By David C. Daoust
Suzanne sat perfectly still, eyes squeezed shut, her brow furrowed as her fingers pinched the arch of her nose. She sat behind her desk, having just finished yet another conference with whatever random executive she had to deal with. She’d already put it out of her mind. The headaches were more and more frequent yet she didn’t want to pop another pill, so there she sat, waiting for the stress to pass.
The picture window behind her showed that of New Runnymede’s seas as seen from the skyscrapers that made up its sky line, the image was itself, a hologram, often times the window showed hamlets under the Domes or other random places people thought she should be. It created the illusion she was in one of her offices, diligently at work, making sure Otomo Corp was a well oiled machine.
In reality, she very rarely visited her home offices.
In reality, Otomo Corp itself was an illusion, built to facilitate not only a cover for her operations, but also to gain recognition by ‘the Board’. Without this recognition she would be little more than an agent under someone else’s employ. No Otomo could stand for that.
Her father never had these problems, well, not that she’d witnessed. Zeke Otomo was a well respected businessman. He had earned loyalty and respect long before his body turned against him. Suzanne however, was just an image on his desk, an image that the big wigs commented on in passing, issuing complements that always left her father with a huge smile on his face.
The Trade Consortium was one giant Conglomerate, a Conglomerate that only cared about those on top.
Suzanne had to start from the bottom. An heiress of a fortune did not get noticed by the Board no matter how large. One had to prove they were savvy. Prove they could make their own fortune. She had at first, sold her story-rights, stories of her childhood training. It had been made into the movie, ‘Galactic Assassin’. It was a pretty silly movie when compared to reality, but it was what she had, and she made some coin off it. It was a feeble attempt to make her own start-up, back when she was struggling with not only her father’s death, but her own diagnosis; a diagnosis that weighed on her.
Zeke’s investment paid off. Zeke Otomo believed that the mind was the most valuable thing in existence, once he’d found Dakota Sun, he sunk as much coin into her as he could, ultimately, ridding the Onion of a disease that eluded modern medicine for decades. Too late for the man himself, but saved his daughter from experiencing the torment he suffered in his final days.
Suzanne was then able to take Dakota’s work to market. Dakota changed everything for her. Otomo Corp solidified into an entity of its own, and Suzanne was able to begin the operations she was trained for. Suzanne loved Dakota. In truth, she had hoped Dakota would take more of an interest in the company, though seemed content to while away her days in the lab. Not that her work wasn’t profitable…
Operations went smooth until about six months ago, when the raiders began to appear. How it landed on her desk was beyond her, but the fact that it did, meant the ‘Board’ recognized her as a real ‘lead operative’, which meant she couldn’t let them down.
What hit her desk began as reports of a minor investigation amongst Star Cruisers that seemed to be losing power, reports that turned into what Suzanne could only call ‘ghost sightings’. Her team started to call them Wraiths, Wraiths that appeared from the nothing of space whenever the effected power cells were tampered with.
There were very few eye witnesses of these wraiths and technology was unable to read them; take their picture, or sense them in any way. Suzanne had sighted them herself, only once, moving across the hull of one of the Cruisers from her private starship’s window. No sooner had she witnessed the figures moving swiftly through the nothing, than they suddenly vanished.
One witness called it a ‘heavily armored astronaut’ that appeared suddenly amongst the engine room. He said it seemed real enough while it was there. It had three glowing spheres hovering over its domed helmet, which was blackened, and its right arm had an energy blade affixed to it, an energy blade about the size of a chainsaw, which it plunged into the ship’s power cell. The witness then described how the spheres had scouted the rest of the room, as the Wraith drained the cells. Once the scouting sphere found the witness hiding behind terminals, he was stunned unconscious by an attack from the sphere itself.
Whenever one of her operatives drew near, the Wraiths would vanish again. Some reported the wraiths passing through solid walls. Still more said they were seen flitting through the blackness of space before and after raids. No one knew where they came from, or where they went, but they made off with the energy, leaving more than one cruiser dead in the water, sort’a speak.
Policy became to ignore the fluctuations, as long as the cells were not tampered with, the wraiths would not appear to drain the cells completely. All the while they began researching new ways to deal with the problem.
It was not until the power fluctuations started on Dori 5, and the small moon Twin Crown, that they changed protocols. They managed to flush the cells without calling in the Wraiths. Quickly afterwards though, the black lung infection began to appear throughout the inhabitants. This is when Suzanne sent in Dakota to investigate Dori 5. This is when Suzanne learned of the nanites.
Problems arose again once Dakota cleansed the station of the nanites. The Wraiths returned, this time her team was ready for them, they managed to fight them off, without alerting the public, closing access to Dori 5’s ports for more than a week. Many men were lost, yet not a single wraith was actually captured, whether or not the Wraiths even took damage, was unknown.
Rather than repeat the Dori 5 incident on Twin Crown, they began to produce the meds to slow the infection. At least until they had a better idea of what they were dealing with. All was going well until Dakota showed up on Twin Crown.
Suzanne sighed aloud as she suddenly slid open the drawer at her desk, the small bottle of pills rolling forward until it bounced against the inside of the drawer. She could tell the headache was not going to pass on its own any time soon.
Snapping open the lid, she popped another pill.
