<< So here’s the thing, I feel that I failed to express last week, that while the Communist Red Faction now ‘owned’ the moon, their ideals had not yet taken hold over the population of Grady. Obviously, as it was the constant corporate invasion that pissed off the first wavers to begin with. I had said in the past that Red Faction was a new presence on the moon, though when I introduced that they were communists… well I feel like I contradicted most of what I had established about Grady, and possibly ruined the whole thing!(It just didn’t dawn on me for a week.) Red Faction’s really young, and pretty much all the governments are forced to play along with the Trade Consortium’s laws and business practices. Anyway I made some changes to last week’s post to show that! Ty,DD>>
By David C. Daoust
It was a high ceilinged room, stark white and well lit, sealed and sterilized. The room doubled as a laboratory and a med bay for the injured. Dakota doubted she was the only doctor on the ship, though she was the only one occupying the lab at the moment. The Red Faction Soldiers had helped the lab assistants move the Ion Device onto the landing pad beneath the barracks ship some time ago. Now she was just waiting for the ‘go ahead’ to trigger the device, something she had no plan on doing until they were all well into orbit around the small moon. She’d always felt she did her best thinking in a lab, so was pleased to have the time alone.
She was familiar with all the devices, all the machines. If you’d seen one lab, you’d seen them all, Dakota thought as she lounged about in the high backed chair in the now empty room.
It seemed she’d spent most of her life inside of a lab. Her years in school were mostly lab based. Even her younger years, while others were sitting in study hall, or maybe a shop or library, she’d always buried herself in the lab.
As she got older, the work she did to eradicate the degenerative disease that literally destroyed Mr. Otomo, and threatened to do the same thing to Suzanne, amounted to almost a decade spent within a lab.
In those years she was focused beyond reason. Like a laser, there was nothing outside of her work, until the day the answer finally shook loose, rose to the top, and she was able to think about something other than losing the person closest to her.
After that she’d moved on to the lab Suzanne had provided her once Otomo Corp was off the ground. A lab which had become more her home than her actual apartment that she lived in; She missed her lab, she missed her home, She missed Suzanne. She missed her whole life! Everything! She realized she was home sick. Even if she was still disgusted by the Otomo Corps actions, she half-wished she could just go back home, forget all this, and live in the dark.
But she couldn’t.
It was all too much.
Too many had died.
She had to find out the answers.
When confronted Suzanne said Dakota didn’t have all the information, like the doctor was leaping to conclusions.She said Dakota’s accusations were madness, though would not elaborate.
‘Left Dakota out in the cold, out in the cold for no reason that Dakota could see, which made her angry. And she was already angry to begin with.
The facts were simple:
Otomo Corp had sent Dakota to Dori 5 to investigate the Black Lung infection that was sweeping through the city-station’s floors. A visit in which Dakota was able to create the meds that would slow the infection long enough to diagnose the real problem. The ‘real problem’ being the microscopic machines that had somehow spilled into the environment, a spill which allowed them to be breathed in by the population.
Upon the discovery of the nanites, they were able to eradicate the issue permanently (albeit on each individual patient, one at a time). If Dakota had not been brought in to figure out what was going on, it might have been much worse, like Twin Crown worse.
Enter Twin Crown, a small moon infected by the Black Lung nanites which she had first heard of from a mysterious man whom she had never gotten so much as a name, let alone, who he may be working for. He’d provided her with classified information which put Otomo Corp in the port town Grady, located on the very same moon.
Otomo Corp just happened to have a small presence on the dusty moon at the same time the Black Lung infection spread… and despite the fact that Otomo Corp knew exactly what the problem was and knew how to remove the nanites from the infected permanently, as was done on Dori 5, they began selling meds to those infected instead.
Medication that could only slow the infection!
That’s right! Otomo Corp was selling meds to slow the infection, though they made no move to eradicate the nanites from the moon itself.
These facts, along with the profit reports of the meds sold thereafter, could only lead Dakota to the simple conclusion that they were more interested in profiting off medications, than curing the cause; As the meds would create returning customers, while the cure was only a one shot deal.
How long would they have waited? How much coin would they have made from the population before they let up?
Under the dosage, the infection could have gone on indefinitely, not only creating a constant flow of coin into the corporation’s pocket, but also allowing others to become infected, others who would also then be paying Otomo Corp for the meds.
It was enough to fill Dakota with rage.
This was before she added in the new information she had gleaned from the stolen holo-pad. From this she discovered that the nanites were also adversely affecting the power cells that powered every device, machine, and power grid in the Onion!
Power cells capable of storing solar power for future use, power cells which were indestructible and should last ‘forever’- were now slowly deteriorating thanks to the nanites presence!
This information alone was disturbing to Dakota, but it did not end there. The plans for a new form of power cell, one equipped to fend off the nanites, were also buried within the stolen data.
Designs only Otomo Corp held the patents to.
Could Otomo Corp be planning to sell these new power cells to Twin Crown to replace those that would inevitably be destroyed?
Power cells had always fallen under Ark Ships domain, which for the most part meant they were free to the people, but if they had to be replaced by Otomo’s designs, the Ark Ships could not intervene without breaking Consortium laws.
All of which could lead to the removal of the Ark Ships’ hold over such technology for good.
This could be a boon for the Trade Consortium as a whole!
At the same time, be a devastating blow to the Royal Alliance!
How far throughout the Onion would they allow the infection to spread? Were there other moons and stations suffering under the effects of the Black Lung nanites? All for the deterioration of power cells? Would there be? How soon? Could her dear ‘sister’, Suzanne, be such an evil genius that the good doctor had never even suspected it?
Dakota’s investigation had come to a halt thanks to her run in with the law, and of course the Battle Drone’s sudden assault on Grady. The questions though were all there, twisting around in her mind. Dakota trying to piece the facts together, not only in a way that made sense, in a way that cleared Suzanne of being an EVIL GENIUS… if only to set her own mind at ease. Dakota’s entire life would come into question, if the woman she had fought so hard to save, could be so vile as to profit off the suffering of others.
