Starship Engineer

Chapter 63 Jane Doe

Jane Doe was not having a good day. The auction was currently in progress but this was just her cover. Her two operatives were already on the planetary governor’s estate acquiring the data. Unfortunately, their contact had given them outdated security information from what her agents were sending her in coded texts to her PerCom.

First, the ground sensors were class 6 and not class 5. The agent's combat stealth suits were still capable of thwarting them but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Two motion sensors not on the security plans had been tripped. Then six human guards came to investigate. There were only supposed to be two guards on duty. At least the aerial dead zone she deployed around the estate with her drones was working and no one outside of the compound was altered. The agents were in process of eliminating the six guards.

The governor was actually sitting in a box directly across from her at the auction. The idiot had come into possession of the research of one Milo Dejarsdin. A brilliant theoretical physicist that specialized in sub-space. He was making some ground-breaking discoveries.

Six months ago another agent of the Brotherhood was supposed to have helped him ‘relocate’ to Earth and be employed in one of the Brotherhood's research firms. Instead, the agent had ‘accidentally’ killed Milo and his research had disappeared with his wife and daughter. She knew the agent, Hanson Gammon. Hanson was definitely better at missions that required the elimination of the target so it was curious that he had been assigned to bring Milo to Earth.

Three months ago the wife appeared in the Arana system under the roof of the governor. Some discreet inquiries and it was learned she had sold the research to him. The wife and the daughter soon disappeared. Jane didn’t care if they were eliminated or just fled. The research was what the Brotherhood wanted. The governor had been setting up some meetings with influential families and corporations from the core worlds, most likely to sell the research. So the Brotherhood wanted to obtain the data before then. And that was why she was here. She doubted the research was anything groundbreaking but after thousands of years, humanity still understood so little of subspace so any tiny piece of knowledge was valuable.

She preferred simple acquisition missions. Get a piece of artwork, bring this man to this location, and relieve this politician of his hidden assets. Her PerCom beeped…all six guards had been neutralized. There hadn’t been any doubt but still, it was a relief. Her operatives had the latest and greatest power-armored stealth suits from the human core worlds. Hopefully, they would get the data soon.

Oh, she needed to bid on something and acquire it to keep her cover. She looked at the next four items coming to bid. A 20th motorized bike…Harley Davidson…whatever that was. It was supposedly not a replica and ran on fossil fuel. Huh, it looked like a fun toy but she would pass.

Next was…A Sylvan courting gown. The Sylvan were also known as the space elves and traded on the periphery of human-controlled space. Not much was known of their culture so she doubted this was an actual courting gown as described. It was too bright for her tastes anyway.

The third item she looked at was an alien horde. It was strange how most societies always developed to have precious metal currency. This lot was from a private collection and had six hundred and twenty-nine coins from the Flouvian race. The Flouvians were cold-blooded lizards with humanoid bone structures. Their ruins were found while humanity was spreading to the stars. It was estimated they went extinct from disease about a thousand years before humans reached the planet.

The last object she reviewed was a collection of artwork from a deceased nebula painter. She decided on getting the coin collection and randomly selected one of the paintings to acquire.

Her PerCom beeped and she had to keep calm. Her operatives were in combat with an Armageddon Bot. Her mind raced…those bots were illegal in the Sapphire Empire. They were only sent in when a city or population needed to be eliminated with prejudice. Her heart started racing and she wished she was there to support them. Armageddon bots were extremely tough…at least it was just one. She didn’t know this particular bot’s load-out but any load-out would be dangerous. How did the governor get one? She was sweating under her clothes.

The coins came up and she bid 50 thousand Sol credits immediately. That should get her the coins with no contest. The metal was only worth around 1,000 credits by itself and the cultural and artistic value was in the eye of the beholder. Someone bid 500 credits more. Jane was irritated, she wanted to be with her operatives. She bid 55,000 Sol credits. Stares in the crowd turned into gasps. For a lot of these rich people, auctions were a game. Normally she would indulge them. Just not today. No one overbid her again.

The paintings started coming up and she smirked as Andrei Curran worriedly eyed her as she bid on painting after painting driving up his costs. She just bid to needle Andrei, and it distracted her as she forced prices up for Andrei. When the painting she had chosen to acquire came up she bid 20,000 Sol credits immediately. It was more than any of the previous paintings went for by more than double. Andrei stared at her with hatred on his face. So he was here for this painting? He had probably been trying to throw her off by bidding on other paintings. How humorous, she had chosen it randomly. It was the largest of the collection, measuring 9m wide by 6m in height and was quite beautiful.

Andrei bid 20,500 with some hesitance. Jane was sure he needed to show he at least attempted to acquire this painting for his client. Teasing him further would be fun. She bid 20,600 next and he responded with 20,800. Jane paused for a while before bidding 24,000. He looked crestfallen. He probably had liquidated his assets to buy the statues she thought. Don’t worry Andrei she thought, those statues would be hers soon as well. She won the painting and stood. There were a half dozen other lots to come up yet but she was done. Her cover would be intact with her two purchases. Many people watched her as she left, some in admiration, some in hate.

When she got back to the penthouse she quickly opened her terminal. Both operatives were alive. Good so far. Vital signs from one of the suits didn’t look too good though. She brought up the data. Fractured femur, two broken ribs, minor organ bleeding. She would live, the suit would keep her alive and treat her wounds. She looked at the combat data next from the Armageddon bot encounter. The Armageddon bot had been disabled but had used mostly close-ranged bludgeoning attacks. Thankfully it hadn’t had a powerful energy rifle. The operatives were currently searching the vault. The injured agent was slowing the process as she was in obvious extreme discomfort.

They would only take the data and would leave the Brotherhood calling card in its place. A silver card with a black B on it. That should prevent the planetary governor from taking any action. She would take precautions anyway. She contacted the Void Phoenix and asked to get on board early to ‘settle in’ before the nine-day journey. They already had a fee structure in place so it didn’t take long for Dora, the ship’s liaison, to complete her requests and take her money. She was definitely going to ask for some time off after this mission.

It was six hours later when her agents returned. Damn. The stealth suit was badly damaged and it took both of them to peel it off her. The leg was bad. The nanites from the suit injections had splinted it. They had gotten the internal bleeding under control as well. The agent kept trying to joke that she needed to train harder and stop having sex with her partners. She would be fine.

Jane said they would be heading up in their shuttle in 14 hours to the station and then over to the Void Phoenix after refueling and sending out mission completion comms through the FTL com array. It was costing nearly 150 Sol credits for the Void Phoenix to transport their shuttle. Outrageous pricing but she had little choice but to get close to Andrei and the statues.

Sixteen hours later they were in their cabin on the Void Phoenix. Their shuttle was secured in the cargo bay on deck 1 with all its precious cargo. They had five days of waiting before departure. Jane only had two remaining micro spy drones. This was going to be a simple operation. Andrei would meet an unfortunate accident on the voyage. Then she would hack the computer and transfer ownership of the cargo to her, load it in the shuttle in the Ragnhild system and head back to Earth on one of the Brotherhood interstellar transports.

All three of them rested together in the large and rather comfortable bed together. The injured agent would be healing most of the trip so this operation was just going to be two of them. They had a few days to get everything ready. She brought up the schematics for the Ambassador Class Liner to compare to the drone's preliminary feedback.

What the fuck? She knew a lot of rich people customized their ships but the Void Phoenix made no sense! An entire passenger deck, deck 5, was repurposed and sealed off. Her drones hadn’t gotten in there to explore yet. There were lots of rooms like that as well, sealed with no designations on the doors. And deck 8? It was essentially equipped to arm a platoon of combat marines. By her count, there were at least 8 trained marines on board. The drone couldn’t get to deck nine as its sensors had alerted that advanced sensors were in the access elevator and she didn’t want to risk discovery.

The other drone had self-destructed. She was manipulating it when one of the blonde steward bots recognized it and tried to capture it. She had no choice but to fly it into a trash shoot and hit the destruct button. There was something odd about the steward bot too. It practiced hand-to-hand with the marines…it was way too proficient. It was at least as good as any of the humanoid combat bots she had seen in the core worlds. This was just another reason she thought this ship was more than it seemed.

Her companion had let her knew that there were numerous wireless cameras embedded behind the epoxy coatings in corridor walls. This was discerning. Powered cameras were easy to find…if they powered up after a scan passed. She deep scanned her cabin and didn’t find anything. Some relief there but this ship…maybe it was run by one of the other organizations…The Purity? No they were focused on purging alien races and there were two Wren on board. Even though Wren were created by humanity the Purists still thought they should be eliminated.

Maybe it was a military operative ship from the core worlds? She kicked herself mentally. The ship had just taken on new crew in the system. If it had been an operative ship it would have been fully crewed. She dropped her line of thought. This was just a heavily renovated passenger liner. A very nice passenger.

They had somehow recruited the third highest-rated chef from the planet. On a planet with 10 billion people that was quite a feat. Jane had enjoyed three meals so far. She was returning from one of those meals to find her companions in the bedroom with two of the female steward bots. They tried to get her to join them. They had rented the bots to satisfy their nymphomaniac tendencies. They were singing the praises of these bots. Better than most and maybe as good as a bot brothel in the core. She waved them off to continue their debauchery. She had work to do. So had just seen Andrei on the promenade.

Jane was frustrated three hours later. The fucking ship had a class 10 AI. Why the fuck would anyone equip a ship with a class 10? She had been sniffing around to get into the cargo manifests to find where the statues were and the firewalls were insane. She had backed off numerous times and hadn’t alerted the AI. Her own hacking program was advanced…for the rim worlds it should be like a frigging magic wand but she was stonewalled.

The ship was nice, very nice. Maybe she should just take it. There were only about eight serious defenders. The more she thought about it the more she liked the idea. With her and her agents in their combat suits, they would be near impossible to stop. Then she could stash away the ship for when she retired in a few decades.