Making the Grade (Omnia Online Series Book 2) (13 page)

Drake found a small arms dealer, a female Karurian, which had a selection of stun guns on display.  The stun guns were all brightly colored with yellow and orange markings.  He asked the dealer about the colors.

“These guns are all considered non-lethal weapons of self-defense.  There are a few small towns, many cities and some planets where lethal weapons are restricted, but stun guns are allowed.  So the marking allows any observer to see that the gun qualifies as non-lethal.” said the Karurian arms dealer.

Drake looked at the selection of handguns and knew that he needed more information to make a choice.

“What can you tell me about the handheld stun guns you carry?” he asked the sales person.

“First, most stun weapons are pneumatic and are able to fire a selection of darts.  One of the most popular type of dart is a projectile that contained a sleep drug that’s able to put a man to sleep for up to six hours.  The second most popular type of dart uses a super-conductive capacitor; to apply a regulated electric pulse designed to keep a person unconscious for up to 30 minutes.”

“The sleepy dart is good for taking on any of the human races, but it’s less effective on other races and many animals, but the sleep dart is generally considered safer for humans than the stun round.”

“The electric stun dart could be dangerous sometimes because it also has to give off enough of an initial shock to reset a person’s nanites.  It has the advantage though of being able to take down all known sentient races and most animals, at least for a few minutes using its initial electrical burst.”

The dealer went on to describe the different types of guns.  They used different kinds of dart feeds and clips; there was also a range of barrel speeds.

The guns reminded Drake of a friend who used to play paintball war games.  At first, the weapons seemed simple, but the more you looked, the more differences there were.

Drake doubted that any of the stun guns had the punch to get through body armor, something he would have to remember.

Drake finally selected a semi-automatic hand stun-gun that supported both the standard types of darts.  The gun had a relatively high projectile speed.  He also purchased five clips; each clip held ten rounds, 30 rounds of the electric stun darts and 20 rounds of the sleep drug darts.

He added a shoulder holster for this weapon.  Drake thought he might need to carry this gun in places the heavy blaster might not be allowed.

With all the different weapons, he was beginning to feel like a walking arms catalog. Drake now had a heavy blaster pistol, a carbine blaster, a stun gun (with electro-stun rounds loaded), and a vibro-blade.

Drake asked Samantha if his scout armor had a life signs sensor detection program like Roshan suggested he get.  It turned out that neither the previous owner nor the manufacturer installed this software.  Drake found this surprising since it was scout armor.

Drake asked around and found a merchant who sold armor software upgrades.  The program was surprisingly affordable at only 30 credits, so Drake had it installed into the armor’s data bracer.

As Drake completed his shopping, he decided he would pass the hand stunner off to Fiona for self-protection since he’d taken back the vibro-blade.

His last stop was to restock his field first aid kit.

In all, he spent 495 credits on the extra gear.

Drake felt he could use the additional exercise, so he ran to the Guild Hall.

The first thing Drake did on arriving at the Guild Hall was to go to the nearest open terminal and take another look at the mission offered by the ranchers.  It was still there, but instead of an E ranked job, the mission Grade was listed as ‘in review.’

Drake thought,
‘If the job was considered higher than an E Grade, I shouldn’t be able to see it right?’

“Samantha, what does it mean that the mission Grade is ‘in review’?” Drake asked his A.I.

“That’s unusual; maybe they have more information about the mission and are considering upgrading its level.  I would advise taking the job right away, if the Guild increases the level to D or higher, we won’t be able to register for it.  We’ve done some of the legwork already, after all.” said Samantha.

Drake immediately registered to take the assignment.  Then he looked around to see if he could spot Allacia.

Drake couldn’t see her from where he stood, so he walked over to the information desk to see where she might be.  He hoped that she, as Drakes only real contact with the guild, could tell him a little more before he headed south again, and into more trouble.

The person at the information Desk was an older Human lady.  Drake would place her in her sixties on Earth, which suggested to him that she was at least a hundred years old by Omnia standards.

Drake wondered if that meant he would live longer too, something else to follow up on, at another time.

“Hello, what can we help you with today, sir,” asked the lady.

“I was hoping to find Allacia, she’s my tutor, and I had a question for her.” replied Drake.

“Let me see if she’s available,” she said, and turned her attention to her holo-display to check some information.

“I’m sorry; she’s out on assignment at the moment.  Maybe someone else can assist you?” said the polite older lady.

“Maybe, I took on a mercenary assignment that Allacia and I talked about.  She suggested that the Guild might have more information about the job that could only be made available to the assignee.  Which is now me…” said Drake.

“Can you give me your Guild Ident number?” she asked.

“Sorry, I’m rather new to the Guild, and I don’t know what my number is.  Could you look me up by name?  My name is Drake, Horatio Drake.” He still liked the way his name sounded when he said it that way.  It kind of reminded Drake of the old James Bond movies.

The lady took a few seconds looking at her virtual screen.  The display was polarized in a way that left Drake unable to see the information the woman was looking at.

“Hmm, yes I found the file, you might be punching above your weight class, dear.” she said.

Drake found the ‘dear’ a little odd, but he was sure the lady meant well, and to her, he must seem like a child.

“I’m going to refer you to our contract coordinator, Sigge Gablier.  If you go up the lift to the second floor, and turn to your left, you should see his office four doors down on the… right, that’s room 224.” She said, in a way that suggested the conversation was over.

“Thanks for the directions.” replied Drake and then he headed toward the lift.

It took Drake a few minutes to locate the office.  The title on the door, ‘Office of the Contract Coordinator’ was stenciled in smaller characters thanthe doo
r
number.

The door was open, and Drake entered to find a Dwarf sitting at a desk bearing a small name plaque with the name Sigge Gablier and a piece of tape on the right with the words Contract Coordinator on the tape.  Drake wondered if he was so new to the office that he didn’t have enough time yet to get the plaque changed. 

There was no receptionist, assistant or secretary.  Just a gray-haired Dwarf who’s serious demeanor gave a lie to the laugh lines around his eyes.

He was focused on something on his screen and didn’t seem to notice when Drake entered his office until he got close to the desk.

The Dwarf didn’t look up, he just said, “Just leave it in the inbox, I’m busy right now.”

From the response, Drake assumed that the man was used to people coming in to drop paperwork off and interrupt what he was doing.

“Excuse me, sir,” said Drake. “I was hoping for a minute of your time to discuss an assignment.  The receptionist said…”

“Yes, yes, they're always sending people to bother me, like I’ve nothing better to do all day then sort out someone’s little clerical mistakes.” said the Dwarf.  But he kept his eyes on his display, not wanting to be distracted by whatever Drake came in to talk to him about.

“Um, sorry to bother you, but I took an assignment to help some ranchers, and I was hoping you could tell me why it was labeled as having its rank ‘in review.'” Drake pushed on despite the man’s attempts to ignore him.

When Drake said the words ‘in review,' the Dwarves full attention switched to him.

“So you’re the Asshole who’s fucking up my day?” asked a now clearly angry man.

Drake wasn’t sure why he was upset so he just waited a minute for the man to explain himself.

“The system should have automatically pulled the contract when I placed its status ‘in review’, and it should never have given such a challenging assignment to someone with so low a rank.  This is going to reflect poorly on me when you end up dead boy.  Just do us both a favor and abandon it now…  I’ll try to square it with the guild for you… After all, we all make mistakes.”

Drake thought that he now understood what was happening.  The Dwarf apparently made a mistake, maybe he was the one responsible for the original assignment ranking?  Could it be that he now has more information that proves the rancher assignment to be harder than he ranked it?

“Sorry sir, but I’ve already done some work on the mission, infect I did some scouting a couple days ago, rescued a couple ladies and took a prisoner I believe to be connected to the rancher’s case.” said Drake.

The Dwarf seemed to calm just a fraction and became even more focused on Drake.

“So that was you?  Humpf, well you sure know how to stir the pot, boy, between that and some report that came in over the weekend showing a pattern of disappearances to the south…  Well, the government is stirring, and the militia is starting to act like they might get off their asses and do something!”

“Good for them,” continued Sigge, “but bad for us if we don’t show em what we can do first.  The Guild needs someone who knows how this sort of thing is done, boy… Give it up, and I can get a real pro on the job today.  I needed this done right and done now, before the Governor and Militia can have time to get more involved.”

Drake replied, “I wouldn’t take the job if I didn’t think I had a good chance at making it through.”

“A chance? No fuckin chance, more like a nagur in a rookma pit.  And when you die, or worse get taken, I’m going to look like crap to management for not getting this done right to start.” said Sigge.

“This isn’t my first garantha ride, you know, I used to be a sergeant in Grantarplan’s Mercenary Company, so I know when someone’s over their head.”

“And you, as a Grade F mercenary, are in way over your head…”

“Do you even know what I’m talking about, boy?” asked the still angry Dwarf.

“Just a second, I need to shut the door, since this is still considered confidential by the government.” Said the man as he stood up and went to close the door.  After returning to his desk, he made a flipping motion with his hand, and a medical report was displayed in front of Drake.

“Here, take a look.  You see there, that man you caught and brought in?  According to this report, he was under ‘intense mental conditioning’, do you know what that means?  He was mind jacked, or as some people call it brainwashed.  Someone overwrote his nanites and put him through full mental conditioning until he couldn’t do anything but what his ‘master’ told him to do.  That’s a grade A crime by Imperial Common Law, and if we don’t find out what’s going on soon, we’ll be up to our asses in Imperial Agents and Navy.”

“The investigators have tried to get the Dwarf to give them more information on his ‘master’, but he refuses to speak.  The only thing he said was that the team of investigators was, that they were ‘unworthy to know his true name,' whatever that means.”

“That’s got the Governor, and the Militia scared enough to start cooperating, and stop playing politics with this.  When it was just a case of a few missing Narack, it was just a game, now their little game might come back to bite them in the ass,” said Sigge.

“You know why the contract was in review this morning?  That report you see there finally made its way through the local police and to the Governor’s office today and shot my day to hell.  The Gov. was on the comm with me personally demanding to know what we’re doing about the problem.  And you know what I could tell him, not a fucking thing; since he knew more about it than I did…  We only had the assignment listed for four days and with a low priority too.”

“The reason that assignment was ‘in review’ was that I was in negotiations with the government on increasing the level of reward and the grade of the contract to rank D., and we still don’t know just how bad the problem is… It could be a Grade C problem.  Do you know what that means?” Asked the man, who seemed to calm down as he explained the problem.

“A Grade D problem is one that can affect a major city or a large area of a planet, a Grade C problem is generally one that can cause trouble for a whole world.  If this escalates to a Grade C problem we’re going to have a planetary Naval Blockade on our hands to keep it contained,” said Sigge.

“Fuck it, I’m going to lose my job.” He continued without waiting for a response and picked up his name plaque that Drake had noticed earlier.

“You see this; I’ve had this job for just over a month.   It started out as a temporary assignment after the old Karurian who had it before retired.  But I was doing well, I cut back on expense, and the number of contracts I brought in was 75% over what this office handled last year… we only expected a 20% increase since the planet's population is growing.  But someone rescued a bunch of girls and the news made the Guild the place to go for help.”

“But now I see that I made a mistake, and I need to fix it fast.  Did you know that the Guild has a 10% contracting fee… it’s what we charged those ranchers, well it turns out that part of those costs was to pay the intel-contractors for background checks so we can verify the posted grade level and the information provided by the contracting party…  They call it due diligence or some such.  This is where I made my mistake.  My thoughts were on saving money when I should have been spending it if I wanted to keep my job.”  The man continued, now starting to sound depressed as he wound down.

“I’m sure that when I get this job done this will all just blow over.” said Drake “You can’t be the first person in this office to ever make a mistake.”

“Not the old Karurian, he retired with a good record, since he didn’t try to show off, and spent the credits to check out the deals.” The clerk continued to explain.

“You still don’t get it, do you?  No, I can see it in your eyes…  There’s always some crazies who would be willing to take a chance on violating a Grade A Imperial Law.  But you know what they really fear?”  The Dwarf just shook his head sadly.

“I should be looking for a way off this planet if what they really fear is true.  They're freaked out that this might be a rogue A.I..” He said at last like he was dropping a bomb and was waiting for it to explode.  Then he sat looking at Drake as if waiting for his reaction.  He didn’t get the response that he was looking for.  Drake just looked back at the Dwarf and waited.

At last, Drake said, “Ok, thanks, is there anything else you can share with me?”

The Dwarf just stared at him, and finally said, “I can’t fucking believe it, you still don’t get it….” After a short pause the Dwarf continued, “No, I have nothing to add.  If that doesn’t get you to change your mind, I’ve nothing to add that might help you, you're just dead if you try… never mind I’ll just have to start looking for the people who will come clean up the mess after you die.  Now go, get the fuck out of my office.”

Drake didn’t ask any more questions.  It was clear that he’d received all the cooperation he was going to get from the man, so Drake quickly left the office, leaving the door open, just as it had been when he arrived.

Once he was out of the Dwarf’s office, he looked for a private location where he could talk to Samantha for a few minutes.  Not finding one right away, he took a seat on a bench and pulled his armor helmet on.  With the visor down he could talk to Samantha through it without anyone hearing.

“Sam, can you explain what that was about back there.  I thought you said there were no A.I.s except ‘legal A.I.s’ in the Imperium.  And why is that man so clearly shaken up by the thought that one might exist?” asked Drake.

“A.I.s are hard to make, they require a rare talent in micro-crystal manipulation, and generally we aren’t even supposed to talk about how we’re made.  The making of legal A.I.s is a secret and closely held monopoly of the Imperial Family.  In some ways it’s what ensures the Imperium.” said Samantha.

“It’s vastly more efficient to make use of A.I. at all levels of our economy, which makes us stronger than our enemies.  It also keeps planets from declaring independence from the Imperium…  As some local rulers have found, running a government and economy with your A.I.s in opposition, make for an exciting life, if short.”