ordered.
David pounded his fist on a flat spot of the table/console in frustration. Their one and only victory had been undone thanks to corruption on the part of the Russians. In fact, Jet may have inadvertently helped deliver the weapons to them, if security had been their ultimate destination.
No, he couldn’t assume that. The easiest way to smuggle cargo was to have it never see the light of day. The security seizure may have been a backup plan though.
Either way, the weapons got where they were going and were now off of Star Force’s grid. How many operatives did The Word have anyway? That was the last time Green Team was going to rely on outside help. From here on out they were only going to use in-house resources.
The note from Davis indicated that the trail hadn’t gone completely cold, and at the least he felt that between Star Force and the Russian Internal Affairs they’d snag at least a few of the conspirators, but the weapons were long gone, and given the time delay since discovering the ‘oversight’ they could have been moved anywhere within the system, so they couldn’t even narrow down their search to a specific region of Mars.
David finished the note, feeling angry and embarrassed at the same time. Whoever these people were, they were good at what they did…but get them out in the open and he’d see how good they are with the weapons they’re making.
He moved down to the second item in Davis’s message packet, seeing that it was the summation of the background searches into the individuals they’d been tracking from the Colorado mission, some from photo identification, others from genetic samples taken both from when they were on the run and from the base. As good as The Word had cleaned it up, they hadn’t actually ‘cleaned’ it up, and Star Force now had dozens of unphotographed individuals with genetic IDs to search for.
Finally some of those searches had come up with new leads. Family relations, previous employers, school records, traffic patterns, both from in atmosphere flight on Earth and transit through the system, a lot of which had been on Star Force flights. With the data before him now, David had some threads to follow, one of which he was sure would lead to a nexus point or something of value for Green Team to hit, and right now he badly wanted to return the favor for the Mars snafu.
There was a lot of data there to work through, so David set it aside and moved down to the third item in the packet, finding yet another analysis report…Davis must have been holding them back so he could send them all at once. It was on several of the items recovered from the Colorado base, backtracking them to their points of origin. Some had been purchased by companies that were now on Star Force’s watch list, while others had gone ‘missing’ or were listed as ‘damaged’…but there were a few others that had no official connection at all.
David pulled up one piece of the report that detailed a 3d fabrication machine that was used to create the pistol barrels prior to the magnetization process. It had no serial number whatsoever, but the design was able to be traced back to Setting Sun Industries. A quiet search through their computer records by Star Force hackers discovered an accounting program with a curious bit of code that would occasionally register numerical errors in the production assembly line…meaning that some pieces of equipment would be physically produced but never cataloged.
In that way, David assumed, The Word could produce equipment for their explicit use without having to buy or steal it, leaving no records trail at all to follow…suggesting a higher level of The Word activity in that particular corporation, for a little sleight of hand with computer systems wouldn’t allow for physical shipping of the product when it didn’t have an ID tag for processing purposes. They had to have agents in position to intercept the ghost units coming off the line and spirit them away into The Word’s illicit transportation network.
Davis’s notes attached to that set of data informed David that they’d set up long term surveillance on those sites, hoping to spot and track future ghost shipments and suggesting that they be left alone rather than shut down by grabbing The Word operatives there if/when Green Team identified them.
In that David agreed.
The third piece of the data packet was the results of a comprehensive search through Star Force’s computer systems within Sol, looking for unrecognized security breaches. It was a short report, for none successful had been found, but they had discovered a bit of nibbling at various locations that warranted further investigation, which Davis inferred was ongoing. Whether or not The Word was responsible for the nibbles couldn’t be said, but David was glad that whoever it was hadn’t managed to get in. The security of Star Force’s comm systems was one of their greatest assets, and if it could be cracked they’d have to rework just about everything, because it could potential jeopardize control of their remote craft.
Namely their warships. And if an outside force gained control of even one of them temporarily, it could result in disastrous circumstances.
So far the systems were clean though, which was a bit of good news. The fourth piece of the packet was not, however. The Director had been pulling anomaly searches throughout Star Force territory, hoping to discover some bit of The Word’s web without following a link back from Colorado to do it. His notes indicated several accidental discoveries unrelated to The Word, which Davis had Red Team dealing with, but there was one individual by the name of Seamus Kilmeade that had drawn a yellow flag.
The man worked in an affiliated Star Force facility, meaning technically he was on Star Force’s payroll, but more of an independent contractor than one of the lifelong staff. On the civilian side, Star Force was split into tiers, the uppermost of which held the more important workers, administrators, and techs. These people, like the Director, had dedicated their lives to the Corporation and lived as part of it. There was no commute to work, for they lived in Star Force facilities and moved about as needed. Most were unmarried, or ended up as such as the years passed due to the fact that they outlived their spouses.
The upper tier members were virtually all more than 100 years old, having attained self-sufficiency even if physical activity wasn’t part of their area of specialty. They had learned the essentials of maintaining their bodies and minds, as well as the advantages it gave, making them far more valuable than any of the ‘younglings’ looking for employment in the Corporation, no matter what their background.
The upper tier, designated a level 7, received no pay…but had free access throughout Star Force’s transportation grid and access to any purchases within the Corporation free of charge, ensuring they had what they needed but making no effort to establish a lifestyle independent from their ‘jobs.’ Like the Archons, they lived and breathed their work, and were exceedingly good at it. It was the techs in the upper tier that were given access to the V’kit’no’sat pyramid data and were pushing the limits of Star Force technical knowledge, doing what the trailblazers had done with the military only on the scientific front.
Level 6 members of Star Force were lifelong employees as well, also taking no pay and mastering at least the basics of self-sufficiency in order to prolong their lifespans enough to become sufficiently
skilled in their work and to be of use handling assignments that the level 7s were either too busy to handle or assignments that had been handled before and needed to be replicated. The 6s were essentially master apprentices, far more experienced than most employees of the Corporation, but not entrusted with ‘trailblazer’ duties. They handled the difficult familiar, taking their cues from the 7s whenever something new came into play.
Level 5s were long term employees that did receive pay, and about half of whom retired outside of the Corporation. The other half was split between those who had achieved self-sufficiency and preferred to stay active in their positions rather than turn tourist, and those that were working their way up the ladder towards level 6. Most level 5s lived within Star Force facilities, though a few maintained personal residences in their limited spare time. Most of those who did were assigned to colonies where the public sector habitats were within travel distance from the Corporate facilities.
Level 4s were high skilled employees valued for their abilities but who only saw their employment as a job, one that would consume most of their time but one that paid well and came along with a lot of perks. They were split between family types and career hounds. Physical training was required for them, along with all the upper tiers, but ambrosia was reserved for those who achieved certain benchmarks. Most level 4s did not achieve that level, and thus were not entrusted with the super-juice due to their unwillingness to train more than necessary to maintain the fitness levels required of employment.
More often than not, experienced level 4s would ‘retire’ when they failed to pass their quarterly physicals which required a quota of completed workouts during the previous 3 month period. In this way the turnover for level 4s was slow but steady, with most cycling out over a period of 40-50 years rather than working their way up to level 5. It was a fact of reality that Star Force had come to accept, that the individual had to want to attain self-sufficiency in order to get there, and that while prerequisite training would extend the workforce’s lifespan they couldn’t maintain the number of workers necessary by requiring higher standards.
Thus, Star Force would teach its employees what they needed to know, and require a moderate level of training that would give them the opportunity to work towards self-sufficiency, but at the end of the day they were in control of their own destiny, and many simply were too lazy to do what was required, even knowing and seeing the benefits in others.
Level 3s were required to do a bit less, and made up the bulk of Star Force’s members. These were the experienced workers that had made a permanent job out of Star Force, though many of them bounced from one section to another as demands met or as they chose. They lived in private housing by choice and kept a social and personal life separate from the corporation, with the average employment lasting between 15-20 years.
Level 2s were a mix of inexperienced workers learning the ropes and of experienced affiliates. The affiliates received pay, but were not part of the Star Force permanent workforce, operating instead as contractors on a set timetable that could range from a day to 10 years. Only minimal physical standards were required of level 2s, of which was measured by being able to run a sub 8:00 mile twice a month. For the affiliates they maintained this requirement for employment sake, while those who were part of the Corporation and looking to work their way up usually exceeded this requirement by a significant amount as they trained towards the level 3 requirements…which would come with increased pay and perks, which was the only reason why many of the level 2 employees put up with the training in the first place.
Seamus Kilmeade was a level 1 employee, having the same sub 8:00 requirement and little else physically, but with a plethora of Star Force codes of conduct to follow. He was an independent hire, and not part of any other company, working as an instructor in one of the training centers prepping would be colonists migrating from Earth. His area of specialty was linguistics, David saw from the attached file, with him speaking 5 separate languages fluently, allowing him to help teach English to groups of colonists coming from varied nations.
One pet peeve of Davis’s was the multi-cultural euphoria that the planet had seen in past centuries, celebrating Earth’s diversity and preserving the cultural and linguistic differences that kept the people living next door to each other from being able to communicate. He’d put a quick end to that with the colonization program, declaring English to be the one and only language Star Force used and requiring all colonists to be able to test out in the language at a sufficient level to be able to operate within an all English-speaking colony without translators…from which point they’d pick up the fluency in the language from daily interactions.
Davis’s seemingly arrogant assertion, as viewed by the public, had been hilariously reinforced when the Hycre had introduced Star Force to the Alliance, noting that different races throughout the local region of the galaxy had seen the wisdom of creating a trade language through which to communicate with each other…which made Humans not being able to communicate with other Humans hilariously pathetic.
Seamus, it seemed, was good at his work, having received an 85% efficiency rating as an instructor, meaning that 85% of his students passed their requirements within a given amount of time that was deemed reasonable. It seemed he was usually assigned groups that had no prior experience with the language at all, which was rare. It also gave him an audience that probably couldn’t understand what he was saying most of the time…which was probably what The Word was interested in.
Davis’s anomaly search had indicated traffic patterns atypical with someone in his position, seeing him travel outside the city/building that he worked within. That wasn’t completely unheard of, but the Star Force transit data didn’t match up with any locations of known relatives, which is what had thrown the yellow flag.
A closer inspection of the data suggested an irregular pattern of predictable routes, none of which could be associated with any known behavior, such as sporting events, festivals, and such. All of the trips on record had been 1-day affairs, some of which had seem him leave and return almost immediately, which had suggested to Davis that the man was making or receiving drops.
David concurred, and was glad to see the Director’s final note on the data.
I HAVE ISSUED NO ORDERS CONCERNING THE TARGET, THEREFORE HE SHOULD BE UNCONTAMINATED. PROCEED AS YOU DEEM APPROPRIATE.
While he knew this might not be related to The Word, David had a gut feeling that it was and apparently the Director did too, otherwise he wouldn’t have sent it to Green Team. With the location being in Antarctica and essentially right next door, David couldn’t see the logic in calling in one of the other team members and knew that he had to deal with this one personally. He wanted to start with a surveillance order and then sit on it for a few weeks, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the target might go to ground if he did…and then there was the slim possibility that the local security might have been compromised as well.
He doubted that, but felt it better if he had a quiet look around before bringing them in on the operation, if at all.
David got up from the console and was headed to grab the duffle he had in his closet to start packing when his earpiece chimed. It was sitting on the corner of a nearby table where he’d left it after coming back from his run. He walked over and picked it up, flicking off a droplet of sweat that had survived on the surface.
“Go.”
“David, Morgan just showed up,” Angel-676 said excitedly, “and she’s playing King of the Hill against six trailblazers and kicking their asses with some freaky new powers. Get over here before you miss the show.”
David raised an eyebrow. The highest ranking Archon was here, had gone mutant with some type of new power, and she was taking on 6 other trailblazers…and winning?
“On my way,” he said, hurrying out of his quarters.
The packing could wait an hour or two.
5
Kerrie-057 slide/kicked across the floor into Morgan’s bar
e right leg, knocking it askew and dropping the ranger down on top of her. She jabbed her in the ribs just below her sports bra before getting knocked in the side of the head as Morgan spun back up onto her feet. Then Kerrie saw Jason jump into her vision laterally and tackle Morgan around the shoulders.
Morgan went down with the Sangheili on top of her…then Jason flew off as she knocked him free with a combination elbow jab and concussive wave. He went flying out of the ring on his own momentum, landing in the softer padding around the King of the Hill circle that they were trying to knock Morgan out of.
High above the wide circle a holographic clock counted up from 4:21, indicating how long Morgan had held her ground against the other six trailblazers. Today the ring was flat, rather than being elevated to form an actual hill, but the basics were the same…stay in and keep knocking the others out. And when the others were 6 trailblazers the odds of anyone staying in, even Morgan, was slim.
As soon as Jason was tossed Tyr came in and tried to knock Morgan further to that side of the ring, ramming his shoulder into her torso but she rotated around and deflected most of the blow. Tyr countered by latching onto her arm in the process and dragged her another two feet towards the edge while Aaron came in to knock both of them out. Morgan countered by dropping down to the ground, tipping Tyr over at the waist in the process and sending Aaron over top of her as she grabbed his wrist and used her back as a pivot point.
The other trailblazer doubled over and inverted momentarily, his legs coming up above his head as he twisted around Morgan who had dug her heels into the floor…then with a concussion wave tap she sent Aaron flying out of the ring upside down, leaving her with only Tyr to deal with for the next two seconds.