Sealing the Deal
Essense region – Peccanouette constellation
Arnon System – Planet IX – Moon 3
Sisters of EVE Bureau station — Sister Alitura’s Office
7 October YC 127
Our Tahaki Karin was good. Within a few days of her transfer to the SoCT spaceliner, she started transmitting intelligence to the Sisters. According to Alitura, it was all useful staff, but there was nothing about Dagan. Apparently, the real Tahaki was pretty low in the Society’s hierarchy and it was hard for our field agent to get hold of anything really juicy. But Alitura assured me that Tahaki was rapidly building her social standing, and it was only a matter of time before she would be accepted in higher circles.
Based on that information, I did not expect any breakthrough in the next few weeks and was spending my life in dolce far niente. Imagine my surprise when I got a message from Sister Alitura requesting my immediate presence in her office. Naturally, I assumed that our Tahaki had discovered the whereabouts of elusive Dagan and I rushed to the security department.
“Has Tahaki found him?” was my first question when I entered Alitura’s office.
The security agent extinguished the flames of my hope, “Unfortunately, not. Moreover, she may be found out herself if we do not act quickly.”
As it turned out, a small fleet of SoCT ships was deployed in the vicinity of the spaceliner. The Sisters had confirmed that the fleet was guarding a spy ship which eavesdropped on local communications.
“You see, Captain, if we do not get rid of the spy, there is a good chance that they will be able to intercept and decipher Tahaki’s communications. She has not been able to bring sophisticated encryption equipment onboard, so, of necessity, she uses a consumer-grade cipher which is not too strong. I need your help in dealing with the spy ship.”
“Dealing?” I raised my eyebrow. “Meaning…”
Alitura winced, “Meaning destroying that ship. I don’t think that shooing it away will work — it will simply relocate to another place and will continue the surveillance.”
“What kind of ship is it?”
“It’s a refitted cruiser named Omnipresence.”
I chuckled, “As long as it’s not Omnipotence, I should be able to deal with it. What about the escorts?”
“All frigates — nothing to worry about,” said Alitura, “but, if possible, please avoid engaging them. We want to minimise the loss of human life.”
“No promises,” I said apologetically. “If we don’t find Dagan soon, there will be many more innocent lives on the line.”
I was about to leave when a thought occurred to me.
“Um… Sister, won’t it be suspicious that the same pilot who has transported Tahaki Karin to the SoCT liner also attacks the SoCT fleet?”
“Well, being a friend of Tahaki’s does not oblige you to be a friend of the Society… but,” she bit her lip, “you have a point — it does look fishy.”
“Can you send another contractor?”
“No, I can’t. Although our organisation would pursue Dagan simply for the reason of his being a terrorist, finding him is a long shot.” Alitura grimaced and continued sarcastically, “My superiors have found an ingenious way to avoid losing both face and money — they declared that the hunt for Dagan is part of The Damsel investigation, thus limiting the rewards to Level 1 and limiting the number of possible contractors to one — you.”
I shrugged, “Then we have to choose between two risks: the risk of comms interception or the risk of attracting unwanted attention to Tahaki. In fact, I shouldn’t say ‘we’ — you are the agent so the choice is yours.”
Alitura sighed and rubbed her eyes with the balls of her hands, “I know.”
She sat for a while staring into the distance. I patiently waited — it was a hard decision, and I was happy to give her as much time as she needed.
After a long silence, Alitura suddenly smiled and said, “I think we can do better than that. Give me a few minutes — I need to organise something.”
Having said that, she switched on a privacy dome over her desk and made a call on her commlink. After an animated conversation, Alitura removed the privacy screen, put the commlink on her desk and turned on the broadcast mode. A holo-projection of a young woman with a short haircut and smiling grey eyes appeared over the table.
“Captain Korff,” said Alitura, “please meet Mademoiselle Lysanne Veralier.”
An hour later, I was undocking in my ship.
“Where are we going, Cap?” asked Aura.
“To Modern Finances Depository in Laurvier,” I replied.
Aura snorted, “What for? Have the Sisters started paying you in gold bullion which you want to offload?”
“Nah, just a delivery.”
Aura scanned the cargo manifest and blinked in surprise, “Station air filters?”
“Yep.”
Aura narrowed her eyes, “Wait a moment. Is it once again a covert microchip delivery?”
“Nope. These filters are absolutely unadulterated.”
“Then why?” exclaimed Aura impatiently. “Don’t tell me that you started doing courier contracts out of boredom.”
I chuckled, “No, I just need an excuse to visit Laurvier system.”
“Why do you need an excuse?”
“You’ll know very soon,” I replied with a smile and warped to the star gate.
Essense region – Peccanouette constellation
Laurvier system — An unaligned safe spot
After dropping off the filters at the Depository station, I undocked and warped to the coordinates provided by Sister Alitura. There I found a small civilian yacht waiting for me.
I raised the yacht pilot on the comms, and Lysanne Veralier’s face appeared on the screen.
“Ready?” I asked.
“I am,” Lysanne nodded, “but be careful. I am not a capsuleer, you know,” she added and terminated the connection.
“Who was that?” Aura asked.
“A damsel in distress.”
“In distress? She doesn’t look distressed.”
I grinned, “Give me a minute and I’ll fix that.”
I ungrouped my railguns, disabled auto-repeat and started targeting the yacht.
“Um… what are you doing, Cap?” asked Aura in a tense voice.
“Don’t worry. It’s all under control,” I said confidently and willed the rail to fire.
The result exceeded all expectations — all the shields was gone, and half the yacht’s armour was destroyed!
“Vlad!” yelled Aura.
“Shit!” croaked I.
“Merde!” cursed Lysanne, popping up on the comms screen. “What the hell are you doing, Captain Korff? You were supposed to leave just a few scorch marks on the hull!”
“I am so sorry,” I blabbered. “I should have replaced Spike with iron charges. Look, I’ll pay you for the armour. Is everything else okay onboard? Are you injured?”
“I am fine,” Lysanne replied gruffly. “As to the ship, nothing is burning or leaking, to my knowledge, but I’ll send you a bill for repairs.” She sighed, “It may even be a blessing in disguise — If anything, my slander will look more authentic.”
“So, are you OK to proceed with the plan?”
“Yeah, no problem. Fly to Arnon and wait for my signal,” Lysanne said and warped away.
When I finished my conversation with Mademoiselle Veralier, Aura glared at me and said, “Care to explain what it was all about, Captain Korff?”
I thought it was time to let Aura in on Alitura’s plan, lest my navigational AI decide I’d gone off my rocker. I told her about the mission and the risk of my attacking the SoCT spy after having delivered Tahaki Karin to SoCT spaceliner.
“So how does roughing a civilian yacht up help you with your mission?” asked Aura sceptically.
“She will play a role of agent provocateur. I gave Lysanne the location of the SoCT fleet. She will warp there and pretend that she was attacked by SoCT. Then a knight errant on a white horse… I mean, on a yellow destroyer will turn up and save her from the brutes.”
Aura shook her head, “That will be an obvious fabrication. They know they didn’t shoot the yacht, you know they didn’t shoot the yacht. What’s the point?”
“Ah,” I said smugly, “but they don’t know that I know — that was the whole point of meeting Mademouseille Veralier in Laurvier, away from SoCT surveillance. Of course, they’ll guess that someone is trying to frame them. But me, I am just a law-abiding pilot who is responding to a distress signal.”
“Hmm… This may work,” Aura said thoughtfully. “Okay, let’s go and save our damsel in distress. Just keep your target lock off her.”
“That sounds like a double entendre!” I chuckled.
“Feel free to find whatever hidden meaning your dirty mind wants to imagine but don’t attribute it to me,” replied Aura and stuck her tongue out at me.
I laughed and jumped back to Arnon. There I found a local pirate base, warped to it and spent about 10 minutes harassing Serpentis frigates with single shots from a safe distance. I could easily have destroyed the pirate ships but I needed to kill time more than I needed to kill them. Finally, a system-wide mayday signal was broadcast by one Lysanne Veralier. I waved the pirates good-bye and warped to the coordinates specified in the distress message.
Essense region – Peccanouette constellation
Arnon System — Mission location
When I arrived at the destination, my first priority was to assess the strength of the enemy fleet. The spy ship, Omnipresence, was a Vexor-class cruiser; it was surrounded by seven frigates of various makes. The fleet was 80 kilometres away from me — a perfect firing distance for my railguns.
My observations were interrupted by a panicked yell coming out of the local comms channel.
“Help, help!” screamed Lysanne, looking frightened. “Captain, please, help. The pirates are shooting at me.”
I put a heroic expression on my face and said, “Don’t worry, madam, you are perfectly safe with me. Who is shooting at you?”
“It’s actually ‘Mademoiselle’,” said Lysanne, sniffing. “That big battleship fired at me.”
“Oh, it’s not a battleship, it’s only a cruiser, Mademoiselle,” I said, adding a devil-may-care note to my voice, which, I hoped, sounded arrogant enough given I was flying a destroyer. “Captain of Omnipresence, what do you want from the lady? Why are you shooting at her?”
A clean-shaven, impassive face of the cruiser captain appeared in another window.
“You are mistaken, Captain… um,” he checked another screen, “Korff. We did not shoot at her.”
I sniggered, “Really? Are you saying that all those destroyed armour plates just peeled off by themselves?”
“In fact, that was the state in which the vessel had arrived to the grid,” the cruiser captain replied primly.
I rolled my eyes, “You want me to believe that this yacht accidentally warped to the exact location of your fleet? Do you know how unlikely such an event is?”
“I do. And because of that I do not believe that it was accidental. It is obvious to me that the pilot of the yacht knew our exact location.”
“And how would she know that? I don’t see any reconnaissance equipment on that yacht, but you,” I shared the video stream from my camera drone and focused it on the cruiser, “you have an Expanded Probe Launcher whose primary purpose is to detect ships using combat scanner probes. Enough of your lies! You can soon tell them to whatever god you worship. I’ll make sure of that.”
The cruiser captain’s face reddened and his emotions finally overwhelmed his cool demeanour.
“We, the members of the Society of Conscious Thought, do not believe in any gods! Such beliefs are irrational!” he spat the words at me.
I snorted disdainfully, “You pretend to be a member of the Society? I know and respect the Society of Conscious Thought. Some of its members are my good friends. They would never sink so low as to attack a civilian ship!”
“Good line, Cap!” whispered Aura and showed me thumbs up.
“And if you really are a rogue member of the Society,” I continued pompously, “I will do it a favour by blotting out your disgraceful presence from its ranks!”
At this point, I started targeting the cruiser.
Cruiser captain’s eyes went wide, “Captain Korff, you are making a serious mistake! I…”
I opened fire. As the cruiser was stationary, all seven Spike charges slammed hard into its hull. Then a few things started happening at once. At the first sign of the firefight, Lysanne Veralier warped the hell out in her yacht — her role was completed. The frigates accelerated towards me. The cruiser, slower than the escorts, started targeting me and aligning in my direction. On my part, I fired up the microwarpdrive and started orbiting the cruiser at 80 klicks.
In the right hands and with the right modules, Vexor is a formidable combat vessel. That was, obviously, not the case with the spy ship. I don’t think it was ever intended to be in a fight. When I said that my first volley slammed into the hull, I meant it literally — the stupid tin can had neither shields nor armour! I guess they stripped it of all combat gear and stuffed it full of spying equipment. As a result, what should have been a prolonged battle of attrition, with Vexor continuously repairing its armour while harassing me with the drones, was finished in 22 seconds. Just like that, my job was done!
I intended to honour Sister Alitura’s request not to attack the escorts, but I found that I didn’t have to make an effort. As soon as the cruiser exploded, all frigates stopped pursuing me and warped away. If I had any doubts that the ships belonged to SoCT, that act was all the proof I needed. It was utterly rational — once the object of protection was destroyed, there was no point in engaging me. If they were pirates, they would continue fighting to avenge the death of their fallen comrades, and would die in the process themselves.
As I was about to warp away, my inbox chimed, notifying me of a new message. I opened it and chuckled — it was a repair bill from Lysanne.