LOCATION: OMNI HEADQUARTERS

  SYSTEM: TAU CETI

  DATE: 2400

  Theodore Pembrooke was not having a good time. Ever siurning from that disastrous arbitration orov Station, that he had been in charge of, his rank had been stripped away, and he had been relegated to a position as a mindless drone. Now he was just another faceless fixer in Omni’s reciliation team. The bottom of the bottom and where he had gotten his start nearly a decade earlier.

  All for some unknown slight against someone above him.

  The fact that he was older than everyone else oeam made him stand out, and not in a good way. All anyone had to do was look at him to know he had screwed up majorly to get sent back here. S to make new es was an effort in futility. Nobody wao hook themselves to a sinking ship.

  Theo had almost thrown iowel when he realized it would be nearly impossible to get back to his previous positio alone rise above it. His innate desire to prove them all wro him going though. His perseverance had finally paid off with a report from an unlikely source.

  Theo didn’t know how many informants and spies Omni had, but he kheir reach extended well beyond STO spad even to some of the pirate havens. This wasn’t from a tact outside of STO space, thankfully. Those would have been routed to far more important agents than him, even if he was in his previous position within the anization. This report came from some low-level of Malis. The man was so low oem pole that he had been forced to joiO Navy to keep his affiliation as nobility.

  He pulled up Captain Wilrd's file. It was nothing special.

  The man was your typical spoiled rich kid who only managed his position through es. And even those must have been poor because he didn’t earn a captaintil he was sixty, despite having the qualifications for over twenty years. The Om included his family es, an i involving espionage, for Omni, that got him nearly court-martialed, and his current posting in Varlen.

  Theo was familiar with the Navy’s shipyards in Varlen. It was his duty to know stuff like that. That wasn’t what ied him about Wilrd’s report. His mention of one, Alexander Kane, in an offhand ent, is what caught Theo’s attention.

  There was no way he could have fotten the name of the individual who had caused the end of his career.

  Theo wasn’t stupid, nor was he seeking revenge. He knew Kane wasn’t ultimately responsible for his situation. To bme him would be silly. If Theo could recruit the man or report all his secrets back to HQ… Well, maybe he could earn his position back. It was a long shot, but it was better than wasting away on this floor for the rest of his life.

  It was going to take some maneuvering to make this happen though. First, he o send a message to Wilrd to tell him to go dark. He couldn’t have the man sending in more reports while he was out looking for Kane. He also marked the inal report as trivial. He would love to erase it, but that would bring more attention to the dot by the AIs that monitored those sorts of things.

  The issue was getting transportation to Varlen to speak with Wilrd face-to-face. That was easy enough, Theo had dozens of non-Omni tacts he could reach out to to get him there. The biggest issue would be ging this report in the archive. To do that he needed a higher level of access.

  Theo grabbed his coffee mug and got up from his cubical. He didn’t furtively gnce around or make a big produ of leaving, he simply did.

  Omni was such a rge corporation that the break rooms were always busy, all day every day. They were massive areas that usually spanned multiple floors of the monolithic building that covered an area hly sixteen square kilometers on the ground and rose over a thousaers into the air.

  Theo had made it up to the one-huh floor in his previous position. A far cry from the lofty heights of the top floor, wo hundred, but a fair sight better than his current position oweh floor.

  As he made his way into the busy cafeteria, he sed the crowd for his target. It didn’t take him long to find one of the lower-level, overworked engineers. He slightly adjusted his path so it would have him brushing past the tired-looking young man.

  They soon came into tad Theo bumped into him, making him drop his tablet. “I’m terribly sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. Here, let me grab that for you. Could you hold this for a sed?” without waiting, Theo thrust his half-empty coffee mug into the man’s surprised hand and reached down to pick up the tablet and also lift the man’s badge from his nyard.

  He made a token effort to brush the tablet off before handing it back to the man and taking his coffee mug back, careful to only grab it by the handle. “Have a good day,” he said with a smile as he turned around and made his way to the beverage area.

  Theo set the output temperature on the mae to a little above human normal. It would cool slightly by the time he made it to the archive room. Ohe mug was full, he made his way to the elevator and took it to sub-basement seven.

  Worker traffic quickly dwihe father dow, but it wasy. Nobody down here bng up though as they hurried about their work. These were the people on their st gasp at the pany or those who simply liked being in records. Theo couldn’t uand that, but he wasn’t here to learn about why the archivists were the way they were.

  He simply walked to the archive room with the slightly warm cup of water in his hand and the engineer's badge in his pocket. Whe to the room, he pulled out the badge, careful to hide his now gloved hand as he pressed it against the bio reader along with the outside of his warm cup.

  This was a trick Theo had learned in his youth a in his back pocket for situations such as this. The reality was that most bio-readers were easy to fool. They checked for a biomarker, the one vely left behind by the engineer when he held his cup, and a certain temperature range. Hehe warm liquid inside.

  The dave a satisfied beep and he pushed the handle down and walked ihe archive server room was freezing cold, but also loud as hell. He hated ing down here. A few teis were wandering through the aisles of servers, but nobody batted an eye about him being there. Who in their right mind would break into the Omni archives, in the most heavily defended facility on the p, on the most heavily defended p iire STO? Theo, that’s who. He would do anything to get his position back, even if that meant burning this entire facility to the ground.

  He repeated his trick with the badge at the closest uerminal and accessed the archives for Captain Wilrd’s file. He didn’t erase the report, that would be too suspicious. He simply modified oer in Kane’s st name. Now it read Alexander Pane, a tle inside joke. The AI might fg it as an error in a few years, but by then it wouldn’t matter. He would have either recruited Kane otten rid of him. Despite what happe Petrov, Theo still believed Kane was important and the report Wilrd filed seemed to corroborate that assumption.

  The man’s report was light oails since Wilrd had to be circumspect about what he sent out, but Theo had been doing this sort of thing most of his life and he knew how to read between the lines. Just the fact that Wilrd thought the enter was important enough to report it was enough for him, but the fact that a Vice Admiral had met with the man personally meant something important was going on.

  After seg the terminal, Theo left the archive and made his way back upstairs. He ditched the purloined badge in an out-of-the-ot, making sure it was on the same path the Engineer had taken as he came into the cafeteria. With the evidence disposed of, he went back to his cubicle and finished his day.

  ***

  LOCATION: ASGARD

  SYSTEM: YGGDRASIL’S EYE

  Katalynn Char heaved in a deep gulp of air, leaning heavily on her bloody sword. She had e out victorious iest cim against her worthio rule, but it hadn’t been without injury. Jarl Bergson lived up to his he man had towered over even her, pushio her limit and leaving a rge bleeding gash on her arm before she finally mao drive her sword into him ahe test.

  She wished it had been the first challenge or eve, but she khe other Jarls were waiting to challenge her as well. They had united in their anger over her calling off the atta Haven.

  The injury would make them wait, as none wao be seen as winning against the infirm. That would only ihers to challehem after they won. She had hoped beating Bergson would have e, but that would only have happened if she did so without injury. Her injury was like blood ier, it would only bolster her detractors who thought her too weak to rule.

  She rose to her feet and flicked the blood off her sword, sending it spttering across the hard sand and the corpse of Jarl Bergson. “Such a waste,” she muttered under her breath.

  An attendant ran out and she hahe sword to them to be ed. Other attendants ran out to prepare the body for the funerary rights. While Katalynn thought the man’s death was a waste, she would never begrudge them fhting for what they believed in and dying honorably for it.

  She would attend as dictated.

  Atendant rushed out with a medical kit and began ing the still-bleeding wound she had. If the man’s strike had been half an inch to the left, it would have been a fatal blow. O healed, the scar would be a good reminder not to uimate the speed er oppos.

  She stood there while the young woman ed her arm. “This will slow the bleeding, Lagertha, but you will o see the healer to have it properly closed.”

  “I’m aware,” she gestured for the woman to leave after she tied off the bandage.

  Katalynn gnced over at a man who was trying to remain inspicuous. She o him and headed down the hall toward the medical facility. He met up with her not long after she ehe hallway. “You better have a good reason for appearing right after a challenge. I don’t need people gossiping that I invoked a Loki to win through underhanded means.”

  The man took the rebuke in stride. “I apologize for appearing when I did, Lagertha, but the Lokis thought it was important enough that we speak with yht away.”

  She gru that. “Then speak.”

  “We have news of Harlow Anazi. He has captured more STO systems, and even broken some of the STO fleets. Reports are still scarce, but it seems he has a new ship as well as a neon.”

  She ched her jaw and fists at that, nearly gasping in pain as she fot about her injured arm. Katelynn g the spymaster, but the man had pretended not to notice her grimace.

  “While that news is upsetting, it isn’t immediately relevant. The man is oher side of STO space. So what other news do you have for me?”

  “You mentioned a man by the name of Alexander Kane spoke with you at Eden’s End. The Lokis have dug up what little information we could on this individual. He seems to own a pany called Blue Star Enterprises that doesn’t appear to sell anything and had a run-in with Omni a few years ago.”

  “Is that name supposed to be useful to me?” she growled, growing a the man. “Quit dang around the real reason you are here.”

  “Someone recorded your loss at Y6X-3H2. They sold that rec to the Xin.”

  “Dammit! Who?” she demanded.

  “We are irely certain. The video was recorded from outside the system.”

  “Find out. Is that all?”

  “I’m afraid not, Lagertha. The Xin have already taken a few of your statioheir border. We believe they are probing for a response. If we don’t react, they will tinue pushing.”

  She hated the damn Xin. They were the worst of the pirate s. Unlike hers or eveested Anazi, the Xin was made up of Coalitiorand Admiral Xin had seen the writing on the wall well before the Coalition war turhe man had gathered his loyalist forces and abandoned his post. Then he flew far outside STO space to set up his own little fiefdom.

  Katalynn despised the man on principle alo there were far more reasons to hate the man.

  After leaving STO space, Grand Admiral Xin turned into the greatest despot in human history. The vulgar and depraved acts his people did in his name made the Anazi look civilized in parison. It was like his thin veneer of civility had vanished once he had power. Then again, maybe the man had never had any civility to begin with. Katalynn had watched recs of his battles against the ST the war. Xin had been notorious for throwing Coalition ships to their deaths or using them as living battering rams if it meant winning.

  Other than his track record for victories over the ST the war, she believed the only other reasoO didn’t boing after that psychopath was because he kept Anazi, and her from expanding. And now he could smell weakness.