Engineer Third Class Ervin Hericles hated his new job. He had been dreaming of working on one of the large freight handlers that traveled the stars for as long as he could remember. And now? He had been so close to reaching his dream, but was now so far from it. He had joined the Imperial Merchant Navy as early as he could, he'd even needed his mom's signature to ship out on one of the mega-freighters leaving his world, and had always been quite good at his job. Even after he'd joined the merchant navy technical school after his first tour he was among the top of his class. When he graduated in March of last year he had been looking forward to a shining career on one of the merchant ships supplying her majesty's worlds and enabling the vitally important trade that kept the empire prosperous.

The empire's merchant navy included all the civilian freight ships in the empire irrespective of the owner. All of their crews felt like one large family anyway, even though many of them actually worked for competitors.

Ervin had enjoyed the first few months aboard a large merchantman immensely. In fact he had continued to do so until exactly 38 days ago, when an imbecile of an aristocrat, who had sadly been his commanding officer, fucked up badly. Nobility like him, even though he was relatively low nobility, had always been able to buy their, and their kids, way into powerful positions. And as it turns out that wasn't a very good idea on a highly technical vessel like a spaceship. At least that was his opinion. But, as usual, no one bothered to ask him.

Naturally his boss fucked up and got away with it. They just said that he was at fault and were done with it.

And that's how he ended up demoted to engineer third class and posted to this lame frontier worlds spaceport. He wouldn't even have had to go to technical school for his current posting, but no ship would take him on after crossing an aristocrat.

"Ervin! Stop daydreaming!" Ervin looked up from the untouched sandwich he was holding in his hands at the overweight engineering officer of the work crew he had been assigned to. He was waving an old rusty spanner at him threateningly.

"Break's over, guys! Get back to work, these rust-buckets aren't gonna repair themselves!"

"Aye Sir," Ervin and his crewmates answered weakly as they began packing up their gear and, in Ervin's case, their untouched lunches.

He really had to stop dreaming through his lunch breaks or he was going to starve to death. And that was one gift he wouldn't give that asshole of a blue blood that had cost him his job.

He stood up from the cargo box he and his two colleagues had eaten their lunches on, grabbed the tool packed chest rig he had set on the ground next to him earlier and walked out of the small hangar onto the tarmac of the mid-sized spaceport.

They jumped on the portrunner parked in front of it. A small 4-wheeled utility vehicle that wasn't much more than a tool cabinet and a workbench on wheels with four seats that had been strapped to it almost like an afterthought.

They sped away over the tarmac as the officer pushed down the accelerator panel and the whining electrical motor accelerated them along the road painted on the tarmac between the large yellow numbers marking the landing spots. Ships of almost all atmospheric flight capable shapes and sizes flew by them as they passed the main passenger terminal and traffic control tower and multiple smaller cargo terminals bustling with activity. Ervin had to admit that he almost liked the hustle and bustle typical of small worlds at the forefront of the empire's expansion. Almost.

As they neared the military area holding their next work assignment, a quite new gunship, fewer and fewer of the civilian spots were occupied, until they arrived at the border to the military side of the port. It was marked by a high metal fence, bustling with all kinds of surveillance devices. Their driver slowed down and came to a complete stop in front of a gate in the fence. It was guarded by two security troopers, one of which stepped up their vehicle and checked their IDs, staring into each of the crew members eyes like he could read what was going on behind them, before he gave a satisfied nod and looked at his colleague, who had been walking around the vehicle shining a flashlight into some of its nooks and crannies. After a short wait he seemed satisfied and they were waved through into the military part of the spaceport.

No one noticed the tiny gun metal gray box under the driver's seat. Or maybe someone did, but didn't think anything about it.

As most of the large warships were incapable of atmospheric flight, most of the ships on the ground were small orbital shuttle and supply haulers with the odd corvette or gunship mixed in. All in all it looked almost like the civilian side except with a smaller variety of ships, a lot less bustle and a lot more armed guards lounging around the ramps of the various parked ships.

Ten minutes later a large explosion tore the portrunner, its occupants and the gunship, it had been parked next to, apart.

Ervin didn't even have the time to make the connection to the box he had been paid to smuggle into the military spaceport and deliver to an officer posted on the gunship.

—

3 hours later

"Any news on the case of the accident?"

The tall man wearing the uniform of an Internal Security Commander nodded at the carnage behind the IS officer as he got out of the black repulsor limo that had flown him to the spaceport. The female Lieutenant avoided looking at him as she answered with some hesitation.

"It looks like the maintenance portrunner parked under its left delta wing blew up, Commander Norris. Norris's head snapped from the still smoldering pile of gunship to her.

"A portrunner? Since when can these things explode? And with enough force to trash a modern gunship?"

"That's what we don't know. Yet." She looked like she wanted to add something, but didn't. Norris gave her an inquisitorial look and raised his left eyebrow.

"What? Spit it out already, Coren!"

"Our working theory is that the portrunner has been tampered with in some way," she added after a deep breath.

He stopped abruptly, turned to her and said:

"An attack?! That's ridiculous! Who would dare to attack a military installation right under the eyes of the 13th fleet??" He took a deep breath while he stared at her and she was visibly uncomfortable.

"And what's your 'working theory' for who did it, Lieutenant?"

She looked at him with a facial expression that was caught somewhere between fear, wariness and a tiny, very well hidden, bit of disdain.

"Not sure yet. We only got her 30 minutes before you." She pointed at the center of the crater in the tarmac, where the portrunner had been, while they resumed walking. A few people in black and gray internal security uniforms were picking through the rubble.

"It may take a while to get something worthwhile out of this."

He hadn't moved his eyes from her during her explanation and now stepped closer to her until she could feel his breath on her face.

"Okay. I'll bite, but this stays between us. If the governor, or god help us, the duke find out that you harbor such crazy ideas or, even worse, someone snuck onto a base and caused that kind of carnage," he pointed at the scene with his thumb,"the admiral will tear your and, even worse, my head off."

Lieutenant Coren nodded in agreement, "or they'll send us to Gell." They both shivered at the thought of the infamous penal colony.

"Don't make me regret this, Lieutenant Coren." He wagged a finger at her, as if she was a kindergartner who had failed to wash her hands after taking a shit, and jumped back into the limo that had followed them slowly while they walked through the carnage. She shuddered at the thought of being sent to the penal world Gell. Gell was the place where the military sent the people they wanted to forget about, but didn't do something bad enough to be shot.

She had to solve this puzzle before Norris decided to throw her to the wolves to save his own skin. He was probably well enough connected to secure his own, if he found someone to take the fall.

Coren took one last look at the repulsor limo disappearing in the distance and then turned around and started to get to work with her team.

—

Coren flicked the safety switch on her carbine to semi, as she took her spot behind the Internal Security assault team that had stacked up in front of the door. She responded to the query for readiness by raising her right hand and giving a thumbs up. The officer leading the team nodded in reply and tapped on the point man's left shoulder.

She and her team of specialists were preparing to raid a three-story building in the commercial district next to the spaceport. During their investigation on the incident they had managed to find the remains of a strange gray material that they couldn't assign to either the gunship or the portrunner. By using the spaceports surveillance system a young analyst on her unit had managed to match it to a box one of the victims, an engineer named Ervin Hericles, had smuggled into the military spaceport.

They had tracked the places he had visited over the last hours using his com-unit and were now ready to raid a number of properties in the city.

The point man kicked in the flimsy NuPlast door and rushed into the building, his gun raised high and the rest of his team, including Lieutenant Coren, right behind him.

When they entered the utilitarian building the team split up and two officers quickly secured the ground floor, which was made up of one large storage area filled with mil standard cargo crates, while the rest of the team continued up the stairs to secure the second and third floor. The second floor was made up of a conference room and a lounge. Almost all the tables and a significant part of the wall were covered with maps, plans and notes. Coren thought that it looked a lot like a terrorist's planning room in a cheesy movie.

"Team leader, take three of your men and secure the upper floor. We'll start here."

"Yes, ma'am." The officer next to her, who was wearing an IS team leader's insignia on his body armor, responded and began calling out the officers he wanted to follow him, as he moved towards the door to the stairwell.

"Alright people. I want a thorough scan of this room and the storage area downstairs. From the looks of it we might be in the right place."

—

"Lt? You should come see this," one of the men that had gone upstairs with the team leader called through the com, obviously shook at what he had seen.

Coren nodded and raced up the stairs.

The upstairs room had been decked out with six beds and a table in its middle that was covered with gun parts and other gear.

But that wasn't why she had been called upstairs. Her men had pulled two corpses, one man and one woman, out of a closet along the left wall. They had been obviously strangled and undressed, not necessarily in that order. One of the officers was scanning their faces and fingerprints to search the database for their names and backgrounds.

"I don't like the looks of this," the team leader said, stepping next to her.

"Neither do I," Coren replied with a humorless chuckle. "Any hits on their identity yet, Specialist?"

"One civilian," the man looked at the smartpad in his hands. "Goes by the name of Torvan Ellis, he works for one of the trading companies in the city. The woman is military police. Sergeant Nia Orleen, stationed shipboard on the fleet carrier Victorious."

Before Coren could react, one of the specialists that had begun to go through the paper mountains on the second floor came racing down the stairs and blared out:

"Lt! You gotta come see this! They've got blueprints, maps and security shifts from Terminus station and a fleet carrier. We believe they are planning an attack."