Bab 146: Chapter 11: Infiltration
Brakagi was simply put in a chair and allowed to recover all by himself as Jozzor sat by him silently while watching Caliditas clean away any evidence of her involvement before resetting the equipment in her lab as to prepare for another day of work.
She will become extra busy now with the strange solar phenomena that is about to happen, and all of the instruments must be primed and ready to gather such data at the earliest instance. Of course, she will wait and give the others both here and at the other research stations enough time to find some abnormal readings before publishing what she has found.
'Our business is done here for now.' Caliditas said, 'I will compile and publish the data whenever the timing appeared to be appropriate. That will take a few days until the sun deviates out of the normal ranges of oscillation for the first time.'
Jozzor nodded his head and puts a hand on Brakagi who's now finally slowly opened his eyes.
'We will keep in touch.' Jozzor said before hesitating and saying, 'thank you for being with us.'
Then, the images of Jozzor and Brakagi were stretch into a straight line and they slung shot away from the station back onto their ship, and Jozzor slung shot the ship out of the system.
Right now, Brakagi will need to recover from his efforts, and they will need to start the planning for their hit on the GBI headquarters. There are a lot of work to be done. Jozzor thought as he activated his artifacts and focuses his attention on his destination back towards the Rock. Then, the lines of light were stretched between the two destinations and the entire ship was slung shot back.
'What...' Brakagi slurred his words as he found himself floating in a ocean of stars. He moved his hands around and the dots of light evaded around his fingers, 'what is going on?'
His eyes are opened once more, and he saw the bathe of the ambient light of his bedroom. They have already returned from the Olympus system, and judging by the time shown on his personal interface, it hasn't been even half a day since their departure from the solar research station.
He got up and loosened his body before heading back out into the empty room. It appeared Jozzor is also resting after bringing the both of them back with the power of his artifacts. Getting a quick drink and a quick snack, Brakagi headed towards the office in the compound and cleared away the notes and holograms for their previous plan.
Now, it's time to think about how they can get into the GBI headquarters. There are a few major things to tick off: whether the record of tempering with Rocky government truly exists, where the GBI headquarters are, what's the architecture layout like, what are the security protocols, what are the plans of action and what are the plans of extraction. A standard planning template for any raid or heist.
Starting with streamlining the goals of this raid, it is certain that the GBI would have cleaned up any loose ends after their prior involvement with the Rocky government, but the remaining document may have been stored in the archives of the headquarters, or perhaps even in an archive off world...Jozzor will need to verify that.
The GBI's headquarters is built into an asteroid and the exact location is not known to the public. However, Jozzor and him had been tracking shipments of supplies and frequent travel into regions of space that have no planets or designated stations in the asteroid belt of the Hades system. A strange system with a handful of gas giants for miners and an abundant amount of asteroids in a belt, the biggest of which is likely where the GBI headquarters are built on. A sub-planet that is partially terraformed and tucked away in clouds of flying ice and rocks.
There are no official tracking of the sub-planet, but some civilian astrological organizations perform observation and tracking of most celestial bodies in all systems, so it would be a simpel task to track down the current position of the sub-planet.
'I have tried.' Jozzor's voice came through the door, and Brakagi looked up to see him also holding a warm spiced tea in his hand, 'the location of the headquarters itself is removed from all public records.'
'Did the Agency have any intelligence on it when you were there?' Brakagi asked about Jozzor's history at the Rocky's very own intelligence agency, and he nodded lightly. That's where the work of tracking and estimating of the GBI headquarters were first done.'Yes, and we have found few possible orbits. However, it would be very easy for the sub-planets to be jetted around. All we know is that they are in the Hades system. The sensors will be able to pick things up once we are there, but so far there isn't a lot we can do.' Jozor reported, and Brakagi nodded and ticked the location tab.
'And my source in the GBI was able to confirm the existence of such training files, though it was classified and muddled.' Jozzor said, walking over to Brakagi and pointed towards the first tab.'Can it be undone?' Brakagi turned towards Jozzor who nodded his head.'Not fully, but enough.' Jozzor said firmly, 'we can pass it to the Agency anonymously after. That would be easy.'
'Who exactly is this.....source you have in the GBI?' Brakagi asked.'She was an acquaintance of mine while I was in the space force. Then, she went to the GBI while I went to the agency after.' Jozzor said, 'we had a deal to exchange information from both agencies, the difference being what she is doing is unsanctioned, while the Agency supported and supplied the intelligence that I am giving her.'
'And the GBI bought it?' Brakagi asked.'Those intelligence are a bunch of useless half-truths regardless.' Jozzor shrugged, 'the possibility of GBI's involvement in your removal was the last intelligence she offered. And...'
Then, Jozzor paused and looked towards Brakagi.
'I am sorry, leader, but they wanted you dead in exchange.' Jozzor said, putting the cup down and bowing his head towards Brakagi, his voice slightly shaken but firm, 'I cannot allow that to happen, so when I learned of the others are making an assassination attempt move on you, I arranged for you to be politically moved away. In that case, you will live to fight another day. I have betrayed you, leader, but that was the only way we are here today.'
'You....' Brakagi wasn't expecting the truth about his past to be revealed in this way, and anger flared up like the raging magma in a volcano before quickly dissipating away like steam. However, Jozzor didn't appear the least bit regretful, everything is a means to an end to him, and judging from their position today, Jozzor made the totally right choice. Brakagi wanted to be mad at him, but he simply couldn't.
He trusts Jozzor with all his heart, and he is his only ally in the galaxy.
'I accept all and any punishment, but I do not regret what I did.' Jozzor said, and he looked up when Brakagi placed his hands on his shoulders.'You stupid Rocky.' Brakagi slapped him on the neck, 'why didn't you tell me?'
'They had agents in the city, and they tagged me.' Jozzor said, looking straight into the eyes of Brakagi, 'there wasn't enough time to arrange anything else, and I can't afford to fail.'
Brakagi took a deep breath in and out before chuckling and hugging Jozzor tightly.
'I wanted to be mad, Jozzor, but I can't.' Brakagi said, grabbing the back of Jozzor's head, 'I have trusted you with my life all this time, and I will always trust you with my life. You are always working so hard behind the scenes for me, how can I possibly fault you?'
'Leader...' Jozzor replicated the affection and hugged Brakagi tightly.'We will make the GBI pay for what they did.' Brakagi said, releasing Jozzor and turning his attention back to the work at hand, 'do you have any ideas for how we can get there?'
'There are a few options.' Jozzor said, 'we know there are movements of both goods and people on and off the headquarters, that means we can get in with the others. However, everything is closely scanned and monitored past the asteroid shields, so we will have to find a way to hide from that.''That's the subtle way.' Brakagi commented.'There is the more brute force way,' Jozzor acknowledged, 'not exactly the safest or most efficient, but we can use the power of Ring of Instability and Sling Shot to bust through the doors.'
'The security forces are the elite kill squads of the GBI that are off duty, so if we can take them out, the rest of the resistance will be negligible.' Jozzor explained as he pulled up a standard architecture of a semi-terraformed sub-planet to use as a demosntration, 'I have crossed paths with a few of them. They are highly augmented beings, extremely strong, but we can overcome them easily with our power.'
'How about this?' Brakagi said, 'I can go through the front gate and distract them while you sneak behind the back and steal the documents?'Jozzor turned his head and stared at Brakagi with a dead pan, but Brakagi wasn't joking.'I am about as high profile a guest as they will ever get, right?' Brakagi explained further, 'I am enhanced, and I have the Ring of Instability. They would want to know what happened and how I escaped the prison. I will just have to make it incredibly difficult for them to capture me.''But what if they do, or what if they killed you?' Jozzor shook his head until a strand of fur was ejected from his face, 'I am not letting you die like that after all the work I did to keep you alive.'
'Ok...what if I am wearing full battle gear with the most advanced defensive items?' Brakagi said, continuing on, 'I will say I have this uncontrollable power that I wanted to hand myself in so I can be saved. They would want to know where I got it and what it does. I will just have to accidentally destroy a bunch of things.'
'No!'
'Listen, Jozzor...you are the trained soldier and operative here. I am just a politician with a louder than usual mouth.' Brakagi continued on patiently, 'we each have our strengths and weaknesses, so let's use it.'
'...Let's see if we can go in the subtle way first.' Finally, Jozzor compromised a little bit, but of course that brute force plan is when things don't work out in the subtle plan. And he will make sure that Brakagi is wearing a tracker that he can see so in case of any actual danger, Jozzor will sling shot the both of them out of there.
The rest of the times are spent ironing out the details of the plans, and Jozzor had to do some hacking to obtain an older version of the GBI headquarter's layout from the architect that first penned the designs. The general layout is what will remain, but he will have to figure out the location of the digital archive server room by himself.
In order to access the room and its files, he will need to have normal access. Any attempt at bypassing the procedure will trigger an alarm and the removal of files starting from the level of highest sensitivities. Everything will be gone in a matter of seconds if he is not careful.
'Wait...how big is the digital archive server itself?' Brakagi asked. The use of a physical digital archive is to account for the benefits of digital archiving while preventing external hacking attempts, 'if it's small enough, can you sling shot it out of there?''Any mechanical impact will also lead to the deletion procedure.' Jozzor shook his head, 'we will either have to do this the old fashion way by threatening someone with access, or swap it away after some has had access.'
'How would you do that? The second option.'
'This is a lot easier.' Jozzor explained, 'within the organization, internal requests for file happen all of the time. If I can send off a request from an office table somewhere, the archivist will go ahead and retrieve the data in a physical item that can then be plugged in the local holographic projections. I will just have to swap it when it was there.'
'What's the catch? If that's all it takes, then I think you alone can complete the job, right?' Brakagi asked, smoothing out the hair on his chin as he thought, 'go in, ask for it, and then run away immediately after you got it.'
'If only...' Jozzor said.
Days passed as the details of the plans are completely cleared and any backups also prepared. Brakagi and Jozzor used Jozzor's artifact to slip onto one of the supply ship as it goes around the Hades orbit, making the detours onto the various stations in the asteroid belt. The interior of the supply ship is cool so the thick Rocky fur and the tiny space suits they are wearing actually comes in handy. Jozzor also carried a semi-transparent cloak with him for use in sneaking around the GBI headquarters while Brakagi carried one of the most efficient shield generators around, combining a high shielding capacity and small size.
They tagged the cockpit of the supply ship, so when they can hear what the crews are saying, as they continue to go from asteroid to asteroid, dropping off the supplies. From the amount of drops, they could easily tell if anything is not for the GBI headquarters.
'The bureu sure wants quite a lot more meat this run...' One of the crews that is on the duty of manual drop off casually commented, and Brakagi and Jozzor nodded towards each other. There are no mistakes here, the bureu is the GBI. As the crates are jetted out of the ship's hanger, Jozzor also grabbed onto Brakagi's arms and slung shot the both of them towards the string of crates that were just released from the ship. They grabbed onto the crates in front of them and floated towards the icy body right in front of them.
There are few LED lights that illuminated the crates, and that is the only hint of light as the edges of the icy body in front of them completely swallowed the lights given off by Hades. An aptly named system indeed, as the sun named after the god of the underworld houses one of the rulers of the underworld in the galaxy.
'We are approaching the headquarters.' Jozzor said as the scanners he had in his space suit is showing more and more signals coming out of the asteroid in front of them, 'let's carry on with the plan, leader.'Brakagi nodded towards him, and Jozzor's image stretched as he slung shot himself into the GBI headquarters. Now, Brakagi is all by himself drifting through space at a velocity that is hard to comprehend with no points of reference around him. The only thing he knew is that the rock is getting larger and larger as he can clearly see more of the craters on it, courtesy of the other asteroids in the belt.
Then, he saw more of the artificial constructs like a handful of the satellite dishes, some lights shining the way and a few of the mirror arrays that collects solar power nearing the sun side of the sub-planet. As the subplanet becomes all that he could see, he know he is close enough to feel a little uncomfortable.
There must be some sort of deceleration procedure, or they would get mashed meat instead of whole chunks of steak in their meals. Brakagi thought, as an opening appeared directly in the direction of their travel, and the lights of a hanger peered through the gap. The entire headquarter is built deeply into the asteroid, and this is the way in, for Brakagi at least.
Swallowing hard, Brakagi braced himself. The primal instincts of the beings will always be around no matter how many times they have enhanced their bodies, and the same is here for Brakagi. The crates glided smoothly into the hanger and the magnetic floor surfaces slowed down the crates steadily. As the artificial spin gravity grasped onto Brakagi's feet and slammed him onto the ground, he rolled to stay as close to the crates as possible and quickly ripped off his helmet once air pressure is reestablished.
Turning on his shield generator, Brakagi glanced down at the ring of Instability and turned on his tracker. This first wave of pulse coming out will alert Jozzor of his successful entrance, and he may begin the document request process now.
There are sound of footsteps of the staff members coming to collect the 2 meter tall crates, and Brakagi walked out of it into two of the kitchen walkers and plead, 'I need your help! Please!'
'What the hell?!' The kitchen workers jumped backwards in shock as nobody expected another being, let alone a Rocky appearing out of nowhere, 'stay right there! Alert the security team!'
'I will, just please...help me...' Counting down the seconds in his mind, Brakagi acted as if he is severly weakened and leanded against one of the crates. His breath heavy and long, and his eyes scanning the environment all around him.
So far, there are only a handful of guards stationed in the hanger, as this looked like one of the auxiliary hangers with few shuttles around. One of them is already coming this way, but more will be here.
'You are trespassing on GBI property, get on the ground and state your purpose!' The guard sprinted towards Brakagi and warned, but before he could get close, Brakagi tapped his fingers on the crates next to him and instantly causes it to crumble and collapse.
He actively dropped onto the ground and reached a hand out, 'Please, I just needed your help! There is no one else in the galaxy that can help me!'
'How the hell did you get here?' The guard ignored his question and pointed his gun at Brakagi.
'Call your superiors.' Brakagi put his hand out and moved the rifle aside, 'please?'
Then, he looked up with a threatening glare and a smirk on his face. The ring glowed and the rifled exploded in the guard's hands.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone