Ignition Broker: Chapter 41 Always Assume There Is A Witness

Chapter 41

Always Assume There Is A Witness

“Nothing is free. If you think you are making friends by giving away your time and equity for free, then you are fooling yourself. That action, it has a value. One that can be leveraged and exploited. If you are given something for free, expect it to be used against you in some way. Similarly, if you give something for free, expect to use it against the recipient of your good will in some way.” – Marcon on Karma

(Rayalta)

Eerie.

Eerie with a faint unquestionable dose of subaudible tinnitus, that would be the way Rayalta would explain the sensations she felt while going over what had to be an odd alien graveyard of parts.

To her everything looked rotting and forged from death itself. While her suit’s seals were in place, it still did little to assuage the strange feelings of wrongness that accosted her at almost every movement inward through the graveyard of broken and corroding parts.

Looking at the parts they all had that classic look to them. That is the form and functionality that made the Cerusians famous, the one where art meets function and form. That is to say they were beautiful, even while they were clearly rotting the ground beneath them as unknown space chemicals eroded the ground corrupting everything in a dark and purply shades.

Shiver.

Even while standing there at the edge of the apparent danger zone, and watching her commander move forward caused a sympathetic shiver to run down her spine. An act due to a sudden onset of cold that should have been impossible considering the protections offered by her suit, meaning the chills she was experiencing were all mental in nature.

To no real surprise, Rayalta watched as Aral strode right to the center of the creepy parts graveyard, where she instantly began pulling out her tools. Since they were so close, Rayalta could swap out part of her feed to show a minor closeup of what her commander was seeing. Which seemed like she was going to try to desecrate what was almost perfect looking alien art.

At first Rayalta wanted to complain, about how she could cut apart a piece of art, but to her surprise the seemingly perfect grooves and markings moved away quickly at her touch. Clearly her commander had worked with this type of equipment before, a fact that was proven over and over again by the way she seemed to work quickly and fluidly on the giant table? It was a table, right? Well, it seemed to be more of a flat surface that had flat covers coming up from the ground and surrounding the object.

Crackle.

The faint crackle of movement from outside her helmet caused Rayalta to realize that she was doing the worst job of providing overwatch. This wasn’t a fictitious scenario with instructors looking to tag them and harass them, this was actual live work in the field.

Worse, this was truly life or death, meaning that if Rayalta didn’t actually do what she said she would, that is provide overwatch, then they might both die. Her due to an attack in the back, then her commander would clearly die being in the exact center of a part graveyard.

Focusing away from the speed and precision that her Commander was now moving with, Rayalta turned and tried to see the source of the noise.

Nothing.

It was quiet, far too quiet.

Changing her scans real quick she focused on heat, then on energy, and finally back to visible spectrum.

Nothing.

Well, at least nothing stayed still for the necessary three seconds to register to her military grade senses. These weren’t the best, not by a longshot. With this, it was better to see stationary people and objects that were lying in wait for an ambush, not objects that were in motion.

This was something that the Commander had harped on, notifying the others that moving quickly and constantly would be a boon to avoid tracking tools. Which was another cheat that the commander had.

Shiver.

Just thinking about the commander and her tactics caused yet another shiver to run down her spine. The girl was a monster in sheep’s clothing.

At first glance she would appear to be everything that Rayalta and the other C-Rankers hated. She was pretty, overly intelligent, from impeccably high breeding, and clearly an A-Ranker. There were hushed whispers about her likely being more than just an A-Ranker. Thoughts that she was easily able to outclass and out perform every S-Ranker, even the Cerusians own helped give credence to this train of thought. But those were ultimately dismissed as being crazy thoughts. As that would almost mean that she had to purposefully lower her gradings to avoid the S-Rank status, but who would do such a thing?

Then there were other theories as well. That she was some type of special head hunter, sent to weed out corruption. This was the conspiracy theory that Rayalta herself would have believed, had she not seen the level of devastation performed to their test ship. Yet, even this was explained away due to the fact that not only did the Commander know how to fix the issue, but somehow made the transport better than original? How could that be for a typical soldier?

It couldn’t, meaning she might be a special forces recruiter who was scouting her own elite team of operatives.

Chuckle.

Rayalta chuckled silently to herself at that thought, as it seemed too romantic to be true. The fact that an elite special forces ranger would come in, target their group of all people. Then build them up, to what? Run away with them in the dark?

Lisom noted that if she was recruiting them, then there would likely have to be a choice. A time given when they could either follow her, or go back.

Thinking back, she remembered the conversation the team had while riding. They couldn’t get too loud, lest the bound spy in their midst hear their crazy plans. But Lisom seemed to have at least a few of the squad convinced that she was a special forces recruiter.

***

“Look, all I’m saying is look at the signs. She is trained. Well trained in ways that we could only wish we had. Further, she turned us into the premier action arm.” Lisom began, his words causing everyone gathered round to hear and get excited with what he offered.

For C-Rankers like Rayalta and the others, he was offering the one thing that was the scariest to consider for low rankers like her and the others. He was offering hope.

“So, what do you think will happen? She will just come in, show us how to succeed. Then what? Do the cliché story of leaving for good, but offering us one chance to follow her? We would burn our current lives, being reborn as nameless soldiers of fortune?” Rayalta blurted out, angry at the thought of such a thing being possible. Worse, the part that stung the most was the way that she almost hoped that part of this was real, that this would be her chance to escape.

It had been so long since she last had hope of any quality. Now for her to have hope at this level, one where she could all but feel herself graduating at the top of the class. The fact that they would succeed from this mission was not in doubt. Seeing the way her commander worked tirelessly and fluidly was clear to anyone that she would not settle for anything less than perfection. Perfection from her, and perfection exemplified in her team that followed her.

“Look, I could be wrong. All I’m saying is that come the end of this operation, I guarantee she will offer us a choice,” Lisom continued. The more he spoke, the more the other members of the squad leaned in, seeming to live vicariously from his every word and action.

“What do you think the choice will be?” Someone asked, only after a second did Rayalta realize it was her own voice that had asked the question.

Smiling Lisom just paused, letting tension build up before he responded smugly, “it won’t be a choice, not explicitly.”

“What?” We all replied in unison.

“Think about it. What she would do, what she would require of us would be to act in mutiny. We would need to effectively give up our rank and role within the military, going AWOL or pretending our deaths. In either case, our careers, the lives we have are over.” Lisom paused letting that first part sink in, before he continued.

“That’s why it will be implied. We need to be willing to follow her, when she states her want to move onward. She will do it, just as you see in the movies. In the scripts, she will leave, making sure we are set up for success on our way back. Where we will graduate as the top class of recruits thanks to our operations here. Where we will then be broken apart into individual soldiers who will be sent off to die the slow death of desk work and underutilization, always wondering what happened to our commander. Well, I for one am not going to let that happen. I will be the first to ask, no, demand to follow her when she leaves. That if she is leaving, then she would have to make room for me.” Lisom stated.

“You think this is all some grand recruitment? That we will somehow get accepted to a black ops team run by Commander Proma, once this ends?” Rayalta shot back at the clearly delusional soldier. One who made Rayalta’s mind go wide with wonder.

“Look, I’m sure some of us have friends, family, loved ones that we can’t live without. And we will be able to see them, in time. But only after training. Only after we get fully sworn in. It will be a test. One that pushes us to our absolute limits and tries to kick us out. The minute one of us breaks, or tries to defect, we will find that we are knocked out, left tied up and abandoned by the houses of our very loved ones that we couldn’t live without. All memories of what happened to us gone, as we slowly try to put back the pieces of what happened to us from our time away.” Lisom stated, again stating the plot to many terrible special forces novels. These were the side stories, the ones devoted to telling what happened to the ones that washed out.

Shatter.

The memory of this moment broke within her mind, as she realized that what Lisom said, what he was proposing was almost exactly what the Commander had already done for Cadet Goldbridger. How she was setting him up to be an exemplary soldier who would no doubt achieve top marks as a maintainer.

Pausing, it was also clear that taking a fraction of the items that were left out here as part of the graveyard would be more than enough to set the entire team up as being truly successful on this mission.

Suddenly, everything seemed to fit, in that odd creepy way that caused something deep within Rayalta to stir, to come alive. This was the thought of hope, of chance that something great would happen.

Chills.

Once again another chill ran down Rayalta’s spine as she realized she might actually believe what Lisom was stating.

“Gods forgive the dreamers for wishing they had wings,” Rayalta muttered to herself. An old prayer about wishing for things that were not meant to be given to her, considering all her advantages. At first Rayalta thought it was just a way to keep orphans from wishing for more than they could ever expect to achieve in life. But now, she wondered if that was just the brainwashing of the system.

Head shake.

Rayalta shook her head, trying to snap these odd thoughts out of her mind. They were distracting, especially while she was acting as overwatch for her commander, speaking of which. Rayalta turned to glance at the shared display that was offered by her commander’s live feed. That’s when it was clear that the commander had moved on from the first activation stand, and gone on to work the second mirrored stand that was on the other side of the walkway.

What?

Was she already done? Had Rayalta been so lost in her thoughts that she missed that? Pausing, she looked around and felt relieved to see that only a few minutes had passed according to her HUD.

Then looking around, Rayalta felt her blood run cold as she saw the residual sign of a fading energy signature. A signature that clearly showed the outline of a booted foot on the ground.

“Shit,” Rayalta muttered as she turned to see if she missed more signs. She had heard them, the snap from earlier, that was clearly them. But they were moving, at least that is what Rayalta gathered. Worse, they were likely better equipped than she was, if the fact that she only saw the one indication of their presence.

“Commander, we have . . .” was all Rayalta could get out, before disaster struck.