Wilson Port, Tewanta - 3306-04-06 09:51 GST
Sir Cedric Nolan lined up his Fer de Lance directly in front of the mailslot of Wilson Port and brought it to a full stop 7.49 km from the station. His cockpit was dimmed and he had his remlok deployed. Just under seven minutes of emergency oxygen remained. He had turned off all non-essential systems on his ship, which at this point included regular life support. He requested docking clearance which was granted promptly. He engaged forward thrusters to bring his speed up to 200m per second, launched a heat sink, and turned on silent running, as his ship drifted towards the station. An alarmed flight control officer broadcast that they had lost his signal and requested that he make contact. He ignored them, focusing on keeping his ship on a straight trajectory for the station dock entrance. He was flying without any automated flight assistance at all, as was appropriate for a knight of the LP 100-56 Dominion. His family took their martial training seriously and he and his three elder brothers were good pilots, swordsmen, and pistol marksmen. While he would rather be leading his Spec. Ops. wing in the war against The Buurian Protectorate in LP 100-56, his father, the Baronet, had a special mission for him. He was bringing the fight to the heart of the enemy's territory, which is why it was vital that his cargo wasn't scanned. AT 800m from the mail slot he matched his ships roll to the station rotation. This was so efficient without the flight assistance computers fighting the pilot's wishes. You just fired the thrusters just enough until the ship was rolling at the desired speed and then forgot about it. Only the tiniest amount of fuel was used. There was nothing coming out, so he held the line through the middle of the entrance and disabled silent running. He found his assigned landing pad and maneuvered his ship directly above it. He gently fired vertical thrusters to lower his ship toward the pad, adding lateral thrust and increasing the ships roll, to keep his ship directly over the center of the pad. A little upthrust just before landing made the touchdown into a gentle kiss. The docking clamps engaged.
He unloaded his four cargo containers and sent them into the automated cargo system. This was the riskiest part of the operation: if the containers were inspected thoroughly, the mission would fail. However, his father had paid four million credits for intelligence on the station's security. The data came from an anonymous source via a data broker, but was detailed, thorough, and, so far, very reliable. Based on this data, four containers were constructed to fool the automated scanning systems, and make the contents look like ordinary harmless goods. However, Sir Cedric was not taking chances. He pulled up the hood of the elaborately embroidered tunic that he was wearing over his flight suit, picked up a small bag and left his ship. The tunic was another piece of technology that came from the data dump on the system security. It had a garish pattern on it, and emitted other patterns on infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths. The combined pattern, he was told was very specific and triggered a subroutine in the station's security cameras that caused them to edit out the wearer from surveillance footage. Although the tunic was a little loud, it was stylish and fit the persona of a pilot who would fly a Fer de Lance, so wearing it wouldn't arouse any suspicions.
Once he cleared the flight deck, he followed a memorized set of directions to a small public toilet, where he swapped the dazzle tunic for a pair of overalls and a baseball cap. He then walked down to the cargo depot, rented a self propelled transport cart, and collected his four cargo containers. He moved them, one by one, to four separate storage rooms in the station. After that, he changed again in another quiet public toilet and found his hotel. He checked in to wait for his rendezvous with his League of Tewanta contacts, which was to take place at 13:00 GST. The whole process took him approximately two hours.
Wilson Port, Tewanta - 3306-04-06 10:25 GST
Hiroko Watanabe used her crutch to lever herself up onto a high stool at the bar of her favorite noodle bar in Wilson Port. Yang's Noodles was a tiny little food bar which opened onto a small square. It had eight seats, of which, at least half were occupied all day. Behind the counter was a small kitchen with two gas burners two large sinks some counter space with a chopping board and containers full of prepared ingredients. Mr. Yang was beavering away chopping mushrooms. When he noticed her, he poured her a cup of green tea and placed a small bowl of wasabi peanuts on the counter with a nod. She nodded back with a smile and studied the menu just to make sure she still knew it by heart. She'd been going to Yang's Noodles two or three times a week since it opened and the owner insisted she call him Lu Shan.
There was music from a station broadcast playing quietly in the background. This one was a charity song in aid of the Eranin famine relief efforts, a punk song, called "The Whiskey Must Flow", by a band called The Tartan Tarts. It was one of the better charity songs that were released in the past few days and Hiroko liked it. She liked the band too, though many thought their songs were a bit inflammatory, particularly, "To Hell With Your Monkeys" and "Cake Isn't Freedom". Hiroko felt that is was good that the punk rockers were around to provide criticism of the establishment. Disappearance of such criticism was an early warning of totalitarianism and even The Protectorate could fall into such habits if they weren't careful.
"Hi Kayleigh", Lu Shan said to someone over her shoulder.
"Heya Lu Shan! Heya Hiroko! How's the leg? Whatcha been up to?", Kayleigh replied, as she hopped up onto a stool beside Hiroko.
"Hi Kayleigh. I'm doing good. The leg is healing well. I am up and about on crutches and will be starting on physio soon. After that, I be down the well at Tall Base, for some physio in higher-g. Then I get back to work.", Hiroko answered, as more tea and wasabi peanuts magically appeared.
"Missing work?"
"Hell yeah! I am bored out of my mind. Finished up the novels I was reading, watched all the romcoms had had stored up. I have started reviewing briefing files while watching the Buurboons, to pass the time. How are things with you?"
"Floopin' busy. I thought we'd get a bit of a break after Operation Market Harvest finished, but nope! Lots of training to be done and we'll need to hire a replacement for Miguel."
"He's leaving?", asked Hiroko, incredulously.
"Sorta. You remember that we used to joke that The Buur Pit CMDRs were probably rich enough to buy an outpost or something? Well there's no need for that probably anymore. They are, and they are buying megaships. That's megaships, plural. They are going to have a fleet of these things. A new design, with lots of input from The Alliance. These things can carry eight Type 10s, along with other ships, cargo, and an outfitting deck. Miguel is going to be working on one of those. Interesting times. It is likely we will still see a lot of him though, as these ships are probably going to spend a good portion of their time in Tewanta."
"You said it! Interesting times indeed!"
They ordered food and chatted about the gossip on the outfitting deck. Mr. Yang placed a bowl of ramen noodles in front of each of them, with sides of kimchi and pickled vegetables.
"Will you look at that jackass, trying to weave that transport cart through the crowd.", remarked Kayleigh, "He'd be quicker if he just moved at a slow steady pace in a straight line, and a hell of a lot safer too."
Hiroko turned around to see a young man wearing blue overalls and a baseball cap deftly maneuver the cart around people, missing them by centimeters.
"Hang on! I recognize that guy! Give me a second."
Hiroko pulled out her hand terminal and took a blurry selfie, with the man controlling the cart in clear focus in the background. Then she placed a call.
"Security Ops? This is Hiroko. I think I have spotted a person of interest from LP 100-56 on the station: Sir Cedric Nolan. Sending my location and a photo."
"Acknowledged! The picture is coming back as a 97% probability match. That's enough to authorize tracking. We'll take it from here. SecOps out."
"Sorry about that! Where were we?", Hiroko said to Kayleigh
"Do you need to do anything about this?", asked Kayleigh, with a note of concern in her voice.
"Nah! SecOps have it covered. Besides, I am on medical leave and these noodles are too good to let go to waste"
"You're not wrong there!"
Wilson Port, Tewanta - 3306-04-06 13:17 GST
Sir Cedric Nolan stood in a storage room behind a tailors shop. There were three other men in the room with him: an officer from League of Tewanta, his body guard, and a technical officer who was examining the data chip he provided on a rugged briefcase sized compute terminal.
"It all looks good, sir.", the technical officer said, "The escrow account looks legitimate with 25 million credits in place. The data broker is authorized as the controlling party with clear release criteria in place. Their automated verification system looks good. I believe the funds will transfer if we meet the terms of the contract."
"Good!", replied the League of Tewanta representative. "What are those release criteria?"
"There are four!", replied Sir Cedric, "Five million now for accepting the contract. Ten million if the attack takes place within the next three days. A further five million will be if the attack causes more than one thousand casualties or the whole remaining ten million if the station is taken offline."
"And the equipment?"
"It is in four locations distributed around the station. One container of battlefield weapons, one of reactive armour, one of high explosives, and one of nerve agents. The locations are noted on the data chip. Do we have a deal?"
"Yes!"
"Excellent! It has been an honour doing business with you."
Sir Cedric exited the room, leaving the other three to back up their terminal and make their own separate exit. He took a passage way behind the tailors shop and after a few turns he was coming near the point where he would enter the more trafficked areas. He turned a corner and he now had a clear view of the square he was about to enter. It was unusually quiet, which he found odd, but continued on the end of the passageway. He was a pace from the end, when an arm whipped around the corner, a hand grabbed the front of his tunic, and he was pulled off his feet. When he passed the corner the hand switch from pulling to shoving and slammed him into the bulkhead hard enough to stun him. Another large hand clamped over his mouth. When his vision cleared he was nose to nose with a very large man in assault armour. He could see through the armour's mask that the man had a bionic eye. Motion to his left caught his attention, and he glanced over to see four marines in assault armour surge around the corner. A hypodermic needle was jabbed into his right arm.
"Sir Cedric! We are looking forward to having a chat with you!", said a woman's voice to his right as he lost consciousness.