How I Got Here: "Exiles"
25 Oct 2022Columbuss
Commander Justin Estok. Stardate 25-OCT-3308."...follow the money."
"FULL POWER TO ENGINES!"
"Engines?! John! Those are Federal fighters! We'll never outrun them in this!"
"You got a better idea?!"
The canopy shines bright blue as beams cut across the surface of the Amy Rhea Type-7. John pulls up on the stick while frantically cycling through Amy's minimal hard points. He pulls down on the trigger, firing the chaff cannons, hoping to throw the Federal sensors for enough of a loop to spin the FTL drive and jump. John and I are pushed back into our seats as he boosts the engines, the g-forces pushing down on our chests like a two hundred pound weight.
John pulls the stick hard to port as the chaff flickers out over the horizon of the barren, low-g world below. The sensors light up as five red triangles zero in behind us.
"We need power to systems! The shields! They're collapsing..." I yell as another beam burns across the hull. Projectile fire follows as orange hot tracer rounds dart past the canopy. The loud clanks echo throughout the ship as the angry orange rounds rip into our hull, chewing through the steel bulkhead. Amy signals a full engine failure. The canopy dims as Amy's power plant slows to a dull hum.
As the ship begins to drift, the Federal ships cease fire, circling in above us like vultures, monitoring our descent. The ship begins to spin slowly, as thruster control fails and we begin plummeting to the surface holding the speed of the last engine boost with nothing to slow us down. As the surface of the cold, dead barren world below begins to grow in the window and our altimeter begins descending rapidly, I cant help thinking that this all has something to do with a known mercenary named Kevin Malloy.
A few days ago, we were exiles. After the attempts to kill John on Gilleken, we'd shot out into the black with no real destination. For some time, we just drifted. The Amy Rhea just floating through the infinite void, caught in the same gravity as any of the other planets revolving around whatever system we were in. To be honest, our exact location wasn't important to me. Only that we were alive... for the moment.
John and I sat in the galley of the transport ship that had become our lifeboat, going over the events that transpired on Gilleken over and over again. It had to be Grill... right? He must have struck a deal with The Dynasty in secret. John was right, he was the only council member not at the meeting before the bombs went off.
Headlines trickled in from Al Mina, bouncing off nearby satellites, somewhere out in the void caught in the same gravity as us. The headlines read "Terrorist Attack On Al Mina Capital. Illegal Thargoid Type Caustic Explosives Believed. Suspects Still At Large."
"They're going to try and paint me for this," John said.
"Of course they are," I reply.
"We need information," John says. "We need to find out who's really responsible. Otherwise, forget Al Mina, we won't be safe anywhere in The Bubble."
"How do you get that much explosive onto the surface of a capital world without anyone noticing? These are the same bombs they used in The Nine Martyrs John... you know that right?"
"We have to find out how it's connected."
"How do we do that?" I ask.
"We follow the money."
When contracting for something, lets say "beyond legal", it's important to only use people you trust. I've said this before, in The Black, your reputation is all you have. Dumping your cargo at the first interdiction, or bailing on some other nefarious plan at the first sight of authority ships won't land you the big contracts. Reliability and dependability is everything. This is why John reached out to Kevin.
Kevin Malloy, as John would tell me, was a mercenary of the highest caliber who's notoriety was rivaled only by his cold hearted approach toward his work. His "claim to fame" was the assassination of some high ranking Imperial magistrate, years ago, when it mattered. John had met him once, at some star port bar somewhere, and had used him for information in the Al Mina system, long before I knew him. They had a cordial relationship.
"We're not exactly in a great position to be meeting someone like this John..." I said.
"We need information," John says. "If anyone knows anything about what happened on B1 outside of who did it, it's Kevin. He works this area. He's our best option."
John pulled up the comm and sent an encrypted message to a signal source he'd used in the past. Now, we'd wait.
With all of our technological advancements in communication, space is still vast. Signals take time to travel across star systems so it was a few days of drifting, living in zero-g and eating on board rations before the comm light lit up with an incoming message.
John fingered the digital comm's relay, pulling it front and center over the center galley display table.
Kevin Malloy had replied...