Crossing Enemy Lines
Everyshore region – Chasnaye constellation
Harerget system – Planet V – Moon 1
CreoDron Factory station
27 April YC 127
“I’ve found it,” I said, handing the scorched datacore to Delphine.
She accepted it as if it was a treasure, and said hesitantly, “And… was there anything else?”
I guessed she was asking about Dr Castille’s remains, and shook my head, “The explosion was really violent. There were hardly any debris larger than this datacore.”
Delphine nodded and asked, “And the pirates?”
“Terminated.”
Tears glistened in Delphine’s eyes, as she came to me a kissed me on a cheek.
“Thank you, Vlad. Thank you for everything.”
I was embarrassed and mumbled something like “I was just doing my job.”
The agent returned to her table and said, “Now we have all the information we need to work on both our problems. I’ll put my whole team on resolving them. Without Aspasia, ” she paused and swallowed hard, “it will probably take more time but we’ll get there. I have a good team.”
“Is there anything I can do to help you?” I asked.
“No. You’ve done your job in space, now it’s time to do ours in the lab.”
She promised to keep me updated. There was nothing else to do, so I left her to her work and went out to find a place to stay.
The days went by and Delphine sent me daily messages informing me on the progress. Eventually, her reports became less and less frequent. When I hadn’t received anything from her for five days, I gave her a call. She explained that they hit a blocker in their investigation and said they would need a week to resolve it. Seven days later she asked me to wait for another week. Finally, I got an invitation to visit Delphine in her office.
5 June YC 127
When I entered the agent’s room, I was taken aback by her appearance. She looked like she aged ten years in the last five weeks. Delphine greeted me with a weary smile and invited to sit down.
She rubbed her tired eyes and said, “I wish we had Aspasia with us.”
“I am sorry,” I said. “You must be missing her terribly.”
“I am but that’s not what I meant. Without her we had hard time analysing the abnormal drone behaviour.”
“So, you made no progress?”
“We did, but not enough to find all the answers, and now we are stuck,” she sighed.
I felt a heavy weight on my chest which suffocated me. I had high hopes that the celebrated CreoDron team would crack the mystery of the destroyed Damsel, but now they were cruelly dashed. Losing Dr Castille at the critical time was a blow from which CreoDron’s R&D team did not recover.
I stood up and took a deep breath, “That’s it, then?”
“I am afraid, it is” the agent said.
I nodded sadly and extended my hand for a final handshake. Instead of taking it, Delphine suddenly locked her arm with mine and said with a smile, “Let me accompany you to the docks, Captain, before I bid you my farewell.”
Bemused by an unexpected gesture, I said, “Why not?” and we walked together to the dock where Kaukokärki was berthed. During our perambulation Delphine expressed a great interest in my Cormorant and asked a few pretty technical questions about its electrical grid. The only reason I knew the answers was my study of Caldari Destroyers in which I achieved the highest level. I was surprised at the agent’s interest which lay outside of her professional sphere – Cormorants were not drone boats – but didn’t mind replying. After all, it was public knowledge which anyone with enough money and time could acquire.
When we arrived to the dock, Delphine asked me to show her the ship from the inside. I led her in and, as soon as we entered the lounge, she turned to me and said earnestly, “Vlad, I have one final mission for you.”
I can’t say it was totally unexpected. In my experience, if an agent takes interest in one’s ship and asks for a guided tour, it means they want to talk in private, away from the company surveillance, which is ubiquitous in company-owned stations.
“But before I give you the details, I suggest you collect your belongings from the hotel and settle your account there,” she continued and, answering to my enquiring look, added, “I don’t expect you to return to CreoDron after this mission.”
I chuckled, “This sounds menacing.”
“Don’t worry, the mission is not dangerous. Not for you, at least. But I expect that you will have to relocate to complete it. Anyway, off you go, I’ll wait for you here.”
Delphine’s strangely enthusiastic tone gave me hope that not all was lost. I hurried to the hotel, packed my things and returned to the ship.
“All right, Mademoiselle Xarasier, I am all ears,” I said, dropping myself into an armchair.
The agent produced a small datacore from her pocket and handed it to me.
“You will fly to CreoDron Factory orbiting Planet VIII Moon 1 and give this datacore to my colleague, Dr. Eliane Viremont.”
“What’s on the core?” I asked suspiciously.
Delphine gave a nonchalant one-shoulder shrug and said, “My favourite playlist of synth-pop songs. Eliane has been asking for it for ages, but with all those drone problems I could never find time to send it to her. CreoDron will pay you 246,000 ISK for your trouble.”
I looked at her incredulously, “You are saying that a leading Gallente drone manufacturer is ready to pay a quarter million ISK for an intra-system transfer of a datacore with music on it?”
The agent looked me in the eye and said earnestly, “No, CreoDron will think that I am sending a top-secret research report to another lab, which justifies the cost.”
“Delphine, what’s going on?” I asked, bewildered. “It sounds like you are embezzling the company funds using your trusted position of an agent. I mean, why? Do you expect a kickback? Is it why you didn’t want to talk about it in the office?”
After a long pause, Delphine’s lips started quivering. She pressed them together and I thought she was about to cry but instead she burst out laughing.
“Oh, Vlad,” she gasped, wiping out tears from her eyes, “you should have seen your face.”
I didn’t see anything funny, so I just patiently waited for explanations.
“You see,” Delphine said, smiling, “I don’t need to send Eliane music on a datacore – it can easily be transferred by GalNet. I was just joking. But neither I have a report to send to another lab. Still, I have a mission which I can’t openly give you and, yes, I am embezzling company funds to pay for it. If the mission is successful, then it will be the money well spent.”
“So, what’s the mission?” I asked curiously.
“First of all, you’ll need to go to planet VIII and deliver the datacore.”
I looked at the agent reproachfully – that joke was getting old.
The agent shrugged, “If you want the money, you’ll have to turn up at that station for the record. You real mission will be…” she checked herself. “Just to be clear, what I tell you now is between you and me. Understand?”
“Sure,” I agreed, “as long as it doesn’t hurt Caldari interests.”
“Funny you should say that. The mission will, in fact, benefit the State. You see, I have a friend in Caldari space. I met him when he was a post-graduate student supervised by my father. Unfortunately, it was at the time when hostilities between the State and the Federation flared up. As he was a Caldari citizen, his clearance was revoked, and he returned to the State. We’ve kept in touch and I know that his research team at Hyasyoda is at least as strong as mine. Probably stronger now,” she added sadly.
“Hyasyoda,” I mused. “Who would have thought? They are not exactly known for their drone development. They are a resource corporation.”
“They are indeed. And that is why they are very interested in having efficient mining drones. Immuri – that’s my friend’s name – says that Hyasyoda wants to develop their own drone manufacturing capability to get an edge over the competitors. And this is where our interests, or rather troubles, overlap. Immuri said that their experimental drones also started experiencing strange problems akin to ours.”
“Wait a moment!” I interrupted the agent. “You keep talking about your drone problems, but what about my datacore problem? The datacore which I brought to you from Alitura?”
“Ah,” Delphine smiled, “that’s where things get interesting. In my opinion, they are the same problem. If we solve one, we solve the other.”
That sounded suspicious. I developed a certain level of trust in Delphine, but I couldn’t discount the probability that she was using me to achieve her own goals.
“Care to explain?” I asked in a neutral tone.
“Remember the corrupted drone parts that you brought to me from the first mission? They contained microcontrollers which were not there when the drones left our lab. To my knowledge, they are not produced by any corporation in New Eden and their design is… how to describe it?.. inhuman.”
“Inhuman?”
“Yes, it does not look manufactured. You are familiar, I assume, with how we grow crystals in labs?”
I nodded.
“Now, imagine that the whole microcontroller was grown like that. I just can’t see how else it could have been produced. In manufacturing, you have a modular design where each part has its own function. The MCs that we analysed had those functions all over the place, like muscles or nerves. The controlling code, for example, was spread through the whole body of the device. That is why it took us so long to extract it in a coherent form.”
“Have you analysed it? Do you know what it does?”
Delphine shook her head, “No, that’s where we got stuck. I hope Immuri can help us decode it.”
“But how is it connected to my datacore?”
“Well,” the agent said with a strange look in her eyes, “your datacore contained exactly the same code that we found in the microcontrollers.”