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[Nordeck]

 

 

Chapter Two

Hidden Mementos

 

 

10 years later

Mara System

Lonetrek Region

Ishukone Watch Vessel IWV-35G15 “Trevani”

 

 

Ever so gently, she pushed aside the silk sheets and lifted her toned legs over the side of the bed. Her client was snoring loudly, and did not stir as she quietly slipped a loose-fitting robe over her shoulders and tied it just below the navel. Careful not to knock over the empty spirits bottle on the desk, she sat down at the console and placed her thumb on the ID pad. She smiled as the screen displayed the balance information for both her own personal and corporate account. Recent deposits from the other madams under her employ were apparent, and the man still snoring on the bed had dutifully transferred the correct fee for the services rendered last evening.

 

She had wondered for her entire life what it would be like to possess such wealth and financial independence. Ironic—but hardly surprising, she thought to herself, that it was gained by practicing the oldest profession known to mankind. “Mankind” indeed. It was such a ridiculous word, and doubly insulting that it was used to describe humankind inclusively. Men were so predictable, so needy, and so pathetically vulnerable to exploitation. She looked down at her breasts, still firm and irresistible after all these years. So many secrets were betrayed to her as men rested upon them. The stuff of treason, greed, ambition and guilt, all told to her either directly or otherwise as they used her to fulfill a need that all their power failed to satisfy.

 

The man on the bed mumbled something in his sleep that she had heard elsewhere before. “Raven”, he said, turning onto his side and resuming snoring. This one was an Ishukone VIP, part of their secretive Research and Development Division. Scientists are so easy, she thought, browsing through the directory that he had carelessly left open from the night before, when he was seduced as he worked. Ah, a project named “Raven”. It was a presentation of some sort, and her photographic memory began absorbing the data scrolling past her blue eyes. Phrases she did not understand, such as “long range standoff and suppression platform” and “hyper advanced gravimetric tracking and guidance systems”, she would commit to memory for research later on. Another abrupt snort from the scientist distracted her concentration, prompting her to carefully shut down the console. She was at the capacity of what she could accurately remember, and there was no reason to push her luck.

 

Adjusting the robe so that a healthy portion of her breasts were exposed, she exited the scientist’s cabin and walked into the hallway. The galley would be an ideal place to record her thoughts to datapad over a drink, and perhaps a long-limbed roe. Even bad sex made her hungry, and besides, the bill was on the scientist’s expense account. As she walked barefoot down the hall, she paused along a stretch of large windows to admire the view of space, ignoring a pair of jaw-dropped crewmembers gawking at her. Setting her gaze on a star-studded nebula outside, she suddenly felt very proud of what she had accomplished with her life. The madams who reported to her all had three things in common: Stunning natural beauty, undeniable sensuality, a sharp memory, and origins in repressive poverty. Today, each of them was wealthier than they ever thought possible, and had accomplished this solely by targeting men’s egos and infiltrating their minds. They understood that since the beginning of time, men too easily mistook offers of flesh for admiration, and intimacy for trust. She smiled broadly again, running her finger along the bright edges of the nebula. Appease a man’s ego, she thought, and his soul belongs to you.

 

Flashing a dismissive “caught you looking” glance at the crewmembers, she resumed her stroll towards the galley. Suddenly, the hallway was illuminated with a bright, bluish light, and she was violently knocked off her feet. Landing hard on the arm that she extended to break her backward fall, she could feel the bones in her wrist snap from the impact. Just as she opened her mouth to scream in pain, a simultaneous blinding flash and deafening noise sent her cowering to the floor in agony. She was stunned, and temporarily unable to see clearly or hear. Eyes wide with fear and confusion, and for the time being not feeling the scorching pain in her forearm, she felt her way along the floor towards a bulkhead wall and tried to get back to her feet. She could feel a pair of hands assist her, and then spin her around. Her vision was slowly coming back, albeit with floating green spots partially obscuring her sight, and she could barely make out the panicked face of one of the crewmembers she noticed before. He was shouting something, and gradually his voice became audible enough to hear what he was trying to tell her.

 

“…is under attack! Do you understand? You have to get to the cargo area as fast as you can! Move!” She became vaguely aware of other people rushing past her down the hallway, which was now tinted a hazy red from the emergency lighting and smoke. The crewman noticed the bewildered look on her face and shouted at her to follow the rest of the crowd down the hall. The ringing in her ears was disorienting, but she suddenly understood the extreme danger that she was in and staggered past him.

 

 

~

 

 

Otro willed the comm channel with the crippled ship open again just as the shockwave from the last explosion dissipated.

 

“Ishukone Watch vessel, this is your final warning. You have exactly 10 seconds to jettison your cargo. If you fail to comply, I’m going to kill you and every other living thing on that ship.”

 

“If it’s money that you want, we can negotiate this,” replied the Ishukone captain. Otro could hear the trembling in his voice. “I can offer—“

 

“The only thing that you can offer me that I don’t already have is your cargo,” Otro answered, taking the time to have his ship’s missile launchers reloaded. “And the only chance that you have to survive is by jettisoning it.”

 

“H-H-How do I know that you’ll keep your—“

 

“You don’t. Ten seconds.” Otro saw Gavriel’s Scorpion-class battleship move closer to the crippled Ishukone ship, still maintaining its onslaught of electronic and propulsion jamming systems.

 

“50 million,” cried the desperate Ishukone captain. “Or even 100 million! Please!”

 

“Five seconds,” said Otro.

 

“Wait! Wait! Alright, here, standby for jettison…”

 

 

~

 

 

The ringing in her ears had subsided just enough so that she could hear intermittent whimpering and sobs from the other terrified passengers. They had been standing within the pressurized confines of a cargo container for a few moments now, and there was just enough lightning inside to make out the contour of its sloped walls. With her left arm shattered and in grievous pain, she was completely incapable of keeping her robe tied. The scientist that she had slept with earlier was standing by the container entrance, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts.

 

“You see, Mila?” he shouted, catching her confused glare. He appeared crazed, and was shaking uncontrollably. “It’s just a matter of how quickly you want to die!”

 

“What do you mean?” Other passengers started looking at him.

 

“You can either die a slow death as their prisoner,” he said, gesturing towards the back of the container. “Or you can die instantly when they destroy the ship!” He backed through the entrance so that he was on the ship’s side of the door.

 

“What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, taking a painful step towards the entrance. “Who’s ‘they’?”

 

“Guristas pirates!” he answered. Amber-colored warning lights began flashing around the door. “You see, I knew there was a good chance this would happen! They’ve been hitting this constellation like crazy lately! Why do you think I spent practically everything I had to hire you for one night?” he asked, just as the door began to close. “Ishukone sent me on a death mission, and I didn’t want to die a virgin!”

 

“Pirates?” she nearly yelled as the door sealed. Mila had experienced such acute dread just one other time in her life. The other passengers began to panic, and some even started banging on the sealed container entrance. An ominously loud, metallic-mechanical noise reverberated throughout the container. Momentary weightlessness followed by an abrupt switchover to artificial gravity left most of the passengers on their backsides. Some of them became violently sick, throwing up all over themselves. Mila found herself unable to stop staring at the single porthole in the container. The image of the ship she was just aboard rotated diagonally across the window twice.

 

It would not appear a third time.

 

 

~

 

 

“That was for making me repeat myself,” said Otro, steering his ship towards the debris field where the Ishukone captain’s pod was a moment earlier. There would be a corpse floating in its midst that he wanted to keep as a trophy. “Gavriel, are our guests on board?”

 

“Affirmative,” came the reply.

 

“Then I’ll see you at Forward-Six.”

 

“Roger that. Out.”

 

 

~

 

 

Three hours later

 

 

Forward-Six

Guristas Deep Space Observation Platform

Tribute Region

 

 

Mila vaguely became aware of the fact that she was no longer unconscious. She remembered the flash and cacophony of metallic pings and thuds as the cargo container was peppered with debris from the ship’s explosion. She could remember the panic, the pain in her arm, and the warning that someone had shouted to cover their nose and mouth, and of seeing the wisps of gas enter the container through the vents. The confusing part, she realized, was that although her eyes were open, she could not see.

 

Most people count on their eyes to provide their primary sense, and Mila was no exception. The human mind instinctively runs through a checklist of available senses whenever primary sensory input is denied. For Mila, hearing was next on that list, but she could hear nothing. The same results were produced again with her smelling, and then with touch: Nothing. It was as if she had been completely detached from herself. The excruciating pain that she should have felt in her arm was no longer there. In fact, she could not even feel her arms, or any of her other extremities.

 

She could, however, taste the saliva in her mouth. And, she could sense—barely—that she was swallowing it, and that she was also somehow able to breathe. But it was just enough sensory information to make her realize two things: That she was still alive, and that she was completely helpless.

 

“State your name,” a voice said, as if it came from directly inside her mind. The sound terrified her, and her brain reflexively sent instructions to limbs that were either no longer there, or had become unresponsive to her commands.

 

“Where am I?” she responded. She could feel her mouth moving, but couldn’t hear her own words.

 

“Far away from anyone that can help you,” came the response. It was a machine’s voice. “It is just you and I, isolated here in our own universe, completely detached from anyone or anything that you’ve ever known.”

 

“Who are you?” she thought, stricken with panic.

 

“Your only companion, your only friend, and your only chance of ever returning to the reality you call home,” came the response. “Now, kindly tell me your name.”

 

“Mila Strevanos,” she answered.

 

“You are the owner and CEO of Satelles Enterprises?”

 

“Yes,” she answered. There was a long period of silence. “Hello?” she asked.

“Madam Strevanos, we see that you incorporated Satelles and properly registered with the House of Records approximately eight years ago. While officially designated as an escort service for corporate executives, Satelles is actually a prostitution ring than you and several other madams have presided over for years. Although acting in an executive capacity, we see that you often apply your own physical talents—and those of your other madams— whenever your clientele possess information that could potentially be sold to someone else. When the accumulated wealth of Satelles passed the requisite amount, you promptly filed your corporation with Modern Finances under the name that you currently claim. Yet we can find no retina scan, DNA record, or fingerprint of a ‘Mila Strevanos’ registering anywhere in the universe before you originally registered with the House of Records.”

 

Mila dreaded where this was going. The voice continued, but in a tone that was a decibel or two higher than before.

 

“You are not the first one we have seen with a forged identity, Madam Strevanos. Please state your real name.”

 

“You have no right to do this to people,” she said, suddenly overwhelmed with anger. “What difference does it make what my real name is?”

 

Suddenly there were other voices present. It started as whispers, gradually becoming the audible buzz of a room full of people speaking in a language she did not understand. The voices surrounded her, and occasional shouts and screams hurled from random directions made her heart stop. It became a rising crescendo of laughter, of the most sinister sounding voices she had ever heard, taunting and insulting her. She could not escape them, and she could do nothing to make them stop. She screamed as loud as she could, and then heard the silence once again.

 

“You can either cooperate,” the mechanical voice resumed. “Or I can leave you with them. They are eager to torment you, Madam Strevanos, and will do so for eternity if I allow it. Now, for the third time, please tell me your real name.”

 

“Gariushi,” she sobbed, completely desperate to be dead now. “Mila Auvuane Gariushi.”

 

There was silence again, suddenly followed by raging insults of the evil ones. “No!” Mila screamed. “Mila Auvuane Gariushi! That’s my real name, I swear!”

 

More silence followed. Mila could feel herself sobbing harder than she ever had before.

 

“What…” the mechanical voice started, then stopped. “State your home world.”

 

“Isinokka Eight, then Drenali Seven when I was 15 years old.” Again, there was a long pause, and she feared the voices would return. “Go to hell, whoever you are!” she screamed hysterically. “You sadistic, sick bastard!” She was so upset that she was having difficulty breathing.

 

“Kaurikou Junction…?”

 

“Yes!”

 

Another pause followed. “Your father was Vilamo Gariushi…” The voice stopped, and suddenly Mila could feel her arms and legs again. She realized that she was submerged in some kind of viscous liquid, and that a mask had been placed over her face. Her left forearm was encased in a nanosplint, and could feel dozens of tubes and wires extruding from a collar that encircled her neck and covered the base of her skull.

 

Still unable to see, Mila could feel herself being extracted from the liquid, and felt slight pain along her spine as the collar was removed. Too weak to put up any kind of resistance, she could feel a pair of strong hands carefully lifting and placing her limp body onto a bed and then covering her with a blanket. The same hands gently touched the sides of her neck and head as if probing for something, and then the mask was lifted off. A clean-cut man she had never seen before was standing over her with an astonished look on his face.

 

“What do you want from me?” Mila breathed, exhausted from the entire ordeal and still resigned to whatever fate awaited her. The man took a moment before answering.

 

“There’s someone I’d like for you to meet,” he said. Another man with much harsher, uglier features appeared. His head was shaved, and his jaw looked like it had been broken once but never allowed to heal correctly. A skull and crossbones tattoo was on his right cheek, and she could see several scars crisscross his face. There was something familiar about him that she couldn’t place. He looked confused, perhaps even somewhat frightened.

 

She was not prepared for what the other man said next.

 

“Mila, this is your younger brother, Otro.”

 

Mila was overwhelmed with a rush of recognition that thrust distant memories to the forefront of her consciousness with remarkable clarity. She superimposed the last image she had of her younger brother, then just five years old when she left, with the hideous man standing above her. As much as parts of her both embraced and rejected this moment, there was no question that this was the little boy she left behind when she ran away more than 20 years ago. It was just too much information to absorb.

 

The last thing Mila saw before blacking out again was her brother look away and say something urgent to the other man, who suddenly appeared frantic.

 

 

~

 

 

Malkalen V – Moon 1

Lonetrek Region

Ishukone Corporate Headquarters

 

 

Ralirashi tried his best to appear impressed as the CEO of Ishukone howled in delight at the flaming wreckage of a defeated Splinterz combatant.

 

“Ha! Another million isk in the bank!” the man said, slapping Ralirashi on the back. “You’d be a fool to bet against me. Right, Rali?” The entourage of rented women from Satelles Enterprises giggled around him.

 

“A fool indeed, sir,” he answered, wishing he could return the slap with a steel club. “You sure know how to pick winners.” I’d actually be extremely happy if you could just drop dead, he thought.

 

“Hey, and he’s observant also!” he answered, draining the rest of his cocktail in a single gulp. The women laughed. “Guess I don’t pay you the big bucks for nothing,” he said, handing Rali the empty glass. “Now go take care of that for me, will you? They’re starting the next round and I have another million to make, right ladies?” On cue, the women—all of them drop dead gorgeous and acting as if they were completely devoid of any brains—cheered in agreement, following him to the holovid link where his bookie was waiting on the other line.

 

Rali looked down at the empty glass in one hand, and the disk with the Ishukone financials that he’d spent more than 24 hours preparing in the other. Why did I even bother, he asked himself. The Board meeting was in just two days. As the Chief Financial Officer of Ishukone, it was his job to know the numbers cold and prepare the CEO for that meeting, and to strategize how best to present the firm’s financial state to the Board. If the news was anything less than perfect, then they would demand to know exactly what was being done to fix it. There had been a selloff in Ishukone stock recently due to rumors that the pace of its double-digit earnings growth was slowing down. This was completely unacceptable to the Board. For the last two meetings, Les had assured the Board members that “his CFO was on top of things and getting earnings growth back on track”. And yet he hasn’t followed any of my advice, not even once. Rali knew that his boss—Les Akkilen, CEO of Ishukone Corporation— would pin the blame squarely on him this time around and suggest a replacement.

 

Rali watched the Splinterz robots take their starting positions through the holoscreen in Les’s luxury suite. So foolish of me to think he’d actually called me up here to talk about business. The Akkilen Family had more money than was imaginable, and their long history of generosity to the Caldari State had even earned them the privilege of having an Empire solar system officially named after the family. Les’s appointment as the CEO of Ishukone was purely political, and clearly the result of having a wealthy family with connections in all the right places. Rali silently fumed. Les Akkilen is nothing more than a stupid, spoiled-rotten kid who never had to work for anything in his life, and doesn’t know a goddamn thing about running a corporation.

 

Les also had a son who was now old enough to claim his own place within the elite corporate class of Caldari society. That was reason enough for Rali to believe that he was being set up to fail, and that failure in such a visible position at Ishukone would destroy his own reputation and leave him a ruined disgrace. Les Akkilen would find a way to distance himself from the failure and hail his own son as the fix that the corporation needed to correct its own image, which was Board’s primary concern.

 

The robot gladiators opened up on each other in a gruesome display of raw firepower and violence. Les hooted in excitement for the combatant that he’d bet on while the women rubbed him and cheered. That disgusting picture right there pretty much sums it up, thought Rali. The widely held view of Ishukone in recent years was plainly that if not for starship pod technology—which the Jovians had invented and for some reason granted to Ishukone many years earlier—then the corporation would be practically non-existent. In Rali’s view, the critics were right. Despite its uncontested wealth, Ishukone had failed to establish a flagship product that uniquely established their industrial might within the Caldari State. Pod sales were the only viable source of income for the corporation, albeit an enormous one. They were known among competitors as the “Pod Company”, nothing more than the lucky beneficiary of technology that civilization could no longer live without. The rest of Ishukone, with the hundreds of thousands of employees on its payroll, was widely viewed as dead weight that participated in the corporation’s success without actually contributing anything to it.

 

While Les threw his wild parties and shrugged off his colossal blunders, which included the multi-trillion isk uranium debacle in Fade, Rali was meeting with some of the brightest people he could find within Ishukone. If it was a flagship product that Ishukone lacked, then he would literally create the grandest flagship of them all: A space superiority battleship capable of projecting power the likes of which no one had ever seen before. Lai Dai had its Scorpion, long the backbone of the Caldari Navy and symbol of Caldari might in space. Ishukone would have to do better than them to establish real credibility. A secret project was born deep in the R&D department of Ishukone, unknown even to Les and the other executive crony “Yes-men” that he surrounded himself with. Its codename: “Raven”.

 

Out of ammunition, the robots that survived the initial barrage of fire attacked each other with giant buzz saws, axes, and maces. The gory scene played itself out in Les’s cavernous office as it was broadcast live from the arena on Malkalen Five. Rali watched, and allowed himself a smile. Wait until I tell them that we not only have a prototype Raven built, but that it passed every one of its space trials already. The look on Les’s face would be priceless. He’d have to acknowledge his CFO’s superior work to the Board in person just to save face, and then I’ll finally get the respect I deserve, thought Rali. He was expecting to hear from a Navy representative at any time. If he was lucky, the presentation that his team was scheduled to pitch later today would go so well that the Navy would award Ishukone with a nice sized order, perhaps for a few dozen ships and a blueprint or two.

 

Another robot fell as its torso was cleaved by an axe and ripped apart by the ensuing explosion. It was down to two gladiators now, and as they tore into each other, Les and his women started screaming for their bet to win. Rali’s messenger buzzed suddenly. At last, he thought, the news I’ve been waiting my whole life for. He set the disk down to pull the messenger out of his pocket. His face went pale when he read the device’s tiny screen:

 

** EYES ONLY **

 

IWV-35G15 TREVANI FAILED TO REPORT CHECKPOINT AT NAV THETA-FIVE. RECON TEAM DISPATCHED TO SITE REPORTS DEBRIS FIELD WITH TREVANI MARKINGS AND SIGNS OF AN AMBUSH. NO SURVIVORS WERE FOUND. CREW AND CARGO ARE MISSING AND PRESUMED LOST. ELINT REPORTS TRACE GURISTAS COMMS TRAFFIC IN AREA. WILL UPDATE AS MORE DATA BECOMES AVAILABLE.

 

IWCMD

 

***

 

“No!” Rali screamed, just as the victorious robot delivered the coup-de-grace. Les and the women celebrated lustily.

 

“I win again!” shouted Les. “Ha! Who’s better than me?” he asked his audience of hired admirers. As they all said “No one, Les” in unison, the empty cocktail glass in Rali’s hand shattered. Several drops of blood fell to the floor.

 

Les started laughing. “Bet against me again, eh Rali? Observant maybe, but definitely not too bright! Ha!” More uproarious laughter followed from the drunken crowd.

 

Rali was shaking, barely aware of the glass shards puncturing his hand. “Ex…If you’ll please excuse me,” he said, turning towards the door.

 

“Don’t worry Rali, I’ll have the Watch keep the loansharks away!” Rali turned for just a moment to seethe at the man he despised. All of the women, save for one, were laughing at him. When she caught Rali’s glance, she quickly began laughing along with the others. Thinking nothing of it, he left the room consumed with hatred, looking for something to stop the bleeding in his hand.

Сообщение отредактировал Nordeck: 06 February 2014 - 8:20