Scribble 19: Imitative Laplace Projection

Hello fellow Wanderers! As promised, this is the third/second part of the Renegade Covert Director series, depending on which one is the first story you read. Sadly though, this would not be the last installment of the series, as I couldn’t cram the final battle here.

Sorry it took so long, real life interfered a bit, although I doubt that anyone actually waiting for this :p.

As you would see, I wrote the perspective of Red/Seventh and Yellow in different font, which is Georgia for Yellow, as Yellow was an agent of UNSED, and Arial for Red/Seventh, which was an agent from Covert.

Would you join me for the ride?

The Scribble will now begin.

Scribble 19: Imitative Laplace Projection

I skillfully maneuvered the Karapace fighter through proton mines, courtesy of Deneb Confederation from the siege of Procyon-SX-180 colony. Really, that Confederation gives me problem even after collapsing.

Procyon-SX-180 is evacuated right before the proton mines were deployed, several that can't make it dies from starvation or insanity. In the end, the war ended without any of the proton mines exploded, which made both exploring the ruins of Procyon-SX-180 and risking being the first victim of the old mines more unappealing than normal deserted colonies.

I chuckled, gaining attention from Red. Oh, wait, she's supposed to be Seventh now, denoted by numbers instead of colors. Oh, how time changes. When we're together in the Colors, she was always the most emotionally unstable, swinging from homicidal impulse one second and affectionate compassion next.

"Yellow, your inner thought leaked out again."

"No, that was intentional." I landed my fighter on the hangar. "There we go. What should we expect?"

"Standard Covert guard, I think. My ID is still valid, the renegade Director can't touch anything that it don't have. This colony belongs to a fellow Director, which had lent me one of the stuff stored here."

"So, this is just an escort mission?"

"Yeah, you can't exactly barge in to kill Covert Director with normal 9 mm."

"Is this asset, uh, Remniscient?"

"Holy Crayfish, Yellow, just sit tight and let me do my job."

"How could Covert took over this colony anyway? This colony was abandoned years ago, before even the War."

"Wasn't it the real reason why Covert took it over? This is perfect base, finely defended, owned by no one, and visited by no one, not even monthly maintenance check. This is the last place UNSED would look for us, and it's right behind their backyard." Seventh stepped down from the fighter, leaving me alone. The woman swiped her card on a panel, and a section of the wall lifted up several meters, showing the bustling city filled with both researchers in white coat and special operatives in black tactical suits alike.

"I'll get you another ship too, another more suited for Covert operation. But for now just wait in the ship."

"Hey, I like my Karapace, and I hate calibrating my orbital sniper."

"No. Just no. Sit tight and let me choose the best for you."

I sighed, and decided to just sleep.

---

I walked through the busy downtown, this is pretty big for a Covert facility, maybe around 5,000 inhabitants? Not even all my facilities combined would be this big.

Not that my facility was much of one. I just have a handful of warehouses filled with skeleton crew ready to deploy if I ever need them, plus several APCs and Exo-suits. If this is a normal assassination I wouldn’t even have to step out from my safe house, the closest warehouse should be enough.

I stood in front of a building marked with small holographic plaque “Remniscient Containment Division Site-93”.

“This better be the one.” I muttered, entering the building.

“Identity, please?” a computerized female voice greeted me.

“Seventh.”

“Hypnos pattern identification complete. Welcome, Director, how may I help you? ”

“Lead me to Apollo-Delta-Aleph.”

“With pleasure. Please follow the blue light.” A line lit up in the wall, guiding my path through the labyrinthine hallways.

I walked through several containment cages when suddenly alarm blared in the hallway, along with red light. “Warning, hostile forces identified as Yellow Hallway is detected surrounding Proton Farm, evacuation advised.”

Yellow Hallway? Is Fifth trying to revive Colors or something?

I raced through the hallway, to a living quarter designated Apollo-Delta-Aleph. I forcefully broke through the steel door with my fist.

“Who are you?” the boy asked, his long gray hair obscured his face, his atrophied body curled in the corner of the cold concrete cell. How old is he? He looked even younger than Blue when he first joined Colors, and yet he exuded aura as if he is as old as time and as vast as space itself.

Which, considering his power, might not be so far from truth.

“I’m Seventh. I need your help. Let’s go.” The sharp red eyes, unlike Fifth’s dull, lifeless eyes, glanced at me suspiciously.

“Bullshit. Even if you did need my help, I have no obligation to obey any commands other than from Third.”

“Oh, I have his permission already.”

“Who cares? I’m not leaving.”

“Warning, fifteen Proton Mines in collision course with RRD-3-15, ETA 15 minutes until impact.”

“Yellow!” I yelled to my communicator.

“I’m holding up as much as I can, but these second-rate imitations are too many. You got 30 minutes, 35 tops, to get on your car and run.”

“Is… is that the real Yellow? The one from Colors that once assassinated a major in his underground shelter from orbit?”

“One and only baby. I could finish them all, but not without annihilating you in the process. Now get moving!”

“You hear that boy? Now let’s get moving!” the boy clicked his tongue as he went up and swiftly run on my side down the hallway, exiting the building and rushing straight into the hangar, entering standard Covert-issue Aslekfar-889 spaceship at the same time as fifteen other pilots.

“Please insert startup key.”

“Director Override. Seventh.”

“Hypnos pattern identification complete. Starting engine.”

“Yellow, fifteen Aslekfar-889 will be joining the battle. Meet me in Vega-Green-99 ASAP. Seventh out.”

I mapped the ship computer to warp into an empty star system, and activated the engine immediately. A cracking sound could be heard reverberating as the reality itself was strained from the paradox caused by the warp engine.

“Let’s get this over with.” with a deafening roar, the ship disappeared from the colony hangar.

We sat in silence for several hours as the ship moved irregularly through warp space, until the boy suddenly approached me.

“In the hangar, you called me ‘boy’”

“Excuse me? In case you didn’t notice, I’m trying to fold a space-time origami right now, so you better off taking your teenage angst somewhere else.”

“I’m a girl.” I stopped fiddling with warp drive control and stared straight to his, no, apparently her eyes.

“Bullshit.”

“I’m a girl.”

“And I’m an UNSED Star Supervisor. You’re clearly a boy.”

“I’m a—look, you’re a Covert Director. It’s practically impossible to lie to you, even with my power.”

“You’re not lying… no, of course you’re not. Even if I were to check your body right now you could basically turn yourself into a boy or a girl at will by changing the stable point of reality.”

“I’ve never been a boy, you insolent old hag.”

“Okay, first off, you’re the insolent one. Second, I’m pretty sure I’m still the youngest living Covert Directors. Just drop it, geez.” I turned my attention back to the navigator.

“Thank you.” a whisper, almost inaudible, escaped her lips. But I said nothing.

Instead, I continued fiddling with the control for the warp drive.

---

Six hundred and seventy six. That’s the number of ships dispatched by the so-called “Yellow Hallway”. I tasked the fifteen Covert pilots to divert the paths of the Proton mines as I shot down every last one of the Yellow Hallway ships.

But of course I hit one of the mines myself and have to float around in a life pod.

“Hey, I’ll let you keep me as a prisoner, so pick me up already.” I yelled to the comm, set into Covert’s frequency.

“Unfortunately, unless you’re a Remniscient, we cannot bring you in without our Director’s authorization.”

“I got Seventh’s authorization, you saw me dropping her few hours ago!”

“This is not Seventh’s facility. Now sit tight, and wait until our Director decide what to do with your desiccated corpse.”

“I don’t have time for this!”

“Neither do we!” a click could be heard, signifying end of conversation.

Now what?

I could use my miniature pocket space generator to envelope this capsule and transported myself to the rendezvous point, but as smart as I am with numbers, the highly unpredictable space made it impossible even for me to make a jump between stars without computers.

As I contemplated various way to explode my oxygen tank and launch me to the colony, a buzzing sound echoed from the capsule’s comm module. I thought it was the life support warning, but then a clump of black material emerged from the corner.

“Identify yourself.” I grabbed my Taser and pointed it to the black clump that become increasingly humanoid.

“You forgot me already?” a makeshift mouth appeared, before a full face emerged on the thing’s head.

“Blue.” I was surprised, but my training kicked in and my head cooled down.

“Third Covert Director at your service, Yellow.” His feature became clearer. I see, it made sense now why she could leisurely walked into this facility despite not being the owner, and the enmity between Covert Council members.

“This is what you do now? Imprisoning kid and using them as weapon?” I ran a scan from my Karapace before, this colony was filled with thousands of prisons filled with children, all with Remniscience wavelength emanating from them.

“That was what UNSED have done to me, to us! I merely gave them new home, picking them from fringe colonies, lost, hungry, alone. I gave them families.”

“Families that they once lost because of you! You even…!” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath “Does Red know?”

“That gullible girl? No, no, why would I told her? She killed me, she killed us all, once. She deserves this.” His eyes glowed with anger “But I have to thank her. Without her, I wouldn’t reach this plane of existence, gaining limited, but definite, access to the multiverse and Boltzmann simulacrum itself… but I digress.”

“What nonsense are you spouting, did you caught something weird in the afterworld?”

“When I think about it, to be able to fully recover after dying once, you’re the most abnormal of us Colors, even in our current state of being.”

“Or maybe I’m the sanest of us all. What do you want from me now? I’d kill myself if you told me to, so you don’t have to do it yourself.”

“No, no, I still have a use for you. Red still have use for you. I’ll give you a fighter, are you fine with Aslekfar 700?” it’s hard to detect his emotion while he was all dark and shadowy, but the way he said Red was somewhat nostalgic and lonely.

Or maybe I’m just projecting myself. I love her, after all, just like this fellow before his death.

“…you’re not seriously giving me that ancient stuff, are you?”

“Well I could just peel this capsule open and let you desiccate while fully conscious, so…”

“Fine, I’ll take it. Now let me land!”

“You’re already there, Yellow.” He laughed as his form dispersed, his voice echoed inside my mind even as his shape disappeared completely. My surrounding undulated and spontaneously changed into what I recognize as standard Covert cockpit.

“Show offs.” I smirked “This better be fun.”

The Scribble will now ends.

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See you in the next scribble, where everything is supposed to end ;)