Paragon

by Rob RodenParker

  Jess relaxed, but only a little.

  "It's pretty easy, basically on this datapad we have gathered data about some people and I just want to investigate if they have any links to the Alpha Cybernetics Corporation. I just need you to sift through it and see what you can come up with. We have developed an in-house program which you can use," he said, as he tapped a few buttons to launch the program on Jess' terminal before continuing. "Basically, we have several different sets of data for people: their people links, GPS data for movement tracking, their family histories, and transmission histories on their datapads. I've defined a heuristic which will look through all this stuff and see if the person has any relation to the corporation, but it needs a bit of babysitting and you need to compile the results. Is everything clear?"

  "It sounds simple enough, I guess..." replied Jess.

  "Good, get working, if you have any questions just ask one of the other analysts. This is important stuff, so I want results fast, okay miss?"

  "Yes sir!" replied Jess, nodding her head vigorously, "Can I ask why we're running tests on these people?"

  James smiled enigmatically.

  "Classified," he replied.

  Adrenaline surged through Jess, she was working on a classified case! This is my chance to shine! And maybe this will even help Kepp in some way.

  "I'll start right away, sir!"

  "Good. Once you have all the results you can just send them to me. You can find my datapad ID on the network."

  "Will do!"

  James strode out, as quickly as he had entered, leaving the room in silence, and Jess in a frenzied state of work.

  Kepp reclined in his seat as the shuttle taxied and took to the air. They had managed to secure a delegate shuttle for the ride to London, which gave them unparalleled levels of comfort, in a large airy cabin, which was finely upholstered and decorated. Cream leather adorned the chair he was sat in, and on the other side of a dark red mahogany coffee table, Haur lounged in a chair of similar make. A minibar stood in one corner, but it was the one time Kepp wasn't tempted by a drink. It was a mere hour’s flight to London, and then Morian would await him. A dark feeling swept through him, it felt like elation, but was tinged with anger and bitterness. The time for vengeance would come soon.

  "Kepp," said Haur, "You can't kill this guy. The political shit storm that it would cause would probably tear the government apart."

  "Don't worry," Kepp replied, "I won't get in the way of the mission."

  Haur grunted, still not completely satisfied.

  "Why do you hate this guy so much anyway?"

  "It's a long story," replied Kepp, who stood to get a glass of water.

  "Well, it's not like we're going anywhere."

  Kepp said nothing until he sat back down with his glass. He placed it carefully on the table, staring at the water swirling within.

  "He killed the one person in this world who ever meant anything to me," stated Kepp bluntly, "but you probably wouldn't understand, coming from your background."

  Haur laughed.

  "Don't be so arrogant, try me."

  Kepp drank a bit more water.

  "So I had a pretty shit childhood, parents always arguing, beating me, beating each other. We never got involved in the whole life enjoyment center culture, my father was against it. A degradation of our purpose, he said, and he made damn well sure to beat that into me. So I always felt out of place. At school, I had nothing in common with the other kids, always alone. I wasn't even sure why I was alive. Then I joined the military academy...I think it was the one thing I did which my father actually approved of, and I began to find myself there. It was horrible to start with. I was a brat, the other cadets picked on me, beat on me. I was going to quit, to run away, but then I met Julia."

  Kepp glanced at Haur.

  "You can think I'm a pussy, I don't care. She changed my life. She was so different to me, so warm and giving, and I learned from her what it was to love and be loved, and I found my purpose. I was going to be the best at that stupid academy, I worked my ass off for it, I broke bones, shed blood, tons of sweat, a few tears, but I made my goal. At graduation, I was the best damn cadet they'd ever seen. Not even the instructors could touch me. I was on top of life, man, those were good times..."

  Kepp paused, reminiscing.

  "But anyway, then I got assigned to Mars, and Julia came with me, of course. I knew then that she would be the woman I was with for life, and I knew she felt the same. I rose quickly in the ranks at the Mars Special Investigations Squad. You know they had and still have a huge problem with drug traffickers, and other random crimes. It was a mystery why crime rates on Mars were so high...anyway...I was talented, and the management knew it. Before long, I was assigned to take down one of the biggest drug cartels there, the Angel Cartel. Morian was the head of that cartel at the time, and he was a wily shit. We had four or five run ins, each time he'd always get away. It almost became like a game, but then he decided to take things up to the next level. He had a contact in the bureaucracy, who found out my details, then they kidnapped Julia for leverage."

  Haur nodded, "And so the story of you, storming the Cartel's hideout solo and taking down all of their men was born."

  Kepp shrugged.

  "I went into a rage when I found out. Didn't stop to think, just rushed in. Lucky I had a good squad captain, Anderson..." Kepp rubbed the back of his neck, as he remembered his old Mars squad. "He and the squad backed me up. We blazed through their defenses, and I found Julia. But it felt like she had been changed forever, her eyes, I won't forget. They were dead. Morian then arrived, and took great pleasure in telling me how they'd treated her. Rape, humiliation, torture for information which she didn't have...it was fucking horrible. Those eyes, they were so warm and full of life, and he killed that. Then, he killed her. He shot at me, and she took the bullets for me. A part of me died with her. Morian and I then fought, I thought I killed him, after shooting him three times and then throwing him out of the window...but apparently not."

  Kepp paused, letting out a big sigh.

  "I have to finish the job. It ends with his death."

  The shuttle streaked through the upper atmosphere, leaving a long jetstream in its wake.

  "You're such a pussy," said Haur.

  Chapter 8 – Veils

  Astropedia Entry: Timeline of human activity on the Moon

  1959: The Russian Luna 2 probe crashes into the moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach the moon.

  20th July, 1969: Apollo 11 successfully lands on the moon, with Neil Armstrong the first man to set foot upon its surface.

  1969 - 1972: Three further successful landings made on the moon.

  15th June 2050: Humankind makes a return to the moon, with the aim of deploying a permanent colony on its surface. The mission was headed by Arlen Curtis, its aim being reconnaissance to find a suitable spot for the colony.

  2050 - 2070: Many more manned missions are made, each delivering vital building supplies to the Abel crater (due to its 122km wide size and relatively flat surface).

  16th August 2073: A NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) joint operation constructs the first prefabricated shelter on the moon.

  2073 - 2100: Human presence on the Moon expands rapidly, first for scientific purposes, and then with the aim of building a human colony living in a biosphere to ease the population problems on earth. Lunar dust shipped back to Earth sells for a lot of money, as superstitious people flock to buy the 'magical' sediment.

  2120: A PFM-drive-powered colony ship starts the first serious colonization efforts of humanity. The project is a joint operation between Cygnus Corp and Trilateral Holdings, two of the world's largest corporations at the time. The tenuous alliance, needed because each lacked the necessary resources to fund a project on the scale required, was held together by a mysterious man called Janos, who through a mix of persuasive force, idealism and charisma persuaded the two mega-corporations to put aside their own fierce rivalry for
the benefit of mankind.

  2125: Trilateral Holdings discover a new element beneath the Moon's surface, later given the name Lunarium. They found that when excited using certain thought patterns (corresponding to different neural impulse sequences), it generated a negative Higgs field, which is the basis for the Paragon implants. A resource war quickly broke out and escalated. The executive board of Trilateral Holdings decide to betray Cygnus Corp, however, Janos found out and tried to intervene. This led to his assassination. After he died, the situation degraded rapidly, and the two corporations ended up fighting their own private war on the Moon colony, with the weak governments powerless to intervene. The colony was decimated, leading to the loss of many lives and the evacuation of hundreds and thousands of people. The Lunar colonization project was abandoned.

  2150: Global unification into one world government is achieved. The government is interested in looking at the Moon as a penal colony. All criminals with a sentence longer than six months begin to be shipped off to the moon.

  2153 - Present: The penal colony program on the moon proves a resounding success. It becomes the prison world of humanity. Most prisoners are put to work extracting Lunarium, but in exchange live relatively free lives, although are confined to the moon. The colony is largely self-governing, and the United Earth Alliance tend to not get involved in any of its affairs - save when it would threaten the structural integrity of the biospheres themselves. The population of the moon is approximately ten million.

  Jess stared at the screen in front of her, watching as the heuristic searched through the data provided on the mission director's datapad. The process ate up all of her workstation's CPU, and still only managed to churn out a result every five minutes. So far, it had finished processing two people, with both of them coming back negative for connections to Alpha Cybernetics. She dropped her head, letting out a small sigh; the work may have been classified, but it wasn't exciting.

  "Bored?" came a voice from behind her.

  She turned and saw one of the other analysts, leaning against the desk behind her. It was Hao, the other young-ish analyst working in the lab. He leaned casually on the side of her cell, head on his arms, he was clothed in dark blue jeans and a plain white t-shirt, which contrasted with his tanned skin. His face was definitely of an oriental descent, but with traces of Caucasian too. Jess found him rather cute.

  She smiled a little guiltily, and scratched her head, shaking up her long black hair. "A little bit I guess. I just sit here and watch this thing and click some buttons every so often."

  "Yeah...I've done my fair share of heuristic analyses as well. Boring as fuck..." he put his hand to his mouth, "Oops. Shouldn't swear in front of you."

  Jess laughed.

  "It's okay. I think you'll find me more mature than you give me credit for."

  "Well, it's impolite. Both in front of a minor, and a lady such as yourself, of course," replied Hao, cracking a grin, "I'm not sure if you've been told, but the pre-lunch coffee round is always done by the youngest person in the room. I believe that's you," he said, pointing at her.

  "Oh really? Nobody told me."

  "It's a good thing I did," said Hao, voice growing somber, "For those who do not obey the rules of the coffee round, have terrible things happen to them."

  Jess was quite sure Hao was joking, however, was afraid to laugh just in case he wasn't.

  "Oof. Lighten up will ya?"

  "That was lame."

  Hao took on an expression of mock offense.

  "You're lame!" he said, waving a finger in her face.

  "Hitting on minors, seriously Hao?" jibed one of the other technicians, raising her amused voice above the background din of the lab. Hao scrunched his face up, and didn't turn to look at her.

  "I think she's just jealous," he whispered at Jess, who stifled a giggle in response.

  "Anyway, joking aside, could you take this to Lab 3? It's right down the other end of the building, and I'm a little swamped right now."

  He pulled out a datapad and waved it at her.

  "Sure thing, I'd be happy to help and do whatever you need me to do," replied Jess, she couldn't help but inject a little sarcasm however. Let's get the new girl to be our personal FedEx assistant...great.

  Hao seemed unfazed by her tone, and so, Jess grabbed the datapad and walked out of the door.

  As he watched Jess depart, Hao then turned and discreetly erased his name from the list of people which the heuristic analysis would investigate, before returning to his desk.

  The darkness of the evening was interrupted by thousands of pricks of light, as the shuttle neared London. Kepp checked the time - 8:15pm. They flew over the towering skyscrapers, almost reaching the base of the low hanging clouds. Finally, the expanse of flat ground that was Heathrow came into view, lit by thousands of floodlights, appearing almost as if it would in daylight. The shuttle descended. As they touched down, Kepp noticed an unmarked black car waiting for them. He bid the pilot farewell as they disembarked into a cold and windy English evening and then stepped into the car.

  "Good evening, sirs," said the driver, with a distinctly British accent. Kepp took a liking to it; it was much nicer than the American lilt.

  "Greetings, ma'am," replied Kepp, as he sank into the comfy rear leather seats, "Liza I take it?"

  "That's right, sir. My team and I have been assigned to keeping track of Morian, sir."

  "You got a situation update? We've had nothing from Paradigm," asked Haur, cutting straight to the chase.

  "Morian is still in the Alpha Cybernetics Headquarters. His information dossier is surprisingly devoid of any useful information. There's a large blank between when he was on Mars and what he is doing currently. We're just keeping an eye on all the entrances and standing by right now, sir."

  "Could you dispense with all that "sir" stuff?" asked Haur, a little irritably, "He's Kepp, I'm Haur, we have names."

  "I'm sorry, sir. Ah...! I'm sorry."

  Liza started up the car, and they lifted off, making their way slowly to the exit airway from Heathrow. They joined a large stream of slow moving traffic as Haur drummed his fingers on the armrest.

  "What's up with you?" asked Kepp, "Getting cranky all of a sudden."

  "I don't like not knowing shit," replied Haur, "Paradigm's been silent on us; we're practically heading into the unknown."

  "They say ignorance is bliss."

  "I say, ignorance is death. Seriously, how've you survived so long with that lackadaisical attitude?"

  "Just joking," Kepp rolled his eyes slightly, "You need to relax, Haur, there's nothing we can do but work with what we've got."

  "After how that last mission turned out? I don't think so."

  "This one will go better, I'm sure. Have faith!"

  Liza smiled to herself as she maneuvered the car towards central London, towards Alpha's Headquarters. I guess even Paragons are humans underneath all that.

  Her datapad vibrated, indicating a message had been received. She displayed the message on the HUD of the car. "Morian is moving; team is trailing."

  She raised her voice, cutting through the Paragons' chat.

  "Morian's moving. The team is trailing him. We'll catch up with them soon."

  "Good," responded Kepp.

  Haur crossed his arms, but said nothing.

  James sat in his office, compiling the data available for Morian. The three large display screens on the walls of his office flashed and scrolled with data, as James manipulated it with his implants - there was no time for manual interfacing. It was a mystery how the former leader of the Angel Cartel could have found his way to such a senior position in Alpha Cybernetics. The dossier on him had not been updated since the Mars incident three years ago, where he had been presumed dead.

  The scouring of data retrieved from the Alpha Cybernetics research facility had not revealed anything particularly surprising so far, except that a lot of projects had been funded and approved by a single entity or person, who was
completely unrelated to the actual board of directors. Perplexing as this was, it did not help the immediate situation - so he dismissed it for now. He had also received the heuristic analysis results from Jess - all negative, as he expected. It was a little odd though, only eleven people were searched; he was sure he had included twelve on the list.

  There was a knock on the door behind him. Saro had returned from his meeting with the UEA Council.

  "This Alpha Cybernetics thing has been quite the bother," began Saro, without pleasantries. He came in and sat down. James swiveled around on his chair to face Saro, pausing the data flow.

  "The council give you a grilling?"