Another Strange Day at the Office
13 Jun 2022maehara_uk
The moment maehara walked into Joshua’s office, she knew it was going to be one of those days. The boss had a “you’re not going to like this job” look on his face, and around the conference table were a motley crew of company workers who, while she knew some of them, she couldn’t figure out what connection they’d have. She gave Joshua a querying look.“We need you to do something unusual. For reasons...” - he stressed the word in a way that made it clear he wasn’t going to tell her what those reasons were - “....we need you to go on a murder spree. And we need you to murder some of our own.”
“Wha...” was all she was allowed to exclaim before Joshua continued.
“Now before you start complaining, I should make some things clear. This is entirely tactical, the people you’ll be ‘murdering’ are all volunteers, and they’ve all been set up with easy-to-kill ships and full Remlok recovery - they’ll be back at the station before you are. But we need to put on a show. These people here will be your ‘victims’ - we wanted you to meet them to be sure this was as above-board as an operation of this type can be.”
And so, a few hours later, she found herself ‘working’ the local Nav Beacon - dropping in, searching out one of her ‘victims’, destroying their ship and jumping out before ATR could intervene. Number 7, Esther from Accounting. Number 8, Steve from the loading bay. Number 9... who was instantly forgettable. The tally ticked up, until at 15 maehara retracted her hardpoints and plotted a route back to Tweedledum. And because a proper show had to be believable, her company rep was now Hostile. That was going to be a right inconvenience for a while.
At least the carrier wasn’t far away. But it turned out, Joshua had one last surprise he hadn’t mentioned during their briefing. As she dropped on the carrier, an encrypted comms channel opened. It was Yara, her captain. “You remember Joshua mentioned that this had to be believable? Well, we’re surrounded by System Authority ships, and you’re listed as Hostile here. I suggest you start charging your FSD...” The channel went dead, and Tweedledum’s weapons batteries opened up. And Yara wasn’t pulling any punches with her targeting.
“Shit!!”, maehara exclaimed. She flipped the FDL around, opened the throttle, and triggered the FSD. Her hull was down to 30% before the drive engaged and she jumped out to safety.
maehara took a deep breath before opening another channel to Yara. “Good lightshow, yes?” her captain asked, mischeviously.
“One day I’m going to get you for that. Now get that ship to somewhere outside our space; I’m going to need a drink or three. And tell the lounge to open a tab in Joshua’s name, he owes us for this one.”
“Aye.” Yara smiled as the channel closed; maehara sighed and leant back into her pilot’s chair. She really wasn’t being paid enough for this shit.