The headquarters of the Directorate of Naval Intelligence couldn’t be reached by public mag-rail. For people without clearance, it couldn’t be reached at all. Gabriel’s air-taxi touched down on an extendable landing pad, allowing him to alight before quickly returning to the skies. The biometric sensors flash-scanned Gabriel’s eyes, and the half-tonne door retracted silently into the wall to allow him access, sealing again once he was inside.
This section was called the ‘Office Block’, a bad in-joke by the architects, since it was a literal block of space in the middle and upper sections of the Spire given over to offices for analysts and other personnel. For a building with a staff of over 75,000, there were very few people to be seen in the concentric rings of hallways. Most of them were support staff flitting between offices; all of them gave Gabriel a wide berth.
Near the top of the Spire, Gabriel headed down a short corridor towards the spine of the building, stopping in front of a reinforced door emblazoned with the acronym ‘D.G.N.I.’. Passers-by who caught a glimpse of the acronym double-timed past it. The biometric sensors flash-scanned Gabriel’s eyes and the blast door slid open, granting him entrance to the most powerful room in the city.
The office of the Director-General of Naval Intelligence was part-office, part-command centre, part-throne room. It was a hemispherical space with a desk and a throne-like chair, surrounded by holographic screens, set atop a dais opposite the front door. The person behind the desk was reviewing a video file on one of the many screens, with the audio playing through the speakers so that Gabriel could hear.
“…my facility goes dark and the first thing you do is short my company and cash out?!” Gabriel recognised Darius’s voice bellowing in anger at his mother.
“Of course,” said the recording of Madam Jezebel Thorn, “you would have done the same if a project of mine ‘went dark’ without explanation.”
“It didn’t ‘go dark’, thus far it’s nothing more than a temporary communications loss–” Darius tried to splutter out an explanation.
“‘A temporary communications loss’, ‘a fault in the uplink array’, ‘space weather’, ‘regular weather’, ‘an act of the divine’,” Madam Jezebel sneered, “I’ve heard countless variations on all those excuses, and they’re always made up by incompetent fools to cover up the fact that they couldn’t keep their business under control.”
“You’re just trying to cut the venture off at the knees at the first sign of trouble!” Darius angrily accused his erstwhile business partner, “You think you can short my company and leave ME with the fleeking mess!?”
“You came to me for seed money for this little off-world facility of yours, and I gave it to you,” Madam Jezebel calmly reminded Darius, winding him up without raising her voice, “I even let you have full control over the facility’s activities, which is just as well, seeing as you probably didn’t register it.”
“Mind your fleeking tongue, or I might have it cut out!” Darius snarled dangerously, perhaps conscious that the walls might have ears.
“In any case,” Madam Jezebel continued, “the facility was always yours to own, and so are the consequences of whatever might have happened there. So I suggest you man up and stop making such a scene.”
“You slippery bitch!”
The recording paused at the exact moment that Gabriel had walked into the booth. The individual seated in the throne-like chair dismissed the video with a flick of her fingers and swivelled round to face Gabriel. He stood to attention and saluted, respectfully fixing his gaze on the opposite wall as he waited for her to speak.
The director-general wore a midnight black uniform similar to Gabriel’s, except that it bore a gold admiral’s insignia on the lapel, whereas Gabriel’s uniform had no insignia or identifying markings. She wore her raven hair in a tight bun and her face appeared locked into an expression of complete indifference to the world.
Her most eye-catching feature, however, was her right eye. It was a bionic implant, with a bright, laser-red iris, in stark contrast to her biological, hazel-coloured left eye. The obvious nickname ‘Red-eye’ had stuck, though no one with a sense of self-preservation dared utter it within earshot of her.
“Your integrity is beyond question,” the Director-General of Naval Intelligence said matter-of-factly, “the same cannot be said of Jezebel Thorn or Darius Avaritio.”
“I presume you want me to investigate Avaritio’s facility?” Gabriel asked.
“That is correct.” The director-general confirmed, “It’s a standard IRS operation. Check in with the medical staff and get yourself suited and ready. Your operational briefing will be forwarded to you on the way.”
“Understood.” Gabriel replied, waiting to be told why he was there.
Most DNI employees dreaded the prospect of being called into the director-general’s office, not least because of her rumoured delight in playing underhanded mind games with her subordinates – like playing recordings of supposedly private conversations just to make them squirm with embarrassment.
Gabriel knew better. It was just a rumour; the director-general only called people into her office for important matters. She rarely summoned people to her office to give them their orders in person, and she certainly didn’t summon them to her office just to embarrass them. She had better things to do with her time.
“There is one other thing.” The director-general added, “For this deployment I’ll be placing you in command of a squad of five operators.”
Gabriel blinked, thinking he might have misheard.
“Normally you would be sent in alone, of course,” the director-general continued, “but given the size of the facility, I believe the support of a full squad is warranted.”
“…Understood.” Gabriel answered stoically.
“Expressing dissent is acceptable.” the director-general said, almost reassuringly.
“No it isn’t,” Gabriel contradicted his superior, “I’ve been given a mission and a set of parameters, and I intend to complete that mission within the stated parameters.”
“So you have no problem at all with working with a team?”
“None.” Gabriel lied.
“Understood.” Red-eye noted with a faint smile, perhaps noting the lie, “Dismissed.”
* * *
Whilst most of the Spire’s levels were devoted to regular office space, the lower levels were given over to research laboratories which formed the core of the DNI’s in-house tech empire: the ‘Rand Block’, as in ‘R&D’. Most DNI employees were restricted to certain areas of the Spire, but the biometric scanners granted Gabriel access to almost every part of the building, including the Rand Block.
Gabriel took the elevator down over a hundred floors to a special preparation chamber. Once he arrived, he stripped down to his underwear and lay down on the horizontal examination slab that awaited him. The robotic medical arms descended from the ceiling and bathed his body in sensory light, scanning him from head to toe. When the scan was complete, a holographic screen materialised in front of him.
“Voidstalker-1707,” said the doctor on the other end of the line, “Colonel Gabriel Thorn. All of your enhancements are functioning within normal parameters. No physical or cellular anomalies detected, although your REM sleep patterns last night were erratic.”
“It was another flashback,” Gabriel explained, “this time from void-exposure training.”
“I see,” the doctor noted, glancing down at his chart, “and how is family life?”