Hello again, everyone. Hope that things are treating you all well and that life's not being too stressful on you. I apologize for the delay in getting this chapter up. Been multi-tasking between this, fixing up Finishing the Fight, and reviewing some of my older stories, going back and fixing some of them up and hopefully improving their quality and such. Still, hopefully this is worth the wait. Special thanks as always to my friends and beta-readers, Atlan, Swordsman, Orsai, Boondock Jake, and everyone else. I really appreciate all the time and effort you guys have put into this.
And thank you again as well to everyone that had read this story. I really do appreciate your time and effort as well, and I hope that this newest addition proves to be worthy of your time.
Chapter Seven: First Appearances
"So there's nothing that you can do?" Angela asked as she looked up at the holoscreen in front of her.
The elderly looking man shook his head back and forth and slumped back into his seat. "I'm afraid not, my dear," Abercrombie Fizzwidget said. "The Board is in agreement with Mr. Barti, and adamant about putting this project on hold for the time being." He paused for a moment. "They're willing to leave some sensor drones back around the facility to keep an eye on things, and the pre-fab camp is going to be left where it is. But I'm afraid that is the most I've been able to get them to agree to do."
"I don't believe this," Angela whispered, before slamming a fist down on the counter she was standing behind. Her hand throbbed in pain at the impact, but she ignored it. The pain of her first project back at Megacorp being a bust was far more agonizing.
"Try…try to look at it this way, 'Doctor'," Fizzwidget said with a soft smile, partially hidden by his big, bushy mustache. "You did help discover what the facility really was, if not how to make it work, and what you, Arden and the others found could give Megacorp a tremendous edge in the coming weeks." She looked up at him and arched an eyebrow. "Angela, the armor that you found is something the Board's very interested in, to say nothing of the nanite samples you discovered in the alien's body. Combat shielded power armor has always run on the expensive side of things, to say nothing of medical nanobots. Only the wealthiest mercenaries and planetary defense forces have ever been able to afford those sorts of things."
"We don't know that this guy wasn't in one of those, wherever he happened to have come from," Angela pointed out.
"That is true, my dear, that is true," Fizzwidget nodded his head. "But there's a chance that whatever you've found could be easier to produce than the traditional methods. If this pans out, the profits the company stands to make will be in the tens of trillions. And you will have been one of the ones that made it possible." His smile grew a bit. "You've more than justified my confidence in your professional capabilities, I think. At least to me you have."
"Thank you, Sir," Angela said softly, before she sighed and looked down at the floor.
"Look, Angela, you've had a long day, and tomorrow you've got to head to Ichar. Get some rest, and when you get back, take a week or two to just relax. I don't need you pushing yourself so hard that something snaps, okay?" Fizzwidget said as soft crooning filling the air; a moment later his protopet jumped up onto his lap. The old CEO chuckled softly and stroked the blue furred creature softly.
"Yes, Sir… I'm just sorry we couldn't show more for our efforts." Angela leaned against the counter of her pre-fab a little harder, closing her eyes.
"Well, not every ancient ruin and-or teleportation facility is necessarily going to result in a massive payoff. This one might have been abandoned long before whatever civilization created it fell," her employer said. "Now, take care, and I'll see you in a couple of days."
Angela merely nodded as Fizzwidget switched off the holoscreen on his end. The female Lombax growled softly and resisted the urge to kick something in frustration. She already had a hand that was throbbing; she didn't need to add a foot to the list. She walked over towards one of the chairs in her home and sat down in it. She pressed a couple of fingers against the side of her head. She could feel the headache coming, and knew that one some level, her boss was right. She'd pushed herself hard these past few days, what with Randolph pulling the plug, the facility finally opening up, and everything else that had happened. There was just so much going on… so much that she wanted to have gone differently. Fizzwidget had assured her that she wasn't a failure in his eyes, but that's the way the 'Old Man' as many affectionately referred to him, saw it. He looked for the best in people, believed in second chances, and was so very different than the cutthroat, eyes on the bottom line mega-corporation officers that seemed to plague this galaxy.
That wasn't to say that Megacorp itself wasn't without flaws, Angela thought, remembering the various side effects to corporate projects, but she didn't even want to think about the sorts of things that Emeraud or Zeo-Matrix might bring about if they ever got into the top-dog position.
A loud warbling noise suddenly distracted the young woman. She was getting a call, and she turned on the holoscreen. Her eyes widened as she saw Ratchet staring back at her, clad in full combat armor. The visor was depolarized, though, so she could see his eyes. She was also able to see smoke and dust rising into the air behind him, and make out what was clearly a shattered cityscape.
"Angela, glad you're still awake," he said, breathing heavily. "Sorry, meant to call earlier, but things have been rather hectic around here lately."
"Is everything okay? Are you and Clank alright?" she asked, leaping up out of her chair.
"We're fine, we're fine," Ratchet waived his hands in front of the screen. "It's… well… I don't think we're going to be able to meet up with you on Ichar-III after all." He let out a sigh. "We were on our way over there and we picked up a distress call coming from the Arcadia system. The whole planet got hit by something… aliens we've never seen before. They wiped out the orbital defenses and took off with some of the planet's anti-matter generators," he gestured over his shoulder with his thumb, and looking past him, Angela could see the remains of what had once been a power production facility. It looked as though someone had just ripped the top right off the thing and torn the generator clean out of its housing facility.
"How bad…" she started to ask.
"They're still adding up the body count… it's…." He shook his head and his eyes settled on her for a minute. "Clank and I are going to stay here, help with what we can until the neighboring clusters manage to get a proper relief effort going." He looked down at the ground and shook his head once again. "Look, I'm really—"
"Don't even start to apologize, Ratchet," Angela said, walking over towards the screen. "A planetary population is much more important than meeting me on some backwater trade hub."
"Thanks, I'll make it up to you, I promise," the other Lombax said. "In the meantime, I'm going to wire you some of the combat data that Clank and I were able to get. I don't know how many of these things there are, but there's a good chance that there may be more of them. I suppose you've heard about the tears…"
"I've heard something about a lot of spatial rifts opening up lately, but that's it. Argus-IV isn't exactly a news hub. I can barely get any holonet reception out here, even if I had time to go looking around on it," Angela said with a frown. The gears of her head began to turn and whirl. Come to think of it, the rifts had started appearing around the same time that the facility had opened up, hadn't they? Was there a chance that the two could be related somehow? Angela's frowned deepened as she turned the hypothesis over in her head. For that matter, was it possible that this attack had been caused by other aliens like the one that they'd discovered in the ruins?
"Well, we're starting to think that that's where they've come from," Ratchet shook his head back and forth. "I've had Sa…I've had Admiral Phyornix run checks on the ships profiles, and none of them are matching known Solona powers. She's already going through the channels to get ahold of Qwark, try and bring him up to speed."
Angela growled softly, her eyes narrowing as she remembered the man that had caused her so much trouble. Countless damages and injuries caused by the protopet disaster, all his doing, and somehow the man was still nearly revered as a "superhero" and somehow managed to con his way into being president of the Polaris galaxy. "You really think that lug-headed glory hound can be 'brought up to speed' on anything other than his current polls?"
"No. I don't. I fully expect him to ignore it and go off to some P.R. stunt," Ratchet said with a shrug. "Look," he reached up and scratched at the back of his helmet, "I'm not sure if and when the Galactic Federation is going to speak with Fizzwidget and the rest of Megacorp about this, but I felt that you needed to know. You guys all but run the show out here, and the sooner you know what we might be dealing with, the better. Can I trust you to forward this?"
Angela said nothing, but merely nodded her head, her expression serious.
"Thank you," he said softly, pulling out his PDA and punching a few keys on it. "It may take a while, holonet connection out here is pretty spotty too." There was a crackle of a radio and Angela heard a garbled communication. "Understood." He said, and looked back at her. "Look, the Arcadians need some help moving collapsed buildings, and Aphelion's up to bat. I gotta go. Sorry—"
"Don't apologize, Ratchet," Angela said, shaking her head. "Go do what you do best."
The other Lombax said nothing; he just brought his right hand up tapped two fingers to the "bill" of his helmet in a friendly salute before his image crackled into nothingness and faded. Angela collapsed back into her chair, running her hands through her hair. She felt a tiny stab of pain at the realization that yet another obstacle had come up that prevented her from seeing her old friend. She squashed it and shook her head. Her friend was needed now, and if the destruction she'd seen behind him was any indication, then that planet had gotten hit hard. She reached over to the table beside her and grabbed one of her own PDA over towards her. Through bleary eyes, she watched as Ratchet's message came in, her eyes widening as she saw the gigabytes of data in it. Angela started the download, letting out a frustrated sigh at how slow it was going. The minutes seemed to pass with agonizing slowness as she got up and paced around her pre-fab, trying to keep her fatigued mind from slipping too far. She contemplated taking another stimulant, but shook her head at the thought. She took too many of the blasted things as it was.
The Lombax let out another growl of frustration and turned towards another PDA, this one containing a copy of her report to the board on it. She reviewed her notes, trying to further contemplate the mystery that the dead soldier represented. Who had he been? What had he been doing when he'd died? Where had he really come from? So many questions that an autopsy, tissue scan, and blood report couldn't tell her. The woman found herself wishing that the nanites in his blood stream had been potent enough to restore him to the realm of the living, if only so she could ask him these questions.
Max Apogee had encouraged that sort of curiosity in her (though the xenoarcheologist had tried to temper it with caution when he himself could remember). Her mind flashed back to one of their earlier excursions, when she'd been a lost, isolated soul on the run from Emperor Percival Tachyon. She could see his smile behind his beard, his tail as it lashed back and forth in excitement at some new find, his almost insufferable optimism.
She shook her head abruptly before the memories could overwhelm her, and realized that her download had finished. Getting back up, Angela walked over to her PDA and opened the file. A series of images appeared before her and she recognized data readouts, flight recording data, and cockpit voice recordings.
"Aphelion's blackbox systems," she muttered aloud as she realized what Ratchet had sent to her. She pressed a part of the pad's touch screen and the whole thing started to play out. She winced as the sound assaulted her ears and hastily turned the volume down to a more manageable level. Then she sat back, eyes riveted to the screens, as the chaos was unleashed.
Angela rubbed her face and muzzle as she watched the last few moments of the recording. Ratchet had sent more than just Aphelion's flight data to her. He'd sent the complete radio transmissions of the fighter group he'd hooked up with, and his own personal helmet-cam feed from when he'd been inside the power plant. The creatures were unlike anything she'd ever seen before. The insect-like nature and multiple limbs, combined with the high levels of aggression, had almost suggested some form of Cragmite subspecies, but she'd discounted that quickly. They didn't seem to have the ability to naturally shift their atoms through space like Cragmites did among other things. The technology that they were using also didn't match up. They also seemed very different from the alien that they'd found in the ruins. Frowning, she leaned forward a bit, bringing her fists together as she tapped her index fingers against one another.
She picked the PDA back up and her fingers began to fly over it as she hastily typed up a message for Abercrombie Fizzwidget, before encrypting the email and marking it with a black cross, a priority one indicator. She attached Ratchet's data and then sent it off. The adrenaline started to fade as she placed the PDA back down, and her eyelids suddenly drooped. She groaned and struggled to rise up out of her chair, making her way over towards her bed and slowly collapsing into it. She breathed deeply once, twice, and by the time she'd exhaled again, she was fast asleep.
Angela might have slept a little less peacefully if she had known that she hadn't been alone as she'd thought she'd been. She'd been asleep for perhaps five minutes when it happened, a faint, moving distortion traveled along her pre-fab's ceiling. With the grav-plating on his boots holding him in place, Lear stared down at her. He could faintly feel her brainwaves altering and he picked up a few surface thoughts. Some fear, anxiety, general nervousness. He wouldn't be able to detect more unless he probed deeper, and that notion almost made him fidget as he stood on her ceiling. Protocol was… murky here. He was stranded, no idea where he was, and had no plausible way of communicating with the locals. Was this an acceptable line for him to cross? Surface thoughts and emotions were one thing, but an actual probe? This wasn't a wetwork op… or even an attempt to bring in a high profile hostis senti generis. This was an ordinary civilian individual. Did the ends justify the means here?
The Empire was quite clear on their stance when it came to the… abuses… that "headjobs" were capable of unleashing. Even their pet killing-machines weren't exempt from those rules. Abuses of that nature were subject to… discipline. Lear tapped the two thumbs of his right hand together, contemplating the course of action that he should take as he zoomed in slightly on the alien. Active bioscanners seemed to peel away the skin of the alien's body, confirming his suspicions of a female. Feline nature, large eyes, ears, and nasal cavities, five fingers on each hand, two toes on each foot. Brain of comparable size to a Mobian, and even asleep, there was a massive amount of neural activity going on.
Lear narrowed his eyes and nodded his head. He'd have to risk it. He let his mind slip a little deeper into her own. It was difficult to sort through the noise, so to speak. Her mind moved so quickly, jumping from one thought pattern to the next. He saw another alien, one that was similar to her, along with a small, silver colored drone of some kind. He saw flashes of planets that he'd never heard of, alien phrases and words that were difficult to make heads or tails or without some point of reference.
The minutes passed, and slowly he did start to get some sort of feel for some of the phrases and words. The words "Veldin" and "Grelbin" seemed to keep coming up again and again, along with flashes of two different planets, one arid and the other frozen. Were those the planets' names? There was another flash, and just as quickly, he saw a diminutive looking alien upon some sort of massive walking throne. Its yellow eyes burned with a fearsome intensity. He sensed a rise in her heartbeat, a spike of fear, as this entity came to life, ordering countless legions forward.
The image changed again, and this time the alien and robot from before stood before the… king… emperor? Whatever it was. The image was hazy, distorted almost, and it was gone in a moment.
Lear shook his head. This was getting him nowhere. He turned away from her and let his mind leave hers, for a moment envying his more potent Delta, Gamma, and Beta class brethren… to say nothing of the Alphas or the Omegas. He shook that thought from his head and instead refocused on the computer that she'd been looking over. He hadn't been able to get a good look at it due to the angle that he'd been crouched up at, and he wanted to confirm his suspicions. He made his way over to the counter and raised his hands, pressing them against the metal of it. He slowly powered down his grav-plating and winced a bit as he heard the metal groan. Best to be quick.
With the grace and precision of a machine, Lear slowly lowered his legs and allowed himself to 'curl' down until his feet were touching the floor. He glanced over his shoulder, back at the alien. Heart rate, brainwave and latent psychic monitoring indicated that she was still asleep. He was tempted to sigh in relief, but suppressed it and headed over to the PDA. He picked it up and frowned. The alien sigils and runes on it were as illegible as ever. He felt a vein in his forehead throb and he clenched his left hand into a fist. Damn that artifact. He let out a short breath, and shook his head.
It took some fumbling, but he finally managed to bring up the data feed from earlier. A chill formed at the back of his head as he watched the scenes before him unfold. Shartan ships. There could be no doubt about it, he thought to himself as he stared at the displays. Lear's breath caught in his throat as the ship recording highlighted the main ship in the attack force. A Judgment Class… what blood he did have ran cold at the realization that one of those monsters had survived the transition to this new neck of the universe. The minutes passed, and he heard frantic calls over the communication channels, cries in that unknown tongue, and countless silent explosions in the vacuum of space.
The feed eventually switched to that of an infantry perspective and he recognized the diminutive robot from the alien's dreams, or at least a robot of the same apparent make and model. He caught a glimpse of the individual recording the feed, reflected off the polished metal of one of the buildings. Silver, black, and red armor, face concealing helmet, and some sort of armored undersuit. It looked like the second alien that she'd been speaking with earlier. Was it the same one from her dream, he wondered? He looked over his shoulder towards her. She was still asleep. He let out a breath he didn't know that he'd been holding and turned back to the recording.
The recording was mostly combat feed from that point out. He recognized Shartan light and medium infantry, and a pair of heavy infantry soldiers that had garnered the nickname of "centurions" among MSE troops. His organic eyes widened a bit as he witnessed the power of the strange, silvery weapon as it nearly ripped a centurion in half, obliterated the two medium infantry soldiers behind it, and still ripped out a massive chunk of the wall. That suggested stopping power in the same area as his LRAM, but the alien's weapon was significantly smaller, barely half the size of the massive anti-material rifle. More baffling still was the strange, wrist-chronometer type device that the alien kept pulling these weapons out of. What manner of technology was that? Subroutines in his mind immediately began to try to contemplate how it might function. A low-level teleportation device? Summoning and banishing the weapons to some sort of pocket dimension? Was it like some of the Alkathar tech that the Empire had discovered? Bigger on the inside? Space folding technology?
Regardless, the implications of such a device were staggering. He'd watched the alien pull out a close combat weapon, an energy rifle, a pistol, a guided micromissile launcher, and that strange energy device, along with the better part of a dozen grenades. Armed with something like that, a soldier could wade into battle with dozens, scores of weapons potentially. He thought about his own combat harness, the magnetic holsters and the webbing that he had strapped over his power armor. They suddenly seemed so very… crude… by comparison. If the Empire was able to acquire technology like that, if that was some indication of the things that this galaxy had to offer, the possibilities made his head spin.
That train of thought was rather abruptly derailed as his motion scanner detected a burst of movement behind him and he heard a high-pitched whine fill the air.
Angela wasn't certain at first what had caused her to awaken from her slumber but she was aware that the fur on the back of her neck was standing up and her ears were twitching about. Her eyes quickly adjusted to the artificial darkness of her pre-fab as she looked about, keeping absolutely still. She couldn't see anything amiss, but the sixth sense that she'd honed when on the run from Tachyon's forces was virtually screaming that something was wrong. She slowly reached underneath her pillow, feeling the familiar grip of the mark-three lancer pistol that she kept underneath it. Then she heard it, Ratchet's voice, repeating one of the conversations she'd heard earlier. Someone or something had turned the file from her PDA back on.
Her eyes narrowed and Angela grit her teeth. The Lombax exploded into action, throwing her covers off her, leaping out of bed, and twisting around, the lancer whining as it powered up. Her eyes focused on the living area, lit up by the holograms of Ratchet's combat feed. There didn't appear to be anything, but she'd learned to trust her instincts over the past couple of years.
"I know you're there, drop the stealth act," she growled, her eyes darting around, her blaster pistol held out in front of her. She focused on the area in front of her and her eyes narrowed slightly, her ears twitching slightly. "I said drop the act!" she snarled.
There was a moment of silence, and then a subtle distortion appeared in front of the hologram. In moments, the distortion widened, darkened, and before her stood an armored figure. It was still somewhat difficult to see in the darkness, as its armor appeared to have the same color and texture as the walls of her pre-fab. She could still make out some details though. The entity was bipedal, perhaps a centimeter or two shorter than her, covered in old-fashioned weapon harnesses and combat webbing. The armor itself was of an unusual design, with the legs and forearm plating being rather angular in nature, while the torso and upper arms had more rounded, contoured coverings. The helmet was wider in the back, with a series of what looked like up-armored sensor gear set into the sides, before narrowing down to a slightly rounded front. The helmet lacked a visor of any type, but had three clustered pairs of what appeared to be sensor nodes set where a faceplate would have traditionally gone.
Angela almost let out a gasp. There were certainly differences. The plating appeared to be a little thicker, the helmet also appeared more heavily armored and had more of those sensors on it, but there was an eerie overall similarity to the armor that the dead alien in the ruins had been wearing. She logged that thought in the back of her mind and stayed focused on the fact that this thing had somehow broken into her home and had been here for gods knew how long. Her grip on the pistol didn't falter, and her face was twisted into an almost feral snarl.
"Hands up!" She said. "Who are you, and what the hell are you doing in my home?"
"Quell darados, neti paronas," the entity said, holding its hands up slightly, and Angela noticed that it had six singers on each one, four standard digits and two thumbs set on opposite sides of the appendage.
So much for her galactic translator, the female Lombax thought bitterly, thinking about the tiny electronic bead that was set into her right ear. There was a moment of awkward silence and then she felt a strange prickling in her mind. The fur on the back of her neck stood up again, and she realized that something felt wrong, off. Foreign words began to appear in her mind and it took her only a split second to realize that that thing was inside her head. It was psychic. She could feel it probing around as if searching for something and there was a certain frantic undertone to its efforts.
"Get out of my mind!" she screamed and she started to squeeze the trigger to her blaster pistol. The armored being leaped to the side as she finished pulling the trigger and the crimson colored bolt sailed into the wall. There was a splash of liquefied metal and a burst of steam that filled the room with an acrid stench.
The intruder shouted in whatever its native tongue was and Angela noted that there seemed to be a strange distortion to it, a mechanized undertone she'd missed when it first spoke. She didn't care at the moment, and fired again. This time there was a crack and the intruder disappeared. The bolt blasted a hole in the inner door of her pre-fab. Angela moved towards the airlocks, growling as some of her fur was burned by the proximity heat of the slagged metal. She was outside in moments, squinting around as the glare of the sun off the sand and dust nearly blinded her. She saw the entity once again, its armor now the color of Argus-IV's dust. She shouted as she fired again, and she heard more footfalls.
A security team rounded the corner of one of the streets. They gave surprised shouts and then shouldered their blaster rifles. The entity twisted about, but a couple of shots still struck it. Blue will-o-the-wisps crackled over it as a protective barrier intercepted their fire, and then the fireteam was blown off their feet by some mysterious force. The entity leaped up onto one of the smaller pre-fabs and started to rush along the rooftops. In seconds, it was out of sight.
She stood in the street, panting softly, her eyes darting about as though she expected it to suddenly return. She could hear cries of alarm and the unmistakable sounds of Class IV combat drones being mobilized to aid in the search. She slumped down into the sand and dust, hissing in pain at the heat and then making her way back over towards her prefab. Sweat was forming on her nose and her ears twitched instinctively, trying to cool her down even though she'd only been out in the heat of the wasteland for a few seconds. She punched in the code and walked back into the blessed cool of her prefab. Only after she slumped down into a chair did she realize that the doors had been locked when she'd gone out to pursue the intruder. It had gotten inside without even opening them. It could teleport, though…
She shivered for a moment, and then felt a spike of rage pulse through her. Whatever it was, whoever it was, it had come into her home like a thief in the night, skulked through what was supposed to be the one bit of privacy she had on this rock and… and… it had snooped around inside of her head. The feelings… the sensation of knowing that there was an alien presence inside of her mind, probing through her brain, searching for something. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. How long had it been in there? Had it searched through her mind while she'd been asleep? The Lombax shivered again, remembering some of the things that the more advanced psionics were capable of doing. They could do more than just read minds; they could control them, plant suggestions and ideas, overwrite personalities and make people into little more than soulless meat-puppets. Had it done something like that to her? Put some subtle command inside of her brain, one that would remain dormant until it willed otherwise?
She slumped in her chair, feeling drained and exhausted. There was a faint hissing noise from the door in front of her and she instinctively leveled her pistol as someone entered her pre-fab.
"Whoa, whoa, it's me!" Sartanus Arden said, frantically waiving his hands. "It's me, Angela, it's me."
The Lombax said nothing, but she slowly lowered the weapon and slumped back into her seat.
There was a crack of air being displaced, and Lear collapsed up on the Alkathar ruins that overlooked the camp. He took a deep breath and resisted the urge to strike himself upside the head. Idiot! That first contact could not possibly have gone any worse. Overcoming a language barrier was always difficult; to say nothing of the added awkwardness of waking up and finding that there was an invisible power armored alien skulking about in your home like some sort of assassin.
And what's the first thing that you decide to do? Why, you think it's a fantastic idea to try and probe her mind and make her understand things… never mind that she never gave you permission and had no idea that all you were trying to do was talk, he thought as he reached down and grabbed the SLAG ammo pack next to him. Naturally, she assumes you're trying to mess with her head, as any sane sapient being would.
The Revenant sat up, curling up and resting his head against his knees. Suddenly he envied diplomats. Always knowing what to do, what to say, how to properly interact with noncombatants. He looked back down. He could still see soldiers and combat robots scrambling about and looking for him and he was tempted to slam his fist into the top of the roof that he was lying on. He'd ruined his attempt to make a non-incidental first contact with these people, and that alien that he'd confronted was probably going to adopt a shoot on sight policy with regards to him. At least, that's what most of the thugs that he'd dealt with in the past had done if they'd realized that he'd been snooping around inside of their brains.
He looked back over at the camp and sighed. They were in the process of packing up and leaving by the looks of things, and he had no idea if there was any other way off this tidally locked hellhole. When they left, he needed to be leaving with them. It looked as though he was going to be doing that covertly, though.
In the absence of orders, one directive was paramount: survive. To do that, he would need allies and friends. The SLAG's ammo pack wouldn't last forever, and while he didn't really need to eat or drink, alone and cut off from any Imperial support, even an operative like himself would eventually be cut down. And today… what was the phrase, one step forward, three steps back?
Lear nodded his head. Nothing else to do but to try again in the coming days. Maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to win their trust, despite today's fiasco.
"You're certain that this is the planned route, and the correct ship?" the individual said quietly, its voice distorted by a myriad of synthesizer units.
"Positive. It's in keeping with the Old Man's standard procedures," came the response, the true voice also hidden behind a number of encryptors. "You just make sure your crew is there on time and that they do it nice and clean. Any witnesses, and things get complicated, fast. Am I clear?"
"I'd watch your tone. I think you're forgetting who runs things in this relationship." There was an icy chill that settled into the first speaker's "voice." "But don't worry. These individuals are very… thorough. We've used them before. There won't be any complications, and you will be compensated accordingly."
With that the line went dead, and the second individual leaned back in the chair that it was sitting in. No need to worry, it thought. Everything was going to be just fine. And when it was over and done with, some bank accounts were going to have several new zeros in it.
Well, there's the end of chapter seven, and I hope that I did a good job. I'm particularly nervous about this chapter, given the way that I'm handling interactions and first contacts and whatnot. As usual, I hope that you all enjoyed it, and feedback of any sort is more than welcome.
Thank you all so very much, and until next time, have a pleasant day, and be safe!