Age of Space

Nagata shook his head in sadness. How unlucky was this family? Not only had Xena-, and Holder Maximus been on the career path of their lives. Xena being a prodigy in robotics engineering and Holder being a highly accredited researcher in the materials sciences. They had left the neighboring farm planet Hartheim in high hopes of new opportunities, and not surprisingly found them. They had asked Nagata for help, and he’d arranged housing in Ironglades, the industrial center of not only Concordia, but also the Tar kingdom itself.

Everything went well the first 15 years but, maybe because they shone too brightly, a rivaling company had tried to poach them from their employer. When that didn’t work, the company had turned to darker means. The shuttle accident 3 years ago had not been an accident at all.

Nagata had found out. He was good that way, Henderson Robotics Inc. had ordered the hit. He’d informed the local planetary police (the planetary guard) and the employer of Xena and Holder by an anonymous tip, but nothing came of it. Internal memos claimed "Lack of Evidence" being the cause. He’d considered informing Ronin of this, but a kid, only 15 years of age, being confronted by something like that? It would only destroy his future even more. He was still uncertain if he should inform Ronin at all. Better not to know.

Well, at least he’d given Ronin a chance to find himself when he blew "atom spice" straight into his face.

Moving Ronin over to a couch, he picked up the unknown device and went into his office. He knew which device Ronin had brought over, of course. What was interesting, was what the device hid, not what it was. Creating a safe virtual interface, he scanned the device for viruses before plugging it into the mainframe. Cracking his fingers, he booted up the subroutine, allowing safe access to whatever goodies it hid beneath its surface.

Horrified and groggy Ronin woke up from some of the worst experiences of his life. He’d seen what could only be called the devil, he'd been shown the worst experiences in his life, repeatedly, all the while feeling crippling anxiety and paranoia. The creeping fear of not entirely being in control of himself earlier today, had become a full-blown demon, giving him strong mental suggestions on the glory in becoming a battle maniac.

“Ugh, I'm never doing that again,” he groaned as he shook his head, trying to come to his senses.

“The demons you faced in that place are your own inner demons. The Atom spice merely showed you what you yourself have suppressed. Embrace it next time.” His uncle replied.

His parents had been right. He should have stayed away from this man.

“Whatever” he got out, not believing a word his uncle said!

“Anyways, put on this faraday hat and come over here, the blockchain key is about to show us what its hiding!”

“Faraday hat? blockchain key?” Ronin asked, a bit puzzled over the names.

“A faraday hat is just what we call a miniaturized faraday cage, made to only block out whatever signals any sort of optical-, or bioimplant sends out. It looks like a normal hat too. This one is pretty fashionable if you ask me.” He said as he handed over a black hat tightly wrapping around Ronin's head as he put it on.

Leaning back into his chair, Nagata, the man known as Psyrat cut off a piece of the cheese placed on his table, threw it into his mouth, chewed, and began to explain:

“A Blockchain key is a typical device for off the record illegal transactions. They can lead to many things but, generally it gives access to a cryptocurrency account. This one appears to lead to a shared account. The number of safeguards I've had to bypass along the way is a new record for me to be honest. Someone went into a lot of trouble to keep this secure.”

Nagata gestured with his hands and a holographic screen popped up, allowing Ronin to see what he was doing.

“Alright, this should be it,” he finished as his head did a weird twitching motion to the side.

As the screen changed and new numbers and letters began to appear-

“By the humanity!” they both exclaimed together as they saw just what they had gotten access to.

“I expected it to be cryptocurrency but this… translating this into Tar Kingdom Credits it would at least be…” Nagata gasped

“Enough to do whatever you want.” Ronin finished.

The sum displayed in front of them, if converted, was enough to pay the fine he was issued at the space force academy. It was enough to pay for a new house, a workshop and hangar to build spaceships, to pay for patent licenses, the latest bio-implant technologies and... Heck, he could just buy up a couple of middle-sized companies himself and still have leftover cash to burn!

They were looking at the equivalent of 800 million Tar Kingdom credits!

“Can we even take this?” Ronin questioned

“I mean, even if you technically can actually do it, I mean THEORETICALLY if you could also hide who took it, wouldn’t this set some things in motion that somehow would harm us regardless? I mean this amount is just too much right? There has to be consequences.”

“Theoretically I can do it... We’d have to be extremely careful on how we spend it though, but yes, it's possible.”

They looked at each other, then burst nervously into laughter.

“I think I need to lay back down on the couch.” Ronin mumbled before heading back, holding his head. The faraday hat was not coming off now!

25 light years away from Concordia, Nameka leaned back into a comfortable gel cushioned chair. It was made to perfectly fit the body in such a way to make it as comfortable as possible. Nanites shaped the gel where the body didn’t and the result? It was ergonomic when you needed it to be, massaged you when you felt stiff and maximized your comfort, when you could afford it.

Today she could afford it. Operation Lightfall had been an exemplary success. The push during the meeting with the heads of state in Tar had been more than enough to firmly nudge Tar further into Sichuan’s sphere of influence. All she had to do for this success was to arrange for some spies to finance various reactionary extremist elements in the Tar Kingdom and like clockwork, they delivered. Extremist elements which, by the way, her predecessors had fostered and nurtured when they pushed Tar into taking several authoritarian measures against its own people earlier. The only way for Tar not to collapse now was to take even more control over its people, making it even more like The Sichuan Empire.

Nameka had been quite upset about being transferred into the middle of nowhere. A planet lacking development and technology, far away from their new home where the glorious party imperiously pushed forward their grand vision of humanity. One People, One mind, One party, One leader! The importance of a single-minded focus when confronting the horrors of the universe was paramount if humanity was to survive!

Although, being transferred so far from the center of power had its own merits. She’d never believe she’d like the freedom this granted. The worry of the bomb implanted into her head was close to non-existent now. The frequent speech pattern analysis checkups, chemical tests, behavioral evaluations had been normal back at the new home world. Staying here for a few years had changed all that. She dreaded them now; she would continue to stay here by doing what she did best. Being good at her job.

Nagata and Ronin had been discussing what to do with the enormous sum of cryptocurrency for hours. As time passed, the discussion evolved from questions such as: “What if someone finds out we took the money regardless?” To: “Well, it's terrorist money, we’re doing a good thing anyways right?” By the end, they were just discussing how they could do it and get away with it. The potential consequences somehow forgotten amidst the greedy fervor.

Having agreed how to handle the cryptocurrency, Nagata began to transfer the funds onto different accounts. 80 % of the funds was to go to Ronin on a new Blockchain key, spanning several new anonymous accounts. The key, set up to be entirely virtual, was now set up even more securely than the key he’d come in with. The remaining 20% was to be transferred into Nagata's own anonymous accounts.

By the end of the transfers, the currency should be almost impossible to trace back to them. Only by actually spending the currency could anyone link up who'd used it. But by that time, the currency would not be connected to the terrorist accounts in any direct way whatsoever. There could be no trail between their money and the terrorist accounts!

Nagata also set up numerous shell companies with tenuous, but binding links to each other. Those links were however drowned in an ocean of other tenuous links which were not binding. They looked like they were though. This would allow them to spend the money without anyone knowing who really was connected to the new accounts. Ronin could now set up a company, but for anyone but him and Nagata, he would just look like another employee.

If some kid from the slums suddenly started spending money like it was raining, it would raise eyebrows. Finally, Ronin would spend the "company" money to pay the licensing fees, operational costs, etc. when designing starships, but his own patents would belong to him and him alone, not any of the shell companies!

Long story short, they had been as careful as possible, the links back to them were close to impossible to find. They had done it! Ronin was now sitting on 634 million credits after the shell company fees were deducted.

Both of them grinning at each other, Nagata couldn’t help but comment:

“I might have to stop doing atom spice from now on. The paranoia might drive me crazy considering what we’ve done.”

“I KNEW IT! I KNEW YOU REALLY DIDN’T BELIEVE IN DRUGS!” Ronin broke out, pointing at Nagata angrily.

“Now calm down, if you’re already very paranoid when you take it, you will naturally become even more paranoid, that's not how…”

“WHAT DO YOU THINK I WAS WHEN I CAME HERE!?”

“Listen, your situation was different, you have never taken it before and had a lot of inner demons to confront...”

“WHAT!? ISN’T YOUR PARANOIA A DEMON?! CONFRONT IT!”

Ronin once again vowed to himself never to listen to this damn hypocrite about this sort of thing ever again!

Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on you also! I will never be shamed!

As Nameka picked up the call with her implant she’d expected some minor issue to be troubling the spy. Perhaps more reactionary agents than expected had been arrested recently due to ‘Operation Lightfall’. Perhaps an operation had been thwarted before it began. She did not however, expect for all the funds she’d been allocated for the CLM movement to have just gone up and vanished.

Cold sweat began to form on her forehead. This was a major issue. The CLM destabilization project was important to Sichuan's overall plan for Tar. If these funds were not found, she could kiss her position as a diplomat goodbye. With a blunder like this under her belt, losing her job was the best-case scenario. At worst… She shuddered as she thought about the bomb installed in her implant.

“Find the money! I don't care what you have to do, just find it, and don't under any circumstances let those funds be connected back to Sichuan!”

She closed the call, the gel cushioned chair suddenly not feeling very comfortable anymore.

Just how did they do it?! She thought as she forcefully massaged her forehead. If she didn’t figure this out, they couldn’t even transfer more funds over to the CLM. They might just get stolen again. If there was some critical oversight in their financial security, all the other projects could also be in danger!