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  Maya nodded sympathetically. “I know. I know. But,” she added slowly and deliberately to make her point, “in the media, perceptions are reality. Heck, it nearly had me going,” she paused, then added, “until I read your thesis.”

  Molly frowned. “You read my thesis?”

  Maya flipped her hand. “Of course. But everything came together from that point forward. It made sense that you’d be trying to stop what was happening, so I put out an alert for any interaction you had with any of the municipal services: police, hospitals etc. That’s how I found out about the hostage situation. I actually showed up there and saw you guys making quite the exit.” She smiled sheepishly, admitting her stalking tendencies.

  Maya wasn’t entirely done with her confession. “Then Sean, or Chris, or whoever, called in the black-market organs bust out there in the middle of nowhere.”

  There was movement in the door way again. Both girls looked.

  Sean had appeared. “Speak of the devil.” He grinned, obviously having heard his name. His hair was sticking up, and his stubble made him look about ten years older than normal.

  The girls just looked at him. Molly was still processing.

  He ambled into the room, padding around the table wearing his military socks as slippers, rather than proper footwear. “ADAM tells me she’s been quite the busy investigator,” he said nodding at Maya. He pulled out a chair at the far end of the table, placing himself behind Maya as she faced Molly on the long side of the table. “Even hacked into your ship to find out where this place was,” he spilled, leaning back in the chair, then putting his hands behind his head and interlocking his fingers.

  Maya looked like she was about to protest, but Molly’s expression stopped her.

  Molly looked impressed. “Lady, that was some badass research fu!” she exclaimed, raising her hand to high-five her. Maya returned the high-five and they grinned.

  Sean watched, taken aback by her reaction. “Erm, Molly, you do realize that most folks would have been mortified that their ship had been compromised in such a way?”

  Molly glanced at Sean briefly, then turned back to Maya. “What did you use? An ASX protocol to bypass the outer EE ring?”

  Maya tilted her head and looked at the ceiling for a moment. “No, I breached the Brancton layer via the comm system.”

  Molly turned back to Sean. “It’s ok. She didn’t do anything that leaves it vulnerable to anyone else to find a way in.”

  Sean huffed, trying not to let her see him laughing in amazement at the interaction. Talk about watching two AIs interact, he mused to himself.

  Just then, Joel appeared at the door to add his reaction. “He’s right, Mollz. Most folks would be concerned that someone was stalking them!”

  He turned to Sean as he walked into the room to join them. “But if they have tech skills, Molly is simply impressed. Figures.” He fist-bumped Sean as he squeezed past him to sit on the other side of the conference table.

  Molly looked around the room as Joel, in his PJs, took a seat.

  She frowned. “What is this?” she asked, her palms open and facing the ceiling, referring to the organic entities who had suddenly crowded into her previously empty conference room. “It’s three-oh-eight in the morning, people. What are you all doing up?”

  Sean answered first. “I heard someone moving around,” he pointed at Maya comically, “and thought I should check it out.”

  Joel was nodding. “I couldn’t sleep, and heard footsteps.” He had leaned on the desk, arms folded and shoulders hunched. He pointed a finger over at Sean.

  Molly looked at Maya. Maya shrugged. “I figured you’d still be working and I was fascinated. Hoped to get a late-night tour of the place.”

  Molly grinned, and chuckled silently to herself. “Ok,” she conceded. “Lemme grab a decaf mocha and then I’ll show you around a bit.”

  Gaitune-67, Safe House, Molly’s Conference Room

  It wasn’t until mid-morning the next day when, after some sleep and chatting some more with Maya, Molly thought she finally understood what had been going on.

  While the rest of the team got back to a normal training regimen and tried to recover from the stress and excitement of the last few missions, Molly held a private conference. She invited those team members who were about to become her “Generals.”

  They instinctively knew that they should head up to the conference room for the meeting when Oz asked them to meet with Molly.

  Caffeinated, rested, and much clearer, Molly started explaining the various details she had put together.

  “It seems we’ve been set up,” she began.

  She explained how the corporate espionage case had gone wrong. “We were never meant to track that feed. They must have thought they were pretty safe, especially since the previous team hadn’t been able to crack it. Pieter said he had a hard time doing it, and I suspect that without Oz we would have failed. But that would have given us the fall-girl, Burns, and then they could have planted the stolen intel anywhere and released it to the press—some well-placed people Jessica controls—who would then have announced how inept we were. It would have been embarrassing, but it would also have massively discredited us.”

  She waved her hand. “Poof,” she exclaimed. “They would have their problem solved. No one would have hired us after that. At least not for a long time.”

  Joel leaned forward on the desk, maintaining eye contact with Molly. “What about the hostages then? That was just bizarre.”

  Molly pulled her lips to one side and bobbed her head. “You mean how the antidote was just there?” she asked.

  Joel nodded. “Yeah. That threw me. But then, I don’t think they knew about that.”

  Molly got up from her seat and started pacing. “I checked into it. That poison is used a lot on the Outer System planets. Not here, in built-up areas. Those common palm bushes don’t grow out there. Different soil composition. Therefore, out there, Assergen is a very effective poison. Difficult to detect and leaves little trace unless you know what you’re looking for, plus no antidote.”

  She turned to look at the group again. “That got me thinking. Who have we come across who has done a lot of work out there? Other than Joel?”

  Joel shook his head. Sean shrugged. Maya waited, hanging on Molly’s every word like it was a famous detective’s story denouement.

  Molly pulled up an image on the conference holoscreen. “Mac Kerr.”

  She paused and looked at Joel, who was now staring at the screen. “Mac Kerr, as we know, used to be called Frank O’Rouke. We also know from our initial run-in with him that he has had some dodgy dealings out there. Bad mercenary shit.”

  She started pacing again. “Well, Oz and I did a bit more digging. Turns out he would now and again need to eliminate whole communities. His drug of choice when he didn’t have test weapons to use was—”

  Joel, horrified, finished her sentence. “Assergen?”

  Molly confirmed, “Assergen.” Her eyes were sad as she said it. Only from her research did she understand what a horrible death those poor hostages had escaped.

  Molly continued her rundown. “Turns out the hostage takers were also mercenaries. They knew—or at least their leader knew—that the hostages were going to be rescued. They wanted them to be. That’s why they left them in a different area of the building with just enough guards to sell it.”

  Sean frowned. “But I put a lot of them down. Why did they keep coming?”

  Molly sat back down, shaking her head sadly. “Probably ordered to by their coward of a boss. The boss who, incidentally, also has history of terrorizing the Outer System as it turns out. I don’t think they were in on the plan. Their job, as far as they knew, was to hold those folks hostage and await instructions…which never came.”

  Molly noticed that Maya was still listening and watching carefully.

  Joel scratched at his head. “So,” he asked, leaning in with his arms on the table, “what about the convoy thing? The or
gan, and the black market.”

  Molly stood up again, and waved her finger at Joel. “Yes!” she agreed with more energy now.

  She started pacing near the end of the table where none of the group was sitting. “Something about this wasn’t making sense,” she shared. “There was a disconnect, because Clarence didn’t have a relationship with the group that was trading the organs. He had no way of meeting them, unless he was approached. And he swore to Sean,” she waved in Sean’s direction briefly as she paced, “that the money was being paid into his mother’s account by a company.”

  She stopped and placed her hands on the back of an empty chair. “Well, Oz followed the paper trail and it went back to a shell company.” She nodded at the holoscreen, and Oz displayed some of the data they’d gathered.

  She continued talking while looking at the screen. “There’s not much listed on this, but the trail was too convoluted to have been set up by the organ traffickers, who could just as easily deal in cash. But if someone else was paying Clarence to deliver the organ to these people, it just seemed to fit better,” she explained. “It’s just a theory at this point, but it does seem to fit,” she repeated, not wanting to come across as too intense about her idea.

  The team was silent, staring at the screen for a few moments. Molly continued. “Then if you take into account the fact that our employer, Framan, is actually just a front company, and we’re the only people invoicing them—”

  Joel’s eyes went wide in surprise.

  Molly kept talking, “—you start to see that all these pieces fit together if someone in this sector is trying to discredit us, giving us missions that we should have failed on.”

  Molly’s pace quickened. “Tie all this in with the toxin situation, and with what Maya shared last night about how Newld was trying to frame me for terrorism, and I guess it’s pretty clear. Especially when you know that Jessica was controlling people like the editor-in-chief at Newstainment and ancestors-know-who-else.”

  She paused briefly, catching her breath. “This all leads back to the Syndicate and everything that dickhead Mac Kerr warned us about. He wasn’t just shooting off his mouth. They have the ability to do this, and it seems they want us—or me—gone.”

  She waited a moment, realizing that everyone in the room was lost in their own thoughts. She walked back to the head of the table, then pulled out a chair and sat down.

  Joel was the first to look up. He shook his head. “Shit.” The skin on his face looked like it was sagging. His eyes looked stressed.

  Sean looked up, elbows now on the desk. He put his head into his hands for a moment, then took a breath and wiped his face with both hands as he sat up again.

  Maya just sat shaking her head. “So what does this mean for us?” she asked. “I mean for you?” she corrected herself. Molly noticed her slip and smiled a little.

  She stayed on point. “What this means is that we are proving to be at the very least a nuisance to their plans. At best, we may be on the right track to understand how they operate, and therefore, how to take them out.”

  Joel asked the question. “So what are you suggesting?”

  Molly straightened up and look at each of them in turn as she spoke. “I’m suggesting,” her voice was now determined, “that we go on the offensive.” She paused. “We take them down, and take them out, and clean up the whole damn sector so that the good people of Estaria have half a chance of staying out of misery and poverty.”

  Joel didn’t wait for her to say anything else. “Count me in!” he said, slapping one hand on the desk.

  Sean was right behind him. “Me too. Me like some good overthrowing of an exploitative regime!” He chuckled gruffly, looking over at Joel. The two guys fist-bumped for the second time in as many hours.

  Molly looked at Maya.

  Maya waved her hands in agreement. “Yeah, sure. I mean, I’ll help however I can,” she said.

  Molly grinned. “Well, as for we versus us,” she said, referencing the way Maya had corrected herself a moment earlier, “might I suggest we have a conversation about you joining us more formally?”

  Maya didn’t miss a beat. “Yes!” she said enthusiastically. “Whatever that looks like, the answer is yes.”

  Molly grinned. “Ok, great!” she exclaimed before turning back to the group. “Looks like we’re a go!”

  Gaitune-67, Safe House, Kitchen

  “It’s a bit of a tradition, the pizza thing,” Pieter explained to Maya, pleased to no longer be the newbie in the group. Even as he spoke, something told him that Maya was going to settle in faster than he had, though. “And there is an infernal battle going on for the good of all that is holy.”

  Maya raised an eyebrow at him as they laid out plates and napkins and cutlery for the soon-to-be-arriving food and people.

  Molly had already appeared and was battling with the mocha machine. She stopped thumping it and turned around. “He’s talking about the role of dead carcass versus clean vegetable protein on the top.”

  “Ohhhh!” Maya exclaimed, looking somewhat relieved. Molly shook her head slightly and turned back to the machine.

  Molly started talking to Oz out loud, pressing buttons on the machine now as if that was going to force it into submission. “For fokk sake, Oz. You can control a ship, multiple Pods and hack the fucking hexagon, and yet you can’t talk this machine into giving me a helvítis mocha?”

  Pieter and Maya froze, watching her.

  Pieter took a second to breathe and then snapped into action. “All right, Mollz. Time to step away from the mocha machine. Slowly.” He walked over to her and put an arm around her shoulders, then pulled her away. He sat her down at the table and turned back to tackle the machine himself.

  “Can you ask Oz to talk to me through my holo, please?” he asked Molly.

  A moment later Pieter was diagnosing the problem, and Oz started talking him through the fix. He hit a few reset buttons, and soon had it humming.

  He dropped a fresh mocha in front of her and she mellowed instantly. “Thanks, Pieter,” she smiled. Her eyes were dark with tiredness, though.

  “Er, you know,” he said, returning to finish helping Maya set the table, “you probably don’t need any more of that stuff. Plus, er, real nutrition is on the way. I believe you even have broccoli on yours, ancestors-know-why!” he quipped.

  Molly bobbed her head gently while gazing into the mocha. “Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, Pieter.” She had another few sips, then set the mug aside to be rewarmed in the morning.

  Just then the others arrived, piling into the kitchen with pizza and beer. The place was a hive of excitement tinged with a hint of exhaustion. Training had been going well and things were shaping up, but it was still all a shock to everyone’s system.

  Eventually the familiar hush fell on the table as the group started tucking into their various choices of pizza. Molly took the opportunity to update them informally.

  “Ok, guys. Great job over the last few weeks, and huge congratulations on these last few missions. As you may have already heard, the funds have hit our account, and ADAM has verified that the challenge is complete.”

  The group stopped guzzling their beer and chomping their pizza to cheer, clap and high-five each other.

  Molly smiled at them. “You’ve done an outstanding job and changed a lot of lives,” she told them. “Each and every one of you should be proud.”

  A hush fell on the room again, but this time it was because they were listening intently. Molly continued. “As you know, passing the General’s test was just the beginning. This is where the real work starts. Joel, Sean and I will be meeting with the General at the end of the week. Maya is here as our guest, and will likely be joining the team in some capacity. We have yet to confirm if she’s to be stationed back at her post in Newstainment or whether she’s going to stay here with us. Either way, she is a most welcome addition to our growing team.”

  She paused, thinking for a moment. “Come to mention it, I j
ust want to add that Pieter, who joined us only a few weeks ago, is also proving to be an incredibly strong addition. Pieter, we are glad to have you on board. Thank you for being with us, and welcome again!”

  Pieter nodded and whipped his hand in a mock-salute. Paige and Brock laughed and spontaneously saluted him back.

  Sean, who was sitting next to him, gave him a manly pat on the back. It knocked Pieter forward a little, but he seemed excited that Sean had acknowledged him as one of the team.

  Molly grinned a little. “Oh, right. Then there is Sean.” Molly’s tone—deliberately or not—was sarcastic, so Sean looked at her in mock indignation with his mouth hanging open.

  The team collapsed into fits of laughter at his reaction.

  Molly tried to talk and keep her face straight. “As you know, Sean Royale has been stalking us for a little while.” She paused, waiting for the laughter from that comment to subside. She continued, “and enjoys gatecrashing our missions so much that the General has finally suggested he join the team officially.”

  The team cheered at the news.

  Brock, Crash and Joel got up to shake his hand and administer man-hugs.

  Paige got up and gave him a girl-hug and a peck on the cheek. Maya reached over the cheese and shrimp megafeast to fist-bump him.

  When everyone had seated themselves again, Pieter slyly leaned backwards very slowly so as not to catch his eye. With his face drawn long, knowing that half the team was watching him now, he put his arm around Sean’s back and patted him the same way Sean had patted him moments earlier.

  Sean jumped at the touch, then realized what was happening. Everyone burst out in hysterical laughter this time, and Sean slapped his own leg and then Pieter’s in amusement. As the rest of the team enjoyed the moment, Sean couldn’t help but put his arm around Pieter, who was a fraction of his size and way more malleable. He squeezed him close in a sideways sitting bearhug and then ruffled his hair before releasing him.

  Molly was beside herself with glee at how the folks in the room were coming together. She would replay that moment for a long time.

  “Ok, so all of this is great,” commented Paige, as the laughter died down and the eating and drinking resumed. “But what about the little project you agreed to?” she asked, looking expectantly at Molly.