New Growth, Pencil Sector EL-Y d5 - 3307-07-22 22:07 GST
Park Yoon Guo stood in a storage closet watching the screen of his hand terminal waiting for the opportunity to commit murder. The closet was tiny, barely bigger than an escape pod, and the only light was the pale green glow from his hand terminal. It showed a low resolution video feed from a micro camera stuck to the wall of the corridor outside. The screen also had scrolling text feeds of station alerts, environmental logs, and door access logs, filtered for the area of the station nearby. The patterns in the logs indicated that someone was approaching. Soon he would spring his trap. His target was Dr. Mike Guerin, a middle aged biochemistry researcher who worked for Seven Stages Movement and a monster. The researcher had been developing a bioweapon at Savchenko Nutrition Nursery, and was known to have fascist leaning politics. It was rumoured that he had used some of poor people from the station, who supported The Shunned faction, as test subjects for his work. This could just be propaganda, but it was plausible enough for Yoon Guo: the Seven Stages Movement treated supporters of The Shunned very badly and resented the other faction's presence in the system.
A lot had happened in the past year, since Yoon Guo's accident.. He had recovered from his injuries, and had returned to his terraforming job for a while, but geological instability had slowed the work down and rumours had it that scientific teams were excavating alien ruins and didn't want grunts driving around upsetting things. So, he had been transferred to a maintenance role on New Growth. It was less lucrative, but still a decent job. While drinking in the cheaper bars on the station he came into contact with members of The Shunned and heard their stories. Like too many of his comrades he had no idea how badly they were treated: they worked the dirtiest most dangerous jobs. When they tried to organize, thugs were sent in to beat up and intimidate their leaders, and in the cases where they did manage to organize a strike, Seven Stages Movement management flew in Imperial slaves to take up the slack, and the strikers were starved back to work. His own maintenance work solidified his view that this was deliberate oppression. The parts of he station where Seven Stages Movement personnel lived were well maintained, with high quality equipment, good power and water supplies, and effective environmental controls. The slightest hint of a problem was met with immediate repairs. In contrast he was only sent to repair environmental systems in places where The Shunned lived when there was a serious failure. By that time people had already gotten sick or had died. This was intended to beat down The Shunned. Inevitably, in such circumstances, with no way up, some went underground, and a resistance started. Yoon Guo couldn't stomach the inequality. During his time working with Old George he had learned that money wasn't a measure of personal worth. The old man held many ideas like that and they had friendly debates over a beer about it on many evenings. He had considered leaving the system and heading back to The Bubble, but his bonus had been held up pending investigations of his accident and the leaks of the inquiry findings afterwards. By the time his bonus had been paid out he had joined the resistance and did stealth repairs to systems his management would prefer he didn't.
Recently, though, The Shunned started to gain the upper hand. Some independent CMDRs, led by CMDR Westhorpe, had helped tip the scale in their favour and their influence surged. The Shunned managed to equip a fighting force and a civil war had started three days previously. Things were going badly for Seven Stages Movement. Relentless attacks on Savchenko Nutrition Nursery had driven his target, Dr. Mike Guerin, out of that settlement. It was during a lull in the fighting that the bioweapon project was discovered, though there had been rumours before. Dr. Guerin was scouting out locations in the station to continue his work and, as it was dangerous, he was looking at sites near habitats of The Shunned. The fear was that the Doctor would unleash his weapon on New Growth if The Shunned managed to gain control.
Movement on his screen brought Yoon Guo back from his reverie. His target, along with a hulking bodyguard, had come into view. Yoon Guo's thumb hovered over a button on his hand terminal. As well as collectivist philosophy, Yoon Guo had learned a few other things from Old George. George was a stickler for safety and doing things right. He had gently pointed out times when Yoon Guo had cut corners or left things unsafe. He pointed out places where preventative maintenance would head off safety problems later. As a result Yoon Guo had an eye for where environmental systems could become dangerous. For example, the thermal regulation system in this part of the station was under maintained and had leaked a lot of coolant fluid. The remaining coolant was way above safe operating temperature and pressure. The ducting carrying this coolant in corridor outside his hiding place was damaged and would fail in time, flooding parts of the corridor with superheated fluid, killing anyone in the corridor at the time. He had planted a small bomb on the ducting equipped with a small short range radio receiver. New Growth was carved out of an asteroid and the rock meant that he had to be close to detonate his bomb, which is why he was where he was. There was risk of injury, but it was a risk that he was willing to take to kill the monster. The two men reached the weak point in the ducting and Yoon Guo tapped the button on his screen. The bomb detonated and the corridor filled with superheated vapour. The two men didn't even have time to scream. The breathing apparatus on Yoon Guo's Hazardous Environment suit kicked in as the temperature rose in the storage closet. Yoo Guo heard air scrubber fans go into overdrive. He waited for five minutes for the heat to subside a little, then he stepped out of his hiding place and reported that there had been a tragic accident.