Corpo Age

Chapter 238: Investigating Aurora Pt.4

“What are you hesitating for?” Thorne blurted out from beside me. “They’re gaining on us. It’s now or never.”

My hand was hovering over the locked panel on the side of the cockpit, but his words broke me free from my thoughts.

“You’re—right.”

I breathed out and accepted the fact that we would have to reveal some of our cards after all.

Throughout this trip, we had disguised our prototype ship as a run-of-the-mill vessel with mediocre performance. It was to keep up the appearance of being a mercenary spacecraft. That meant we muted some of its capabilities, including its speed, weapons, sensors, and, most importantly, stealth.

I rested my palm against the panel and let my biometric unlock it. I then plugged into the controls behind it, freeing the ship from its restraints.

“Lanus, focus scans on our pursuers.”

“Affirmative. Scans show one five-hundred feet class warship and two half that size, headed our way. Confirmed, they have locked onto us.”

“Well, I guess we should get strapped in, then.”

Thorne turned to me with a skeptical look on his face.

“Aren’t you just going to turn on the ECMs and disappear from their sensors?”

“That’ll let them know we’re corporate for sure. No company would share their stealth tech with some random mercs they hired, after all.”

I heard him sigh before strapping himself tight to his seat. I did the same and began increasing the throttle. I pushed the lever forward as I shouted out commands to Lanus, who did the bulk of the delicate calculations.

The vibrations of the ship increased by the second as the engine came to life. The speed increase could be clearly felt by the increased Gs we had to endure.

“Umm, aren’t we accelerating a little too fast?” Thorne asked. “This’ll tip them off too, right?”

“Don’t worry. They’ll just think we’re junkies who modded our ship to unsafe levels. Or so I hope.”

“I hope that means what we’re doing is still at safe levels. Tell me we are, please.”

“We are. Probably,” I muttered.

The blips on the sensors swiftly changed from closing in on us to falling behind. It wasn’t long before they too accelerated, but the gap kept widening between us.

---

Ajax - Aurora Corporation

A lone man by a desk with his hands bracing his neck while his feet were up. He was currently overseeing all his subordinates’ training in the kill house below. It was a routine event meant to keep the active duty guards sharp while training up teamwork with the new recruits.

As the commander of the unit, Ajax simply had to sit back and point out any mistakes his men made.

However, his relaxing task was soon interrupted when the building rumbled as if an earthquake were happening. It ended quickly and, from Ajax’s experiences, he could tell it was no natural phenomenon.

He rolled back in his chair before doing a backflip into a standing position. Then, he amplified his voice with his cybernetic embedded in his voice box.

“Everyone, alert level two! Get your asses in gear and to the elevator within twenty seconds!”

The well-trained men swiftly got into position. They were in the midst of training, so they only needed to swap out the weapons for something more lethal or grab the right kind of ammunition. Other than that, they were already equipped with everything they needed.

The dozen armed guards quickly got into their assigned positions, just like all the other security personnel in the building. They were trained to move in an efficient manner during the event of such abrupt situations.

As they stood by the elevator, Ajax waited for orders from the security room. Not even a minute later, he received just that.

“Team Ajax, you’re to head to the forty-seventh floor immediately! We have sent the elevator to your floor.”

“Roger that.”

Ajax didn’t bother asking if they were sure about their decision, despite his wariness. He’s heard more than a few stories where corporate security like him had suffered at the incompetence of their superiors. If the elevator being sent to them was compromised, it would be the end for him and his team. Despite knowing this, Ajax still complied.

Following orders was what he trained to do. He was prepared to lay down his life.

Thankfully, the elevator worked normally and their team was soon brought to the forty-seventh floor. They found the entire place stained with burnt marks caused by the explosion, with a door crumpled up against a wall. It flew off at the hinges and was completely bent out of shape.

Ajax held his hand up and gestured for his team to secure the area. They moved quietly and efficiently.

“Back is clear!”

“Clear here, as well!”

“Two injured in here!”

“One here, unharmed.”

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With a dozen men, the small area was quickly combed through without any signs of intruders. They found the corporate officers in their offices mostly unharmed. Their thick walls protected them entirely from the ordeal. Only the room where the explosion went off was trashed.

“Calling central control, the AO is clear.”

“Report casualties.”

Ajax turned to his second in command.

“Total casualties?”

“All unharmed or only superficial wounds.”

“They’re all accounted for?”

“Yes—”

“Even the person whose office got blown up?”

“Umm, negative.”

“You guys need to be more thorough!”

Ajax didn’t waste time reprimanding his men and directed his attention back to the person from the security control room.

“One missing from the epicenter of the explosion. Everyone else is accounted for. Requesting permission to pursue our missing manager.”

“Pursue? Where? You need to wait for us to investigate where they went first. Standby, soldier.”

“Every second counts here! At least let us head for the spaceport. We’re trained in starship search and rescue operations.”

The person on the other end of the call was hesitant to approve Ajax’s request. He didn’t have any concrete clues to believe the missing employee was to be found on a starship outside. His job was to follow protocols, and the request went against it.

“I’m sorry, Commander. You’re to—”

Before he could finish, the man’s voice could be heard drifting away from the mic as he fell into a conversation with someone in the background. After a few moments, a new voice spoke out on the call.

“Commander Ajax, permission granted. Head out immediately to the Nightjar. The captain will be briefed about your arrival.”

Letting out a breath of relief, Ajax quickly ushered his men to their new assignment.

Everything was smooth sailing all the way up to boarding the large two-hundred-foot spacecraft. By the time Ajax was invited to the bridge, he received an alert that suspicious mercenaries had been found leaving the city in a rush after being spotted around the area of their headquarters. They were to intercept and investigate them.

“Commander Ajax, your elite team is assigned to board the target’s ship, along with our marine team. We’re taking off right away, so I’d appreciate it if you could remain on standby in that seat over there.”

Ajax saluted and replied he understood before heading over to the assigned seat. He let the captain do their thing. He watched as the entire bridge crew was busily preparing for their departure. Some managed the instruments that flew the large vessel, some readied the weapons, and some were in the midst of reviewing the footage of the cameras that caught the target vessel leaving to triangulate their flight path.

With so many experts working together, Ajax could only nod in admiration as he saw their ship catching up to the suspected target. His approval didn’t last long, as he could see the dot on the radar quickly grow further away.

It caused the entire bridge to fall silent, confusing Ajax a little, which prompted him to speak out.

“Captain? Are we still in pursuit? We need to speed up if we’re to catch them.”

“That ship’s acceleration surpasses ours by not just a little. We’re already going as fast as we can,” one of the navigation officers replied in the captain’s stead.

“So we can only watch as they slip away?”

“That’s correct,” the captain stoically proclaimed.

“How can some ship belonging to some mercenaries outrun ours? It must mean some hostile corporation is involved, then?”

“That’s hard to say. A few mercenaries like to do some work on their vessels. It’s not exactly uncommon to see one of them forgo all safety measures for the sake of speed. They’re ignorant of the dangers without professional training. There’s no way we’d catch up to ships like that.”

“Maybe it’s better for you to report the situation to the higher-ups, then. Your expert insight is more valuable than mine.”

With that, Commander Ajax and the captain of the ship exchanged a nod before they expressionlessly watched the screen that flashed with radar signers. Their objective inevitability made more distance between them as time passed. All of them were forced to sit in silence, staring at the target ship increasingly getting further away. Everyone had their failure lingering in their mind as they thought hard about how to address the fallback they would inevitably receive.

---

Once we returned to Aegis, we immediately turned on all stealth measures before docking in a dock we recently rented. It was adjacent to our shipyard that was under construction, but otherwise empty, as we had yet to build or buy any ships.

I left the shop to scrub all of our traces of the ship belonging to the mercenaries known as Shake and Echo to my employees while we escorted our captive to a safe house. I left that mostly to Thorne, too, as I made my way back to my workshop on base.

I made sure Claire was notified of all the latest updates before I put my room into do-not-disturb mode.

What’s done has been done. In the moment, I was carried away and argued with Thorne, but now I simply left it for others to deal with it. There wasn’t a lot of planning to do, as everything hinged on the reaction from Aurora.

For me, I decided to busy myself with the few samples of their gear I had helped myself to during my visit. I had picked up their riot shields that were laced with a layer of energy shields, along with an arsenal of various EMP weaponry.

The collection ranged from grenades to small drones, and I was determined to investigate them. If Aurora really became hostile with us, learning about their equipment was the best way I could think of to prepare.

The EMP weapons were easy to test. In fact, it was something we did in our labs back on Earth on a regular basis with our prototypes. We had to ensure our products weren’t something that would just keel over by being hit with this famous category of armaments.

I had enough to dissect and for practical tests, so I quickly got Lanus to assist me. As for the shields, I couldn’t help but start right away.

Hooking up the specimen to the wall, I activated its energy shield. I didn’t hesitate to pull out my sidearm and aimed at it. Pulling the trigger, I watched as a familiar scene of energy shields rendered the bullet from my Suri harmless.

I took some sensors, scanned the structure of the shield and battery levels, and replicated the test a few times. From those readings, I could observe how much energy was drained, the efficiency, and the structural integrity before and after.

These tests went on all night before I got a good idea of their capabilities.

As I had witnessed from their training grounds, the shields were a more effective form of energy shields. Despite its smaller coverage, it was much more durable and energy efficient.

The EMPs were a pleasant surprise. Their form didn’t stray from standard principles that much, but I discovered the key lay in the material it used for the magnetic core. It was a key part of EMPs that employed the EPFCG, the Explosively Pumped Flux Compression Generator method and allowed the resulting blast to have a more devastating effect on electronics. It managed to bypass many of the typical shielding in EMP-resistant devices from a greater range.

However, the material was completely foreign to me. I needed more time to decipher it, and even then, it was likely a rare exotic material only found from the rich resources of space.

Being able to analyze their drones was also a boon to our company. That was because it allowed me to learn that they were all suicide drones with only one purpose in mind. Deliver the EMP payload.

As I was satisfied with my research and exited my lab for breakfast, I found Thorne and Claire staring at me with pointy eyes as I walked in.

“What?”

“You done? Because we’re waiting on you to decide the next steps.”

Without any more clarification, I was quickly sent a file containing the latest updates.

I sighed as I opened them.