This Royal Navy welcomes Jason Burge and Rocky to its ranks.
As your Fleet Admiral, I, Crimson_Reapr, welcome you, honor your commitment, and thank you for your service. May our power reach beyond the edges of charted space, and may ruin fall upon all who stand against humanity's strength.
---
The whiskey in Alistair Thorne's glass cost three thousand credits a bottle. It was a single malt, aged in zero-gravity barrels orbiting a neutron star, theoretically infusing the liquid with a unique molecular stability that enhanced the flavor profile. It was the kind of drink reserved for toastings, for victories, for the quiet moments of satisfaction that came after crushing a competitor or securing a quadrant-spanning contract. At least it was for most people.
To Alistair, its taste was no longer the sweet, slow burn it had once been. Now it simply tasted like failure, an ashy taste that revealed the expensive mistakes that had arisen as of late for SIGS.
He stood by the panoramic window of his office on the 150th floor of the SIGS tower, staring down at the blooming dawn of Nova Celeste. Five days ago, this view had been a source of boundless pride, a visual confirmation of his dominion over the Novellus System. From this height, the world below looked organized. The pink trees lined the boulevards in perfect symmetry, the blue grass rippled in the wind like a subservient ocean, and the people were nothing more than data points in a system he helped control.
Now, the pink trees and blue grass just looked like a mockery of the chaos consuming his life. The perfect geometry of Aurelia felt fragile, a thin veneer of glass waiting to be shattered by the sledgehammer that was currently swinging toward his head.
"Give it to me straight," Thorne said, his voice raspy. He hadn't slept properly in seventy-two hours. His suit, usually immaculate, felt heavy on his shoulders and its fabric stifling.
"The subject you have requested we investigate, last name Takagi, first name Kenjiro," the cool, dispassionate voice of the IUC Tracking Division liaison echoed from the holographic terminal behind him. "He has not been found and, unfortunately, is still at large."
Thorne turned slowly, his grip on the crystal glass tightening until his knuckles turned white. He looked at the hologram, which was a faceless blue avatar representing the combined surveillance power of the IUC, giving the liaison and anyone else representing the IUC a high level of anonymity.
"I want you to stop dancing around the subject. Define 'At Large,' Agent," Thorne said, his voice low and tired. "Because to me, 'At Large' implies you know which planet he is on, or at least which star system. It implies a chase. It implies that you are currently closing a net. This... this feels remarkably like you are telling me he evaporated into the ether."
"And you wouldn't be wrong to believe so. We have confirmed his departure from Elyse Station via commercial shuttle Transport-Alpha-9," the liaison explained, projecting a grainy video feed into the air. "Takagi boarded the shuttle at 06:15 on Monday. His biometrics were scanned at the gate, and we also have the receipt of the ticket he had purchased with the destination being Mechanicus Station."
"Then what the fuck are you waiting for? Do you need my permission to go to Mechanicus and pick him up?" Thorne snapped, slamming the glass down on his petrified wood desk. The whiskey in it splashed over the rim, staining the priceless surface, but he didn't care. "It's a fucking station! It's a tin can in space! It has walls! It has airlocks! It's leaders answer to us! There are only so many places a man can hide in a closed system!"
"With all due respect, Director," the agent replied, his tone thinning with irritation, "Mechanicus is home to eleven billion people. It has eighteen thousand docking ports, three thousand miles of unmapped maintenance tunnels, and a criminal underworld that charges for breathing room. I can say with the utmost certainty that it is not a tin can. If anything, it is a hive. And it is a hive that does not like the IUC because its leaders are backed by the same fucking houses that don't respect us!"
"That's just a bad attempt to excuse yourself from doing what you are paid for," Thorne hissed, pacing the room. "We have facial recognition. We have a walking pattern analysis. We have the sheer, crushing weight of the SIGS surveillance network. We pay the Station Authority enough in bribes to fund their entire atmosphere recycling budget. And you bastards get more than enough from our taxes for you to find him. You will do what we ask you to do!"
The office went quiet for a moment, and a deep breath from the hologram could be heard, as if the agent was trying to regain control over their emotions.
"Must I remind you that we do not answer to you," the agent stated. "We are the military forces of the Imperial Union of Celestine, not some ragtag bunch you can just order around."
"Bullshit," Thorne said. "The IUC has never put its foot down when we ask things of you, and you will not start now. You may act like you are sovereign and you enforce the laws, but you've never been anything other than our enforcers. Without the houses, you wouldn't be worth a shit. Without the corporations, you wouldn't be worth a shit. So now tell me, why haven't you found Kenjiro?"
Another moment of silence reigned over the office before the agent responded.
"We tried to find him, sir," the agent sighed, the avatar shifting slightly. "We pulled the arrival logs from the Mechanicus commercial dock for the time his shuttle arrived. We accessed the station's central security grid and prepared to track him from the moment his boot touched the deck."
"And?" Thorn asked.
"And... he never touched the deck," the agent responded. "Watch."
The hologram shifted, expanding to fill the center of the room, turning into a high-definition feed of a bustling airlock on Mechanicus. Thorne watched with hawk-like intensity as the shuttle Transport-Alpha-9 docked, and its airlock doors hissed open.
Passengers began to stream out. Thorne saw miners in dusty exosuits, droids hauling crates, spacers with magnetic boots. He saw a mother holding a crying child. He saw a courier checking his datapad.
"This is the feed from Docking Bay 94," the agent said. "Watch the time code in the bottom right."
Thorne watched. The timestamp ticked forward.
06:47:03...06:47:04...06:47:05...
And then, it jumped.
06:47:05...06:47:09.
Four seconds. Four seconds of footage were missing. And it wasn't a glitch or a static burst. It was a surgical excision, and the people in the background just suddenly teleported three feet forward in their walking paths. The ambient noise of the dock didn't even stutter either. It had been looped and smoothed over the gap.
"Someone scrubbed it," Thorne whispered, stepping closer to the hologram, staring at the ghost in the machine. "But who scrubbed it?"
"That is something that we do not know at this moment," the agent admitted. "The splice was expertly done, to the point that even our AIs did not identify the change. The encryption keys for the station's security grid weren't forced either, meaning that it was possibly someone with high-level administrative access who logged in, deleted the frames containing Dr. Takagi, looped the background noise to cover the audio gap, and logged out. Something that only lasted a mere 0.04 seconds."
Thorne felt a cold knot form in his stomach as a profound sense of unease settled within him. Kenjiro Takagi was a brilliant thermal engineer. He could visualize the heat dissipation of a singularity. He could do math that made other physicists weep. But he was not a hacker.
"He had help," Thorne realized, the words tasting bitter as they escaped his lips. "Sophisticated help."
"That is our assessment as well," the agent nodded. "Whoever wiped that tape knew exactly when he was landing, exactly which camera feed to hit, and exactly how to bypass the Station Authority's firewalls without tripping an alarm. We believe that Takagi didn't just run away, Director. Rather, he was extracted."
Thorne waved his hand, dismissing the hologram. "Leave me alone and keep looking. Bribe the dockmasters if you have to. We'll pay the expenses. I want eyes on every port of Mechanicus station, constant checks of credit transfers, and I want you to even check the black market clinics. If he sneezes, I want to know about it."
The liaison vanished as soon as Thorne finished talking.
Thorne sank into his chair, the leather creaking under his weight. He rubbed his temples, trying to massage away the headache that had taken up permanent residence behind his eyes.
Kenjiro wasn't just missing. He was gone. And if he had been extracted... who in the hell had the resources to do that? Stellar Dynamics? Spatial Propulsionary Solutions? Had a competitor finally made a move? If SPS had Kenjiro, they would have the secrets to the Mark IV within a week. They would know the alloy compositions. They would know the failure points.
*BUZZZ*
The intercom buzzed.
"Greta," Thorne spoke into the empty room, his voice weary.
"Yes, Director?" Her voice came from the intercom instantly. She sounded tired as well, which to Thorne was good. Loyalty meant sharing the suffering.
"Any word from the Board?" Thorne asked.
"Chairman Vance has called three times in the last hour," Greta replied tentatively. "He... he used the word 'incompetence' in the last voicemail, sir. And he mentioned something about a 'structural reorganization' of the Novellus Directorate if the asset is not recovered by the quarterly review."
Thorne closed his eyes. Vance, that old snake. He would love nothing more than to see Thorne gutted and hung out to dry. If the Board decided Thorne had lost control of his proprietary assets, they wouldn't just fire him, they would ruin him. They would trigger the non-compete clauses in his contract that would bar him from working in the industry for fifty years. They would freeze his assets and turn him into a pauper in a luxury world, forcing him to watch from the gutter as someone else sat in this office.
"Ignore him for now," Thorne said, opening his eyes. The panic started to recede as a cold, calculating desperation replaced it. "I need... I need something else. Greta, pull up the patent filings for the last week. Filter for Thermal Dynamics, Propulsion, and Energy Management. Look for anything anomalous."
"Sir?" Greta asked, confused by the request. "The R&D legal team reviews those daily."
"The R&D legal team is a collection of overpaid sycophants who wouldn't recognize a fucking threat if it sat on their sunlight-deprived faces!" Thorne shouted, his patience snapping. "They are looking for infringements from major competitors. They aren't looking for... they aren't looking for a fucking ghost. Do it! Now!"
"Yes, sir," Greta said. "I'll get right on it."
Thorne swiveled his chair to face the window again. He needed to think. Why did Kenjiro leave? The gears in his mind spun until he remembered the resignation letter. "I am going to find actual work." The claims that turned out to be true once they found the plaque in the trash. The outright insult about the Mark V that he had been so involved with.
Kenjiro was an idealist. A purist. He hated the corporate game, and Thorne knew that. Kenjiro hated the incremental upgrades and wanted to build something real. He wanted to solve problems, not maximize profit margins. But you don't hold the market by selling solutions, you do it by creating a problem and releasing a temporary solution.
If a competitor had kidnapped him, they would be parading him around, or at least, the sudden leap in their stock price would give it away. But the market was quiet.
"Director," Greta's voice cut in, sharp with surprise. "I think I may have found something you'd find useful."
"Send it to the main screen," Thorne ordered.
A document materialized in the air. Contrary to Thorne's expectations, it wasn't a classified intercept or a spy report. It was a standard IUC Commerce Guild Patent Filing. It was public record data. Something that was simply boring and bureaucratic.
But the date was from five days ago, a day after Kenjiro's disappearance on Mechanicus.
"Patent #99-Alpha-Zeta: Recursive Fractal Lattice for High-Efficiency Thermal Dissipation in Starship Propulsion Systems.
Patent #99-Alpha-Theta: Tri-Phase Capacitor Containment via Superconductive Ceramic Grain Rotation.
Applicant: Shepherd Orbital Works (LCC).
Inventor of Record: Mark Shephard.
Co-Inventor: [REDACTED]."
Thorne stared at the words before eventually reading the abstract for the fractal lattice vent.
"...utilizing a generative geometry to maximize surface area within a finite volume, achieving thermal dissipation rates exceeding 45% over standard cast-alloy variants..."
He blinked.
"Forty-five percent?" Thorne whispered. Reading the number felt like taking a punch to the gut. SIGS had spent three trillion credits, mobilized an army of researchers, and built a dedicated orbital lab on Elyse just to get 0.3%. And this... this "Shepherd Orbital Works" had just filed for forty-five percent.
He then looked at the second patent. It was something about Grain rotation, a new approach to some "Hellfire" Capacitors.
He looked at the name of the applicant. Shepherd Orbital Works. SOW.
"Greta," Thorne said, his voice deadly calm. "Who is Mark Shephard?"
"Give me a moment while I search public records," Greta replied. After about 20 seconds, she read off the information she found. "Mark Shephard. Recently turned 32 years of age, born on June 3rd, 2953. Huh."
"What is it?" Thorne asked.
"It says here he's from the colony planet of Strara O86," Great said with slight bemusement.
"The one caught up in that IUC-VIC skirmish because of us?" Thorne wondered.
"That very same planet, sir," Greta confirmed. "However, according to the registry, only one registered person had that name. Well, it's spelled differently, Mark Shepherd with an E rather than an A. The IUC reported him missing and subsequently killed in action about two years ago. But that Mark Shepherd also looks different."
"Maybe a stolen identity?" Thorne suggested.
"Could be," Greta admitted. "It could also just be a lack of information, since half of the archives of Strara O86 were lost in the attack."
"Interesting," Thorne said, rubbing his chin. "So, what else is available on this 'Shephard' guy?"
"He is the sole proprietor of Shepherd Orbital Works," Great said. "It's an LCC registered on Mechanicus Station just three months ago. He only has two assets: One heavy frigate, a custom outfit with unusually long railguns, believed to have been a decommissioned vessel, though the registry is heavily redacted. And one leased shipyard on Docking Platform 2 of the Industrial Sector."
"So a startup," Thorne laughed dryly. "A startup with a custom frigate and a lease."
"Sir, there's more," Greta continued. "His ship was apparently registered personally by Admiral Ren Varis on Station B-147. It's got preferential treatment for travel between the gates and for chats. It's almost a military vessel without actually being military."
"That is quite intriguing," Thorne said, furrowing his brows. "So he seems to have IUC backing..."
"That's not all," Greta said. "I'm looking at the sales data reported to the Mechanicus Trade Authority, and just in the last three weeks, SOW has moved over three million credits in inventory. Their primary customers are independent haulers and... the Void Vanguard."
That made Thorne raise an eyebrow. "The mercenaries?"
"Yes, sir. And..." Greta paused momentarily. "Director, the Void Vanguard just cancelled their contract renewal with SIGS for their fleet maintenance. They cited 'superior performance from alternative vendors. '"
Thorne sat back as he felt the pieces finally click into place with the precision of a locking mechanism. The chaotic noise in his head suddenly silenced, replaced by a singular, crystal-clear frequency.
Kenjiro hadn't been kidnapped by a rival conglomerate. He hadn't been snatched by Stellar Dynamics.
He had run away to join a fucking circus.
He had found an upstart mechanic with a crazy idea, and he had defected to build "actual work." The co-inventor's name was redacted, but Thorne knew it had to be Kenjiro. He knew it in his bones. The "fractal lattice" sounded exactly like the kind of theoretical geometry Kenjiro would use to doodle on napkins during budget meetings.
"He's there," Thorne said, standing up. The lethargy was gone, replaced by a cold, burning fury. "He's on Mechanicus. He's working for this... Shephard."
He looked at the patent filing again. On second glance, he noticed something he hadn't noticed before. It was airtight. He recognized the legal structure immediately, a defensive cluster filing designed to block litigation. It utilized obscure jurisdictional loopholes to stall infringement suits. It was simply brilliant. It had to have been Kenjiro using his intimate knowledge of the SIGS playbook against them.
"Greta," Thorne barked, grabbing his jacket from the coat rack. "Get me Security Chief Calloway on the line. Tell him to assemble a tactical retrieval team with Class-A clearance and Full suppression gear."
"Sir? You want to raid a registered LCC on Mechanicus?" Greta asked, her voice trembling slightly. "That's... that's outside our jurisdiction. The Station Authority, not to mention the IUC-"
"I don't care about the Station Authority!" Thorne roared, his composure cracking. "This isn't a raid. It's a corporate asset recovery operation. We are retrieving stolen intellectual property and a kidnapped executive."
"Kidnapped, sir?" Greta asked, genuinely confused.
"Kenjiro Takagi is mentally unstable," Thorne said, buttoning his suit jacket with shaking hands. "He has clearly been manipulated by this Mark Shephard and is currently acting under duress. We are going in to rescue him."
He walked toward the door, checking his reflection in the glass wall. He looked tired, but he also looked dangerous. A desperate man with unlimited resources is the most dangerous thing in the universe.
"Prepare my shuttle, Greta. Flight plan to Olympus Station. I'm meeting Calloway there."
"You're going personally, sir?" Greta asked.
Thorne stopped at the door. He looked back at his pristine, beautiful office. He looked at the whiskey glass on the desk, the stain spreading into the wood.
"This Shephard thinks he can humiliate me," Thorne whispered. "He thinks he can steal my engineer, steal my market share, and file patents right under my nose. I want to look him in the eye when I burn his little shop to the ground."
He then stepped out of his office, not hearing as Greta reported one last bit of information.
"Sir, there's a report here as well," she said, but no one was listening. "This Mark Shephard is considered unpredictable and extremely dangerous by IUC authorities."
However, she didn't get any response.
"Sir? Oh, Jesus, these upity pricks never have the time to spare a few extra seconds and listen to us. Just always do this and do that. Well, here's to hoping you catch a bullet and I get a promotion, Director Thorne."
---
The flight from Nova Celeste to Olympus Station was a short hop, barely enough time for the sub-orbital shuttle to reach cruising altitude before it began its docking sequence. Thorne spent the entire flight staring at his datapad, reading the dossier Greta had compiled on Mark Shephard.
Mark Shephard. 7 feet tall. Service Record: Redacted. Combat Specialization: Redacted. Psychological Profile: Stable, high authority resistance.
The unpredictable and extremely dangerous notes had been purposefully omitted by Greta. To Thorne's knowledge, he was a brute. A grunt with a wrench.
Thorne sneered at the image.
Olympus Station lived up to its name. It was the playground of the gods, or at least, the gods of finance and industry. Orbiting in a geosynchronous lock above the capital city of Aurelia, it was less a space station and more a floating palace. The exterior was plated in gold and white ceramic. The docking rings were shaped like halos.
Thorne stepped off his private shuttle onto the VIP concourse and took a deep breath. The air here smelled even better than on the planet. It smelled of money. It smelled of power.
Waiting for him at the end of the airlock was a man who looked like he was carved out of granite.
Security Chief Calloway stood at six-foot-four, with shoulders that strained the fabric of his black tactical suit. He had a buzz cut, a scar running through his left eyebrow, and eyes that looked like they had seen everything and felt nothing. He wasn't a former IUC military member, he was corporate security. That meant he was better paid, better equipped, and had significantly looser rules of engagement with everything to gain and only his life to lose.
Behind him stood six operatives in full SIGS heavy-containment armor. They wore matte black, faceless helmets, K-272 energy rifles that were mag-locked to their backs, and K-982C pistols. These fired conventional ammo, unlike their regular counterpart, the K-982 Energy pistols, and were mag-locked to their thighs. They looked like reapers standing in the immaculate white hall of Olympus.
"Director," Calloway nodded, his voice a deep rumble. "The team is prepped, and we have the transport ready."
"Good," Thorne said, not breaking stride. "Brief me on the target."
They walked together toward the private hangar bay, the armored squad falling in behind them like a praetorian guard. Passersby, wealthy socialites and junior executives, scattered out of their way, sensing the violence radiating from the group.
"Target location is confirmed," Calloway said, handing Thorne a secure datapad. "Shepherd Orbital Works is located on Mechanicus' Industrial Sector, Platform 2. It's an enclosed facility with a single entry point via the main concourse, plus the docking bays themselves."
"Are we to expect any resistance?" Thorne asked.
"We ran a deeper background check on Shephard," Calloway said. "We pulled some strings with a contact in the Navy. The redactions cover his time in a specialized unit. His file is unclear, but from what they got, he appears to be a heavy assault specialist, but not just any heavy assault specialist, Director. He was a Breacher. He opened doors that nobody wanted to open. He's dangerous."
"He's a mechanic," Thorne scoffed. "He turns wrenches. You have a squad of elite operatives. Deal with him."
"We've detected active defense turrets in the facility," Calloway continued, ignoring the dismissal. "There is also a team of private security, 'Enzios Private Affairs.' They're not the greatest, but they will definitely put up a fight. There is also what we believe to be an AI... possibly the one responsible for the scrubbed footage? We tried to ping the SOW network to get a layout. The probe didn't just bounce; it was eaten. Whatever digital security he's running, it's not civilian."
Thorne stopped at the airlock of the unmarked, black transport shuttle Calloway had chartered. It was a Ghost-class stealth runner, fast and heavily armored, designed for extraction missions in hostile territory.
"I don't care if he has a dragon guarding the door, Calloway," Thorne said, turning to the Chief. "I want Takagi secured and unharmed. He is the priority. The giant? Shephard?"
Thorne's eyes went cold.
"If he resists... neutralize him," he paused. "If we can't bribe the security, then neutralize them as well. Self-defense, of course."
Calloway smirked. "Of course, Director. We carry body cams. We can edit the footage later. We have the best editors in the system, after all."
"You're speaking my language, Calloway," Thorne said while clapping his hands. "Let's go."
The journey from Olympus to Mechanicus was a descent into hell.
They left the glittering orbit of the luxury station, the Ghost engaging its stealth drives to slip unnoticed through the traffic lanes. Thorne sat in the command chair of the passenger compartment, watching the viewscreen.
Behind them, Nova Celeste hung like a blue marble of perfection. It was the world he belonged to. The world of order.
Ahead of them, Mechanicus loomed.
It was an ugly thing. A massive, sprawling amalgamation of metal, rotating slowly in the dark. It was covered in docking ports, exhaust vents, and refinery towers. Thorne hated it. He hated the thought of breathing the air. He hated the thought of his Colletti leather shoes touching the grime-slicked decks. He hated that a man like Kenjiro Takagi would choose this over the paradise of Elyse.
It was an insult. A personal rejection of everything Thorne stood for.
"Approaching Mechanicus traffic control," the pilot announced. "We are spoofing a diplomatic transponder... They're waving us through to the VIP lanes."
"Bypass the VIP lanes," Thorne ordered, gripping the armrests. "Take us directly to the Industrial Sector. I want to dock as close to Platform 2 as possible without triggering their proximity alarms."
"Copy that," the pilot nodded. "Redirecting to Docking Bay 99. It's a maintenance bay, currently empty. It's three hundred meters from the SOW entrance via the service tunnels."
The shuttle banked, diving into the smog. The beautiful stars vanished, replaced by the towering canyons of the station's superstructure. Flashes of welding torches sparked in the darkness like distant lightning. Massive cargo haulers drifted past like whales, their hulls scarred and pitted.
Thorne checked his suit, adjusted his cuffs, and looked at Calloway, who was checking the charge on his energy rifle.
"Rules of engagement," Thorne said softly. "We go in fast. Shock and awe. We secure Takagi before Shephard knows we're there. If the AI tries to lock us out, blow the doors."
"Understood," Calloway racked the slide on his sidearm. "Operatives, engage active camo. We move in silence until we breach."
The shuttle shuddered as the docking clamps engaged.
CLANG.
"Docking complete," the pilot said. "Atmosphere cycling. Welcome to Mechanicus."
Thorne unbuckled his harness and stood up. He smoothed the front of his jacket.
"Let's go get my property," he said.
---
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