Careful Not To Break Reality

The next day, the pair woke nice and early and went ahead to the Wolfana spaceport to collect the light cargo cruiser that was promised to them. Valerie went ahead to pick up some more necessary gears like space suits, weapons, shield generators and general supplies while Rydel was in charge of making sure the ship is ready to fly.

As Valerie left to collect the box of equipments she ordered yesterday, Rydel went for a simple sweep of the ship before starting to examine the mechanical and electrical parts of the ship. To his pleasant surprise, despite the grittier look of the cruiser from the outside, it was fairly well maintained and equipped on the inside, fitted with bog standard engines and control systems. The cargo bay near the back was extra large and completely empty, perfectly suited for the kind of mining operations that they would have to do.

Everything seems standard, and nothing rings a warning bell. Then, he took a look at the crew rooms. It's not exactly spacious, but sufficient for a two person operation. Sh.i.p.s like this can conformtably house a five man crew, so it's a bit of an overkill for only Rydel and Valerie, though the heavier shielding and more powerful engine is something that would prove exceptionally important in this kind of mission.

It didn't take long for Rydel to start fine tuning everything and setting a course for the moon. Valerie arrived back on the cruiser with all the necessary equipment not long after too, and Rydel signaled for take off.

'So, you said you would take care of the backdoor arrangements?' Rydel said, 'what's your plan for me to get into the server room?'

'Well, you don't necessarily have to get into the server room itself.' Valerie said as she brought out a connector, 'by talking to one of my contacts, it turns out that sneaking into the server rooms are next to impossible, so that wasn't exactly the brightest idea.'

'Ah.' After all that set up about a server room break in, that was the result? Rydel can't help but be slightly disappointed, 'so are we still going forward with the ultimate confusion strategy?'

'Yes.' Valerie nodded firmly, 'and this time, we would just be a lot simpler. We will go take out one of the data collection satellites. And that was the useful information that my contact very willingly provided.'

'Right.' Rydel looked over to see whether the spaceport has allowed for their cruiser to depart, but no signals were given just yet, 'and how the hell do you get in touch with a contact the day you landed?'

'My father used to work closely with an informational broker, and with whatever money we have left, I got what we need.' Valerie answered with a defiant tone, obviously not happy with the fact that she had to use her father's name to get things done, but beggars can't be choosers, 'everything else doesn't matter, but we have the coordinate of the satellite. It's just one of those autonomous observation stations in deep space, should be quite easy to take out.'

'Won't there be any protection?' Rydel asked curiously as he moves aside to let Valerie take the chair and input the destination coordinates.

'Out there, the vastness of space is the best protection. If you don't have the coordinates, the chance of you running into it is zero.' Valerie looked at Rydel and said, then the signal is given and the light cruiser began its lift off. The flight computer should take care most of the movements, and Rydel and Valerie could focus on planning the rest of their mission. The journey to the first stop would take about ten hours and one stop through an acceleration gate, which is extremely rare in the wild regions due to the high cost and requirements for often maintenance.

Both of which the Grey Wolf can afford, so there are a handful of them linking Wolfana with the neighboring star systems of its allies.

'Let's do a debrief about the realms of Black Pegasus, which would be where we are going next.' Valerie sat in the co-pilot's chair next to Rydel and turned to face him, 'I am sure you have learnt about this area in textbooks and other things, but the real deal is a different animal.'

'The main forces within the region are the various guilds. Most of the forces in this area are either temporary travelers or those registered with one of the guilds, typically the Smuggler's Guild and the Pirate's Guild. Each of them operate under their own rules, and treat the outside forces differently.

'Within reason, the Pirate's Guild grants regions of space to certain groups, and they therefore are in charge of the safetey within their region, in exchange for some fees, like bullies but somewhat reasonable thanks to the regulation of the Pirate King.

'The Smuggler's Guild operate the various transport routes in between regions owned by the Pirates, and also runs the basic economic structure within the area.'

'There are some smaller Guilds, but another one is the Thief's Guild which branched out of the Smuggler's Guild. They train professional thieves, and are more of a separate power. Not something we need to be worried about.'

'What's likely to happen is the areas that would become the intersection would have already had pirates occupying that region. And that means there would be some rules set in place, and yet their attitudes towards outsiders might be unpredictable, and differ based on where we come from.' Valerie explained, 'so we will have to scout the situation after we got into the Black Pegasus and make a stop at the nearest station.'

'And the stations also belonged to the pirates in that region?'

'Ah no, that's one of the rules.' said Valerie, 'the stations are always positioned on the edge of the pirate group's boundaries, making them neutral officially, though some preferences may occur. This comes from personal experience, as father used to take us to train our skills and fight against rogue pirate groups in the Black Pegasus, rogue pirate groups are the ones not registered by the Guild, and hence are fought and surpressed by those that are registered.'

'Like a training camp, but...deadly?'

'Pretty much.'

The rest of the journey went by surprisingly quickly. After some further debrief, Rydel simply stayed in the pilot's chair and recited everything he has learnt about blending into unfamiliar environments and gathering information, followed by the skills of manipulation of people and their emotions.

Then they got to the unoccupied data collection station, and simply blew it to bits and made it look like a rogue asteroid just happen to ram across that specific region of space. This doesn't exactly happen very often, but even it did, the algorithm will simply compensate for it until better data are obtained and a new station is dispatched. In any other day of the ten years, this won't matter since the offset would be way less than 1% of the total time, and yet in this specific scenario, the 1% would make all the difference.

The replacement station would arrive in half a month before observation resumes, but that would be way too late. From the moment the station went offline, the output of the model, which would be the predicted dates of crossover would be altered slightly, though most would believe that's a natural result of the optimization algorithm thanks to more data being collected, rather than less.

Sometimes, the machine learning algorithms just like to play tricks with data.

Then he went to the back to see Valerie unloading and equipping the gears that she ordered.

And there lies a metal mace. Not quite the same caliber as the one Torelamri made, but Rydel was still really surprised that this actually showed up.

'I don't know what your obsession is with maces...' Valerie said, 'it's such an ancient weapon, slow and heavy.'

'It has its uses.' Rydel insisted, especially when you do some special modifications with it... Rydel is thinking about some type of electrical shock device, like those one can equip with Aquarian blades. It's should be really simple to make if the gear box also contained the rest of the things he ordered.

It did.

Rydel then spent the next few hours attaching a shock device and embedded it deep into the mace itself. The enhancements he got made the mace feel incredibly light, he is sure he would be able to deliver a lot of blunt trauma damage. If his fist can do all that crazy shenanigans, then a mace should do something similar, add on the shock factor, it should be quite a handy weapon. He only got one mace in total though, and that's to make sure it doesn't impact his movements. As light as it is to him, it was nowhere near the ones Torelamri made in an evening.

On the other side, he would have a heavy duty shield generator, better be save than sorry. Add on that a blaster pistol and a dual-purpose rifle with both energy and physical bullets, and he is all set for some proper fighting, which Rydel wished he won't have to do.

Valerie, on the other hand, has a standard 'spy's outfit', which dual pistols, smaller shield generators, various tools and gadgets, a massive cloak covering everything up and some more hidden guns and knives in various places. It seemed like that's what the Black Wolf trained their daughters in, and she certainly seemed extremely familiar with the general set up.

'Somehow, I feel like no matter how many lessons I learnt about firing people up to do my bidding, I won't be nearly as good as you, just by the looks of things.' Rydel pointed at the typical space force grunt soldier's outfit and pointed to Valerie's very own, combining fashion and function and still showing her incredible physique at the same time.

'You would be right, which also makes you my perfect partner.' Valerie looked at the map showing their progress made towards the space station designated code name 10T right before the region that would have be crossed by the Chariot. They are still a day away, and have just left the territories of the Grey Wolf.

For Rydel, that would be the first time in months. For Valerie, it would also be a new experience, since she had never come to this particular space station before.

Things are always different and far more dangerous when there are precious metals blazing across the sky travelling at fractions of light speed. One would be stupid to not want to get their hands on it.

'When we get there, we will refuel, make sure everything is working as usual and get supplied if not. Then, let's go stir some shit up.'

When their light cruisers arrived, Rydel and Valerie realized that they have far underestimated how much everyone would want their hands on the rare metals. Before they even catch the sight of the space station, the cl.u.s.ters of parked sh.i.p.s and cruisers are what they noticed first. Thankfully, the station staff seemed to have planned for such increased traffic and arranged to get many massive portable tankers that act like floating car parks in space in which all of the sh.i.p.s attach to, then transports are arranged that takes people from the tankers into the space stations. Rydel used all of his piloting skills to secure one of the last open spaces in one of the closer tankers, much to the dismay of other space users.

But hey, it ain't the wild regions for nothing.

The ship closes into the magnetic landing pad on the outside and gently touches down before the magnetic field engages and locks it in place.

'We are here. In the middle of absolutely nowhere.' Rydel said cheerfully as they descent through the corridor into the giant tanker itself. The gravity field is turned off here so both turned on their magnetic boots and started heading towards the transport area, 'ready to get people to kill each other?'

'Oh come on now.' Valerie rolled her eyes and complained, 'Don't let it weigh on your conscience. There will not be any killing on the station...'

'Please note that no killing will be allowed on this station in accordance to the Laws of the Three Guilds.' An announcement cut off Valerie's speech, and she simply winked at Rydel after.

'See?' She continued, 'plus, if they planned to fight with each other, a single push would simply be an excuse.'

'Yeah.' Rydel sighed in defeat. He isn't one to be a flawless being, not even close, and this story isn't a fairy tale, 'I saw the symbols of the Silver Snakes and the White Crows on some of the sh.i.p.s as we got in.'

'Yes, and that's only the sh.i.p.s that have the symbols on them.' Valerie explained while lowering her voice as another group cut in front of them, 'Aquarians have a strange sense of honor, while humans tend to hide their true allegiance for the sake of their goals.'

Rydel looked at Valerie, and she looked back at him.

'So, who else is here?' Rydel continued.

'From what I can see, the sh.i.p.s commonly used by the Wolf's Pack Mining company are parked in the far tanker, where they have around twenty sh.i.p.s in general. That's just on our way in. I can recognize the symbols of a few White Crow gangs too, like the White Hawk and White Eagle, two of the biggest gangs. And of course many from the pirates and smuggler's guild.' Valerie said, 'there are a lot more people than I anticipated.'

'Yeah.' Rydel looked all around and saw people converging at the corner of the rectangular tanker, where the shuttle transport is located. They formed into a somewhat orderly cue, with some light scuffles and people yelling somewhere near the back. Rydel and Valerie looked over and saw a few humans pushing around some Aquarian gangster who cut in the cues. The Aqurians are like nobody Rydel has ever seen before, with rundown exoskeletons and burn marks everywhere. This drastically contrasted the typical qualities Rydel always associated with that species like elegance and class, but then again it would be foolish to frame an entire species with a single quality.

To avoid drawing attention, Both of them acted normal and turned back around.

'Good stuff.' Rydel chuckled, 'it should quite easy to stir up some stuff.'

'Yes. Let's do it step by step. You ask for the locations of where the people from the Grey Wolf's go, and I will ask for the Silver Snake's place.' Valerie said as they both move ahead in the cue, and now Rydel can see a simple 'boarder control' gate, which are just droids checking the identification of the travelers into the station and repeating the phrase of 'No Killing Allowed on station'.

Presumably, the droids would also have enough intelligence programming to know that the intelligent organic beings in this galaxy are mostly tribal in nature, so by simply separating them, most of the conflicts can be averted.

'Alright.' Rydel nodded as they moved forward yet again, this timing being pushed slightly by the crowd behind, possibly because the scuffle has increased in its intensity, and fists are being thrown.

'Sorry, hehe...' A low masculine voice came from behind, and Rydel saw a giant human standing behind them, 'I am trying not to get caught in the fight.'

He stood at at least six foot eight and is extremely wide too. It felt like the magnetic boots are barely holding him down. He has a massive beard that floats in the weightlessness and wobbles with each movement of his chin. He wasn't here moments before, so perhaps the Aqurians weren't the only ones pushing in.

'I am sure you are worrying too much.' Rydel said before he turned around. Overhead, multiple riot control droids not too dissimilar to those used on B1 by the forces of the GBI whizzed pass with its sirens blasting and headed to stop the fight.

'Nice, some droid implements to minimize damage and stop any actual fight.' Valerie whispered quietly as she leaned over to Rydel, who held her around the shoulder.

'Yeah, blasters kill quick, and not everyone have fully charged shield generators.' Rydel said so after he kissed her gently on the head, 'and it would cover our get away after any drama we caused.'

'Smart, Rold. Very Smart.' Valerie looked up, and smiled.

It wasn't long before its finally their term to be registered, and the droid simply scanned through their doc.u.ments and taken basic biometric measurements afterwards. After all of the standard procedures, the droid looked down and said: 'No killing are permitted aboard this station. Any violation will result in you being deported from the station.'

'Understood, where do the Grey Wolves usually go?' Rydel looked over and asked.

'Please find yourself at the Rockhard Bar in level 1.' The droid answer, as expected. A solid lead, Rydel thought, maybe he could have hacked into the droid and made it give random answers to this question? Nothing would cause more chaos than seeing a bunch of Aquarian gangsters when you are just going for a drink with the boys. But Rydel dropped that thought just as quickly.

'Thank you.' Rydel kept on going forward, and boarded the very next shuttle with Valerie.

'So?' Valerie asked as the two stood by a window and watched the tanker slowly becoming smaller in the view port.

'Rockhard Bar on level 1...What about you?'

'The Lake, it's a restaurant on level 1 too. So it seems like the rest of the groups would be on the other levels.' Valerie said, 'which makes complete sense.'

'Let's scout the various floors before making a move then.' Rydel said so after some thought, though the thoughts of vandalism still make his heart rumble, 'and then we can do something to their sh.i.p.s too, nothing too extreme, just enough to get them to notice.'

'Ooooh...' Valerie looked back over with a grin, 'I like that. It seems like it will be an incredibly interesting few days.'

'And better yet, we can't physically be killed on the station. Great.'