Chapter 30
Chapter 30
Something small and grey bounced on the surface of Teiwaz’s Black Site asteroid.
When observed closer to ground level, the bouncing object revealed itself to be a Czenki 4203 APC, its odd mix of angles and curves betraying its alien heritage. Six wheels, all on independent suspension mounts, dug into the pulverized dust on the asteroid’s surface and flung it out into space. Atop the vehicle, a small turret rotated, with an old 90mm mass accelerator fitted with a dented and worn barrel shroud mounted in the middle, with a mass accelerator machine gun and particle beam projector bracketing it to the sides. The barrels of all three guns independently rotated up and down as the vehicle made its way along the pitted surface, targeting nothing but arbitrary points in space.
Inside the vehicle, Nevara Char was having a blast in the driver’s seat. One of the few highlights of the long trip out of Citadel space had been joyriding on alien planets and moons, to the point that shore leave revolved around the order in which crew members got their chance to drive. It had been a dark day when one of the junior officers had cut on the jump jets a little too late after racing up a slope at 100 kph and damaged the APC’s original structural frame. For Nevara, who was one of the unfortunates waiting for her driving slot, it’d been a shot to the gut that lingered through the initial encounter with Tekkadan.
In the back, Vorhess and a group of human and alien technicians were busy checking readouts on tablets, making sure the newly repaired vehicle was operating to spec. The Czenki 4203 was designed to be a cheap, cheerful, and durable transportation option for planetary survey and first/second-wave colonization operations, which explained the modular construction of the vehicle. Czenki, as it proudly boasted its advertising, had consulted hundreds of planetary surveyors, explorers, and colonists, then crafted the ultimate vehicle for handling the top 50 causes of vehicle damage and destruction. It was a list that included thresher maws surfacing directly under the vehicle, running over land mines, operator error, sinkholes, operating near molten lava, and jumping over angry Krogan firing anti-vehicle rounds, amongst many other notable causes.
The ultimate benefit of this was that Czenki hadn’t bothered to use mass effect field forged materials in the structural frame that the wheels, jump jets, and ground penetrating scanners used, and even better, all those components were designed to be easily removed from an existing frame. As a result, Teiwaz’s engineers determined that mobile suit frame materials were more than adequate as a substitute, stripped all the parts off the damaged frame, forged a new frame, and mounted the old hardware on the new frame within three months. In fact, the work would have been done even faster, if not for initial difficulties in determining what tolerances were necessary for the various mounts, as well as creating new taps in alien thread pitches for all the bolts.
“You know, you don’t have to run over every single outcropping on this rock,” Vorhess commented as the vehicle shuddered a bit.
“Hey, you guys said you wanted a stress test, so you’re getting one,” Nevara shot back as she weaved around a vaguely triangular boulder.
A few weak chuckles died off as she fired the jump jets, then let the vehicle slowly drift back to the surface, letting the new automatic safety fire the jump jets before landing. When Milena Dantius purchased this particular Czenki 4203, the factory original safety had functioned perfectly, but somewhere along the numerous journeys on alien planets, the automatic safety had failed. So, naturally, thousands of light-years from the nearest dealership, and not having packed a spare or cracked the Fabrication Rights Management encryption on the device template, the crew had made do with eyeballing the timing, leading to the inevitable result.
An irritating beep-beep-beep began blaring, which Nevara cut off with a quick tap on a side panel. “Alright folks, time to head back for the big show.”
Ten minutes later, she walked into the test control center set up for the Thrill Seeker’s moment of glory. Today was the day when they’d fire up the Ahab reactor and see if the ship was fit to fly. Technically, the power up sequence had already been done, and the inertial compensators were all online and tested. The only thing that remained to do was fully power up the artificial gravity and see how many unanticipated malfunctions occurred due to Ahab wave exposure.
“So, how’re things going?” she asked, looking from screen to screen as technicians muttered to each other and called out readings. One large display was focused on the exterior of the ship, once again welded together into one piece. The old weathered Turian paint had been carefully stripped off in preparation for adding a layer of nanolaminate armor. Naturally, the new paint job was the subject of much debate, because some people wanted the closest to the original paint scheme for authenticity, others wanted it to look distinctive but not too alien, and still more just wanted to keep the paint costs down. Another large screen displayed, just below the CIC’s ceiling panels, a baseball hovering in zero-G, which was the traditional test object for artificial gravity systems.
“Everything seems good to go… so far,” one of the human technicians, a scruffy looking man with the name tag “DAVIS,” replied. “All the data we’re getting is consistent with a good grav system install.”
The Asari officer nodded, and looked at the ball again. According to the humans, baseballs were used for this task because they were cheap, easily expended items with decent enough accelerometers to track whether or not artificial gravity was kicking in. Of course, they weren’t relying only on the ball’s sensors – the camera feeds focused on the ball were being fed into computers that were analyzing the footage to determine the ball’s rate of descent.
“Only a half hour more of this,” Vorhess commented as he entered the room. “You sure you want to be here for this?”
Nevara turned and gave the Batarian engineer her best sardonic expression. “Hey, I was told that this should be done to my satisfaction, so I’m going to stay here until I’m satisfied.”
“Really. Coulda sworn you were just putting off the paperwork for your little joyride.”
“Huh, that never crossed my mind.” She gave him a quick wink. “What about you? Going to stay for the show?”
He shrugged, leaning against the back of a console. “Might as well. We already have the repair teams ready to go if something goes wrong, it’s just a matter of whether they’ll be needed or not.”
The soft chatter in the room continued as the procedure proceeded apace. Every so often, the descent would pause as the artificial gravity was shut off to verify that all sensors were synchronized and properly calibrated. At the end of the process, the baseball was rolling normally across the deck, at which point Davis announced “Entry team 1, you are green to go.”
On a smaller side screen, a live feed from one of the docking ports showed a team of humans and aliens entering one of the airlocks, tossing a baseball in first to determine if the gravity was behaving normally. After retrieving the ball, the camera feed switched to a body cam on the leader, who threw the ball into every new compartment the group entered. Nevara sighed in irritation as the camera swung widely from side to side, only giving her glimpses of oddly flickering haptic and physical displays here and there.
“Oh boy, there goes another load of half-metal,” Vorhess grumbled as he looked over some of the other screens and their video feeds. “Looks like Milena didn’t stick with a single supplier when she had the ship refurbed. If she had, we’d probably have everything work or be broken, not this weird hodge-podge.”
“How long to get it all fixed?” Nevara didn’t particularly care about the amount of time to get the job done, but she needed to know for the official report. She already knew that Jastley Dominokols, the deputy head of Teiwaz, was riled up about how long it was taking to get the ship back up and running, so heading off his complaints was a major priority.
Sighing, the Batarian rubbed his face. “It’s hard to tell, since they haven’t checked every compartment, so… maybe three weeks?”
Given all the problems that’d been encountered in the process of refitting the Thrill Seeker, Vorhess tended to go for the most pessimistic estimate on repair and alteration times.
“Great, I’ll let the big wigs know the earliest we can do a shakedown cruise is three weeks.” The young Asari turned around and slapped the Batarian on the shoulder. “Look on the bright side – at least we don’t have to have some documentarian or whatever poking around.”
Caitlyn Staziak stifled a yawn as she walked out of the Tekkadan mess hall and ducked into a building to to avoid the ever-rising sun. Digging her phone out of her pocket, she nodded at the people passing by her – some she recognized by name, others she didn’t – and checked her itinerary for the day. For the past two days, she and Ed had done easy, unobtrusive work: lots of B roll, getting to know people who might have interesting stories, having people fill out the onerous release forms to let them show up in the documentary… With all that out of the way, now they could proceed with actual filming.
Caitlyn’s first in-depth interview subject would be the enigmatic Dr. Vass. Despite some interviews on Earth in the immediate aftermath of the Arbrau election, the Salarian doctor remained a mystery in terms of… well, everything. Most of her sources indicated that he was corresponding a lot with medical institutions and specialists, which made total sense – the alien was a doctor, after all – but some of the specialties involved were quite interesting.
She wound her way through the nearly identical looking worn corridors to Ed’s room. The door was open, and inside, the cameraman was going through his final preparations, stashing cleaning wipes, extra memory cards, and battery packs all over his person. Some might have called it paranoid, but Caitlyn had worked with camera people who weren’t anywhere near as diligent and paid the price, so she indulged him in his overpreparation.
Besides, on Mars, lord knows how hard it’ll be to get a replacement, she thought. Things that were at best an inconvenience on Earth were a pain in the ass here on Mars, and that already spoke volumes about the situation.
Ed gave himself a final pat down and nodded, grabbing the camera off the bed. “Alright, ready to go.”
“Great.” Caitlyn started off towards Vass’ office with Ed on her heels, only getting turned around once in the maze of unlabelled doors that was between the two locations.
The door to the infirmary office was already open when they got there, the Salarian doctor tapping away at his computer without a care in the world. He didn’t even look up when they stopped. He just finished his work, then turned and said, “Ah, Ms. Staziak! It must be time for our appointment!”
There was something about the alien’s tone of voice that bothered her. The enthusiasm was real – she’d interviewed enough people to know when someone was faking it, even if all the little cues a human had weren’t there. But there was something to his voice that made her feel like she was under a microscope, instead of the other way around.
“It sure is,” she replied, taking a polite look around. The office was a bit cleaner than the rest of the base she’d seen, even if it was just as worn, with a computer terminal in the far corner as part of a wrap around desk. One wall had a window and door into the actual infirmary, while the other was dominated by empty shelves over a set of drawers and cabinets. Boxes of old books and other miscellaneous items sat on the counter top, presumably from whoever last occupied the office, but she couldn’t discount the possibility that they were his property. “Are you comfortable here, or do you want to move somewhere else?”
“This is fine for the preliminaries.”
After a few minutes of Ed putting up small LED lights to make things a bit more photogenic, the interview started in earnest. Caitlyn patiently worked her way through the preliminaries, which was much easier than it would’ve been with a human interview subject. There were so many interesting tangents to get into, just due to Vass’ nature, that actually talking to him was quite a pleasant experience. Most of it would wind up on the digital cutting room floor or perhaps used as advertisement fodder, but it beat talking to the 9000th executive, politician, or activist who went to a university, met someone with connections, and experienced a meteoric rise afterwards.
At last, she got the conversation where she wanted it. “So, doctor, it seems like you’re doing a lot of research into… controversial subjects.” She consulted her phone, reading off the list of highly restricted research topics. “Human genetic research, neural alteration, medical implants, the Alaya-Vijnana System… the list goes on and on. I know there’s probably a lot of taboos that don’t cross cultural lines, but as an average person, that sounds very suspicious.”
“Ah, yes, I would imagine it would have a… sinister air, to the uninformed,” Vass replied, not even perturbed by the question. In fact, that made Caitlyn wonder if he wanted her to ask about those things. “It’s easier to explain things if you see them for yourselves.”
With that, the alien got out of his chair and walked out the door, forcing the humans to hastily follow. Soon, they found themselves in dingier and dingier parts of the base, areas that clearly weren’t being used on a regular basis… or at all. Caitlyn couldn’t tell if the grime on the floors and walls was black due to age or being a foul mix of who knows what, and she imagined it’d be easier on her peace of mind if she didn’t know.
“Ah, here we are,” Vass announced, stopping at a seemingly random door. “I must warn you, what you are about to see might be quite disturbing.”
The door snapped open and inside… The two humans carefully stepped inside and began looking over the place, peering at crude operating tables and esoteric equipment, all draped in plastic and bearing unique identifier tags. Caitlyn flicked her eyes towards the ceiling and noted the dim cast of the lights, and realized why the place bothered her. It all had the air of some kind of horror movie lair, where all sorts of tortures and atrocities would take place.
“What you see before you,” Vass swept one hand in an arc that encompassed the entire room, “is one of the most heinous cases of exploitation of sapient life I have seen.”
Ed had already brought the camera to bear on the Salarian, who proceeded to pace around the room as he continued. “All of this is the foul legacy of Chryse Guard Security, who forcibly implanted cybernetics into children, with no regard for sanitation, safety, or medical ethics.” Even Caitlyn, someone with a near total lack of experience in reading alien expressions, could see the sheer disgust and indignation on Vass’s face. “A conservative estimate is that 50% of the fatalities could’ve been avoided by regular disinfection of the tools used to implant the Alaya-Vijnana nanomachines. At least 30% of those who were crippled by failed integration into their nervous system wouldn’t have suffered that fate if the operators had bothered to learn how to adjust the appropriate settings. That there are only about two hundred known children in Chryse’s slums whose disability is traceable to the botched implantations speaks more to the high rate of suicide and general lack of medical care that killed the rest.”
Okay, you might have bit off more than you can chew, Caitlyn thought to herself, licking her lips as she tried to figure out where to take her line of questioning. Oh what the hell, I don’t understand most of this jargon, I might as well go the obvious route, since the audience doesn’t understand it either. “Couldn’t you learn everything you needed from examining the machines and taking them apart?”
Vass chuckled and shifted into more of a professorial mode. “Oh, we gathered plenty of data from functional examples of Alaya-Vijnana implants and our examination of the machinery here, but to truly understand a system as complex and finely integrated as this requires a holistic comprehension of how it was crafted. When you understand the intent behind each and every design decision of this level of wetware, then you can safely alter it.”
She nodded, then paused. “Alter it? Don’t you mean remove it?”
“Removing nanotech cybernetics is a difficult task,” Vass explained, ignoring Ed as he silently scuttled to the side to get a new shot. “It’s not a simple plug-and-play operation, like replacing a replacement limb or eye. If you are lucky, you can render a nanite based implant inert and instruct it to essentially dissolve, then allow it to be excreted through natural body fluids. But for something that intertwines itself into the nervous system, well…” The alien doctor sighed. “The most you can do is make sure the wetware interface is properly configured and augment the organic components if the load placed on them is excessive.”
“That means…?”
“Individually examining each patient and crafting a treatment regiment for each one,” the Salarian elaborated. “Obviously, if I had access to a proper, state of the art medical facility, I could assure decent outcomes for most, if not all of those children. As it is…” He sighed and shrugged. “At best, I might be able to give some of the paralyzed children a limited amount of mobility.”
It took Caitlyn a few moments to formulate a response to that. “Don’t the hospitals here have…”
“The necessary resources?” A dark chuckle came out of Vass’ mouth. “Within the first two weeks of making planetfall, I went to inspect the local medical facilities. They are… inadequate for this kind of work.” He shook his head in frustration. “Theoretically, Gjallarhorn’s medical facilities should be available for critical care at that level, but I highly doubt that they would cooperate in this venture.”
“I—I had no idea things were that bad.”
“Well, isn’t that part of the reason you’re here? To learn kind of crucible could create such formidable youngsters as Tekkadan and Kudelia Aina Bernstein?”
The documentarian gave him a sheepish smile. “You’ve got me there.”
Nodding, the Salarian returned the smile. “Now, perhaps we should leave this dark and depressing place and discuss more uplifting subjects. Perhaps you would be interested in our hydroponics bays, where we grow an assortment of fruits and vegetables from Citadel space to help feed everyone on the base, as well as producing seeds for sale to local farms.” His smile grew. “I think you would be quite interested in one of our specimens, a tuber from Tuchanka – it’s quite delicious when deep fried.”
Caitlyn shot glance at Ed, who gave her a thumbs up. “Lead on, doctor.”
Orga rubbed his eyes and took a sip of his coffee, looking suspiciously around the arrival terminal of the Hakofune space station. The station was officially neutral territory, where civilian ships from all the economic blocks could dock and unload cargo, but it was still administered by Gjallarhorn. As far as he was concerned, he was potentially in enemy territory, which was why he had an armed guard in Shuttle 2 and an Asari bodyguard with him. He didn’t anticipate problems, but if Gjallarhorn decided to start some, he at least was ready to get his ass out of there in a hurry.
To be honest, he wasn’t really eager to be here at a painfully early hour, but there were two reasons for it. First, it bought him a little time before he had to give an interview to Caitlyn Staziak for her documentary, which he didn’t look forward to at all. Not because she bothered him as a person (he had to admit to checking her out once or twice) or because he wasn’t used to interviews (he’d had to do dozens of them on Earth), but because he worried that the weight of everything he was doing would settle in and crush him partway through.
Second, Naze Turbine was coming by for the first time since they’d parted ways after Edmonton, even if it was only for a day.
Orga had hoped to spend more time with his mentor, but Naze had hinted that he was on stop secret Teiwaz business. What that was, he had no idea, but from what little Naze had given away, it seemed like the Hammerhead was working its way from Jupiter to the inner spheres. That meant it was probably related to the aliens in some way, although from what he’d heard, progress was slow on that kind of stuff.
His thoughts were interrupted by the nearby door sliding open, revealing Naze in his white suit and Amida hanging off his arm. The smile on the older man’s face grew wider as he spotted who was waiting for him. “Orga! How are you!”
As Orga approached to give him a handshake, Naze pulled some cash from his left pocket and handed it to a smirking Amida.
“We had a little bet going,” Amida explained, “about whether or not you’d be the first person Naze here would see once we docked.”
Naze gave Orga a helpless shrug. “I lost.”
“Well, next time, give me a heads up, brother,” Orga said with a chuckle.
“Maybe I will.” Naze turned to his wife. “Amida, darling, would you—”
“Handle the boring paperwork?” She had a sly smile on her face. “Of course, dear. You boys go and enjoy your alone time, alright?”
Naze put a hand on Orga’s back and gently turned him towards the door. As they walked in, Asari bodyguard in tow, an exasperated expression crossed the older man’s face. “Here’s a lesson for you Orga – when you find that special woman that you just can’t let go, you have to be ready for her to yank your chain whenever you give her an opening. And of course, you have to be ready to yank her chain.”
“Uh… right.” Orga hadn’t bothered thinking about getting into relationship for months, just due to Tekkadan’s operations getting more and more complex. The closest thing he’d had to romance in his life had been some flirting with Merribit, but to be honest, it didn’t really bother him that it’d just stopped at some point after Edmonton.
“You’re young, Orga, so there’ll be plenty of opportunities for you to get to know someone,” Naze continued, guiding the group deeper into the ship. “Now, there’s some business we have to attend to.”
Orga glanced over his shoulder. “Is it secret business?”
“Only to anyone who isn’t in Teiwaz and Tekkadan,” Naze replied as he squinted at the doors they were passing by. “Ah, here it is.”
After a few taps on the keypad next to the door, the door slid open to reveal a small compartment, perhaps not more than a few square meters, full of computer equipment, complete with a keyboard and monitor. Naze turned and gestured to the hardware around them. “Well, here we are. You’re looking at a human made quantum entanglement communicator.”
Orga looked at the hardware, then at his mentor. “Okay…”
“You’re getting two of them – one for the Isaribi, and one for your base,” the older man explained. “They’ll be shipped to you in pieces, but I have to give you a key component in person.” He wagged a finger at Orga. “Come look at this.”
Orga followed Naze to what looked like a large, double latched metal storage container. Upon unlatching it, Naze flipped open the lid and pulled out a thick circuit board that he handed off to Orga. “This here is the heart of the system.”
Orga leaned over and peered inside. A layer of cubes interconnected cubes, about the size of a 9-ounce shot glass, filled out the bottom of the container. Each cube had a connector port on the top, and he suspected each of the other sides did too. “What’s that stuff?”
“Each of those cubes allows you to connect to one other facility with a QEC,” Naze explained. “One of them is a direct line to the Old Man, two of them are going to be your direct lines to me, and so on. The egg heads call it a “peer to peer network,” which basically means that every Teiwaz facility is going to be connected to each other… once everyone gets the new hardware. Right now, the priority is on getting all the major operations in the inner spheres equipped, so I have a cargo hold full of the stuff, all officially listed as ‘surplus computer hardware,’ which is technically accurate.”
It took Orga a minute or so to roll the words over in his mind. “So you’re saying we’ve got an untraceable communications net that no one can takeover, right?”
“Exactly!” Naze took back the circuit board and reinstalled it in the machine, then snapped the cover back into place. “What’s even better is that once we get all our ships equipped with these, we won’t have to worry about whether or not we’re in Ariadne range to make any calls we need to.”
“Are we going to be using these QECs from now on?”
“Only for urgent or secret business,” Naze replied as they walked out of the room. “Everyone in the Teiwaz top brass may not agree on everything, but they all agree that stopping our routine comm traffic would raise too many questions.”
“Yeah, that’d look pretty suspicious,” Orga agreed. “So, how are things going out there?”
“A lot better now that we have that new navigation software that—” Naze paused, trying to dredge up the name, “Rala? – made for us. You wouldn’t believe how much time and fuel consumption we’re cutting off our course with it. I’m having it installed in every ship that docks at our base.”
“I’ll let her know you like it.” Orga smiled. The Asari pilot had gotten together with a few alien shipmates on the cruise back to Mars to revamp the Isaribi’s navigation suite, which was merely adequate to the task. While the process took a bit longer than the voyage home, the new software promised to make future trips faster and cheaper.
“Honestly, I’d like to thank her in person, but I’ve got a schedule to keep.” A mischevious twinkle appeared in the older man’s eye. “The Old Man loves that we can charge a premium on Teiwaz shipping, now that we’re the fastest in the business.”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, if we’re really being honest, I prefer being out here to dealing with all the board room drama these days.” Naze shuddered, something Orga felt was exaggerated for effect. “Plus I get to have the one division that isn’t spending tons of money.” He paused and looked up at the ceiling as he tried to recall something. “By the way, I have some other good news. You’ll be getting a job soon from the Old Man – we’ve got some prototype mobile suits that could use some field testing on Mars.”
“New mobile suits? That seems pretty fast.” Orga didn’t bother keeping the doubt out of his voice.
“Well, you have to keep in mind that mobile suit designers are always working on something new,” Naze replied. “You can’t just have them stop once they finish one mobile suit. If you do that, they get rusty. So once they finished all the Teiwaz frame designs, they started working on a cheaper, more mass production frame. Plus, these days, a lot of the hard work is handled by computers.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” He filed that away for later.
“So, how are things going for you?” Naze asked, turning the earlier question around.
Orga shrugged. “I mean, we’re not starving or anything, but we’re not raking in the big bucks with the media stuff either. Right now, it’s just more paperwork.”
“I’m not really surprised by that. Everyone else I talk to is complaining about how they’re not making much money off of alien tech either.” The trio finally reached Naze’s office, which was furnished in much the same style as his formal meeting room. In one corner, tucked behind a fine wooden desk, was a safe, which the older man unlocked, while using his body to block his guests’ view of the combination lock. He placed three small plastic cases full of the cubes on the desk. “Here you go: one for the Isaribi, one for your base here, and one for Earth branch.”
“I thought you were going to deliver the – uh – cubes to Earth branch?” Orga paused as Naze handed him an empty, nondescript duffel bag, which the teen carefully placed the three boxes into.
“I could do that and risk Arbrau customs finding them, or I could just have you guys take it on the next shuttle to Edmonton.” Naze smiled. “You’ve got to make the most of your opportunities, no matter how small they are.”
“Uh huh.” Orga ran a hand through his hair. “Let me guess, you want me to buddy up to whoever’s hiring us to test those new mobile suits.”
“Well, you don’t have to be buddies, but making your own connections is always a good move.” Naze sighed and leaned on the safe. “Like it or not, you’re in charge of a large operation, even though the media side isn’t really making money yet. Getting to know the rest of the big wigs is par for the course.“
Orga took a big breath, held it for a few seconds, and then blew it out. Easy for you to say, he thought. “Any advice?”
“Well, in this specific case, just go into it like you would do with any contract negotiation. Be respectful, keep calm, and be noncommittal if anything might be a problem.” Naze paused and rolled his eyes. “Be glad you’re not doing this at one of the meetups on Saisei. Sometimes people have a bit too much to drink and get a bit… adversarial.”
“Great.”
The older man smiled and closed his eyes. “The good news is that most of the problems go away if you’re successful. If there’s one thing no can dispute, it’s bringing in lots of money.” He opened his eyes and widened his grin. “How do you think I get away with so much?”
“I thought it was because you suck up—” Orga’s mock ribbing was interrupted by his omni-tool gauntlet vibrating. Scowling, he activated the haptic interface and tapped the offending notification icon. “Who the hell— Oh, it’s—uh—Montag.”
“Has he contacted you since we last met?” Naze’s eyes had narrowed at Orga’s hesitation with Montag’s name.
“No. This the first time.” Pausing, the teen stared at the unopened message in his inbox, then finally shutdown the holographic display.
“You’re not going to read it?”
“Nah, I figure if I did it now, I’d be preoccupied during the interview and then I’ll get a whole bunch of uncomfortable questions I don’t want to deal with. Besides, he sent a text message, instead of trying to call me directly. That means whatever he wants, it’s not that time sensitive.”
Naze’s suspicious gaze remained on Orga. “Have you found out anything about him that I should know about?”
“Not really. Well… Vass thinks he’s super dedicated to a cause or might just be deluded.” Orga tried to keep his face still, even as he grappled with the fact that he wasn’t sure why he was keeping this secret to begin with. As far as he could tell, the secrecy was mostly to keep McGillis’ involvement in events hidden from Gjallarhorn. He shrugged. “It’s hard to get a feel for the guy when we’ve barely done any business with him.”
Nodding, Naze visibly relaxed. “The Old Man had some people do some digging on this Montag, and hit nothing but dead ends. I won’t tell you to not work with Montag, but if he asks you to do something… extreme, you should bring it to me or the Old Man. It’s not like you can’t get a hold of us at any time with these QECs.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Good.” Naze stretched and cracked his neck. “So… are you seeing anyone? Because I have plenty of pointers if you need help...”
Orga merely sputtered and glared at the dapper gentleman who verbally burned him.
Author's Notes: Hope you like the world building exercise I went on with the APC, as well as clarifying the status of the Thrill Seeker. As someone who does machining and machining adjacent work, I can tell you tolerances are a bitch, as well as thread pitches.
Given Vass' profession, I couldn't imagine him not being pissed at the shit job the CGS guys did with implanting kids with cybernetics on a technical level, never mind the obvious moral issues with that. Also, given the general shit state of the Chryse economy, I figured the state of medical care is pretty bad, and wrote accordingly. I plan to do more with the Tuchankan potatoes as well.
One thing I wanted to do with this chapter was definitively settle how Teiwaz is going to be handling the QEC comm network. I decided to go with a more decentralized approach, mostly because McMurdo Barriston is smart enough to see the disadvantages of centralized comm networks when hostile aliens are a thing.
Thanks to some random blog, I was reminded of the big ass space station from season 2 in orbit of Mars, which answered something I was confused about (where do the civilian ships dock). Originally, I was thinking about having Orga go through the interview, but this chapter is long enough already. Also, I was worried about whether a 6 month turn around time for Shiden prototypes was unrealistic, then the USAF straight up said they used AI to design and build a plane in a year, so that's not even a problem.
Something small and grey bounced on the surface of Teiwaz’s Black Site asteroid.
When observed closer to ground level, the bouncing object revealed itself to be a Czenki 4203 APC, its odd mix of angles and curves betraying its alien heritage. Six wheels, all on independent suspension mounts, dug into the pulverized dust on the asteroid’s surface and flung it out into space. Atop the vehicle, a small turret rotated, with an old 90mm mass accelerator fitted with a dented and worn barrel shroud mounted in the middle, with a mass accelerator machine gun and particle beam projector bracketing it to the sides. The barrels of all three guns independently rotated up and down as the vehicle made its way along the pitted surface, targeting nothing but arbitrary points in space.
Inside the vehicle, Nevara Char was having a blast in the driver’s seat. One of the few highlights of the long trip out of Citadel space had been joyriding on alien planets and moons, to the point that shore leave revolved around the order in which crew members got their chance to drive. It had been a dark day when one of the junior officers had cut on the jump jets a little too late after racing up a slope at 100 kph and damaged the APC’s original structural frame. For Nevara, who was one of the unfortunates waiting for her driving slot, it’d been a shot to the gut that lingered through the initial encounter with Tekkadan.
In the back, Vorhess and a group of human and alien technicians were busy checking readouts on tablets, making sure the newly repaired vehicle was operating to spec. The Czenki 4203 was designed to be a cheap, cheerful, and durable transportation option for planetary survey and first/second-wave colonization operations, which explained the modular construction of the vehicle. Czenki, as it proudly boasted its advertising, had consulted hundreds of planetary surveyors, explorers, and colonists, then crafted the ultimate vehicle for handling the top 50 causes of vehicle damage and destruction. It was a list that included thresher maws surfacing directly under the vehicle, running over land mines, operator error, sinkholes, operating near molten lava, and jumping over angry Krogan firing anti-vehicle rounds, amongst many other notable causes.
The ultimate benefit of this was that Czenki hadn’t bothered to use mass effect field forged materials in the structural frame that the wheels, jump jets, and ground penetrating scanners used, and even better, all those components were designed to be easily removed from an existing frame. As a result, Teiwaz’s engineers determined that mobile suit frame materials were more than adequate as a substitute, stripped all the parts off the damaged frame, forged a new frame, and mounted the old hardware on the new frame within three months. In fact, the work would have been done even faster, if not for initial difficulties in determining what tolerances were necessary for the various mounts, as well as creating new taps in alien thread pitches for all the bolts.
“You know, you don’t have to run over every single outcropping on this rock,” Vorhess commented as the vehicle shuddered a bit.
“Hey, you guys said you wanted a stress test, so you’re getting one,” Nevara shot back as she weaved around a vaguely triangular boulder.
A few weak chuckles died off as she fired the jump jets, then let the vehicle slowly drift back to the surface, letting the new automatic safety fire the jump jets before landing. When Milena Dantius purchased this particular Czenki 4203, the factory original safety had functioned perfectly, but somewhere along the numerous journeys on alien planets, the automatic safety had failed. So, naturally, thousands of light-years from the nearest dealership, and not having packed a spare or cracked the Fabrication Rights Management encryption on the device template, the crew had made do with eyeballing the timing, leading to the inevitable result.
An irritating beep-beep-beep began blaring, which Nevara cut off with a quick tap on a side panel. “Alright folks, time to head back for the big show.”
Ten minutes later, she walked into the test control center set up for the Thrill Seeker’s moment of glory. Today was the day when they’d fire up the Ahab reactor and see if the ship was fit to fly. Technically, the power up sequence had already been done, and the inertial compensators were all online and tested. The only thing that remained to do was fully power up the artificial gravity and see how many unanticipated malfunctions occurred due to Ahab wave exposure.
“So, how’re things going?” she asked, looking from screen to screen as technicians muttered to each other and called out readings. One large display was focused on the exterior of the ship, once again welded together into one piece. The old weathered Turian paint had been carefully stripped off in preparation for adding a layer of nanolaminate armor. Naturally, the new paint job was the subject of much debate, because some people wanted the closest to the original paint scheme for authenticity, others wanted it to look distinctive but not too alien, and still more just wanted to keep the paint costs down. Another large screen displayed, just below the CIC’s ceiling panels, a baseball hovering in zero-G, which was the traditional test object for artificial gravity systems.
“Everything seems good to go… so far,” one of the human technicians, a scruffy looking man with the name tag “DAVIS,” replied. “All the data we’re getting is consistent with a good grav system install.”
The Asari officer nodded, and looked at the ball again. According to the humans, baseballs were used for this task because they were cheap, easily expended items with decent enough accelerometers to track whether or not artificial gravity was kicking in. Of course, they weren’t relying only on the ball’s sensors – the camera feeds focused on the ball were being fed into computers that were analyzing the footage to determine the ball’s rate of descent.
“Only a half hour more of this,” Vorhess commented as he entered the room. “You sure you want to be here for this?”
Nevara turned and gave the Batarian engineer her best sardonic expression. “Hey, I was told that this should be done to my satisfaction, so I’m going to stay here until I’m satisfied.”
“Really. Coulda sworn you were just putting off the paperwork for your little joyride.”
“Huh, that never crossed my mind.” She gave him a quick wink. “What about you? Going to stay for the show?”
He shrugged, leaning against the back of a console. “Might as well. We already have the repair teams ready to go if something goes wrong, it’s just a matter of whether they’ll be needed or not.”
The soft chatter in the room continued as the procedure proceeded apace. Every so often, the descent would pause as the artificial gravity was shut off to verify that all sensors were synchronized and properly calibrated. At the end of the process, the baseball was rolling normally across the deck, at which point Davis announced “Entry team 1, you are green to go.”
On a smaller side screen, a live feed from one of the docking ports showed a team of humans and aliens entering one of the airlocks, tossing a baseball in first to determine if the gravity was behaving normally. After retrieving the ball, the camera feed switched to a body cam on the leader, who threw the ball into every new compartment the group entered. Nevara sighed in irritation as the camera swung widely from side to side, only giving her glimpses of oddly flickering haptic and physical displays here and there.
“Oh boy, there goes another load of half-metal,” Vorhess grumbled as he looked over some of the other screens and their video feeds. “Looks like Milena didn’t stick with a single supplier when she had the ship refurbed. If she had, we’d probably have everything work or be broken, not this weird hodge-podge.”
“How long to get it all fixed?” Nevara didn’t particularly care about the amount of time to get the job done, but she needed to know for the official report. She already knew that Jastley Dominokols, the deputy head of Teiwaz, was riled up about how long it was taking to get the ship back up and running, so heading off his complaints was a major priority.
Sighing, the Batarian rubbed his face. “It’s hard to tell, since they haven’t checked every compartment, so… maybe three weeks?”
Given all the problems that’d been encountered in the process of refitting the Thrill Seeker, Vorhess tended to go for the most pessimistic estimate on repair and alteration times.
“Great, I’ll let the big wigs know the earliest we can do a shakedown cruise is three weeks.” The young Asari turned around and slapped the Batarian on the shoulder. “Look on the bright side – at least we don’t have to have some documentarian or whatever poking around.”
Caitlyn Staziak stifled a yawn as she walked out of the Tekkadan mess hall and ducked into a building to to avoid the ever-rising sun. Digging her phone out of her pocket, she nodded at the people passing by her – some she recognized by name, others she didn’t – and checked her itinerary for the day. For the past two days, she and Ed had done easy, unobtrusive work: lots of B roll, getting to know people who might have interesting stories, having people fill out the onerous release forms to let them show up in the documentary… With all that out of the way, now they could proceed with actual filming.
Caitlyn’s first in-depth interview subject would be the enigmatic Dr. Vass. Despite some interviews on Earth in the immediate aftermath of the Arbrau election, the Salarian doctor remained a mystery in terms of… well, everything. Most of her sources indicated that he was corresponding a lot with medical institutions and specialists, which made total sense – the alien was a doctor, after all – but some of the specialties involved were quite interesting.
She wound her way through the nearly identical looking worn corridors to Ed’s room. The door was open, and inside, the cameraman was going through his final preparations, stashing cleaning wipes, extra memory cards, and battery packs all over his person. Some might have called it paranoid, but Caitlyn had worked with camera people who weren’t anywhere near as diligent and paid the price, so she indulged him in his overpreparation.
Besides, on Mars, lord knows how hard it’ll be to get a replacement, she thought. Things that were at best an inconvenience on Earth were a pain in the ass here on Mars, and that already spoke volumes about the situation.
Ed gave himself a final pat down and nodded, grabbing the camera off the bed. “Alright, ready to go.”
“Great.” Caitlyn started off towards Vass’ office with Ed on her heels, only getting turned around once in the maze of unlabelled doors that was between the two locations.
The door to the infirmary office was already open when they got there, the Salarian doctor tapping away at his computer without a care in the world. He didn’t even look up when they stopped. He just finished his work, then turned and said, “Ah, Ms. Staziak! It must be time for our appointment!”
There was something about the alien’s tone of voice that bothered her. The enthusiasm was real – she’d interviewed enough people to know when someone was faking it, even if all the little cues a human had weren’t there. But there was something to his voice that made her feel like she was under a microscope, instead of the other way around.
“It sure is,” she replied, taking a polite look around. The office was a bit cleaner than the rest of the base she’d seen, even if it was just as worn, with a computer terminal in the far corner as part of a wrap around desk. One wall had a window and door into the actual infirmary, while the other was dominated by empty shelves over a set of drawers and cabinets. Boxes of old books and other miscellaneous items sat on the counter top, presumably from whoever last occupied the office, but she couldn’t discount the possibility that they were his property. “Are you comfortable here, or do you want to move somewhere else?”
“This is fine for the preliminaries.”
After a few minutes of Ed putting up small LED lights to make things a bit more photogenic, the interview started in earnest. Caitlyn patiently worked her way through the preliminaries, which was much easier than it would’ve been with a human interview subject. There were so many interesting tangents to get into, just due to Vass’ nature, that actually talking to him was quite a pleasant experience. Most of it would wind up on the digital cutting room floor or perhaps used as advertisement fodder, but it beat talking to the 9000th executive, politician, or activist who went to a university, met someone with connections, and experienced a meteoric rise afterwards.
At last, she got the conversation where she wanted it. “So, doctor, it seems like you’re doing a lot of research into… controversial subjects.” She consulted her phone, reading off the list of highly restricted research topics. “Human genetic research, neural alteration, medical implants, the Alaya-Vijnana System… the list goes on and on. I know there’s probably a lot of taboos that don’t cross cultural lines, but as an average person, that sounds very suspicious.”
“Ah, yes, I would imagine it would have a… sinister air, to the uninformed,” Vass replied, not even perturbed by the question. In fact, that made Caitlyn wonder if he wanted her to ask about those things. “It’s easier to explain things if you see them for yourselves.”
With that, the alien got out of his chair and walked out the door, forcing the humans to hastily follow. Soon, they found themselves in dingier and dingier parts of the base, areas that clearly weren’t being used on a regular basis… or at all. Caitlyn couldn’t tell if the grime on the floors and walls was black due to age or being a foul mix of who knows what, and she imagined it’d be easier on her peace of mind if she didn’t know.
“Ah, here we are,” Vass announced, stopping at a seemingly random door. “I must warn you, what you are about to see might be quite disturbing.”
The door snapped open and inside… The two humans carefully stepped inside and began looking over the place, peering at crude operating tables and esoteric equipment, all draped in plastic and bearing unique identifier tags. Caitlyn flicked her eyes towards the ceiling and noted the dim cast of the lights, and realized why the place bothered her. It all had the air of some kind of horror movie lair, where all sorts of tortures and atrocities would take place.
“What you see before you,” Vass swept one hand in an arc that encompassed the entire room, “is one of the most heinous cases of exploitation of sapient life I have seen.”
Ed had already brought the camera to bear on the Salarian, who proceeded to pace around the room as he continued. “All of this is the foul legacy of Chryse Guard Security, who forcibly implanted cybernetics into children, with no regard for sanitation, safety, or medical ethics.” Even Caitlyn, someone with a near total lack of experience in reading alien expressions, could see the sheer disgust and indignation on Vass’s face. “A conservative estimate is that 50% of the fatalities could’ve been avoided by regular disinfection of the tools used to implant the Alaya-Vijnana nanomachines. At least 30% of those who were crippled by failed integration into their nervous system wouldn’t have suffered that fate if the operators had bothered to learn how to adjust the appropriate settings. That there are only about two hundred known children in Chryse’s slums whose disability is traceable to the botched implantations speaks more to the high rate of suicide and general lack of medical care that killed the rest.”
Okay, you might have bit off more than you can chew, Caitlyn thought to herself, licking her lips as she tried to figure out where to take her line of questioning. Oh what the hell, I don’t understand most of this jargon, I might as well go the obvious route, since the audience doesn’t understand it either. “Couldn’t you learn everything you needed from examining the machines and taking them apart?”
Vass chuckled and shifted into more of a professorial mode. “Oh, we gathered plenty of data from functional examples of Alaya-Vijnana implants and our examination of the machinery here, but to truly understand a system as complex and finely integrated as this requires a holistic comprehension of how it was crafted. When you understand the intent behind each and every design decision of this level of wetware, then you can safely alter it.”
She nodded, then paused. “Alter it? Don’t you mean remove it?”
“Removing nanotech cybernetics is a difficult task,” Vass explained, ignoring Ed as he silently scuttled to the side to get a new shot. “It’s not a simple plug-and-play operation, like replacing a replacement limb or eye. If you are lucky, you can render a nanite based implant inert and instruct it to essentially dissolve, then allow it to be excreted through natural body fluids. But for something that intertwines itself into the nervous system, well…” The alien doctor sighed. “The most you can do is make sure the wetware interface is properly configured and augment the organic components if the load placed on them is excessive.”
“That means…?”
“Individually examining each patient and crafting a treatment regiment for each one,” the Salarian elaborated. “Obviously, if I had access to a proper, state of the art medical facility, I could assure decent outcomes for most, if not all of those children. As it is…” He sighed and shrugged. “At best, I might be able to give some of the paralyzed children a limited amount of mobility.”
It took Caitlyn a few moments to formulate a response to that. “Don’t the hospitals here have…”
“The necessary resources?” A dark chuckle came out of Vass’ mouth. “Within the first two weeks of making planetfall, I went to inspect the local medical facilities. They are… inadequate for this kind of work.” He shook his head in frustration. “Theoretically, Gjallarhorn’s medical facilities should be available for critical care at that level, but I highly doubt that they would cooperate in this venture.”
“I—I had no idea things were that bad.”
“Well, isn’t that part of the reason you’re here? To learn kind of crucible could create such formidable youngsters as Tekkadan and Kudelia Aina Bernstein?”
The documentarian gave him a sheepish smile. “You’ve got me there.”
Nodding, the Salarian returned the smile. “Now, perhaps we should leave this dark and depressing place and discuss more uplifting subjects. Perhaps you would be interested in our hydroponics bays, where we grow an assortment of fruits and vegetables from Citadel space to help feed everyone on the base, as well as producing seeds for sale to local farms.” His smile grew. “I think you would be quite interested in one of our specimens, a tuber from Tuchanka – it’s quite delicious when deep fried.”
Caitlyn shot glance at Ed, who gave her a thumbs up. “Lead on, doctor.”
Orga rubbed his eyes and took a sip of his coffee, looking suspiciously around the arrival terminal of the Hakofune space station. The station was officially neutral territory, where civilian ships from all the economic blocks could dock and unload cargo, but it was still administered by Gjallarhorn. As far as he was concerned, he was potentially in enemy territory, which was why he had an armed guard in Shuttle 2 and an Asari bodyguard with him. He didn’t anticipate problems, but if Gjallarhorn decided to start some, he at least was ready to get his ass out of there in a hurry.
To be honest, he wasn’t really eager to be here at a painfully early hour, but there were two reasons for it. First, it bought him a little time before he had to give an interview to Caitlyn Staziak for her documentary, which he didn’t look forward to at all. Not because she bothered him as a person (he had to admit to checking her out once or twice) or because he wasn’t used to interviews (he’d had to do dozens of them on Earth), but because he worried that the weight of everything he was doing would settle in and crush him partway through.
Second, Naze Turbine was coming by for the first time since they’d parted ways after Edmonton, even if it was only for a day.
Orga had hoped to spend more time with his mentor, but Naze had hinted that he was on stop secret Teiwaz business. What that was, he had no idea, but from what little Naze had given away, it seemed like the Hammerhead was working its way from Jupiter to the inner spheres. That meant it was probably related to the aliens in some way, although from what he’d heard, progress was slow on that kind of stuff.
His thoughts were interrupted by the nearby door sliding open, revealing Naze in his white suit and Amida hanging off his arm. The smile on the older man’s face grew wider as he spotted who was waiting for him. “Orga! How are you!”
As Orga approached to give him a handshake, Naze pulled some cash from his left pocket and handed it to a smirking Amida.
“We had a little bet going,” Amida explained, “about whether or not you’d be the first person Naze here would see once we docked.”
Naze gave Orga a helpless shrug. “I lost.”
“Well, next time, give me a heads up, brother,” Orga said with a chuckle.
“Maybe I will.” Naze turned to his wife. “Amida, darling, would you—”
“Handle the boring paperwork?” She had a sly smile on her face. “Of course, dear. You boys go and enjoy your alone time, alright?”
Naze put a hand on Orga’s back and gently turned him towards the door. As they walked in, Asari bodyguard in tow, an exasperated expression crossed the older man’s face. “Here’s a lesson for you Orga – when you find that special woman that you just can’t let go, you have to be ready for her to yank your chain whenever you give her an opening. And of course, you have to be ready to yank her chain.”
“Uh… right.” Orga hadn’t bothered thinking about getting into relationship for months, just due to Tekkadan’s operations getting more and more complex. The closest thing he’d had to romance in his life had been some flirting with Merribit, but to be honest, it didn’t really bother him that it’d just stopped at some point after Edmonton.
“You’re young, Orga, so there’ll be plenty of opportunities for you to get to know someone,” Naze continued, guiding the group deeper into the ship. “Now, there’s some business we have to attend to.”
Orga glanced over his shoulder. “Is it secret business?”
“Only to anyone who isn’t in Teiwaz and Tekkadan,” Naze replied as he squinted at the doors they were passing by. “Ah, here it is.”
After a few taps on the keypad next to the door, the door slid open to reveal a small compartment, perhaps not more than a few square meters, full of computer equipment, complete with a keyboard and monitor. Naze turned and gestured to the hardware around them. “Well, here we are. You’re looking at a human made quantum entanglement communicator.”
Orga looked at the hardware, then at his mentor. “Okay…”
“You’re getting two of them – one for the Isaribi, and one for your base,” the older man explained. “They’ll be shipped to you in pieces, but I have to give you a key component in person.” He wagged a finger at Orga. “Come look at this.”
Orga followed Naze to what looked like a large, double latched metal storage container. Upon unlatching it, Naze flipped open the lid and pulled out a thick circuit board that he handed off to Orga. “This here is the heart of the system.”
Orga leaned over and peered inside. A layer of cubes interconnected cubes, about the size of a 9-ounce shot glass, filled out the bottom of the container. Each cube had a connector port on the top, and he suspected each of the other sides did too. “What’s that stuff?”
“Each of those cubes allows you to connect to one other facility with a QEC,” Naze explained. “One of them is a direct line to the Old Man, two of them are going to be your direct lines to me, and so on. The egg heads call it a “peer to peer network,” which basically means that every Teiwaz facility is going to be connected to each other… once everyone gets the new hardware. Right now, the priority is on getting all the major operations in the inner spheres equipped, so I have a cargo hold full of the stuff, all officially listed as ‘surplus computer hardware,’ which is technically accurate.”
It took Orga a minute or so to roll the words over in his mind. “So you’re saying we’ve got an untraceable communications net that no one can takeover, right?”
“Exactly!” Naze took back the circuit board and reinstalled it in the machine, then snapped the cover back into place. “What’s even better is that once we get all our ships equipped with these, we won’t have to worry about whether or not we’re in Ariadne range to make any calls we need to.”
“Are we going to be using these QECs from now on?”
“Only for urgent or secret business,” Naze replied as they walked out of the room. “Everyone in the Teiwaz top brass may not agree on everything, but they all agree that stopping our routine comm traffic would raise too many questions.”
“Yeah, that’d look pretty suspicious,” Orga agreed. “So, how are things going out there?”
“A lot better now that we have that new navigation software that—” Naze paused, trying to dredge up the name, “Rala? – made for us. You wouldn’t believe how much time and fuel consumption we’re cutting off our course with it. I’m having it installed in every ship that docks at our base.”
“I’ll let her know you like it.” Orga smiled. The Asari pilot had gotten together with a few alien shipmates on the cruise back to Mars to revamp the Isaribi’s navigation suite, which was merely adequate to the task. While the process took a bit longer than the voyage home, the new software promised to make future trips faster and cheaper.
“Honestly, I’d like to thank her in person, but I’ve got a schedule to keep.” A mischevious twinkle appeared in the older man’s eye. “The Old Man loves that we can charge a premium on Teiwaz shipping, now that we’re the fastest in the business.”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, if we’re really being honest, I prefer being out here to dealing with all the board room drama these days.” Naze shuddered, something Orga felt was exaggerated for effect. “Plus I get to have the one division that isn’t spending tons of money.” He paused and looked up at the ceiling as he tried to recall something. “By the way, I have some other good news. You’ll be getting a job soon from the Old Man – we’ve got some prototype mobile suits that could use some field testing on Mars.”
“New mobile suits? That seems pretty fast.” Orga didn’t bother keeping the doubt out of his voice.
“Well, you have to keep in mind that mobile suit designers are always working on something new,” Naze replied. “You can’t just have them stop once they finish one mobile suit. If you do that, they get rusty. So once they finished all the Teiwaz frame designs, they started working on a cheaper, more mass production frame. Plus, these days, a lot of the hard work is handled by computers.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” He filed that away for later.
“So, how are things going for you?” Naze asked, turning the earlier question around.
Orga shrugged. “I mean, we’re not starving or anything, but we’re not raking in the big bucks with the media stuff either. Right now, it’s just more paperwork.”
“I’m not really surprised by that. Everyone else I talk to is complaining about how they’re not making much money off of alien tech either.” The trio finally reached Naze’s office, which was furnished in much the same style as his formal meeting room. In one corner, tucked behind a fine wooden desk, was a safe, which the older man unlocked, while using his body to block his guests’ view of the combination lock. He placed three small plastic cases full of the cubes on the desk. “Here you go: one for the Isaribi, one for your base here, and one for Earth branch.”
“I thought you were going to deliver the – uh – cubes to Earth branch?” Orga paused as Naze handed him an empty, nondescript duffel bag, which the teen carefully placed the three boxes into.
“I could do that and risk Arbrau customs finding them, or I could just have you guys take it on the next shuttle to Edmonton.” Naze smiled. “You’ve got to make the most of your opportunities, no matter how small they are.”
“Uh huh.” Orga ran a hand through his hair. “Let me guess, you want me to buddy up to whoever’s hiring us to test those new mobile suits.”
“Well, you don’t have to be buddies, but making your own connections is always a good move.” Naze sighed and leaned on the safe. “Like it or not, you’re in charge of a large operation, even though the media side isn’t really making money yet. Getting to know the rest of the big wigs is par for the course.“
Orga took a big breath, held it for a few seconds, and then blew it out. Easy for you to say, he thought. “Any advice?”
“Well, in this specific case, just go into it like you would do with any contract negotiation. Be respectful, keep calm, and be noncommittal if anything might be a problem.” Naze paused and rolled his eyes. “Be glad you’re not doing this at one of the meetups on Saisei. Sometimes people have a bit too much to drink and get a bit… adversarial.”
“Great.”
The older man smiled and closed his eyes. “The good news is that most of the problems go away if you’re successful. If there’s one thing no can dispute, it’s bringing in lots of money.” He opened his eyes and widened his grin. “How do you think I get away with so much?”
“I thought it was because you suck up—” Orga’s mock ribbing was interrupted by his omni-tool gauntlet vibrating. Scowling, he activated the haptic interface and tapped the offending notification icon. “Who the hell— Oh, it’s—uh—Montag.”
“Has he contacted you since we last met?” Naze’s eyes had narrowed at Orga’s hesitation with Montag’s name.
“No. This the first time.” Pausing, the teen stared at the unopened message in his inbox, then finally shutdown the holographic display.
“You’re not going to read it?”
“Nah, I figure if I did it now, I’d be preoccupied during the interview and then I’ll get a whole bunch of uncomfortable questions I don’t want to deal with. Besides, he sent a text message, instead of trying to call me directly. That means whatever he wants, it’s not that time sensitive.”
Naze’s suspicious gaze remained on Orga. “Have you found out anything about him that I should know about?”
“Not really. Well… Vass thinks he’s super dedicated to a cause or might just be deluded.” Orga tried to keep his face still, even as he grappled with the fact that he wasn’t sure why he was keeping this secret to begin with. As far as he could tell, the secrecy was mostly to keep McGillis’ involvement in events hidden from Gjallarhorn. He shrugged. “It’s hard to get a feel for the guy when we’ve barely done any business with him.”
Nodding, Naze visibly relaxed. “The Old Man had some people do some digging on this Montag, and hit nothing but dead ends. I won’t tell you to not work with Montag, but if he asks you to do something… extreme, you should bring it to me or the Old Man. It’s not like you can’t get a hold of us at any time with these QECs.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Good.” Naze stretched and cracked his neck. “So… are you seeing anyone? Because I have plenty of pointers if you need help...”
Orga merely sputtered and glared at the dapper gentleman who verbally burned him.
Author's Notes: Hope you like the world building exercise I went on with the APC, as well as clarifying the status of the Thrill Seeker. As someone who does machining and machining adjacent work, I can tell you tolerances are a bitch, as well as thread pitches.
Given Vass' profession, I couldn't imagine him not being pissed at the shit job the CGS guys did with implanting kids with cybernetics on a technical level, never mind the obvious moral issues with that. Also, given the general shit state of the Chryse economy, I figured the state of medical care is pretty bad, and wrote accordingly. I plan to do more with the Tuchankan potatoes as well.
One thing I wanted to do with this chapter was definitively settle how Teiwaz is going to be handling the QEC comm network. I decided to go with a more decentralized approach, mostly because McMurdo Barriston is smart enough to see the disadvantages of centralized comm networks when hostile aliens are a thing.
Thanks to some random blog, I was reminded of the big ass space station from season 2 in orbit of Mars, which answered something I was confused about (where do the civilian ships dock). Originally, I was thinking about having Orga go through the interview, but this chapter is long enough already. Also, I was worried about whether a 6 month turn around time for Shiden prototypes was unrealistic, then the USAF straight up said they used AI to design and build a plane in a year, so that's not even a problem.
