The Gas Station Part 5
Late April 2018
The hatch of the POD was slowly closing, hiding its two passengers behind a chromed wall of steel until not even a seam was visible anymore. But from the inside the space around the small spacecraft was still visible.
Mizukis hands were flying over the console in front of her, running through a final check of the craft. A few lights became green and with a smile she hit the ‘power up’ button. The karaoke machine in the middle console activated, the two microphones lit up, one with blue and one with orange lining and a text appeared on the main viewscreen.
‘Loading music, please wait...’
“Get the mike, this will be fun” Mizuki said to inspector Zenigata as the grabbed her microphone. “Have you ever done some Karaoke singing?”
“What?”
Zenigata looked at the catgirl for a few moments, not sure if she just made a joke.
“Hey, its one of the quirks of the POD. Without the Karaoke singing, it will not go fast!” Mizuki said defensively. “It will play the song once, then again with the text on screen. Hey, its not that difficult.”
Zenigata rolled with his eyes, but he grabbed the microphone in front of him as the music started to play. “For the mission,” he murmured. “at least the music could have been much worse.”
Quickly the ‘Pinball Wizard’ song ended for a first time and the music started again.
Zenigata sighed shortly and tried to follow the flow of the music. He could hear that Mizuki was definitely more practiced in singing.
‘Your team-score: 153 Advice: ask the catgirl for lessons.’ was on the display as the music finally ended.
“Wow” Mizuki said excited, “I was never able to get it above 89 alone... maybe teams get better scores?”
With a light vibration the engines of the POD came to life and a wave of bright blue energy raced through the cockpit and outward to the hull of the vehicle.
“Ohh... thats much brighter than during my tests” Mizuki said with a grin, grabbing the control stick.
“Next station, Mars!” she cried and the POD raced out of the open airlock.
“So they both left for Mars this night” Arthur Nkomo asked and Cortanas avatar nodded.
“Yes, they two hours after you and Mr. Schmidt went back to your rooms. They will be entering the Mars orbit any minute and will land soon after.”
“Wait a moment” Arthur replied, “I remember Mizumi said something about eight hours to Mars, shouldn’t they still be hours away?”
Cortana chuckled.
“We are not sure, but the POD made a new speed record on the voyage to Mars, its running close to 19% lightspeed at the moment. Nobody expected this speed boost, so they have nearly finished their journey.”
Jürgen Schmidt gave Arthur a pat on the back.
“You see, it was a good idea to send the message to Mars yesterday” he said with a nod, “at least they got a warning about their visitors. So what is on OUR timetable for today?”
“We will hopefully get today a full analysis of the handwavium probe Zenigata found. And we have to look over all the pieces if we missed another important puzzle” Arthur said. “Cortana, can you make sure that our car is refueled and ready for a trip back to the inner system? If we find a good trail, I want to get there as soon as possible.”
“Should only take a few hours” Cortana said and nodded, “a little bit more if you want us to get some goods from the Warsies before you leave.”
“So what are you looking for Inspector Ichikawa Zenigata?”
Zenigata smiled while he tried to remember what Arthur had told him about Natsuko Aki before he left Jenga.
“Thanks that you have time to spare for me Inspector Aki, I am on an important trail of evidence at the moment and need help and advice” he answered. “We are looking for a large truck, most likely built here on Mars.”
“A truck... built on Mars” Natsuko Aki repeated, “I hope you have some more evidence.”
“Yes, I have... I have the minimum dimensions of the vehicle and I also know it has been built by cheap steel coming from the belt. It has been waved on Mars, most likely on the surface because it was contaminated with Mars dust during the process.”
He gave Inspector Aki a small data pad with a number of size estimates.
“The catgirls on Jenga said that its already a pretty large vehicle but made from cheap materials, so I hope its a really large truck and not a custom built vehicle.”
He was aware that most of the evidence was still shaky.
“And we have this” he finally said and put a small box on the desk. “Its a waved part of the vehicle, so we hope the manufacturer recognizes it and we can verify the whole thing by comparing the Handwavium strain and material.”
Inspector Aki nodded slowly.
“Okay, that limits the number of manufacturers a little bit... but I will be honest, it still will be a pretty long list. But at least you got something to identify the craft when you find it.”
Zenigata shrugged.
“I have to try it, just sitting and waiting for the case to solve itself will not help. I also have a catgirl from Jenga with me that could handle the Handwavium measurements I think.”
“Good. I will work out a list of people you should ask here at Helium and close to the town.” Inspector Aki answered. “This will be the shortest list and maybe you get lucky. In the meantime I will try to get in contacts with a few friends on Mars, maybe we can pinpoint where your dust particles were coming from. I hope you are prepared to spend a lot of time visiting a lot of people.”
“Yes, I am” Zenigata just said. He had to find Mizuki to start their tour through Helium.
“Damned... another one who sold a few trucks but nothing that fits our evidence. Is every second Fen a car salesmen?”
Zenigata was sitting on a bench, looking to the police officer to his left.
“Fenspace is a little bit more personal and distributed than Earth” the officer chuckled, “but I think it would be much worse to visit all car salesmen in Tokyo, right?”
“Yes of course” Zenigata said and rolled with his eyes, “but thats something different. I think we are really close to make progress with the investigation, but now we are bogged down by looking for our car dealer.”
It was their third day in Helium and all of their visits at several known and semi-known car salesmen and truck-loving Fen had come up with nothing at all.
“Where is your catgirl anyways? I heard she arrived with you here on Mars, why isn’t she helping you with the legwork?”
“She isn’t my catgirl, she just brought me here to Mars” Zenigata answered, “and I think she got bored after the first day. I think she said that Marsbase Sara was more fun.”
The officer nodded.
“Yes, some catgirls just lack the ability to concentrate on one thing for a long time... especially when they become distracted. A few weeks ago we had someone here with a waved laserpointer, it was hilarious to watch the local catgirls reactions.”
“A few more days dealing only with car salesmen and I will become insane” Zenigata murmured as he arrived at his room in the evening. “This whole search feels like a huge waste of time, but we are so close... I sometimes think I just have to grab the evidence.”
Unfortunately he was still not a single step closer to solving the case. But at least he had learned that it was unlikely the truck had been waved and sold at Helium.
‘I will just look what Mizuki is doing and then get a shower’ he decided and knocked at the door of the apartment next to his own. The camera in the door light up for a moment and he heard a click as the door unlocked immediately.
“Mizuki, are you here” he asked carefully as he opened the door and took a look into the badly lit room. “The door just opened!”
The room behind the door was in a state of chaos.
Zenigata nearly stumbled about a strand of cables growing out of an opened panel next to the door. A stream of blue blinking lights ran over the ground through the cables between a number of electric circuit boards and a group of household devices. A trash can filled with empty fast food boxes and tin cans were standing next to an open microwave.
In an edge of the room he could see a pile of printouts with Catgirl Industries logos, on the right a large holographic display with piles of numbers running through was glowing in a dim red color. In the background he could hear a quiet humming.
In the middle of the small apartment room, in the only free space on the floor, Mizuki was sleeping on a thick blanket, her arms tightly wrapped around a large pillow.
Just as Zenigata decided to come back later, a small bell rang out in the room and Mizuki began to stir.
“Just a few more minutes Nina” she whispered and yawned, turning over and got instantly tangled up in the cables next to her sleeping place. Finally she opened her eyes and sat up. “Oh, its you... hope I didn’t overslept the breakfast. What time is it?” She took a look through the room and to the closed windows. “What day is it?”
“Its evening, third day we spent on Mars” Zenigata said and chuckled. “I was getting worried when you didn’t showed up for three days... what has happened here, I had hoped that you would help me finding the maker of the truck!”
“Oh, at first I had planned to go with you through Helium... but then I had a crazy idea I wanted to try out first” Mizuki said and looked left and right. “So I bought a little bit of hardware in the local shops and started... hmm... well, I needed a bit more computer power. And I had to record a bit holo-tv.”
“Why didn’t you just asked, the local police could have supplied you with access to all the computer power you needed?” he asked while carefully stepping over the cables to the window. The red light of sunset finally lightened the room. “You remember that we are on an official mission, right?”
“Bah, borrowed equipment. That stuff never works right, it is no fun to use.” Mizuki replied, blinking a few times to get used to the light. “Its just not compatible with the way I like to do things.”
“So what DID you do in the last days?”
“Wait, I will show you” Mizuki replied and grabbed a VR helmet that was laying next to her sleeping place.
The holoscreen suddenly flashed bright and filled the room with all kinds of holographic objects. Zenigata could see numerous clusters of machine code floating in the room, receiving data from outside sources, filtering them and putting some of it in some kind of data storage. On the blanket besides Mizuki he could see the holographic images of six Exocomps.
“Welcome to my part of the Grid” Mizuki said with a smile. “Took me some time to download the necessary data from Jenga through the PODs comlink, but as I said I like to work in a familiar environment.” Mizuki stood up and a wave of her hand she activated her holographic overlay.
“Wake up my friends, we have more work to do!” she said and the six Exocomps came alive and began to float around the shape of her avatar. “Lets show our guest what we have done!”
Holographic code and data moved aside to make place for a video playback. Zenigata watched the video presentation of the ‘Catgirl Industries promotional Marsbase Sara competition’, then he looked back to Mizuki.
“You released the information about our evidence to the public? What did you really told them for this competition?” he asked slowly. “If the bad guys learn we are on their trail, they might vanish even more!”
“Calm down and listen, I didn’t released the evidence” Mizuki said annoyed, swiping the video away from the holographic screen. “The competition is about finding someone who owns a sample of Handwavium as close as possible to a randomly selected batch we collected a year ago. Oh, and you also get a price if you are the one who found the person with the right Handwavium.”
For more than a minute Zenigata remained quiet while he thought through Mizuki’s plan.
“Yes, I think it could work... the method is a bit strange, but you might have just saved us from days and days of walking through Marsbase Sara, looking for the right cars salesman” he finally said and smiled. “Do you already got results?”
Mizuki called up screen with statistics and images from persons.
“These three are our best hit, one of them entered the database last night... ehh, this morning” she explained. “One of them is very close to the data I provided, the other twos seem to be nearly exact matches to our probe. Maybe they use the same batch of Handwavium or got it from the same source. Or maybe its just the same Handwavium breed with different materials. We have to ask them and run their wavium through our taster.”
“So what are we waiting for, lets get to Marsbase Sara and talk to this people!” he finally said.
“A week lost, but at least we are starting to make progress.”
Eric Hunt sighed as he looked through the results of the latest survey. They had spend a couple of days checking their personal equipment and working on ‘evacuation plan’ in case of further attacks while the catgirls had set up a defense perimeter around Pan. Eric wasn’t sure what it was, but the catgirls didn’t want to give the attackers a second chance.
Yesterday the catgirls had finally declared Pan safe again and both astronauts from Earth and inhabitants of Jenga had descended onto the moon’s surface like a bee swarm exploring a picnic site.
They spent two days until they were sure they had got a complete picture of the situation. And now they had to decide what to do about it.
“We can help you making up the lost time” Cathy said, “but quite a bit of the material you already had on the moon has been damaged. I know you will get an additional supply run, but how much redundancy do you had in your plans?”
“Not enough Cathy, not enough” Eric answered and looked up from the survey data. “Even with the additional supplies a lot of structural parts for the station have been damaged. Luckily the more delicate equipment was still in containers. I have thought about my call from ESA in the last days and we will need even more help from you.”
Cathy’s ears twitched and she gave Eric a smile. “That sounds interesting, why don’t you explain what you have in mind? I mean your project has been planned with one foot nailed on the ground the whole time and the attack didn’t improved the situation.”
“Nailed to the ground?”
“Yes, nailed to the ground. I can understand that you wanted to stay away from the really quirky stuff, but you didn’t even had artificial gravity on your spacecraft.” Cathy said calmly. “I tell you, in all the years I have been up here I didn’t got a single report on a life support system that got quirky and unreliable. You spent years to develop the technology to get here instead of focusing on the extraction tech you needed for the Helium-3.”
“Cathy... do you think we don’t know this? Since the first waved spaceships there has been a hidden battle about using Handwavium at ESA. But ESA lost the battle every single times... and for a year or two we thought the EU would cancel the program completely.” Eric sighed, the Fen picture how Earth worked was always a bit limited. “So someone decided to become clever and flank the enemy, which brought us here to Saturn.”
“Okay, I can see that you would have got ... but how does this help you in the current situation. Its not that the situation will get better if you cannot provide Helium-3 for Earth.”
“Less thinking about breaking rules Cathy, more thinking about flanking” Eric said with a grin. He could see that Cathy was more thoughtful. “But there is something else we need to discuss. I need you to get us enough materials to repair the damage and finish the station. And I have been informed that we cannot expect more money from Earth for this.”
Cathy did not looked that happy about the last part.
“But I have a different proposal for you” Eric continued, “one that you might find interesting.”
Cathy listened carefully to his proposal and her eyes became wide.
“Are you sure they are living in the same flat?” Mizuki asked.
“Yes, the Space Patrol officer for Marsbase Sara was sure about this.” Zenigata said and nodded. “It might spare us a lot of time being able to talk with both of them simultaneously.”
“I wonder if they are related to each other” Mizuki mused, “they look quite similar. Ahh, here we are!”
Zenigata knocked at the door. A few moments later the door was opened from the inside by a man.
“Yes, what can I do for you?” the man asked and looked at Zenigata and then at Mizuki. Suddenly he began to grin. “Wait, you are the one from Catgirl Industries who announced the competition a few days ago, right?”
Mizuki nodded with a smile.
“Yes... YES... YEEEEES!” he shouted and looked over his shoulder. “Did you hear it, I won! Now I will easily beat you!”
Zenigata waited a moment until the man calmed down.
“So you are Mr. Mark Thompson?” Zenigata finally asked. “We would like to talk with you.”
Mark Thompson instantly cooled down a bit. “And who are you?”
“This is Ms. Mizuki from Catgirl Industries” Zenigata replied, “and I am Ichikawa Zenigata from the Japanese National Police Agency, currently working together with Space Patrol... and we need your help.”
“Japanese police?” Mark Thompson said surprised, “does this mean the whole competition was a fake? What do you want?”
“No, no... the competition is real, I promise!” Mizuki quickly said, “But we really would like to talk with you... and with a Mr. Ronald White.”
Mark stared at her for a moment.
“No... just tell me that was a joke... please... no...” he said, looking very unhappy. “My first moment of triumph and you tell me... tell me that I have to share it?”
Mizuki and Zenigata looked at each other, unsure what to reply to this.
Mark shrugged finally and waved them into his flat. “Just come in, I will call him and you can explain why you want to talk to us.”
He brought them into the small living room of the flat.
“Just sit down, I will be back in a moment” he said and vanished through another door. A moment later he came back with a similar looking man.
“Ronald, these are Ms. Mizuki from Catgirl Industries and Mr. Ichikawa Zenigata from the Japanese police” he introduced both of the visitors. “And this here is Ronald, my brother.”
“Maybe you can explain this” Zenigata said, “we were surprised both winners working at different places but living at the same address... but we had no clue you were related to each other.”
Both of them grinned.
“That is simple... we both changed our Surname when we moved to Mars a few years ago, we wanted to make it harder to connect us to our families back on Earth.” Mark explained. “And because we had a heated discussion at that time, we choose different names.”
“Heated discussion?” Zenigata asked.
“I hope you understand,” Ronald replied, “we are both Gearheads... but I am a Robotech fan and my brother Mark is a Macross fan.”
“Ouch!” Zenigata said and made a face. “I understand your trouble, that can really hurt.”
Both brothers grinned again.
“So we finally know how you could enter two strains of Handwavium that similar” Mizuki said, “I fear you will have to share the price, you entered the same strain twice.”
“But maybe we should focus a bit more about why I am here” Zenigata interrupted Mizuki. “We are looking for a vehicle, a waved large truck capable of long range flight. We know how large it was and we have a fragment of it waved with the handwavium strain you seem to own.”
“A truck you say? We have sold a few waved trucks over the year.” Mark answered thoughtful. “We import them on demand through a friend on Earth and wave them, it helps to make enough money to pay for our work here.”
“Good... we are looking for a truck with at least this dimensions for cargo” Zenigata continued and showed them a diagram, “which most likely used this loops to fix the cargo to the floor.”
“The birthday present?” The two brothers looked at each other for some time and nodded. “Yes, thats it.”
“As I said before, we have not waved that many trucks since we arrived on Mars. Only one of them was as large as the one you describe.” Mark said, “We got a contract from someone from the US, he wanted a waved truck for a friend. Was exported back to Earth over Luna a few months ago.”
“Are you sure about this,” Zenigata asked, “do you have met your business partner?”
“No, we have not... but it was an US email address, and the bank was coming from a US bank account!” Mark said defensively. “I hope his friend did not wrecked something important in Japan with the truck.”
“Thats not your concern at the moment” Zenigata pushed forward, “but we need everything you still know about the truck. Photos, plans, color, engine... everything could help!”
“I think we should call up the local Patrol office to confirm there is an investigation” Ronald interrupted Mark. “I am sorry Mr., but you are out of your jurisdiction and I would like to confirm your story.”
“Please wait, link is being established... authentication in progress.”
Ichikawa Zenigata was sitting in a shielded communication room of Space Patrol at Marsbase Sara, waiting for the link to Arthur Nkomo’s vehicle at Jenga being established. Small status lights of the encryption module were switching from red to green one by one until the screen finally lit up.
“Good morning Arthur, good morning Jürgen.”
“Hello Zenigata,” Arthur Nkomo replied. “I hope you have good news for us.”
“Yes, I have... Mizuki and me managed to find the Fen who imported and waved the truck we were looking for” Zenigata replied. “We don’t have a hard link who bought the vehicle, but we have everything else. Pictures, model, performance parameters. And we know that it was sent to the Moon to be collected by the customer.”
Arthur thought about this for a moment and nodded.
“Yes, that is really good news. I think we need to involve specialists from the White Tower right now” he decided and pushed a few buttons on his console to activate a conference call. “Great work Zenigata, now its time the Patrol earns their pay.”
The screen on both ends split in the middle, making space for a third communication partner.
“Jeff Patson, Data Mining... what can I do for you Mr. Nkomo?”
“Hello Mr. Parson, I hope you got the memo about my current case?”
“Yes i got it” Patson acknowledged. “So tell me what we need to dig up for you.”
“I need your group to find a vehicle involved in my case” Arthur answered. “The vehicle has only been in Fenspace for a few month so I hope you can find it quickly.”
“I am transmitting you everything we know about the vehicle” Zenigata continued, “the last known position of the vehicle was the Moon, two months ago. It was parked there on a public parking lot to be collected by the contractor.”
“I just got your data package, that should be enough to start hunting for the vehicle. I assume this is a priority request?” he asked back and Arthur instantly nodded.
“Yes, it is. We need to find the people who use this truck at the moment, as fast as we can” Arthur replied, “you don’t need to call me back when you found it, we will come to the White Tower in the next 24 hours.”
After the connection to the White Tower had been shut down Arthur looked at Zenigata again.
“We will be leaving Jenga in the next hour, I expect to meet you at the Tower tomorrow. Hopefully Section 7 will already have found some data when I arrive” Arthur said. “I will also send a request to Section 6 to keep one of their FESWAT teams on standby, as soon as we know where to strike I want to be able to do so.”
“See you at the White Tower” Zenigata replied.
Jeff Patson sighed as he turned off the external link and switched over to the White Towers cyberspace.
“I don’t know why people always think its easy to find data quickly” he murmured, “without us they wouldn’t even know where to start.”
The Data Mining group was officially part of Space Patrols technical support section, the little brother of Space Patrols hacker and codebreaker teams. While their job involved no exciting cyber combat or hacking, most people had just no idea about the scope of Data Mining’s job.
Fenspace produced an incredible amount of data each day, most of it totally boring and useless for everyone. Until someone came up with a request that redefined ‘useful’ for the last couple of months... or years.
“Okay my friends, we have a new job... priority request from Great Justice.” he said after he logged in to White Towers cyberspace. “I am uploading you the description of a vehicle... we have to find it and its owners. We have to look both through our own recordings and external sources.”
“That sounds like some fun” one of the AI’s replied, “what are our parameters? Any loops to jump through?”
“None this time. Cameras, traffic sensors, video blogs, look at everything that stores sensor data which could be useful for us” Jeff said. “If a Fen put something on the web that is useful for us, take a look at it. I don’t think you can move a vehicle to the Moon and back without hitting a dozen recording devices.”
“What is about external databases? Shall we ask the Hackers to take a look at them?”
“Only if it is necessary, we have pretty good official backing for this. Contact the Supers, we need to access their recordings too.” Jeff answered after a moment. “If they give you access or coordinate with you we are happy with it.”
He could see that the AIs were already looking forward to the challenge.
“Oh, one more thing... if you uncover something keep me informed. Section 6 already told me they are on standby to kick in someones door. So if you need some active surveillance, they might be willing to organize it for us.”
“Our target is the main belt asteroid called 2685 Masursky.”
The planning room of FESWAT Unit 2 was filled to the last place as the Sergeant explained the mission.
“A stealthed recon flight confirms that the asteroid is primarily made from stone and has been mined to some extent, which left it with a series of tunnels and caves. According to the intel data there is no atmosphere inside.
We have only limited data about what to find inside.
First, we identified three persons which are involved.”
The picture of the holoprojector changed and three infosheets appeared.
“Alexander Ward, Miriam Fisher and Norman Fox. We think that all of them are originally US citizens. No known biomods, no known combat abilities, no known connections to major Factions or organizations. They are active in the ‘Red Mars’ movement and are vocal opponents of any kind of terraforming. Up to this point Patrol had them classified as insane but harmless.”
A hand in the room went up. “Commander, we are taking the whole team to grab these three jokers?”
“Yes we are. Yesterday I would have told my boss the same. I will come back to your comment later.
The only living space in the asteroid we know about is a Whistler Container type B. A few rooms, a parking lot for a compact car and an airlock. The weapon system they used to attack Pan doesn’t even fit into this container.”
The commander looked through the room.
“I am pretty sure we are missing more than a few facts, but that is all we got. Maybe there are more people on the asteroid, maybe these three sniffed too much Wavium last year and became full Mads.
We cannot afford to wait, we have to strike quickly. We go in with the whole team, the Clipper as as external backup and a Roughrider squadron to make sure no one gets out. If we see that its too much for us, we bail out and call the cavalry.
One last thing, we need these terrorists alive. We need answers, not dead bodies... any questions?”
Arthur Nkomo was sitting together with his two Earth co-workers in a different meeting room.
“I still would have liked to be there when we arrest this terrorists” Zenigata said and sighed. “Somehow its annoying to know that the grand final will happen without us.”
Arthur rolled with his eyes.
“You know the drill... this is a job for specialists, there is no way we would let someone without zero-g combat experience on this mission” he replied. “Calm down, we will get all the data they acquired during the raid. And they will bring back all prisoners directly to the White Tower, so we can interrogate them.”
“Do Japanese SWAT teams allow other personnel to accompany them on a mission” Jürgen Schmidt asked with a smirk on his face.
“No, they do not... yeah okay, I will shut up. But still, it would have been nice to see your people doing it.” Zenigata said. “Any news about this other men who used the truck?”
It had taken Data Mining only a few hours to gather all data about the truck standing on its parking slot. It had been taken away twice by different people.
The second one had been Norman Fox. His picture and the data from Kandors traffic control system had been the first evidence that had given the Patrol a clue where to find their current targets.
But the first person who had taken the truck and brought it back a few days later was a mystery. He had arrived in a small compact car and had left with the same car again. Neither the car nor the person had been found in any other data source Space Patrol had been looking into.
“I hope the interrogation will give us some insight what is going on” Arthur said. “This smells a lot like someone making sure there is no connection between him and this group. But who knows, maybe we'll get lucky.”
“Tactical links coming online, Unit 2 disembarking.”
The Tactical Support room of Unit 2 in the belly of the Roger Murtaugh was dimly lit by the monitors on the consoles, displaying the asteroid 2685 Masursky and the members of Unit 2. Twelve points of light leaving the safety of the stealthed hull and floating over to the surface of the asteroid towards a tunnel entry into the interior.
“Minimal surface gravity, no sensors detected... going in!”
Tunnels walls appear on the screen as the first members of Unit 2 enter the asteroid. Naked dark stone, nothing that suggests someone had been in this tunnel in the last years. Slowly Unit 2 moves forward, constantly safeguarding against any kind of surprise attack.
“Smaller tunnel branching off from the main tunnel.”
The operators quickly check the data of the secondary tunnel. ‘Too small for the Whistler Container, wrong angle to get a truck into’ they decide and advise Unit 2 to advance along the main tunnel.
“We have reached a former mining area, completely empty. Multiple tunnels visible.”
The operators watch as Unit 2 spread out and begin to examine the other tunnel entrances. One by one the tunnels are visited by four green dots, checked out for any kind of evidence and equipped with a small sensor.
“Operation, this is Team 3. We found a small device, looks like a waved Nav-Beacon!”
Pictures of devices begin to run over the screen until a match appears. Moon built reactive navigation beacon, waved wifi interface and battery cell. Civil technology, sold in large quantities at Kandor.
“Team 3, place it in a Faraday Box. All Unit 2, proceed through this tunnel!”
Unit 2’s position markers move forward again, following the curved tunnel deeper into the asteroid. Slowly the infrared levels begin to increase. The tunnel finally opens into another cave, but this one dimly lit by a group of light bulbs.
“Operation, we found the truck and the Whistler Module. Still no enemy activity!”
One team begins moving to secure the truck but the rest of Unit 2 carefully surround the Module and check its only airlock. One by one all members of Unit 2 signal that they are ready as a plastic airlock inflates and the hacker box connects to the doors lock.
“Operation to Unit 2, you are cleared to go!”
The outer door flashes open as its control system is overridden and Unit 2 storms through the airlock into the main room of the Module. Target 2, Miriam Fisher, appears on the screen, working on a computer terminal. She open her mouth, staring with wide eyes at the intruders.
“Space Patrol! You are under arrest!”
A taser dart hits Target 2 before she can even scream.
“Shit, its the cops!”
Target 1, Norman Fox, shouts and ducks behind a desk. He tries to grab a device on his desk but before anyone can recognize if it is a weapon or not, two taser darts hit and paralyze him instantly. Unit 2 races through the room to the doors at the back and forces them open. More taser fire can be heard.
“Operation, this is Leader. All targets are down, area secured.”
“Mission accomplished.”
“So why is the Director of Europol attending the Fenspace Convention” Commissioner Kirk Russell asked. “I don’t think it is common for you to attend foreign political meetings.”
The director nodded.
“Officially I am here to talk about the Liaison treaty between the European Union and the Convention for further collaboration in crime fighting. The operation at Pan will become more and more important for us in the next years, so we would like to have a head start this time.”
“I heard that Mr. Jürgen Schmidt has agreed to become the first Liaison officer with us?” the Commissioner asked. “Not that we would disagree, his first joined investigation has been pretty successful.”
“Yes, that was one of the reasons he was asked to do the job” the Director of Europol confirmed. “Someone decided now that he already had experience dealing with the Fen and Space Patrol, he should continue to do the job. I have also heard the National Police Agency in Japan is thinking in similar ways, so you might also see Mr. Ichikawa Zenigata again.”
“Good to hear that, he raised quite some rumors with his investigation at Helium and Marsbase Sara, together with this catgirl. Personal contact and being know is an important part of working in Fenspace” Kirk replied. “I will ask our technical staff, I think we can easily provide a secure Interwave Link between your headquarter in The Hague and the White Tower.
But you said officially... so you have a second reason to come to Coruscant?”
“Yes, I have... a week ago Europol was contacted by Allan Bossert, the ESA Director General. His team of internal investigators analyzed the Aurora specific evidence you gathered from the terrorists and they found something interesting.”
He opened a small suitcase, took out a ring binder and put it on the table.
“This is a copy of the sensor data of our spaceships you found with the terrorists. A highly detailed scan. We thought it was done when the ships left Earth together for their first voyage to Saturn. Unfortunately this is wrong, they are an elaborate fake.”
“A fake?” Commissioner Russell raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Like I said, the plans are very detailed, showing quite a bit of internal structure of the crafts. Unfortunately the crafts were never built like this.” He opened the binder and pointed to one of the pages. “While ESA had planned to mount the fuel pipes in this way, they discovered a structural problem while assembling the crafts at their station on Nouveau Paris. The engineers had to change the layout.
This is not a sensor scan... this is a fake, based on a set of plans that were only available internally to ESA and JAXA, they were not included in the general project plans. Which means there is someone on Earth involved in the attack. Someone with enough resources to steal this plans. And maybe someone why also has a reason and the abilities to build and deploy the weapon system that was used against Pan.”
“That fits well with some analysis results we got from the weapon system.” Commissioner Russell agreed. “Some of the materials are very complex and totally unusual for Fen construction. We try to keep an eye on Earth based factions activity in Fenspace, but we are not aware of even a hint that one of them has been involved in the terror attack.”
“Which means you might have missed someone.”
“It is great you had time to come to our party, I had not believed you would travel all the way to Saturn again” Mizuki said. “You must have awful much to do for work these days!” The day of the Aurora Station Opening Party’, nearly half a year after the attack on the icy moon, was over and everyone had the chance to get a full night of sleep again. Jenga had frozen its internal clock at midnight until the party was over, so it was still ‘late in the morning’ at the moment.
“The first few months with my new job were really chaotic, but things calmed down to a reasonable level after that” Ichikawa Zenigata replied. “Working together with Space Patrol and the Fen on Coruscant is... interesting. Different than what I had to do back in Tokyo but interesting.”
Both of them were sitting in the Cafeteria of Jenga with their breakfast. Jenga would leave the Saturn system later that day, so most Astronauts of the Aurora Station and the other party guests enjoyed to chance to eat together with their hosts.
“Our flight from Saturn to Mars was really cool” Mizuki continued, “I would have never guessed my POD would become that fast. Just cool, we have to do this again!”
“It got us to Mars quickly when I had to get there” Zenigata said and chuckled. “It was really a nice little craft.”
Mizuki stared at him with big eyes for a moment, then she rushed to Zenigata and gave him a tight hug, purring loudly.
“You are the first one who liked the POD” she said happily, “the other catgirls who helped building it are always argue about it quirks.”
Zenigata sighed mentally but kept quiet and waited until the catgirl calmed down again.
“I have to visit my lab and look how much of the PODs Handwavium I have left” she suddenly said, “maybe I can make another one for you if you really like it!”
“Hmm... I like the idea that the POD is an unique craft and will always think fondly about it.” Zenigata replied, “but I am not sure I would be able to use a POD of my own enough, because I will often need more space when I travel. But if I need a small but crazy fast craft in the future, may I just call you?”
He could see that Mizuki wasn't that happy about the answer, but finally she nodded.
“Just one question, did you tell the two brothers on Mars that the POD was karaoke powered?”
“I might have slipped that accidently” Zenigata admitted. “I hope that wasn’t that bad, I didn’t felt it was a secret.”
“Oh, it wasn't a secret, but it explains a lot. It took them three months to decide what kind of project they would like to get our assistance.” Mizuki answered. “Of course it was always about some transformable robot, but they argued over the Macross versus Robotech thing forever!”
“That's an important issue” Zenigata agreed with a grin, “you should not pretend it doesn’t matter.”
“Fandom can be really a pain with some Fen, but in the end one of the brothers made an argument that the other one could not refute.” Mizuki chuckled. “Macross has better music. So after all this time they settled on something from Macross Frontier... but in Macross Frontier most of the show is about space fighters and singing!”
“Yes, that makes a lot of sense” Zenigata agreed, “so when they started working on it, they remembered me talking about a catgirl that owes them a favor.”
“Yes, exactly... we really had a great time and I will return there in a few weeks to help them finishing the project... I will send you an email when we are done, maybe you can visit us!”
On the other side of the cafeteria Eric Hunt and Cathy were sitting at a small table.
“Another party over... I sometimes think you are all enjoying this way too much” Eric Hunt said with a smirk. “I am not surprised that some people on Earth think you are a bit crazy.”
“Yes we do, is that a crime? Why do something if you don’t enjoy what you do?” Cathy replied. “And I like ‘a bit crazy’... not being a bit crazy would mean you are boring normal, never rushing out to do something really new and exciting! Isn't your whole mission also a bit crazy?”
“Okay, you got this point. The Aurora mission was a little bit crazy and it got more crazy after the attack when we had to start improvising.” Eric Hunt had to admit. “Someone will go really crazy when they compare the original plans with all the small details we had to change, but that is not my problem. They got what they wanted... The Aurora Station is ready for autonomous operation, completely without Handwavium. Thats all they care about, that and the Helium-3.”
“Yes, if you see it this way you are right” Cathy said and chuckled. “Do you plan to tell them about the second station on Pan?”
“Maybe later, after we delivered the first Helium-3” Eric Hunt replied with a big grin. “It’s not that important.”
“If you have any trouble with our Module, just give us a call.”
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