Careful Not To Break Reality

Wolfana, the capital planet of the regions of the wild space regions under the control of the notorious Grey Wolf, was one that was the single most developed planet in the whole of the Wild regions. It carried the nick name as the garden of the desert that is the desolate wild regions before any settlements at all. This is to be expected, however, given how the Grey Wolf arrived and settled right in the geometric center of the region, and this planet stood in the middle of many traffic lanes for traders and business, and acted as a harbor of economy and political influence.

There are strict laws being applied within the boundaries of the planet to ensure the planet is at least safe and lawful so the traders will be able to continuously bring in more goods and services, keeping the money flowing. This is the reason that despite the raging conflicts and backstabbing happening between the various war lords and the neutral and chaotic forces, Wolfana remained the militaristic yet flourishing beacon up on the hill.

Before Rydel and Valerie even got close enough to see the lines of the endless city lights, the transport they are on have already slowed down massively by the lines of other start sh.i.p.s organizing themselves and patiently waiting for their turn to land. They simply orbited the planet within the given region and waited for their numbers to be called.

With much time to spare, Rydel was able to get a close look at the planet as well as read into the history of the planet Wolfana as well as that of the Grey Wolf. Despite it being compulsory prep work, Rydel found all that knowledge and the dynamics between the various groups incredibly interesting.

When the Grey Wolf lead his hound of 'wolf cubs' away from the settled regions in search of adventure and greater resources, they have ventured deep into the uncharted wild regions before the action itself was a common trend in the age of the Great Exploration. They discovered one of the more stable and resourceful star systems and decided to start a new life here, free from the influence of the Galactic Government. Initially, the Grey Wolf ran an extremely human supremacy government, refusing to help any of the Aquarian refugees that ventured to this part of the space. He also hesitated when taking in other human though he soon came to realize that in the wild regions for those that have not yet established themselves, the more help and allies you get, the better.

The timing of the realization also coincides with the time that a large group of Aquarian explorers arrived and established a force that mirrored to himself, named the Silver Snakes. It is rumored that they have Aquarian governmental backing with proper funding and equipment, and by allowing those to venture into the wild regions unhindered, Aquarian governments can maintain influence in a larger area of space as well as farm and mine any cheap untapped resources out here.

Unfortunately, all of the resourceful planets already belonged to the Grey Wolf, and as a gesture of good will, he willing offered two mining and resource planets each to the Silver Snakes, establishing an alliance with both the leader and General, the Silver Snake himself, and the Aquarian government officials backing this operation. All of the atrocities he committed against the Aquarians that arrived way too early were obviously swept under the rug, seeing how the Grey Wolf's support is paramount to the establishment of the regions that belonged to the Silver Snake.

Within the same plane of reference, the force of the Red Dragon began to rise and establish themselves too under the Grey Wolf's nose, though he was too busy running his own colonies to do anything about it. The Red Dragons also reached out to the Grey Wolf soon after terraforming a few planets and began to settle and yet another alliance is formed, perhaps the Red Dragon herself is thankful of Grey Wolf's non-interference with their development, or perhaps she saw a strategic opportunity.

However, not every group within the wild regions are that friendly to each other. Even though the deeds of the Grey Wolf were never acknowledged officially, those Aquarian explorers and refugees that were rejected entry continued their travels for as long as they could until they reached yet another system located within another plane of rotation that intersects but doesn't overlap with the one Red Dragon, Silver Snakes and Grey Wolf sits on. They began their developments and settlements much slower than the other explorers could, but then things changed.

Ever since the creation of the galactic government between the three interstellar travelling species, there have been beings that disagreed with the emergence of a new galactic society. Those that viewed themselves as the superior being are unsurprisingly threatened by the fact that there are two other group of people that are like them. This is one of the biggest drivers of people leaving the settled regions, and by using this psychology, this group of run down Aquarians managed to rally enough support from those that are discontented with the merger and got them to also join the ranks. They traveled as if they are going to join the forces with the Silver Snakes, but simply used this opportunity to slip pass the unmonitored boarder and continued onward, following the tracks left by their brave predecessors.

They soon announced their withdrawal from Aquaria citizenship and established the White Crows, being one of the less friendly forces within the wild region towards the Grey Wolf. But they are not a threat to him just yet.

Piracy became a bigger problem way before the White Crows mustered enough forces to declare an all out war against the Grey Wolf, and what little supply chain that was established are often cut off and raided by the pirates, who are not interested in setting up a new world order, but rather in for a new buck after things got rather difficult back in the settled regions.

But all of the leaders already saw this coming, and through a series of summits between the Red Dragon, Grey Wolf and the Silver Snake, they agreed to pick out one of the pirate lords who have the most potential of uniting the vast ocean of space, and backed him in his conquest by eliminating competing groups and establishing rules and order.

Soon, a collection of guilds and organizations within the wild region banded together, and established a more lawless neutral state under the banner of the Black Pegasus. A true representation of Wild Space. This is also where Zel spent most of his teenage times. He obtained his artifact near the ends of the pirate wars and the early dawn of the creation of the Black Pegasus. Grey Wolf specifically made sure that the Black Pegasus is located right in the region of empty space in between the White Crows and the Grey Wolf himself as to provide a buffer for any potential attacks.

There are only a handful of planets in the Black Pegasus space and a cl.u.s.ter of black holes orbiting around each other near a planet nicknamed the Devil's Prison, seeing as how nothing can enter or leave thanks to the black holes making space travel incredibly difficult. The guild of pirates, thieves and smugglers thrived under these harsh conditions, however, developing an unique ecosystem and power balance within the unified banner and the days of senseless killing are finally behind them.

There are also two other warlords that only recently come into view in the region, and the spies from the Grey Wolf reported back little useful details. The Rockies also have their representation nearing the asteroid zone, forming the Disciples of the Rock, and another group of Aquarians military forces settled in the edge of space between Aquarian space and the wild regions, naming themselves the Sea Serpents as a homage to their Aquarian roots.

As Rydel read to this point in the doc.u.ment, he can't help but look up and take a massive breath. Though not much has been touched upon, he could already see the interlinking dynamics between all of the war lords, and now he finally realized the importance of all the soft social skills he has learnt. By the look of things, any wrong move during whatever the mission is going to have severe consequences, if not for the Grey Wolf then it's for himself.

Rydel continued on and read on the list of little conflicts and skirmishes, but there has never been anything major. Yet. Rydel really hoped whatever mission that would be given as their test of skill won't be anything outrageous.

After yet another grueling twenty minutes, the transport is finally moving on, and Valerie dragged Rydel to the viewing port near the front of the transport and strapped both of them on the seats closest to the exit.

Another twenty minutes have passed, and they have finally landed on the busy Wolfana space port. A smell of oil and grease filled the air as workers and droids ran from ship to ship, doing maintenance and patch jobs as they were asked. Valerie and Rydel took all of their belongings and headed for the Governmental Administration building located in the central governing district, about another half an hour of shuttle transport from the space port.

When the shuttle doors shut and a field of noise insulation is turned on, Rydel can still feel the overbearing level of space port noise echoing within his head.

'Right, so here is the deal.' Valerie broke him out of his own thoughts, 'we will both need to register as the ones taking the Test of Skill, without going through the nanotechnology enhancements. Then we will have a range of missions that we could select for our test, and we will choose one that looked the easiest.'

'Sounds like that's going to turn out great.' said Rydel, not very enthusiastically.

'True, but we will deal with that later.' Valerie nodded as she lowered her voice, 'They don't always allow people to perform such missions without permission, but I can use my backdoor relationsh.i.p.s to get it done.' Though she sounded slightly hesitant and uncertain.

'Are you sure it will work?' Rydel asked with a look of concern on his face and reached out to grab Valerie's hand.

'It should.' Valerie squeezed Rydel's hand once and let it go, 'we are basically free labor, so they literally have nothing to lose.'

'Hopefully.' Rydel said with a shrug, 'so what should I do?'

'You just hang around the area and don't get into any trouble while I sort that out.' Valerie said, 'And I trust that you would be an entirely responsible person and made sure to not cause any scene around this area?'

'Yeah, of course.' Rydel said with a grin on his face, though Valerie doesn't seem amused, 'this is how all the stories go, isn't it?'

After the basic registration, Rydel and Valerie went their separate ways in the bottom floor of the administration building. As Valerie took the doc.u.ments and entered the lift to the higher levels, Rydel instead left the building and started looking around. The central governing district is akin to the areas where the politicians and officials work and live, and there is a particular sense of glamour to the areas, with patches of greenery and flowers dotted around the metal and concrete structures.

With a map of the local area now within his personal interface, he searched for the nearest communications outpost. He did promise to update Cellica on what's going to happen once he got to Wolfana and have a basic idea of what's going to be happening for the next little while. After a quick search, one located in a nearby bar showed up. It is currently mid-morning in the standard hours for Wolfana, so there should be absolutely no drunk maniacs stirring up trouble in the bars. Hopefully.

The itself is located in underneath another generic office building with a gate that's half shut and a stained sigh indicating where to go down. Compared to the well-organized and maintained streets of the district, this dirty rundown pub stood out like a stain on a newly painted wall.

'Well, don't judge a book by it's cover.' Rydel shook his head and walked through the door gingerly. The floor is sticky, reminding him of the club up on the space station the very first night he got together with Valerie, but the stickiness did help him get down the somewhat steep stairs without much scare.

The bar is quite dark with scarce blue lighting. The bartender droid is cleaning the tables while the human owner of the bar slept on a sofa bed not too far to the left.

'Is this place open?' Rydel raised his voice and asked the droid. It looked up, and replied with a confirmation.

The human owner didn't move, seems like he or she has had quite a heavy night.

'Where is the communication counsel?'

'At the back.' The droid pointed with the sponge on his hand towards the darkened back room, and then immediately returned to his duties.

'Great. Nothing out of the ordinary here.' Rydel tried to sound optimistic, though deep down he was not so sure about contacting Cellica at this moment anymore. He carefully stepped around the puddle of unknown fluid and plastic cups littered all over the floor and made his way into the black until suddenly the room lights up automatically.

In this corner of the room were a couple hastely set up communications counsel linked into the citywide network and between each of the projectors were literally cardboard boxes acting as separators and some old sticky-looking headsets for a vague sense of privacy.

Not the best condition, Rydel has to admit, but he knew Cellica would be able to keep things uninterrupted on her end as an insurance if his special communication traffic allowance he won from Pilotmania failed to do what it does.

Rydel cleared his throat, chose the counsel in the corner and entered in his communication codes.

Rather than a blur like before, the projection of Cellica appeared after a brief flicker, and became clear. She looked up from her desk and a mountain of paper work, and smiled slightly.

'Establish secure transmission?' Rydel went through the usual protocol, 'give me some privacy.'

'Acknowledged.' Cellica nodded and pressed a botton on her desk. Then she waited for a second and asked, 'done. What's your current progress?'

'I have gone through the first level of enhancements and got used to the adpatatinos mostly.' Rydel reported honestly, 'I met someone that helped me accelerate the process of rising through the ranks within the academy, though I will have to take two missions that are supposed to be done after the level two enhancements to prove my worthiness for it.'

'I see. So are you about to begin the very first one of those? The...test of brain?' Cellica massaged her temples gently, as the stress of the recent piling of work is really starting to get under her nerves.

'No, the test of skill is the first one, and it's akin to a high difficulty mission given out by the Grey Wolf. I am not sure what the test of brain could be about, since I felt like I will be using quite a lot of skill and brains for this one.' Rydel explained as Cellica nodded gratefully.

'Right, and would you need any further support from us?' Cellica asked, 'You might not get the news in the wild regions, but recently the Rockie government has been rather.....radical. The alleged winner of their election was a militant type, and he caused quite a scene in the recent Galactic Senate meetings.'

'By radical, you meant...'

'Supremacist racist type, yeah.' Cellica sighed as she stretched out her back, 'and he was planning to declare independence and demand more power before being ousted by his own people literally a few days ago.'

'Wow, sounds like someone that belongs in the wild regions.' Rydel joked.

'No shit.' Cellica swore, to the surprise of Rydel himself, 'he is exiled, and the new Rockie government is sending him to the Devil's Prison.'

'The Devil's...That the one in between the cl.u.s.ter of black holes in the territory of the Black Pegasus?' Rydel couldn't believe that he would be hearing that phrase this soon ever since reading about it that morning on the transport shuttle.

'Yeah, the place where none shall leave.' Cellica said, 'the Rockies deemed him that dangerous. According to the Rockies, he is dangerously charismatic, and when he was out there, he created nothing but chaos and instability. So the best way to get rid of him without actually killing him is to put him on a one way trip to the place he cannot return from.'

'Damn.'

'Yeah, so as long as you don't venture to that area then you should be fine.' Cellica concluded.

'From what I read today, that would probably be the least of my worries if I ever ended up there.'

'Hahaha nice one. Ok I need to go now, you be careful.' Cellica chuckled at Rydel's remarks and brought her hand closer to the projector on her desk, 'do you have anything else you want to tell me?'

'...Urgh...' Rydel hesitated, then swallowed his words, 'No. Not really. Hope your work goes well.'

'Alright.' Cellcia nodded and ended the transmission.

It can't be helped, since she is an extremely busy person, and that now is a s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e time in the settled regions. Rydel was never one that's extremely into galactic politics, but it seems like now would be a more relevant time than ever to look into this kind of thing.

Rydel ended the transmission here, shut off the projector on his desk and put the sticky headset back down. He spun around, and saw Valerie leaning against the wall near the exit of the communications cousel's corner with her arms crossed and the shadow obscuring her facial expression.

'Hope your work goes well?' Valerie stayed in the shadows from about five meters away, 'you calling a colleague?'

'Somewhat. Glad to see you make your way to the best bar on the whole of the wild region.' Rydel certainly wasn't expecting Valerie to be out this early, and to physically be right here in this very moment, 'never judge a book by its cover.'

'Is there anything I need to know about?' Valerie started walking towards Rydel and ignored the attempts at humor. She meant business when she is here.

'No.' Rydel gave an honest answer and looked at her in the eye, 'nothing too special. Just catching up with a.....friend.'

'This friend of yours...' Valerie came even closer and sat on his l.a.p, 'anything that might prove detrimental to our big project?'

'If anything, it would help us reach our goals.' Rydel said.

'Right. Just don't sneak away from me next time. I wouldn't have found you if I didn't hack into the central monitoring system on the way out.' Valerie said as she wrapped her arm around Rydel and kissed him on the cheek lightly, her soft lifts leaving a sweet tingle. She reached out and activated the projector on the personal interface on her wrist, 'now, let's talk about the mission.'

'Our mission, is to grab a rock, in the region of the Black Pegasus.'

'The what?'

'And where?!'