We exited the warp right in the guts of a voidcruiser crawling away from the Paradizio system, which I felt was the best place to be. The farcaster linked its terminus point right into the space warping engines of the voidcruiser Fargone Days. Lucky for us, Noor still has relevant qualifications for breaching ops in her CV, which I always felt was a bit overkill for searcher ops but always comes in clutch in situations like these.
Even before the sensor fuzz cleared up, Noor activated her shell's hazardous enviro routines and blindfired eight variable-pen ironcaster munitions at the most anomalous patch of fuzz. When it did, we came to an engineer lying in pieces with the remnants of their IDE lying in representational pieces orbiting him, and klaxons blaring on all spectrums.
We were still pros. Kanly stopped to scrape up the last bits of sec-data on the engi while Noor and I stacked up on the door. She breached it with a wide-beamer burst and we were coming up the ventral access shaft running from the HQ to engineering, protected by eight dissipator shields, in case of critical overload. Standard procedure, my beta-fork noted, was that in case of boarding, severing charges should be detonated and the crew quarters separated from overrun sectors. Except, voidcruisers are dear to any corporation that operates them, so Solarium LLC is chancing a countercharge.
A three-team of commando shells comes down the access shaft. They're bringing out all the stops against us, but they obviously let standards drop. The firewalls are easy for Kanly to punch through, their formations easy to punch through. Noor dumps kiloerg after kiloerg of high energy waves down the shaft, while I take potshots at the marines with my ironcaster. They cut all their combat sim budget on crap, and now they're paying the price.
We're halfway up the shaft, air hot and overstuffed with Kanly's RAM-eaters, depriving the defensive systems of computational resources. The pop-up daemonforms deployed flash-fab beamers that lasted for all of one millisecond before they experienced critical system failure, spilling their information out into realspace in crazy auroras of light. Noor advances, her FORCE-spec shell hardened for real deployments, where new suns are kindled constantly. A little bit of fuzz isn't anything to her. The six remaining try to flank, but Noor's Kalashnikov can chew through this voidcruiser's outer hull. The internals are nothing. Four of them go down in the first volley, sigs going from active to surrender. The last two ninja out of this sector, mostly intact.
Me? I took it easy.
We killed our way up the shaft, into the HQ. Foam specs, degenerated matter, and stranger stuff coiled around us. I made a note to get Noor a bonus- she's been meaning to go to Jungle one of these days, and this op justifies the vacation cycles.
They gave. +surrender! Surrender! the ship's LT pings us. +who's boarding?
+Lambent Beat LLC. I sent a cease fire command at Noor, who's already cooling off her Kalashnikov. +Sorry, fellas. Hope insurance covers that.
The voidcruiser's defenses spool down. "You guys?" the LT opens the blast doors, where I can see what's probably the XO fixing a hole in their skull. Not at all related, the LT has an ironcaster in their hand. "You hit Paradizio, ya? Good heist, though you fumbled it." The LT has a conversational tone, like they're discussing a piy game. I like them. Their shell is a pinnance, a bulbous, weak thing built to interface with the 'cruiser. And they still took a gun to their XO's expensive toy. "I'll send an invoice to your office, if it's still there."
Huh? "What do you mean by that?" The LT gestured to the nethook on the 'cruiser's console. It was showing a newsfeed, Paradizio Local. Noor and Kanly peered over my shoulder. Singular, heh.
START LAMBENT BEAT LLC IN VIOLATION OF PARADIZIO SECURITY POLICY
"Expected that," Kanly nodded.
BEGIN PROSECUTION OF LAMBENT BEAT LLC FOR VIOLATION OF EMPIRE SUB-STATE CONFLICT REGULATIONS 1.c.I- 1.cIII
1.c.I relevant entities will agree to the time, place, and nature of the conflict.
1.c.II any violation would allow for either an escalation of conflict or a case brought before EMPIRE/MAGISTRACY.
1.c.III finally the offended party may escalate two steps and no further.
"We can fight that in court, I think. Charity can handle costs." Noor. "Bet their lawyers can make Light-Bending Guy look like a sore loser." And no one likes a sore loser in the Empire. Especially because we operated under a completely different set of regs- the corporate conflict suite. Yeah, we bent those a little, but that's just normal. Advantage pushing. No magistrate would agree with Light-Bending Guy, I hope.
PUNITIVE RAID LAUNCHED AGAINST LAMBENT BEAT LLC.
"Aaand there it is," I muttered. There was a timeslice hyperlinked to the last announcement, I opened it and it was about as bad as I expected. Office in ruins, there goes our stock. At least our data's in the cloud under a premium account with a reputable company. "Noor, round up the crew and keep them under lock. Kanly, you get to what needs fixing and get us the fuck out of Paradizio."
They nodded and began their tasks. I opened a channel to the Charity- Empire Concern for Invariant Persons- and waited for them to respond.
>//. SITU FUBAR HAVE CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE?
Three milliseconds. Decent response.
>//. SEMI-CONCLUSIVE. PHYSICAL REPRESENTATION OF POSSIBLE NON REGISTERED INVARIANT OWNERSHIP.
I waited for their response. All I could think was that maybe this could be the end of the op.
>//. GOOD TO DECENT. WILL CUT ALL CONTACT & DISAVOW KNOWLEDGE OF YOU.
Motherfucker on motherfucker.
>//. WILL STILL PAY IF YOU BRING CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE. DOUBLE-TREBLE. SORRY WE CAN'T HELP. GLHF.
"So since we're not invariants, we can go space ourselves, huh?" I shake my head. Double or treble won't cut it. When we're free of this, I thought, we're going to shake them down for an OOM more. Plus operating costs. +Noor. Kanly.
+Here.
+Here.
I sent over the log and waited for the cursing to stop. +Alright. Let's discuss our next move. We're not illegalized, but we're the second best thing- trapped in legal limbo until a fact finder figures out what the hell is going on with our situation.
+How much credit do we have? Kanly. +You know it's not enough.
+Our first move anyway should be immediate security. Debate everything else later, when we're in deep space. Good work getting us on a DSV.
+You burned half of it.
+And you'll fix the rest. Noor shrugged over IP. I was operating the voidcruiser console from a tactile interface, opening up the navi-gears. We're a bit out of the heliopause, limping away in our drive bubble. Burned up ansibles, overloaded the sensor systems. We're running blind, and Light-Bending Guy had enough net worth to outfit the system with a couple of heavy duty interceptor-voidcruisers. And, of course, we have nine marines, two of which are in full capability and the rest fixing themselves up from redundancy. In other words, possible hostiles.
OFFICE RENOVATION
Select two.
[]- Restore Engines: You're gone. You might leak so much EM people halfway across the sector can see, but that's their problem.
[]- Restore ELINT: The drive bubble's crap, but that doesn't matter if you're just background radiation.
[]- Secure the Crew: As long as they're clear for infil-ware, you can use them to crew the ship. And nine commandos never hurt anybody.
[]- Eject the Crew: You don't need them. They can hail for help, and you can't risk the security breach.
NEXT MOVE
Select one.
[]- Homeward Bound: Return to your home system and salvage what you can.
[]- Into the Black: Disappear into deep space and begin investigating available evidence.
[]- The Chop Shop: Contact criminal elements and get a price for Fargone Days and your disappearance.
