Chapter 17: A Random Universe for Random People
With a twist of Kunzite's wrist, a thin stream of a blue liquid began to fall into a large glass beaker.
"And there goes number eight," Kunzite said, looking up at the red digitally-displayed timer on the wall in front of him. "So, we've got maybe half a minuta before we have to start soaking the catalyst bed with salium."
"Nothing we can do until then?" Endymion asked, picking up one of the black respiratory masks off the sixth table and checking the seals for any defects.
"Not right now," Kunzite answered. "We don't want the boron fluid to sit too long after we mix it with the mestian, so mixing it now is no good. No point in trying to sleep, so...let's just wait."
Setting the mask back down, Endymion milled over towards the top left workstation, eyes darting from table to table.
"Once we get the furnaces burning, we'll have time to sleep. And you, especially, should take full advantage of every opportunity to sleep. You'll have a hard enough time functioning well on this sleep schedule, but you'll have to at least get a decent amount of it if you want to have a chance at doing this well."
"Sure thing." Endymion leaned over, watching the tiny line of blue fluid gradually fill the container on the first desk.
Kunzite tapped his right hand fingertips on another one of the tables, cautiously looking over at his charge. "Alright. Your Highness...what's done is done, and you can't change your past decisions, so...at the very least, can you admit that there simply had to be a better way to handle things than...this?"
"From my perspective, things went fine," Endymion muttered, gritting his teeth a little bit nevertheless.
"I shudder to think of what you would have viewed as less than fine," Kunzite countered patiently.
"Hey, I could do without your tone," Endymion said coolly, looking over at his guardian. "Look, my father's going to keep things a secret until I get back, and then I just have to...mitigate his concerns. Like I said, I'll say I couldn't bring myself to do anything, he'll...he'll have no problem believing that." He blinked rapidly a few times. "And Serenity, I knew she was going to be upset, I just needed her to accept my explanation."
"Did she?" Kunzite inquired. "I'm not convinced that she really believed it."
"She has to, my father was right there confirming it. She'll eventually come to accept it. Yes, she's not happy about it, but that's temporary. It'll pass."
Kunzite rolled his eyes. "I just have a hard time saying that something that ends with your wife being that upset went well. And if I'm thinking that, then...well, you certainly should be as well, I'd say."
"Hey, hey," Endymion said warningly. "What...what are you getting at? Gods, I...Serenity is my wife! I hate that she's upset by this, of course, I...I shouldn't even have to say that! How can you even imply something like that?"
"I'm...I'm sorry, Your Highness," Kunzite said slowly. "I just have concerns about...the way you're looking at this whole venture."
"I love Serenity more than anyone or anything in this universe," Endymion said insistently. "And it kills me, knowing that she's back home right now, upset and...maybe, possibly, even questioning my honesty." He gave his head a couple of heavy shakes. "But, don't forget why I got involved with this in the first place. It's for her. It's for the restoration of her Kingdom. Bringing her birthright back to the status that it held for thousands of years."
Kunzite sighed, but ultimately nodded. "I...I understand that."
"If Serenity knew the stakes, and...she can never know, obviously, but if she knew what was going on here. Absent the breaking the law part, she would understand. Her being...unhappy for a few days is well worth it, if the end result is her getting to watch the Moon be rebuilt into a prosperous, desirable Kingdom in her lifetime. And as her husband, I have to be the one...strong enough to see that, and facilitate it!"
Kunzite stared down at one of the slowly filling glass beakers. "I suppose."
"And...it's not always easy to do what's best for your loved ones, sometimes you have to hurt them to help them. And I hate it, but...in this instance, it's what has to be done." Endymion absentmindedly placed his left hand on one of the empty tube furnaces. "This...disappointment she's feeling lasts a few days. A drop in the ocean. Compare that to how thrilled she'll be to watch the Moon Kingdom rise from the dead and join the rest of the galaxy again."
"Can you grab one of the sacks of raw from down below, actually?" Kunzite asked. "May as well, we'll have to start melting it down shortly here."
Endymion kneeled down after shuffling a handful of steps to his left, prying a trap door open next to his feet and setting the square metal plate down gently. The entire cargo hold was filled with identical thick burlap sacks, practically loading the entire hold to capacity. He reached down, grabbing the mouth of one of the bags. With a small grunt, he hauled the significantly heavy load up to the ship floor, setting it down next to the opening in the ground. He slid the door back into place.
"She's my wife, it's my marriage. I will deal with the consequences of my decisions as they come. But I stand by those decisions." Endymion got back up to his feet.
"Speaking of consequences," Kunzite said. "You should get started on getting this down."
The general tossed a silver packet about the size of his palm down onto the floor next to Endymion. It slid to a stop right next to Endymion's hand, and he took it.
"Rest assured, it will fill you up," Kunzite said as Endymion picked it up and carefully tore the top edge off of the packet. "If you can...keep it down."
Endymion put the open little container up to his nose and sniffed, face wrinkling. He frowned down at the contents, a bunch of brown spheres the size of his fingertip. He reached his hand in and withdrew one, feeling it's soft texture, squishing it between his fingers.
"It also has everything you need to keep your body running at a high level," Kunzite added. "They're the fanciest, most palatable survival rations I could find."
"Well, what does that say about the industry?" Endymion muttered, popping the little ball of sustenance into his mouth and chewing on it. His eyes squeezed shut tightly, face puckering down hard. "Why is it sour?!"
Kunzite casually went over to a crate on the floor in the near corner of the ship's main room, pulling the lid off to expose a half-dozen large cups and a bag full of tiny blue pills. He grabbed one of the cups and a pill, giving the pill a small squeeze before dropping it into the cup. After starting to vibrate, the pill suddenly began spinning around rapidly, then disgorged out a large quantity of water. An entire cup of water being compressed inside the tiny little capsule, it took only a few beats for the glass to be filled almost to the brim, the pill having disintegrated into nothing.
"Trust me, it disguises the actual taste. And that's a good thing." Kunzite brought the cup to Endymion, who quickly took it and took a large gulp out of it.
After swallowing, Endymion disdainfully regarded the packet, but ultimately kneeled down to set the glass down on the floor before dumping a small handful of the brown spheres into his palm. "Well. Here's to trying new things." He slapped his hand up against his open mouth, depositing the food on top of his tongue.
"Looks like there is a touch of survival training mixed in here after all," Kunzite remarked as Endymion forced himself to swallow the mouthful down. He quickly chased it with a swig of water.
"This stuff had better be really good for me," Endymion grumbled, reaching down towards his right hip pocket. "O-oh, right." Endymion stood back up, looking over at one of the walls to the ship, at a steel handle, red button, and lever all right next to each other. He walked over to it, withdrawing a small white anklet with a single red bead on it from his pocket. He yanked the handle towards him, opening a chute, and then dropped the piece of jewelry down into it. He slammed the handle shut, and then held down the red button as he flicked the lever down, ejecting the pearl band out into space.
"What was that?" Kunzite asked.
Endymion gave a quick shrug. "Uh, nothing. Just...trash."
"
"Oh, don't even get me started on the agency right now," Queen Jupiter muttered darkly, face bending down into a scowl. "Just...here I am, trying to get my head above water on being a Queen, really just applying myself the best I can, and they just storm in here and practically climb up my ass about some...theft at a chemical warehouse." She rolled her eyes. "I have real problems trying to find an effective way to run this planet, I'm incredibly out of my element on this, and...ugh." Her arm suddenly became visible in the hologram as she wiped the back of it along her forehead.
"Yes, they've been...they've been on Mercury as well in recent times, actually," Princess Mercury chimed into the conversation. "It's been annoying, to be sure, but...they're just doing their job. Actually, the ones who you're directly dealing with, they're certainly just following orders. As frustrating as it's been, I...I actually sympathize with them, I'm sure they're not thrilled about being here and conducting all these long interviews."
"Yeah, I'll sympathize with them after I put my foot in their ass," Jupiter grumbled.
Serenity lazily rested her forearms down on the desk in front of her, looking down at the miniature holograms hovering a few finger-lengths above the desk surface. Four heads, each one belonging to one of her dearest friends, being projected from across the galaxy and put right in front of her for easy, seamless communication and conversation.
"Hey, Serenity, put in a good word for us," Jupiter suggested, the hologram of her head twisting a bit to look at the Moon Princess. "Your father-in-law is a big shot over there, isn't he? I've got my entire crew of advisors and officials getting grilled, I just feel awful for them!"
Serenity gave a little nod. "Oh, I...well, I don't know...how that works, really."
"It doesn't seem like they're all that close to being done on Mercury," the blue-haired Princess said sadly. "I, I don't even really know what they're looking for, it's so odd that they feel the need to...question hundreds of people here. I know there's that...extremely pure imperium being smuggled on Earth right now, I just...it's odd that they're here if that's what they're after."
"Yeah, they're nowhere near done over here either," Jupiter said. "All because of one stupid barrel."
"Hey, Serenity, what's up?" Queen Mars inquired, one of the heads turning towards Serenity yet again. "You're quiet today, that's not like you. What's going on with you?"
Princess Serenity gave a dragging little sigh. "I...I don't know. I guess...things just haven't been going the way I expected lately."
"Well, you certainly can't say something like that and then not elaborate," Princess Venus goaded. "Come on, Jupiter's been bitching long enough about her problems, let's hear it."
Jupiter scowled again. "Oh, Venus, you're lucky you're...three hundred million dolichos away. Or whatever the hell it is."
Serenity turned towards the representation of Mercury's head. "You remember what I told you about Endymion when you were here?"
"Yes," Mercury said.
"W-well...it's still happening." Serenity swallowed down hard. "A little before the wedding, I asked him to try to...include me in whatever it was he was doing, even if it was just telling me about it, and he gave some ridiculous excuse for why he couldn't say anything to me. So that was...weird, and I didn't like that, but...after that, I thought it was done, and things were fine, and now…" she gave a disbelieving little laugh. "He's gone for seven days. No communication, no contact, gone for seven days."
"No contact?" Mars repeated. "I...what? How is that even possible?"
"I mean...did he say why?" Venus inquired. "There aren't that many places in the galaxy anymore where you can't send communications. And why a Prince would ever spend so much as a beat in any one of those places, beyond me."
Serenity glumly propped her elbow up on the table, resting her chin on her hand. "Well. He said that he had to go off to do something called...survival training."
"Survival training?" Mercury repeated. "W-what does that even mean?"
"Apparently, something about...learning how to live in the woods, and...and hunt for food, I don't even really remember, it was...I've never heard of anything like that before! A-and, why would he ever need something like that? Why would any royal ever need to know how to do things like that? I think it's more likely that I get a platinum certification in...brain surgery than Endymion will ever actually need to know how to hunt and skin rabbits!"
"Mm," Jupiter grunted. "As a royal myself...I've certainly never heard of anything like that. At least, nothing that involves having to drop off the grid for seven days in a row. Jeez."
"Said it was a...family tradition," Serenity continued. "Men in his family have been doing it for hundreds and hundreds of years!" She rolled her eyes. "Just has to do it, right now, before I give birth, so...one day, he tells me all about this, and next day, poof. Gone!"
"I'm sorry," Mercury said. "That...well, that must be surprising, to have something sprung on you like that."
"I...I don't know if he thought that I actually believed it or not," Serenity muttered, looking down at the desk in front of her. "I mean, he must realize how it sounds, how ridiculous it appears."
"...do you believe him?" Venus asked, giving Serenity a curious look.
Serenity blinked vacantly a few times, blowing a puff of air from her nostrils. "I...I don't know. I mean, how can I? And then, how can I not?"
"What do you mean by that?" Mars asked. "I mean, how do you feel about it? Do you believe it?"
"It sounds so bizarre. Came from out of nowhere. So unbelievable, I'm almost tempted to believe it just because...well, how else could you even come up with something like that?!" She scowled. "His father was standing right there the whole time, saying he just forgot about it and that it had to be done now and that...oh, it just has to be done. But...I don't know. I don't know how to feel."
Jupiter sighed. "Yeah, I...I understand that. It's definitely weird. Just...if he wasn't telling the truth, what would he be doing? What would he be hiding?"
Serenity put her hand up to her mouth. "That's what I'm trying to figure out." She grimaced. "I...I don't know. Which, honestly...I mean, if I can't think of a good reason for it, then I have to assume that he's just telling the truth, right? Ugh." She tilted her head downward, staring at the wood of the desk right in front of her. "I don't know. I just can't figure out how to feel."
The five-way conversation was silent for several moments, Serenity finally bringing her head up to look at her friends.
"Alright, well...sorry to leave things on that note, but I actually need to go," Queen Mars stated. "S-Serenity, I'm sure everything will be fine, just...try to keep a positive attitude. We'll talk again soon."
"Yeah, I've got my advisors practically knocking my door down trying to get in here," Jupiter agreed. "See you all. And Serenity, uh...well...love you."
One by one, the holographic heads disappeared from the air in front of Serenity, leaving the young Princess alone in the large bedroom yet again. With wide, vulnerable eyes, she looked all about, seemingly trying to find a solution to her problems on the heavily-decorated walls of the room.
She sighed, wrinkles of concern setting into her face as she rubbed at her right temple.
"
Princess Mercury immediate went into deep thought as she deactivated the holographic projector that had facilitated the long-range conversation. Seated at the desk in her absurdly flashy room, she folded her hands in her lap, blinking rapidly.
"Survival training?" she muttered under her breath, staring down at the communicator, now inactive, mind racing.
"
Endymion was in agony for what felt like the thousandth time in the last few days. As Kunzite had warned, living on a cramped spaceship for seven straight days was unlike anything the Crown Prince had ever experienced, and he would just as soon never experience it again. Every time he thought he had survived the hard part, he would quickly learn that this marathon synthesization session was one 'hard part' after the other.
Having to tolerate the unpleasant taste of the food rations was just the first part of a two-part ordeal. Endymion's stomach, accustomed to only the finest foods in all the galaxy, would complain non-stop at being introduced to the rations, which quickly turned into repeated latrine trips, to his eternal embarrassment. Sleep was both sporadic and painful, with only a thin little mattress between the Prince and the metal floor. Endymion had difficulty even getting to sleep until he was so exhausted he had no other choice.
Right now, his suffering was directly related to the work at hand. Seven of the eight tube furnaces were running, each of them hardening the purified imperium from it's liquid form back into a solid, generating an extreme heat that affected the temperature of the entire room. But all of them running at once made things insufferable, with the large spinning fans doing just barely enough to make things slightly less agonizing. Wearing a respirator mask, which only made his situation all the more difficult, Endymion's face was dripping sweat, fogging the mask, decreasing his vision. He had already stripped down to his undershirt, for all the good it did him. He leaned over to spray a white gas into the central chamber of the eighth and final furnace, cueing Kunzite to quickly pour a clear liquid from a bucket into the heated equipment.
After releasing the contents into the furnace, Kunzite sealed it up with the cap on to the tube attached to the ceiling. He reached up to remove his mask, prompting Endymion to rip his off.
"Augh!" Endymion gasped out loudly, booting it over into one of the corners where a couple of the rotating fans were pointed, going down to his knees right in front of the blasting cooled air. He panted heavily, wiping his face.
"You can ask for me to take us back to Earth any time, Your Highness," Kunzite offered, going over to the opposite side of the heated room.
Endymion took several beats to gather himself, closing his eyes and basking in the chilled air blowing onto him.
"I won't mock you at all, just ask and we'll head back immediately," Kunzite continued, dropping another tiny tablet into a large cup and watching it fill.
"We can...we can leave after both of those barrels are empty," Endymion grunted, crouching lower to the floor so the air could hit him in the face. "Not a second before."
"Your Majesty, I understand you might feel as if you have something to prove, but think it through, please!" Kunzite quickly cleared the length of the room to present the Prince with the cup, Endymion quickly taking it and glugging down the contents. "We have eight hundred libras of refined imperium, or we will after this batch is done. We take this back to Nephrite, it will take his network several cycles to sell it. That gives me plenty of time to train and test the chemistry abilities of Zoisite, make sure that he can produce the high quality that we need, and then have him assist me! You've done very well here, you've lasted far longer than I expected, but there's no good reason to continue! You're in agony!"
Endymion huffed out a large breath, pushing his short black hair out of his face with both hands, then turned to look up at his general. "Has it affected my abilities?"
Kunzite's face curled downward a bit. "I'm sorry?"
"In the process, the synthesization, has...you say I'm in agony, but tell me. Be honest. Is my work suffering?" He spread his arms out to his sides, then swung them around towards the eight workstations. "You've been checking the purity levels on all the batches, is there a problem?"
Kunzite sighed, acknowledging he wasn't going to win this argument, and then reached down towards the pocket on his left hip. He withdrew a fat round bottle filled with tiny white pills, unscrewing the cap and pouring two out into his palm. "Fifteen batches to go. Fifteen-and-a-half, since this one isn't done yet."
"It'll get easier," Endymion said. "My body's adjusting."
"Zoisite is trained to handle these conditions, Your Highness. He wouldn't have to adjust. Same for Nephrite and Jadeite." He held the two pills out towards the Prince, allowing him to take them into his hand. "You could be sitting at home right now, in bed with your wife, or eating truffles, or riding Helios, keeping Serenity happy and unaware, all the while you still get what you want anyway."
Endymion slapped the pills down into his mouth, then guzzling down another mouthful of water to swallow them down.
"And I understand your concern about the purity level, but now that we're part of the way through, you must understand by now that...this isn't worth it. You being up here, Serenity being alone on Earth, barely believing your absurd alibi and feeling who-knows-what...all I'm saying, Your Highness, is that we should learn from this."
Endymion's eyelights fluttered a bit, his head dipping a slight amount before snapping back up.
"Just, I'm serious. There is no need for you to be involved in the actual production. That's true now, and it will be true going forward. No reason for it."
"How many people do you think have worked as miners on the moon?" Endymion asked, sitting down on the ground and leaning back a bit.
"I'm sorry?" Kunzite inquired. The general quickly walked over toward the near corner of the room, head turned to look at his charge, bending down to grab the small mattress from it's spot on the floor.
"In...say, recorded history, the last thirty-two hundred years, how many people have been employed as miners on the moon? Hundreds of millions? Billions? In its heyday, the Moon's population was close to two billion, it's never been lower than one billion, so...if you added it all up, maybe. Add in pre-recorded history, since we know people were digging around there back then, and we're talking...tens of billions, possibly."
Kunzite slowly came over, setting the mattress down next to Endymion, within the area that was cooled by the two fans.
"Some of them would work down there for years. Decades, even. Add it all up, we might have over a hundred billion days worth of labor. All of that time down there, drilling, searching, mapping...whatever." Endymion glanced over at the mattress, and then slowly crawled his way onto it. "All those people, all those days, all of them working towards one simple goal. Go down into the depths of the Moon, and find things of value to bring out. Ultimately, that's always been the intention. Anything that can be used or sold, bring it up. And...all that time, all those people, going down into the depths, over and over and over, and somehow they missed the most valuable thing in the whole galaxy. For thirty-two hundred years, it was just sitting there, waiting for someone to find it, and somehow it wasn't until...a few cycles ago that anyone did. And then, the people that did find it? Completely unable to utilize the find in any way. It was like they hadn't found it."
Kunzite just stared down at Endymion as he continued to wax on, slowly laying down on the cushioned little pallet, resting his head down on it and turning on his side.
"And then...I go down there once...once. For the first time ever, just for a little while. My only intention is to have a little bit of fun with my wife and ride the carts around. No interest in finding anything. Not even a thought in my head. And I'm the one that finds it. Not the billions of workers who dedicated their lives to finding minerals down there. But me, an Earth Prince just down there for a little lark. How can that happen?" Endymion's eyes slowly closed, the short-term sleeping pills taking rapid effect on the young man. Kunzite listened on.
"Think of...of the odds," Endymion mumbled, voice starting to slur and slow down slightly. "There was one night, maybe...last cycle, where I tried to calculate them, but...I didn't...even know where to start. Just think about what they must be, that it would be me that found all that imperium. That...that miner, Jericho, I think...he would have been dead in another half-cycle, f-forget him, I...may as well have been the first person to find it."
"I'm...not sure what your point is, Your Highness," Kunzite mumbled.
"I mean, the universe is random. That's what they teach. Everything that happens is just chaos. Particles crashing into each other at random, causing things to happen, nothing more than that. Nobody pulling the strings, nobody making things play out in an effective or satisfying or meaningful way. Science...science says that." Endymion rolled over heavily onto his back, eyes closed. "But...but how? How can it be random, that...that I...I find this? It just...has to...mean something."
Kunzite frowned a bit, slowly crouching down towards the floor.
"I just...I feel like...something...something or someone...meant for it to be me. It has to be something...like that," he continued in just barely above a whisper. "It couldn't just...be random. I was meant to find it. Meant to use it to save the galaxy. I...how can I...not...be here...when…"
Kunzite continued to listen, but after a few moments, glanced over to see that Endymion had finally dozed off entirely. With a bit of a sad look, with a touch of confusion mixed in as well, Kunzite lowered his head to the floor and closed his eyes. It would only be a few minutas before the heated imperium would need to be moved into the ovens.
"
Kasios danced his pen along a line at the bottom of a document, scribbling his signature across it before sliding it over to his left on the desk. Digging his right index finger into his temple, head down at the writing before him, he grumbled under his breath.
His office on The Savery was the same as it had always been in terms of structure and design, but he now had a large map of the Earth on the wall right behind him, four points on the map highlighted with a blue dot. Right next to this map was a picture of Mimete's face, with a short black line extending out to the right of it, leading to a piece of paper that read "TUXEDO MASK". A second black line stretched from the top, going to another slip of paper marked with "BOSS?". All in all, frustratingly thin.
A knock at the door drew Kasios's attention, pushing his head up towards the portal across the room. He reached across the desk to his right, pushing a green button down with his finger and causing a light buzzing to sound from the door.
A moment later, it swung open, Naxos entering the chamber.
"Oh, Naxos! Good to see you," Kasios said absentmindedly. "Your brother's okay?"
"Yes, yes, he...I keep telling him, stop eating things that come out of the ocean." Naxos's forehead furrowed. "You can't trust things that come out of the ocean."
Kasios gave a little shrug. "We came out of the ocean."
Naxos stopped halfway to the desk. "W-what?"
"Yeah, we did." Kasios set his pen down on the table atop the sheet of paper he now had in front of him. "Like...everyone. Millions of years ago, right?"
"Hey, maybe on your planet," Naxos muttered, quickly closing the distance between him and Kasios, sweeping across the office. "All I know is I didn't come out of an ocean."
"W-whatever, uh...he'll live?" Kasio asked. "Your brother?"
"He'll definitely live," Naxos answered. "It wasn't...it wasn't like that. Don't get me wrong, it was bad, but nothing lethal or permanent. He thought it might be that bad, which is why he wanted me there, but...oysters, man. What do you expect?"
"You need to catch up on things? I could help," Kasios offered.
"No, no, I'm good, I was only gone two days." He looked up at the map of the Earth on the wall. "Well, wait, is that a new arrest?"
"Y-yes, actually, we picked up a fourth just recently," Kasios said. "Class E, though, so...they're sweating him down on Earth, but realistically, not going to get anything. Carat and a half, though, so that's not nothing."
Naxos nodded slowly, taking a seat in one of the chairs against the right wall, and then pulling it over to the space in front of the desk. "Anything...anything else developing?"
"Um…" Kasios puffed his cheeks out a bit. "N-not really. But we've just started still, it's been a handful of days."
"Mmhmm," Naxos grunted, giving a non-committing nod.
"Hey, four arrests already, that...the way I see it, every arrest we get gives us another chance to nab someone with a decent amount on them, so...every pointless arrest gets us closer to the one that cracks this wide open. Really, four arrests in a case this fresh, I'm happy! Everyone should be happy! It's just a matter of time."
"Right," Naxos said. "How much time do you think, though?"
Kasios gave a little throat-based grunt. "I...who can say for sure? I'd be guessing, but my point is, logic dictates that it will happen."
Naxos's nose wrinkled. "Possibly. But, look, can we talk about that?"
"I...I guess," Kasios said curtly. "What's to talk about right now, though?"
"Well, let's explore the possibility that...it doesn't happen. I mean, buddy, we're dealing with an entirely new animal here, you have to understand that. What if you just keep...picking up low level street dealers that you have to let off the hook before we can even get them up here?"
Kasios blinked a few times. "Well, if that happens, then we'll have to...consider other options. Until then, we act logically. And logically, it has to happen at some point, we...twenty-four carats!" He unconsciously slapped his palm on his desk. "Twenty-four! I lose more than that in waterweight every time I take a leak!"
"You know this stuff is selling for fifteen hundred creds a carat on the street?" Naxos asked. "Twenty-four carats, that's thirty-six grand worth. I don't think this is as much of a sure thing as you do. There's just no need to carry around a bunch of it. If this was forty-five percent pure product, twenty-four carats would go for less than three hundred."
"I know!" Kasios snapped. "I know, I...look, there have got to be layers to this thing. These dealers, they're getting the product from somewhere, right? There has to be someone out there who's in charge of...getting the product out to the street dealers! That's how distribution networks work!"
"Those guys aren't easy to catch," Naxos pointed out. "They don't put themselves out there like the dealers, a lot of networks use dead drops to make it almost impossible to link them to the process. And we don't even know how many rungs this network has. No way to be sure we can even depend on this hypothetical person that we catch to lead us to to the top. No way to guarantee that he or she flips, either."
"Then we follow the ladder up!" Kasios grunted. "Okay, look." He put his hands out towards Naxos. "Why don't you just get to the point that I know you want to make so I can refute it?"
Naxos sighed, looking down at the floor in front of him. "Kasios, buddy, I'm not here to tell you how to do your job or run your investigation. But, there will come a time where either you change the laws on Earth, or the agency will get involved directly. And I know which of those two options you'd prefer."
"Earth has the strictest imperium smuggling laws in the galaxy already, outside of Venus," Kasios protested. "Compared to Uranus and Neptune, I'm already a fascist. Do you have any idea how much unregulated imperium you have to have on Uranus in order to get stuck with a sentence longer than an Earth-year?"
"Y-yes, Earth is already quite harsh on imperium smuggling, I know," Naxos said nervously. "But, Earth now has a...unique problem that might require even more drastic measures. And, I know that the rest of the high council is kind of...waiting around for you to handle it yourself, because that's one of the benefits of having a King on the council. They can handle things like this on their own instead of us having to force our way in and fight for new laws. So...you know…maybe we should take a look at the way they're doing things on Venus. Last I checked, there's no imperium black market anywhere there."
"Well...I'm sorry, but there are other considerations here. Venus has driven themselves halfway to bankruptcy implementing the apparatus required to monitor imperium usage and make smuggling impossible, and look at what it's done to them! Come on, we all know it, the population of Venus can't stand the current regime. Fascism is expensive, and not just monetarily." Kasios frowned.
"You wouldn't need to copy everything that Venus is doing," Naxos assured him. "I'm not asking you to get rid of anything surrounding search-and-seizure laws, or assumed innocence, but there are a few things that could be added that would severely hamper our...Tuxedo Mask individual. I understand that you're not interested in loading up your prisons with thousands of minor, non-violent criminals, but it could just be a temporary thing until we resolve this. It's not like you have to worry about winning any elections to stay in power."
Kasios's eyebrows squished together towards the middle-point of his face. "Okay. And then what? I change laws, I adopt some sort of zero-tolerance policy towards imperium smuggling on Earth...and then what happens?"
"Well...this new distribution chain will find it a lot harder to operate, people we arrest will be far more receptive to flipping when faced with spending years of their life behind bars on The Savery, and we'll have an easier time taking care of this Tuxedo Mask." Naxos couldn't help but look rather confused at the question.
"Let me walk you through this," Kasios said, a touch of impatience in his voice. "Here's what would happen. I change the laws, Tuxedo Mask shuts down his street operation, ramps down his selling significantly. Probably starts selling exclusively to organized crime outfits, allowing the process of selling to be completely private and under-the-radar. Maybe he moves to another planet, where the agency doesn't have as much power. Either way, our ability to find him and take him down is drastically reduced. As long as he has two functioning brain cells to rub together, he'll take his dealers off the street the moment he thinks that there's a risk of them flipping when they get arrested. Great, we've...slowed him down, inconvenienced him. Last I checked, that's not our mission statement."
"We don't know that for sure," Naxos contested. "Yes, it's possible, but how many millions of people over the years have risked long-term prison sentences carrying around bags full of unregulated imperium? These people, they care about making money a lot more than you and me."
"No, no, he...I change the imperium smuggling laws, I lose him forever. This isn't like other operations that won't be financially feasible unless they can street sling. This operation must be printing money, they can afford to ramp down if they have to. I don't want to make his life harder. I want to stick in in a cell up here for twenty years and have all of his product in our vaults." Kasios scowled down at the papers in front of him. "We have to bait him a bit to keep him exposed. The only way."
"Kasios, I don't know if you're aware, but...okay, I'm here as your friend, just to give you a heads up. I'm not trying to force you to do anything. And your concern is valid, but I want you to know that there will come a time where the council loses their patience. And it would be far better for you if you were the one altering the Earth laws, and not the agency getting directly involved."
"Believe me, Naxos, I know," Kasios insisted. "I'm aware. I'll deal with that scenario when it comes, but until then...we play it my way. We give him a reason to stick his neck out, give us a target to fire at."
"Alright, I just...I wanted you to be aware," Naxos said, standing up to his feet. "I'm sorry to butt heads like this, I'm not attacking you or trying to tell you what to do, it's just...well, yeah."
Kasios leaned back in the cushioned leather chair, a tired look on his face as he stared over at his friend. "I...thank you, Naxos. Believe me, I feel the pressure here."
"Sorry," Naxos repeated. "I...sorry."
"Hey, I'm happy to look on the bright side," Kasios reasoned. "At least I finally got you calling me buddy."
With a grin, Naxos stepped away from the chair. "See you later, Your Highness."
Kasios just gave an exasperated shrug, sighing as he rested his head back against the chair right behind him.
"
Endymion placed the burlap sack onto the square platform on the floor, right next to one of the workstations, bending down to check the digital reader at the top of the device.
"Ninety-nine point eighty-one," the Prince reported, taking the bag off the scale and toting it over to where the trap door in the floor of the ship was. He kneeled down to open up the compartment, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a piece of green string to tie the mouth closed.
"Ninety-nine point eighty-one," Kunzite repeated, stepping over into the corner where two of the high-powered fans were focused and crouching down. "So two thousand, three hundred and five point thirty-two libras total."
With a large puff of breath, Endymion put his hands on his hips and leaned his head back. "Alright. After distribution costs, I get two point twenty-eight million per libra...so...hm." He blinked a few times, straightening back up. "Wow. Approximately five point twenty-six billion creds worth of Imperium, then."
"I have the same," Kunzite agreed. "Minus fines, minus loss, probably five point two at the least. Nephrite estimates eight libras per day, so...just shy of three hundred days to move it all. Call it ten cycles."
Endymion milled over to where Kunzite was crouched. "Kunzite. Buddy." He slapped at his general's back, bending down a bit to get near his level, clearly exhausted. "Five point two billion creds in seven days."
"Well, ten cycles," Kunzite corrected. "That's...that's the right way to look at it."
"We did it," Endymion said, breaking out into a grin, looking right at Kunzite's face. "We did it."
"I don't know if I'd say that," Kunzite muttered. "Your Highness, we've done quite well, and things are certainly much more viable than before, but even at six billion annually, we're still just at maybe five percent of the Moon's annual budget, and then we have—"
"Kunzite," Endymion said with a violent little push of air, slapping on his general's shoulder again. "Let's just...you know. Come on, let me have this."
Kunzite, after a pause, nodded. "Alright. Good job, Your Highness. We've done very well."
With slightly shaky legs, Endymion got back up. "Wow. I made it. We made it."
Kunzite stood up, clapping his hands together. "Well, I suppose we're done here. I'll just make sure that one of your other generals is trained enough to assist me up here some time in the next ten cycles, and we've got a good system."
"Well, hold on now," Endymion said. "Before we do that, let's, maybe...that second barrel, still a little bit at the bottom. While we're here, maybe we should use it up?"
"Uh…" Kunzite furrowed his brow. "Maybe enough for forty libras more, I don't know if...it's a good use of time. Don't you want to go home?"
"Yes, but...I mean, we're all the way up here already, so why not—"
Suddenly, the ship shuddered a tiny bit, making both Endymion and Kunzite have to take an unsteady step to keep from falling over. Kunzite immediately raced up to the cockpit of the ship, Endymion hot on his heels.
Kunzite crashed into the back of the pilot's chair, looking down at a screen on the central console. A soft little alarm was ringing from the console.
"We're in a containment beam," Kunzite grunted, reaching forward and tapping the screen a couple times.
"From what?!" Endymion demanded, leaning up over Kunzite's shoulder to look.
Kunzite grimaced. "Salvage ship."
"Are you kidding me?!" Endymion hissed. "A salvage ship?! Out here?!"
Kunzite frantically ran his fingers across the screen, reading digital readouts from the ship.
"Get us out of here!" Endymion shouted, reaching up around Kunzite towards the controls.
"We're not going anywhere," Kunzite said darkly. "Not in this ship." He stood back up, away from the screen, thinking.
"Well, what do we do?!" Endymion said, voice just on the edge of panic, thinking about the twenty-three hundred libras of highly illegal purified imperium down in the ship's cargo holds.
Kunzite quickly spun around, storming back into the main room of The Qesem, purposefully striding through the workstations, into the back.
"Please tell me you have an idea!" Endymion said, quickly twisting his head all about, looking around the room, trying to come up with something himself.
Kunzite emerged from the back of the ship, holding a large red and white axe in either hand. He bent down and slid one of them over to Endymion, and then quickly went over to one of the workstations and quickly swung the other one up over his head, bringing it down hard into the tube furnace.
"What?!" Endymion gasped as Kunzite quickly mutilated the expensive chemistry equipment with the sharp weapon.
"We've got maybe a minuta before they send a boarding party over," Kunzite explained, again smashing the furnace with the blade with a powerful blow. "And they can't find an obvious imperium lab when they do."
Endymion watched Kunzite take a massive swing at the oven next to the furnace, and then bent down to grab the axe. Getting a running start at one of the workstations, with a primal grunt, he buried the blade deep into one of the furnaces.
Working with an fevered pace, the two young men ran around the room, swinging at everything that could possibly be identified as chemistry equipment, working to render it all unrecognizable at first glance. Glassware was shattered with a loud crashing sound, beakers and jars smashed into tiny pieces. Each workstation was dismantled, swing by swing, objects discarded to the floor as soon as they were unrecognizable.
As Endymion turned his attention to the wooden cabinets in the corner, Kunzite quickly hacked up the fans, trying to make the room look at chaotic and inexplicable as possible. The very limited amount of time they had was ticking by far too quickly.
The Prince began using the dull end of the axe to heavily dent the sides of the two barrels. Kunzite, however, now reached down into the cargo holds, pulling out one of the sacks of refined product and setting it down on the floor.
"What are you doing?!" Endymion asked, out of breath from all of the destructive work of gutting the room.
"Giving them a reason to not take us back to a salvage yard," Kunzite answered, reaching into the sack and grabbing one of the ounce-heavy cubes. Quickly re-sealing the bag and kicking it back down below, he reached into his chest pocket and removed the silver laser pen. Kneeling down and clearing out a spot on the floor, he started to cautiously slice off shreds from the cube, letting the miniscule amounts of imperium form a heap in front of him.
Endymion went back to destroying everything the best he could, running over to the cabinets again, axe raised.
"Pass me one of the cans of P2O!" Kunzite instructed. Endymion lowered the axe, then managed to wrench the warped cabinet door open. Fumbling around among the collection of scattered supplies, he found a full, sealed can and tossed it over to his general.
Kunzite thought for a moment, and then stumbled up to his feet, lurching across the room over to a small little drawer built into the wall. He ripped it open and then pulled a collection of sheets of paper from it. The formulas Nephrite's network had collected cycles ago. Endymion, meanwhile, continued to beat the axe into the cabinet, gashing massive slashes into it. After a few more swings, he knocked it over loudly. With the room satisfactorily disheveled, he ran over to the window, looking out into space, craning his head around. He couldn't find the salvage ship.
"Forget trying to see the ship!" Kunzite yelled. "Bust up the tables!" He was taking the tiny shavings of imperium and placing them on top of the sheets of paper, then balling up the paper and sprinkling them in the liquid inside the can Endymion had just tossed him.
With all the strength his tired arms could muster, Endymion began to smash down on the tables, trying to buckle the surfaces. After achieving this, he started hacking at the table legs.
Kunzite, meanwhile, had quickly fashioned ten of the wadded up, dampened balls of paper, each one with a tiny amount of imperium inside. He jumped to his feet and began to spread them around the room, hiding them underneath the rubble caused by the recent axe-related destruction.
Suddenly, a red light built into the left-side wall began to flash rapidly, Kunzite looking up at it as he was positioning another of his wads.
"A shuttle is coming over to board!" He turned to Endymion, who was cutting up another set of table legs. "Get down below, now!"
Endymion discarded the axe to the side and jumped over to the trap door, swinging it open and diving down into the small lake of imperium sacks. Twenty-three of them marked with a green tie, and one of them without one. He rolled over, giving room for Kunzite to follow suit.
Kunzite, meanwhile, was watching out one of the windows, finding the Class-A shuttle that was quickly closing in on them. A red ship that was small even by typical Class-A standards, it began to line itself up to connect it's docking port to the main door of The Qesem.
Scowling at how inexact this would have to be, Kunzite pulled a small rectangular device from his belt pouch, flipping the lid open and snapping his thumb along a switch inside, causing a tiny flame to start dancing from the top of it. He stood there, listening intently, finally hearing the port make contact with the bottom of the ship and start to form a suction seal.
Reasoning he could wait no longer, he began to place the flame up against the damp wad of paper at his feet, getting it to catch, and then quickly ran over to a second one. With great speed and precision, he found each of the ten he had made, getting each one to catch fire.
Endymion wanted to call to his guardian, but was afraid to make noise. He knew that the salvagers were likely in the docking tube, on their way up. Face covered in sweat, heart pounding, he was almost afraid to ask what Kunzite had in mind.
With beats to spare, Kunzite gracefully slid down into the trap door, down into the cargo hold, closing the hatch behind him as he set himself down next to the Crown Prince. With a deep breath to settle himself, Kunzite looked at Endymion and placed his finger to his lips.
The entry hatch to the main compartment of the ship was slid open, and both of them could hear the sound of footsteps clanging against the ladder rungs.
"Holy shit, I think we have ourselves one of the Notre models! No wonder it got abandoned, these things are trash."
Endymion's ears practically twitched as he strained to hear the voices up above.
"Wow, what in the hell happened here? Look at this place!" More footsteps, these on the floor right above their heads.
"Man, I don't get it, how does this make sense? Check the cockpit for bodies."
A short silence. Kunzite closed his eyes slowly.
"I don't see anything. So what, this ship got used for one hell of a party, then gets abandoned out in the middle of nowhere? Kinda weird. They just jump onto another ship out here?"
"We don't know how long this thing has drifted. We'll check and see when the last time the engines got turned on after we get it into the yard, but it might be years."
"Earth years?"
"What other year is there?"
"There are other years!"
"What other years are there worth talking about? Anyway, the hull's still intact, atmosphere in here is fine. Take off your helmet if you want."
"I don't think it's been abandoned that long, the power's still running. Just for the sensors and main console, but those don't last that long typically. Oh, yeah, I checked, the serial numbers and ID tags have been physically filed off in the cockpit, so there's no way we'll be able to trace an owner or origin."
"Good for us, we'll definitely be able to sell it now. Check the cargo holds."
Kunzite's hands balled into fists, and he reluctantly rested his right fist atop the plasma blaster on his belt. Endymion's face twitched down to look at the weapon, then up to the trap door up ahead.
Suddenly, a sharp explosion from above. Endymion couldn't help but jump, reaching up to cover his mouth with both hands to avoid yelling in shock.
"Oh SHIT!"
Another explosion. Then another.
"GET BACK TO THE SHUTTLE! BEFORE THE HULL BREACHES!"
Several beats passed, the sound of rapid-fire clanks on metal ladder rungs clearly audible just before another ripping blast.
Kunzite just sat back, listening to the explosions, counting them. They could also both hear the sound of the docking tube detaching from The Qesem.
"Eight," Kunzite said under his breath.
"Eight?" Endymion repeated quietly.
Another explosion snapped off.
"Nine," Kunzite said.
"Do you have any idea how big space is?" Endymion grumbled. "How massive the empty areas between orbital bodies are?" He crossed his arms over his chest. "All of that space, and a salvage ship finds us?!"
An explosion from above.
"Ten." Kunzite jumped up and reached over his head to the hatch, pushing it up on its hinges and quickly climbing up. Endymion followed quickly, popping up in time to watch Kunzite stride over into the cockpit.
"How can that even happen?" Endymion grunted, closing the cargo hatch after pulling himself back out onto the floor.
"Come on, come on, come on," Kunzite muttered under his breath, watching the screen on the center console. He swung himself into the pilot seat.
Endymion came up behind his general, grabbing the back of the seat in both hands. "Those explosions—"
"Refined imperium combined with P2O liquid, exposed to a flame, causes an explosive reaction," Kunzite quickly explained. "And now, hopefully, they're afraid that the whole ship is going to erupt, and they won't want to be so close to it when it does, so…"
The screen suddenly stopped blinking red. Kunzite immediately flicked two switches on the console in front of him, and then held down a yellow button next to them before reaching up and yanking on a lever. Within a beat, the ship's engine had sparked to life, and in the next beat, it jumped forward, launching itself far away from the salvage ship.
"WHOO!" Endymion exclaimed, slamming his hands down on the headrest of the pilot's chair. "Wow! Great job!" He placed his hands on Kunzite's shoulders. "Holy shit, I...we're in the clear!"
"Not even close," Kunzite protested, watching stars streak by out the front window of the ship. "They definitely saw this ship's engine power on and then jump away. They're going to report this, and it'll eventually work its way up to someone who figures it might be a mobile imperium lab."
Endymion's relieved smile faded, and he looked down at Kunzite. "Well, that should take awhile, right?"
"It might." Kunzite ran his finger across the center console screen. "Might not. We need to offload our cargo, and then destroy this ship immediately, is the point."
"Alright, um...you had it parked in a junkyard anyway, just ask the guy to scrap it."
"Not good enough," Kunzite said. "As soon as we dump the cargo, we're launching this ship into the sun."
Endymion gave some rapid-fire nods.
"
Endymion and Kunzite unfurled a large red tarp over the pile of tan sacks, rolling the sheet so that all of them were covered up.
"Close enough?" Endymion asked, looking down at the tarp and then glancing around. The two young men were out in the middle of a dry, rocky, mountainous area, a hot sun beating down on everything, no trees to offer protection. The hilly surroundings made it easy for a large hump to blend in, meaning that the five billion plus worth of refined imperium would be reasonably safe for a short time here.
"It'll do," Kunzite replied, bending down to stick some spikes down into the ground to keep the tarp down. "Not that often anyone comes through here anyway, and it'll only be here for a bit."
Endymion watched Kunzite work, and then copied him, pulling a little prong out and embedding it deep into the ground, having it hold the tarp tight.
"Man, that was...that was a lot of equipment we had to bust up," Endymion said ruefully. "Kind of fun, though. Don't know if I've ever done anything like that before."
With the tarp secure over the massive haul of imperium, Kunzite reached into his belt pouch behind him and pulled out a small screen, holding it up in his hands and peering down at it.
"I suppose we can afford more." Endymion slowly ambled over next to his general, looking down at the screen. "Maybe get a better ship. Something bigger, a more efficient setup. I don't know, there has to be a better way than that."
"The Qesem is almost there," Kunzite said, the screen showing the perspective of a camera attached to the backrest of the pilot's chair on board the ship. Stars were streaking by as the ship flew at maximum speed, making recognizing anything impossible. "Any time now, the hull will fail because of the heat, and there won't be a thing left not too long after that."
Endymion grimaced, slowly reaching up to put his arm up around Kunzite's shoulders, watching. The camera flickered a bit, and the front window was beginning to crack. "It was a nice ship, though. Served our purposes admirably. Kind of sad, actually."
Kunzite had no reply, simply blinking a couple times as the window developed more and more fractures. Finally, it gave, shattering. The camera gave out, the screen now displaying a pure black. He re-pocketed the screen.
"There it went," Endymion said. "Gods, I...still can't believe that. How does a salvage ship just...happen upon us like that?"
"The universe is random, Your Majesty," Kunzite mused. "The universe is random."
Endymion gave a couple of relenting nods, pulling his most trusted general a little closer.