Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

"Ugh! We're not getting anywhere!" Avery slammed his terminal down on the console in front of him and then exhaled deeply in frustration. For around the last hour and a half they had been trying to figure out which one of the names Jasmine had found was connected to the tangled web of plots centered around the Phregon System. Terrorist, pirates, slave soldiers, and a pair of kidnapped Baccigans. They were all pieces of the same puzzle, but trying to fit them together and figure out the whole picture seemed to be impossible. The person that was controlling everything had covered their tracks well. "How many from the list are we confident aren't involved?" Avery asked, hoping that Kasandra, Jasmine, and Ezra might have made some progress. "We've eliminated four. All of them own companies that were hit hard by the terrorist or lost several trading ships to pirates and other unknown assailants. It would be unlikely that they would cause this much harm to themselves just to seem innocent." Kasandra replied. That was certainly a start, but it still left them with twenty-four individuals to look into. At this point if they went after one of them, it would not even be a gamble but a shot in the dark. "What about Grito and Kaiden? Have they found anything yet?" Ezra asked Kasandra. "I've messaged my brother a few times, but he always just responds with 'we're working on it'. I guess that implant must be a pretty complex piece of technology. We might need to find someone else to analyze it if Grito can't handle it." Despite having gotten this far, it appeared that Avery's group had hit a wall. That is, until Jasmine brought back up an avenue that they had all already dismissed. "What about trying to find a connection between Bréige Pharmaceuticals and the people on our list? Before we did not know what we we're looking for, but trying to connect one out of twenty four people to the shell company should be a lot easier than aimlessly looking around for information." Having made no headway in a while, Avery, Kasandra, and Ezra shrugged their shoulders and got to work looking into Jasmine's suggestion. If they found someone even loosely involved with Bréige Pharmaceuticals, that would probably be the person they were looking for. However, as they dug into it, they found that seven individuals on the list had a connection to the shell company. Either through a relationship with one of the employees or by investing money. "There are more of them than I was expecting. Still, we've narrowed it down quite a bit now. We just need one last thing to figure out which one of these people is the one we're after." Avery said, intently staring at the shortened list. As they hit this slump in their investigation, Grito and Kaiden finally returned. With Grito wearing a massive grin on his face. "This implant is as intricate as it is diabolical, but I finally managed to figure out how it works." Grito slammed the implant that was back in its container in front of Avery. His expression was smug, and it looked like he was practically asking for praise. "Good work! So, what did you figure out about it?" Happily, Girto listed off the functions of the implant. Unlike normal medical devices of a similar nature, this one was purely designed to control the person it had been put into. It was capable of acting as a locater beacon, as well as completely shutting down a person's brain. And in the most severe case, it could kill the person it was implanted into. Something Kaiden had witnessed firsthand. "How does it even know when to do that though?" Ezra asked, wondering how the implant activated. "From what I could find, it reads brain activity and listens to speech. If certain thoughts or words are formed, it turns on and delivers a punishment based on the severity of the infraction. I'm guessing that revealing the identity of the person that had this thing implanted automatically activates the elimination function. If it weren't for the strong alcohol in the guy's system dulling his mind, he probably would have died before he could utter even a single syllable." The more that they learned about it, the less humane this implant sounded. Once it was installed into someone, even thoughts of rebellion would be met with intense pain. Eventually the person would completely lose their will to fight back and become loyal soldiers just to avoid the agony that came with resistance. "You said that it also works as a beacon. Does that mean that they know where we are right now?" Kasandra asked, looking concerned. "Well, I disabled that function now, but it was active for a while. If I were to bet on it, I would say yes. But that hardly matters. They already know what ship I'm on, so they could have easily tracked us down anyway." While it was disconcerting to think that their enemies knew exactly where they were, there was nothing they could really do about. As Grito had said, the private soldiers had already identified the Dauntless. It would not be impossible to keep track of it while it was docked on Phregon III. "Let's not worry about something that we can't control." Ezra said. "Now Grito, did you figure out anything that might lead us to the identity of the one that created that implant?" "Maybe. Most of the components are made with techniques I'm unfamiliar with. Probably by an engineer that works solely for the person using these things. Nevertheless, the diodes and resistors used in its construction come from a major electronics company. Seeing as how they are custom made for this implant; they must have been a special order." With this small detail, Jasmine refined their search and checked to see if any of the seven they had narrowed it down to were connected to the company that Grtio had told them about. And as luck would have it, this served as the last bit of intel they needed. After narrowing things down, only one name remained.