By Jones on the secure line. The encryption pattern this shift is Omega, sir.” Just as quickly as the intern appeared as a floating head at my office door she is gone, leaving only the baleful blue light shining in from the hall. The office is rather grand as far as black ops sites go out on the far reaches of human space. UB313 is located out in the grim darkness beyond Pluto, and as such doesn’t warrant much attention from The Companies associated with earth’s greater goings on. Decorated with framed photos guilded in gold, hand drawn ancient maps, technical drawings of stations and memorabilia stolen by the earth side insurgencies they help to fund and direct from afar. Corporate espionage and technological breakthroughs in R&D are the main focus in the bored out depths of UB313. They are as unscrupulous a bunch as you will ever find. They attract the vile, the scum and villainy like maggots to day old roadkill on a piping hot asphalt road in late July.
The walk from the grand office down the tight bare hewn rock walls of the hallway is a fair jaunt. The high grade low wattage blue leds strung up over the kilometers of dark grey black rock make everything here look the same. Signage is at a bare minimum here, due to the elicit nature of much of their work. Also – the torture element. Dr. Jang has a penchant for unnecessary surgery and has used it to mine for answers among those his insurgents have managed to capture and return to him alive enough to question. Lost in thought, but still counting off his turns and stairs along the route the taught, rigid doctor saunters into the bridge without knocking to stride over to the private channel comm’s terminal located in an alcove off of the side of the main bridge. A red blinking light flashes repeatedly beside a blood red hand held phone receiver. With a quick flick of the wrist Dr. Jang picks up the receiver and places it next to his ear. “Took you long enough – I have word from our network that somebody has triggered a sword initiative, rated at level orange. You know what that means good doctor. We need to locate and capture the target before the earth side corporation’s can get out there to find it. Dispatch a small team now, before we’ve even traced the signal. We have a nine week travel lead on The Company people. Use it and bring me that specimen!” – CLICK. The other end of the line has gone dead. The raspy voice of the one we call Jones was tight with excitement, also insistent on an urgent response. Well it isn’t beyond the good doctor to act rashly before having a fully developed plan. Slowly a menacing grin blooms across his taught features like an ink stain on wet paper. Turning quickly on his heels to glide across the room and out of the private alcove Dr. Jang leans over a smaller terminal to toggle the base wide PA system. “We have an Omega level sword initiative triggered – code level orange. I need an immediate dispatch of search teams ETA & THETA. Head to the Charon Pluto lagrange point 5 – add the offset in crew as additional fuel since your orbit will be unstable. Hang there until we can get you a more precise set of coordinates. Dr. Jang out.” Looking around the room at the shocked and excited faces of the bridge crew Jang knows it is going to be a busy and fretful couple of weeks while they work to pick up the requested target. “Sir?. We have some rough data going in on the teletype machine – looks a little disrupted though. It could have been corrupted passing one of the signal repeaters. But we can test for that against our back log of recieved communications- sir.” “Good, good. If you need me I’ll be back in my surgical bay. I have a few questions I need answers to. Please do have your interns buzz before they enter this time.” The look on the comm’s ensigns face drains of any appreciable colour. “Yes! Sir – yes, yes sir of course, sir.” A single bead of sweat dribbles down the side of his face even though the UB313 base would be considered rather chilly at the best of times.
Part Four: Ghost of the Dirty Starling..
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 