Chapitre 58: Chapter 20: Test of Skill - Prelude
'You know, I have so many questions...'
After dropping the bomb shell on Rydel in the dark bar within the central governing district, Valerie then poked Rydel in the cheeks playfully and then stood up before heading towards the exit. The bar owner is still asleep as Rydel chased after her through the sticky aisle, and headed into the light too. The little stint in the dark bar has already made his eyes adjust to the darkness to the point that the bright sun of Wolfana actually hurts his eyes a little bit.
'I know you have many questions.' Valerie said without looking back, 'but whatever it is, you just don't use the communication devices provided by the shady bars. So much of their income comes from blackmailing unsuspecting callers making shady deals.'
'Yeah, but I have safeguards against those...'
'It doesn't matter! It's a risk, and a liability.' Valerie turned around and lectured Rydel as they continued walking, 'and it's something we shouldn't take, especially on Wolfana.'
'Is there something about the city that I should know about?' Rydel asked, now being slightly worried about whether the secure transmission set up by Cellica would be enough.
'Yes. The way it looks is very different to the way it works. With this many ears all around, stay quiet until we get a private place.'
Rydel wasn't told of the destination they were going for a little while until they hopped on yet another two land shuttle transports and went all the way away from the formality of the central governmental district, through the glamour of the central business district and made a short turn towards a high raising estate area.
The latest transport stopped at the base of a large hovering building that casts a dark shadow over the slums beneath, and Valerie gestured towards Rydel that they have arrived at their destination. There are a few security droids and cameras guarding the entrance, and the metal gate and the force shields were lowered to let the pair through.
Rydel had a good look downwards once they have left the business district, and all he saw were the poorly made slums consisting of scrap metal and other building materials covering the ground level of the living areas. It's not exactly a very good living condition just from the look of things.
Those poorly compiled houses being directly underneath the seemingly luxurious apartment estate Rydel is walking into gave the ground level residents first hand access to any sort of rubbish and unused items for basically free, and the gigantic block of metal and concrete also serves to be a roof, a noisy and overbearing one at that with the endless exhausts being pumped out from the gravity field generators keeping the building afloat.
Suddenly, Wolfana doesn't seem so glorious anymore. This is the wild regions after all.
Valerie suddenly took a sharp left, and took the nearest lift on the left. Rydel followed closely, and they found themselves in a brightly lit lift that goes all the way up to thirty floors.
They were the only two, and the gentle music being played in the background isn't enough to upset the silence.
'So, is this your secret base on the planet?' Rydel threw out the best guess he could come up with.
'No.' Valerie tilted her head and looked at Rydel, a smile on her face with a tinge of sadness, 'it's my home.'
The lift stopped at level thirty, and opened up. There is a long aisle with two doors on each side at the end, and Valerie lead the way, taking the door on the left. She reached out with her finger, and scanned herself in.
It was the single biggest living space Rydel has ever seen. The very first thing here is a giant empty living room with some sofas, a few gaming counsel being packed up in the corner and multiple projectors. On the right were the kitchen and dining rooms while a balcony lingers all the way in the back. The floor were laid out using ceramic tiles that has black and white webbed patterns and the shiny surface reflects the sun lights that sneaked through the balcony window as well as the windows on the first floor.
The balcony itself overlooks the business and central governing district, with one of the landscape, Wolfana tower erect at the end of the horizon.
Rydel was completely speechless at the sights he is seeing right now. What's in front of him was a level of wealth and status he could not even comprehend. He himself grew up in a normal family setting, though ever since he became an adult and marched into the stars chasing a dream of academia and started supporting himself, he has left the old life behind. In this age, the universe is simply too big for much human ties and emotions, especially for those people like Rydel who grew up in an ordinary mid region planet all his life.
But despite the outrageous layout and views, the apartment felt hollow. From Valerie's looks, Rydel can tell that being back home means nothing more than a painful reminder of their father's fate. Rydel looked over at the sofa, and wondered if the girls watched Gold defeat the Black Wolf while sitting there helplessly and screaming in horror.
'Are you okay?' Rydel asked.
'It is what it is.' Valerie said defiantly, pressing down her emotions and tried to sound calm and collected. She turned on the audio interference for the entire apartment, and headed towards the dinning room, 'come on, I will tell you more about about the test of skill and what we actually have to do as we cook.'
The kitchen was, for an apartment that displayed nothing but the highest level of technology, old school. There were no sight of a food printer, but rather flameless electric hove and actually cooking utensils.
'Father always said that when we move forward as a species in technology, we always tend to leave something behind.' Valerie said as she pulled out a pot and a pan from the draws before giving them a quick rinse, 'like the skills of cooking. The organic being chefs are now one of the most overpaid occupations in the galaxy, how ridiculous is that.'
'Well, considering not many people can cook anything beyond mediocre, I would say their skill sets are much needed.' Rydel said as he took the pots and pans, shook off the water droplets and rests them on the stove, 'so, what do you want to eat?'
'I don't know.' Valerie looked down at the sink, and supported herself by placing her hands on the edge of it, 'I don't want to sound ridiculous, but whatever I do here, it will always bring back old memories...'
The memories of a family unbroken. Rydel understood. It always hurts more to lose something that you once had than never having it to begin with.
'How about this, I will handle the cooking, and you give me the brief.' Rydel said, as he walked over to stand next to Valerie. He placed his hand no her hunched-forward shoulder, and brought it backwards gently. She always have great posture, so it becomes extremely obvious to Rydel how Valerie is feeling right now.
'Yeah...' Valerie brought herself to the other side of the cooking area, which is just a bar table.She put a projector on top of the table surface, and linked it with her personal interface, so that the mission brief will be projected for Rydel to see.
Rydel poured her a glass of water, and she smiled back.
'So, the typical missions for the test of skill revolves around the soft and hard skills we have obtained throughout our lives and then at the academy. At least that's what the mission management said to me. It's aim is to test our abilities to handle a complicated and difficult mission for the good of the Grey Wolf.'
Something to keep the Grey Wolf happy while developing the recruits. Rydel thought to himself as he quickly looked through the perma-fridge and found a selection of root vegetables and greens. A rather genius arrangement between the Grey Wolf and the leader of Absolute Being.
'When I said that we needed to grab a rock from the region of the Black Pegasus, that is basically a gross simplification of our mission.' Valerie continued on, and then 3D projection of the star chart is shown hovering above the table. There, the regions belonging to each of the forces are labelled with distinct colors. The region they are in right now is labelled grey, and the region of the Black Pegasus, black.
Then, a circular pattern is shown on the map, intersecting with multiple regions. No, not circular, elliptical.
And it's not a pattern, it's a path.
'This is the orbit of a cluster of comets, named the Chariot.' Valerie continued on, 'that's our target, and it's currently crossing through the endless void of space in between the two planes of rotation in the wild regions.'
'And it will go across Black Pegasus in how many days...?' Rydel asked as he pointed the tip of his knife towards the intersection between the orbit and the region of space that was painted black, 'must be rather relevant if our mission is about that?'
'Five days.' Valerie explained, 'just enough for us to leave tomorrow, get there, do whatever we need to do to prepare, and get on with it.'
'And you are going to talk about why this Chariot thing is so important?' Rydel gave the potatoes a quick wash, and diced them into discs. He already knew what to make, and the recipe was somehow still fresh on his mind despite how much he has went through. The last time he made this recipe, Cellica said 'shit' and he had a fight with Zel that ended up with him stealing the high energy stabilizer back from right underneath his nose.
It was such a long time ago.
'Indeed, but it's less convoluted than you think.' Valerie said, then she zoomed in on the predicted position of the comets, 'there are quite literally countless comets within the cluster, and many of them contain a huge amount of rare metals that would cost a fortune to obtain or mine normally, even for the Grey Wolf.'
'So we are just going to take one of the big rocks and bring it back?' Rydel asked cautiously, the mission sounds simple, but this isn't the first time this happens.
'...Sort of,' Valerie watched in surprise as Rydel quickly mixed together a couple seasonings and threw it all together some onions, garlic and peppers. As soon as the thing went into the small mixing bowl, a exotic fragrance exploded from within, and her mouth began to water, 'could you make sure the flavor is strong enough?'
'You got it.' Then Rydel doubled the salt and garlic. Good choice.
'Back to topic, this is where things get complicated. The comet comes by one every ten years, which is moving extremely fast for a comet, thanks to the pull of the black hole clusters.' Though insignificant in cosmic times, for those in the wild region, everything can change in ten years, especially when it's the sudden influx of an abundance of rare metals, 'this means only one thing.'
'Ah shit, I get it now.' Rydel sighed, the catch is that everyone would want a hand on it.
Essentially, they would be competing agaisnt the rest of the wild regions, especially since the Black Pegasus's region is neutral territory, which means only a handful of rules apply, which means next to nothing.
No one is going to enforce laws in an area that's 99% empty space.
'Yeah. But it's really not all bad news.' Valerie said with a hint of optimism in her voice, 'Despite the fact that everyone would want a piece of it when it passes, the shear volume of rocks within the comets were never truly measured because of how much there are, so if we cut in at the right time and place, it is likely that we won't face much opposition.'
'But that's only talking about the first half of the extraction process, right? It might be easy to get in, and easy to tow one of those rocks around, but if I were the smart ones, I would wait for those miners to emerge and just take the stuff straight from them.' Rydel said with a casual shrug of his shoulder, and his words threw Valerie off completely.
'You...are right.' Valerie admitted after some thought, 'but its unlikely that it would be us doing the bullying, seeing how we weren't provided with much equipment to begin with.'
'And I really wouldn't want to be doing that too.' Rydel said as he threw the baking tray full of seasoned potatoes into the hot oven, 'just throwing it out there, yet another factor for us to consider.'
'You are right.' Valerie said, 'which is why we need to plan this carefully. Our target is to get anything bigger than ten ton, which is a lot of mass. It wouldn't fit into the haul of any ships we can have access to now. The only option for us would be to tow it and somehow make our way back without being seen.'
'You got any ideas?' Rydel asked as he reached into the fridge to grab the steaks and threw it onto the table.
'Maybe.' Valerie answered and projected a list of names onto the air alongside the map, 'these are the list of forces that would have someone present when the comet crosses the area. The best way for us to get out of the cluster with what we wanted would be to cause as much chaos and confusion as possible, so when we finally emerge, these people would be too busy fighting each other, or doing something else to care about ten tons of rare metals.'
'Ah, relevant.' Rydel chuckled and finally began to understood what Valerie is getting at. There will be forces from the White Crow present, as well as those from the Silver Snakes and some business groups that are based in the Grey Wolf's region. It won't be too hard to stir up the emotions and get them busy pointing their guns at each other. This is where the skills of manipulation comes in, 'I guess ten tons really isn't a lot compared to how much rocks there actually are.'
'No, these mines are really just a personal bonus for the boss of the mission administration, but money is still money, even if it's only a few million credits.'
'Bruh.'
'Anyway, I don't plan for this to be only tactics that we will be using.' Valerie said and brought up a map of Wolfana on a planet scale and its moons orbiting around, 'the organization that are the ones in charge of the predictions for the trajectory of the comets have their servers based on the second moon of Wolfana, and all of the information from the monitoring stations all around Wolfana are collected and processed here.'
'No way....'
'Yes, we will infiltrate one of the server centers, plant a bug that will change a single variable within the computing process, and it will impact the results of the predictions by just a day or so.' Valerie said as she continued on, 'this won't work for those factions that are running the data through their own servers or doing their own simulations, but it will get rid of quite a bit of noise.'
'Let's say this works out and we managed to only compete with a handful of opponents, what exactly do we have to do? I doubt those things aren't exactly something you can just sit and catch.' Rydel said, thinking about the shear amount of kinetic energy that would be present, 'I can see it shredding through a ship with zero difficulty.'
'Precisely.' Valerie nodded as she then plotted yet another curved path that intersects with the orbits of the comets. The detailed physics here isn't something either Valerie or Rydel is interested, but the Chariot has built up speed under the influence of the Black Hole Clusters over millennia, which is why they are moving the way they are, instead of the gravity field constantly doing work on all of the objects within the field of influence, the comets are just carrying on with whatever kinetic energy they had since the very beginning. This is why ships can choose to remain stationery and not get throw around by the gravity fields.
This is also the problem that everyone who plans to get a piece of the chariot will have to deal with. To be able to keep up with the comets and mine it, the miners will need to accelerate their ships to a certain matching velocity before any activities can be conducted. Conversely, whatever activity that will be conducted will also need to be done fast before the comet ventured too far away and making it back to the plane of rotations with a payload that's travelling at incredible speeds in te opposite direction became impossible, or way too slow. There had been horror stories of ghost ships with all the crews long dead before the ship made it back to the Black Pegasus two years after the intersection of the Chariot.
'We were provided with a mediocre mini cargo cruiser, which I am sure you know how to pilot expertly.' Valerie said, looking over to the oven repeatedly to see when the food is going to be done, 'I need to do some calculations, that means taking everything into account, including the amount of fuel we can carry and how much of those would be needed to reverse the forward momentum of the travelling ship and the cargo and make it back at a reasonable time....'
'Simple optimization?' Rydel asked while throwing the steaks into the frying pan with sizzling oil and other seasonings. He just planned to keep everything simple for tonight, and crack on with the mission tomorrow.
'Yeah, should be simple...' Valerie said, 'I should be able to finish it by the time you finished cooking.'
It's almost like the oven heard Valerie's comment, and it gave a loud ding that took both of them by surprise.
Valerie looked over at the oven and glared at it.
'Don't worry, the steak is still cooking, plus I have to make the salad too...'
Eventually, the optimization was performed, and the food was prepared and served. It turns out they would have a window of two hours for everything they needed to do, but if everything goes according to plan and nobody tries to kill them, they would need no more than twenty minutes to attach all of the anchors and start slowing the asteroid down. With that knowledge, now the pair are starting to work on their contingency plans while having a deliciously cooked meal. It turns out Rydel did put a bit too much seasoning for his own liking, but it worked just fine in Valerie's case.
Interestingly, Rydel didn't notice much effects from the physiological enhancements, and instead felt like he has evolved even further without much drawback. Occasionally he felt like he has greater control over the glove thanks to the enhancements, or maybe he can now accesss a fuller extend of the artifact's power? He wouldn't know, and he wouldn't dare to try to find his limits anyway. It's way too risky and stupid to do so.
After the meal, Valerie then took Rydel for a full tour of the house, and then the pair went to bed really quickly. Only cuddles tonight, they will need their full concentration for the battles to come.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone