Rise of a Valkyrie

Part 10

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Allana Rayker's maintenance shuttle approached the lower service bay of Jupiter Station, the largest man-made structure in the galaxy. Huge, and regularly spaced triangular openings interrupted the surface of a hollow sphere twenty miles wide, through which vessels could reach the inner dockyards. Home to nearly a million inhabitants, the station orbited three thousand miles above Jupiter's atmosphere—close enough for awed travelers to make out the intricate swirling patterns in the brightly colored cloud layers.

Once the shuttle landed in one of the station's smaller Service Division bays, Rayker stepped out, breezing impatiently past the dock personnel. She didn't thank the crewmen who had prepared this discreet arrival for her, and hadn't thanked the captain of the freighter for the trip from Caldera. They were cartel men and knew enough of her reputation to accept payment and leave her alone.

She wore a maintenance jumpsuit over her usual attire and carried her possessions in a work bag, which was enough of a disguise to get her out of the docking hangars without being questioned by a supervisor. A private locker in the transit zone held a nondescript travel case, which she exchanged for the work bag after transferring her effects and ditching the suit. She then headed for the star-liner flight deck, strode up to the checkpoint and scanned her phone. The machine beeped happily, as it recognized the forged ident.

"Have a pleasant journey, Ms. Divine," the border agent said, and Rayker nodded back.

Fortunately, the core world's security forces were not as energetic in reviewing their population database as their frontier counterparts. If they were, the lesser-known business dealings of a great many politicians would be unacceptably disrupted.

The alias "Carlotta Divine" was senior enough in the Rackeye Research Council to be able to afford first class quarters on a passenger ship from Jupiter to Earth. Rayker had thought about boosting herself up to a Tier One luxury vessel, and all the pleasures of the flesh that would grant her, but decided it wasn't worth the risk.

Whilst most of the Helvetic aristocracy would never have heard of Allana Rayker, there was always the possibility of running into one of the Justice Service's senior directors, and Rayker knew that their top-secret file contained her photograph. If caught, she could expect imprisonment and interrogation, while her partner in the Adjudicate would deny any knowledge of her, to save his own skin.

No, for the six-hour trip, hot tubs and massage parlors could give way to a bar, with the possibility of a mid-wit businessman to play with.

Once comfortably settled in her room aboard ship, Rayker messaged Reed, and waited for his video call.

The alert flashed up on the screen, and Rayker tapped to accept. "Well?" she said, pleased to see a cheerful expression on Reed's face.

"The lab's teleportation system continues to bear fruit," he said. "We were able to create a connection to another underground installation in the hills outside of Rackeye. I sent a team over to explore the new complex this morning. That makes fourteen bases discovered on the portal network. Based on the data files we've already translated, I'm confident there are an additional four waiting to be unlocked."

"Hmm. Have you found anything useful?" she asked.

"Useful, Madam?"

"Weapons?"

"Nothing like that, yet. It's still not clear what purpose these installations were meant to serve."

"The mountain site we first discovered is clearly for nano-weapons research. I would have expected to find something a little less... esoteric somewhere on the damned planet."