Notes : Chapter 437 has been written and added to the queue !
Ironically, writing MFR proved harder than more TFW after this break, simply because I wasn't in the right headspace for the lighter tone of MFR (compared to TFW right now).
Anyway, as previously discussed, this chapter has something of an ending. The only thing I can say is that 436 is worse. MUCH worse.
I hope you'll enjoy the chapter !
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Chapter 435
Red Sands Desert, Aurorean Empire
Simulation Six
The merchant shifted, before opening his eyes.
Alexandra didn't say anything. He could see her, out of the corner of his eyes.
He was laying on the same bed the spymaster, and Emylris before him, had woken up on.
She had wanted to put them in the grimiest, most horrific torture dungeon she could conjure up, but Ghost had argued against it, and she'd caved.
He sighed.
"Alright. I know when I've fucked up." He raised his arm, and stared at it. "My implants have been overridden. Professionally. And I'm in a simulation." He turned his head towards her. "And you're Crystal. I'm going to go ahead and assume this isn't a very conveluted interview process. Or a rescue. Those troopers, they were yours?" She nodded, and he whistled. "Stealth composites, power armor, and pulse rifles. Had I know you had that, I would have made a better proposal." He pulled himself into a seating position. "So, what's your price? You haven't killed me yet. You know enough to override my implants. You're talking to me. You want something from me."
"I do." Alexandra leaned back into her seat. He was trying to keep his cool, but she was monitoring his vitals. His implants regulated them, but she knew what a distressed cyborg looked like on those readouts. After all, she'd taken a look at her own biomonitor often enough. "I tried to dig into your data archives, you know. Found two things. One, military grade encryption. Two, partial data, with half on the chips, and presumable the other half on the meat."
The man looked like he was about to smile, before thinking better of it.
"I do like to keep my secrets." He paused. "What do you want to know, and what do you have to offer?"
"June 18th, 2161. Ortu Stella."
Even with his quite likely considerable training, the merchant flinched.
He gazed at her, then at the room on top of the simulated mage tower, then back at her.
"You wouldn't know about this without having talked to another extradimensional. One that was there, given the fact that I haven't heard of new arrivals yet." He looked at her. "I repeat myself. What do you have to offer?"
"Life imprisonment."
"Not much of an offer."
Alexandra smiled. It wasn't a particularly nice smile, and the man tensed up, automatically getting ready to jump up and fight.
"The alternative is summary execution. And that is already being generous."
He stared at her.
"Why do you care, about what happened?"
"Why do you?" Alexandra tilted her head. "Are you afraid of your clients finishing the job with tying up loose ends?"
He jerked away from her.
"You know far too much."
"On the contrary. I don't know nearly enough." She stood up. "So here. You can give me something that has little value. I give you your life. We can go from there."
There was a pause. Total silence.
Then he sighed, closing his eyes...and nodded.
"Very well." He opened his eyes, and met her gaze. "What do you wish to know?"
*****
"Elkaryos." Said the Empress, and the dark elf stepped into her office.
He bowed, deeply, not even flicking a glance at the paintings around, or the stone faced elf and vampire flanking the Empress.
Oh this isn't good.
Every time the vampire maids had exited the dungeon, it was either to buy things, usually causing some chaos in the process, or serve as proxies for Crystal.
"Your Imperial Majesty." He said, before straightening as she nodded at him.
"You are certainly aware of the events that just befell the city." It wasn't a question, but he nodded nonetheless, and the Empress smiled mirthlessly. "These events were distressing. And I grieve for the loss the merchants guild has suffered. As a fellow Master Merchant, I stand ready to render any assistance the guild needs. But as Empress..." She stood up, and he tensed. "I wish to know why the hell the guild had a hidden missile site in my capital city. And why those missiles fired towards the residence of the Empire's minister of war, during a time of conflict."
Elkaryos' blood ran cold. He'd known what this would be about, but he had hoped, dearly hoped, that the Empress would be willing to cut the guild some slack.
Apparently not.
Or...
He managed not to glance at Pyn. The Empress' wife, yes, but also her chief negotiator.
Or she was going to use this incident to get concessions. Hopefully.
"The guild was given authorization to build defenses. It was in the contracts when the city was founded." Carefully said Elkaryos. "To encourage companies to protect themselves and participate in the defense of the city. Essential in the wasteland, and even more so as the situation...evolved."
Rebirth had survived thanks to outside forces, after all. The dungeon core was the most obvious one, but the troops from Sarth and Philia's contingent of royal knights had also played a key role.
Hell, you could make the argument that all of Rebirth's forces were external. Most of it's city guard was drawn from Darthar's or various wasteland expeditionary units.
"Oh I am aware. Considerable leeway was given to the guild, in the interest of continued good relations and with the trust that it would not be abused. Perhaps it is time that We changed it."
Elkaryos had to stop himself from physically jerking as the Empress used the Imperial 'We'. She did so very, very rarely, if at all.
"I implore you not to, your Imperial Majesty." Quickly said the Master Merchant. "While it is true that the city's defenses are more potent than ever, the attack today succeeded, showing that, if nothing else, the security measures of the guild were not powerful enough." He licked his lips. "Keeping the missiles hidden from you was a mistake, certainly." And they had been kept from him as well, though he wasn't about to admit that. "But it was a way to ensure the element of surprise, which is critical in warfare and internal security, as I am certain you are aware."
Like when Crystal had dropped an entire infantry company via drop pods onto the Imperial palace when the Sapphire Kingdom had tried to assassinate her. That had been a surprise.
"I am." She leaned forward slightly, resting her hands on the desk. "Then tell me, as a fellow Master Merchant. What is the guild ready to do to keep that privilege? And before you say anything, keeping me and my minister of war fully in the loop of any measures is non-negotiable."
There it is.
"One could construe this as blackmail, your Imperial Majesty."
"You fired missiles on my lady's fortress." Said the deadly soft and cold voice of the vampire maid. Ella, was her name? "She has destroyed whole armies for less."
"Not to mention the fact that we have recently experienced...issues with another guild." Said Allya, with masterful understatement. "Besides, I believe that the words of the Grand Merchant Sseth are that 'there is no blackmail, just business and leverage'."
Elkaryos had to hold back a smile. Well, she certainly deserved the title of Master Merchant.
"Very well then. I believe there were some..." He flicked a glance at the maid. "...ongoing negotiations, and perhaps the guild would be willing to be more flexible on several points..."
*****
"Start with the beginning." Said Alexandra. "It was an assassination, correct?"
He nodded. Disconcertingly, his eyes remained perfectly locked with hers as he did. Implant to keep a visual on a target, maybe?
"It was. Target was an EFSN lieutenant-commander. Alexandra Rousseau. Assigned to the Duty Eternal."
The dungeon core smiled.
"A bit much for a lieutenant-commander, don't you think?"
"A bit much? We had everything. A refitted trader halfway to a Q-ship. A spy's wet dream. Military-grade assault hyperdrive with sensor dampeners and stealth plating to prevent being detected while powering up for a jump. Cutting edge passive sensors, full electronic warfare suite, onboard supercomputer and the codes to break into the station's internal security datanet."
Alexandra's gaze hardened. She knew exactly how difficult all of that was to acquire. She wanted to ask who the client was...but not yet. First, get everything she could out of him.
Because she was fairly certain that when she learned who had been willing to murder an entire space station's worth of innocents to get to her, she wasn't going to be very rational anymore.
"I see. What was your exit strategy then? I'm guessing this wasn't a suicide mission. You could have just blown your ship up."
He nodded, with the same disconcerting focus with his eyes.
"We were supposed to find the target, make visual contact, be certain she was in the radius before jumping." He shrugged. "Then make it to the outer colonies, disembark our cargo and scuttle the ship. We had contacts, and our cargo...top of the line martian and african terraforming plants, UIS computers and EuroFed colonial fusion cores. We'd be able to live like kings for the rest of our lives. The entire crew would have founded dynasties that would rule continents."
"They were all in on it?"
He chuckled.
"They always had been. They'd been following me for...thirty years, now?"
That gave her pause. Assassins didn't behave like that. They certainly didn't tend to stick together.
"You weren't killers for hire. You were mercenary black ops. Deniable assets."
This, in turn, made him pause.
"Yes. We were." He finally said. "You're familiar with that, aren't you? Had enough of them inflicted upon you, at least so I heard when I was working for these bastards and helping the Republic."
"Yes. I have." And she had given orders to plenty of them, as High Admiral. "They gave you so much, and pretty much guaranteed retirement. For such a target. That didn't make you suspicious?"
He shook his head, breaking eye contact this time.
"Of course I smelled a rat. Hell I smelled an entire sewer worth of rodents, but I'd been working for them for..."His eyes glazed over briefly, and she was warned that his implants had an activity spike, though she was monitoring the data transfer and no files were modified. "two decades at that point. Never fucked me over. Never fucked any of the other operatives over. I found a few of them in retirement. Some of them had done far worse than rip off a section of a starport, believe me."
Something in her subconscious started screaming in alarm, and she leaned forward as she tightened her digital walls and put her metaphorical finger on the system that would blow the VR pod and the entire room to hell.
"But? I presume that confidence was misplaced."
He nodded, slowly.
"It was. Someone sabotaged the hyperspace shield generator." He shook his head, looking disgusted. "My people had gone over every single centimer of that ship, and we never caught it. That's how good these bastards were. I don't know what it was exactly, but one second I had alarms blaring, my implants filled with errors and catastrophic failures, and the next I open my eyes on a sky with too few stars, with some weird ass armor that looked like it was pulled straight out of AD Leonis and a fucking sword on my belt."
That was...precisely what she had experienced. In the last part, at least.
"What about the rest of your crew?"
"No clue. I presume they were loyal and didn't betray me. It's not like you can launch escape pods in hyperspace, so they all came down with me. There..." He sighed. "None of them made it through. At least so far as I can tell. Frankly, I thought I was the only one from this whole mess. You're the only proof that I wasn't." He met her gaze again. "Part of the reason I'm willing to talk at all is that I was betrayed, and I may be a mass murdering scumbag to you but I was loyal to my people."
"You wouldn't be the first. The propensity to do terrible things does not necessarily mean you lack loyalty." She would know, after all. "But even if you had reasons to think your clients wouldn't betray you, what made you think your exit strategy was viable? The European Federation would have hunted you to the edge of the universe. Even if you went to a rogue colony, you'd have been found eventually."
He barked out a laugh.
"You know a lot about Earth. And I didn't think they would. Because there'd have been simpler ways." His face grew grim as he looked down. "Simpler ways is what I got, I suppose."
She frowned.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
He looked her in the eyes.
"The European Federation wouldn't have bothered with a pursuit. Because they knew where I was going. They were my employers in the first place."