Blue Star Enterprises

"You're sure it's her?" Theo asked Captain Ramirez for the third time.

"Yes," the man responded in annoyance. "We ran the DNA scan three times. Unless someone is pretending to be her, it's her."

The video of the captive proved it was someone who looked exactly like his former mentor and trainer during his time at Omni, but he still found it hard to believe the woman had gotten caught. It was sloppy. He might blame it on old age, but she was only a few years older than him and still well in her prime years.

He suspected she had gotten caught on purpose, which concerned him because he had no idea what that purpose might be. Considering her message to the STO ship, she was likely meant to be a backup in case the other saboteur failed.

"Sorry, Captain Ramirez. I'm not questioning your judgment, I'm just confused as to why they would send her."

"She's sitting in the interrogation room with Mrs. Wu, maybe you should ask."

Theo accepted the rebuke and gave the man a single nod in reply. He straightened his back and headed into the detention facility. It was a more recent addition to Eden's End to accommodate a larger number of troublemakers that would come with a growing population.

It currently housed mostly insurrectionists, who were let out each day for work details. There were also holding cells for violent criminals, but those were all empty at the moment. The last cells were temporary cells meant for people who needed a few hours, to a few months, to rethink their life choices.

That last section was where he was heading. The guard at the front desk verified his identity and buzzed him through the security door. He was scanned for contraband, and then let through the next door.

Theo helped design the security measures for the detention area. There were no easily bypassable bio-locks. Each separate area had redundant security measures that started with an actual person. Then, a DNA scan was performed, and facial recognition verified that the person was who they said they were.

There was even a heartbeat sensor. If the person trying to enter was agitated, it would show and they would be denied entrance.

Separately those security measures were all easy enough to bypass, but when you put them all together it was nearly impossible to get around them without getting caught. The weak link in that chain would always be human nature, but the guard on duty was picked from a random draw each day making trying to bribe a specific guard much more difficult.

Theo was trying to get Alexander to incorporate similar redundant security in his ships and other projects, but that was a long-term goal. Right now Theo pushed those thoughts to the side as he arrived at the monitoring room.

He slid his badge across the reader and looked at the camera next to the door. There was a pause before the door gave an audible click and opened.

Alex turned to face him as he entered. "Theo, glad you finally made it. Your friend is being rather difficult."

"She's not my friend," he said testily. "She may have been my mentor, but that doesn't mean we like each other."

"Fair enough," Alex admitted. "She says she will only speak to you though."

"Figures," he muttered. "She's been checked for weapons?"

Alex nodded his avatar. "Checked, clothes taken and replaced, and a full scan done to ensure no implants of any sort. She's as clean as we can make her. If you are having second thoughts or don't think it's safe to talk with her, I can."

Theo shook his head. "If she said she would only speak to me, that means she will only speak with me. I'm sure it will be fine." He made that statement with more confidence than he felt.

Alex nodded again and clicked the intercom button. "Eva, would you please return to the security room?"

The older woman seemed annoyed at being interrupted, but she stood and left Theo's former mentor alone.

Not long after, the woman stormed into the monitoring room. "Why did you pull me from the room, I was making headway- Oh, you're finally here," she stated when she spotted Theo. "Well, get in there. There's no telling what this woman is up to."

Theo looked at Alex.

"Markus was aboard Resolve when her capture went down."

Theo decided not to comment on that as Eva turned to glare at Alex. Instead, he left the room and headed toward the interrogation room.

He knew Eva wasn't prone to bursts of anger, but he could tell when a woman was experiencing an overprotective moment and he preferred to be elsewhere for that.

When he reached the holding cell, he didn't bother to knock or alert the room's occupant of his arrival, he simply opened the door and stepped inside. If she was surprised by his sudden appearance, she didn't show it.

He sat down across the cold metal table and stared at the woman seated at the other end. "Beatrice."

The woman was still as beautiful as he remembered, but it was the type of beauty that only came about through extensive surgeries and he knew that beauty was barely skin deep. It scarcely hid the monster in front of him because he knew she was rotten to the core.

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"Theodore," the woman replied with a wry smile. "Still failing downward I see."

Theo ignored the taunt. "Why are you here? What did you transmit to the STO ship?" Alexander had already decoded the message, but he was curious if Beatrice would corroborate their findings.

Instead of answering his question, Beatrice sighed. "Theodore, I'm disappointed in you. You know why I'm here and what I sent to the STO ships, so why bother asking? Do you think I'm going to implicate myself by answering?" she asked, her smirk growing. "Not that it matters," she pulled her arms up an inch before the cuffs prevented her from moving any further. "You've already made up your minds about me, haven't you?"

"You tried to activate the devices onboard Blueridge, didn't you?"

Beatrice shrugged noncommittally. "I don't know what you're talking about, Teddy, I was simply a passenger aboard the Compton."

"You asked for me, and here I am. Now you waste my time and dance around the questions. If you weren't going to answer, why did you want me here?"

The woman pouted, which sent a shiver of disgust up Theo's spine. "I wouldn't say our time together is wasted, dear. I got to spend it catching up with one of my former students, but you are right, I did have an agenda for requesting your presence."

Beatrice tried to lean forward, but the strap around her upper torso held her to the chair. She tutted and sighed. "I was told if all else failed, that I was allowed to make Alexander Kane an offer. My employer–"

"–Omni," Theo corrected.

"My employer," she continued, "stated they were willing to let bygones be bygones if Mr. Kane simply stopped producing and selling pulsed fusion drives that were on par with theirs inside the STO or to STO-based entities."

Theo narrowed his eyes. "Why now?"

She shrugged. "I'm not privy to management decisions. If I had to guess, they realized the cost to continue such a venture, outweighed the benefits. You know how it is," she added with a smile.

"And what do you expect to get out of this deal?" he asked.

"A ticket home, obviously."

"I'll need to speak with Mr. Kane."

"I'll be waiting," she said with a wink and a jingle of her restraints.

Theo left the room and returned to Alex.

"Do you think her offer is genuine?" Alex asked.

"I would get it in writing, but yes, I believe it is," Theo admitted. "I think thwarting their plan with Willard has annoyed them, but they always look at the bottom line before anything else. If the cost of getting rid of you is too steep, they will simply try another avenue of approach."

"So even if I agree to this… I'm not sure what to call it, ceasefire? I'll still need to be wary of them trying something else?"

"Like I stated before, Omni never relies on only one solution to a problem. They likely won't try a similar approach in the future, and if they were going to send a fleet, they would have done so by now. You may be harming their bottom line, Alex, but you are barely even a drop in the bucket with how many sales you have taken out of their pockets. I think if you agree to Omni's terms, they will stop any overt attacks against you, but you should still be wary of their other methods."

"Dropping my guard against them never crossed my mind," Alex stated. "Tell her it's a deal if she can provide me a legally binding contract with her employer's name clearly listed on it. I'm not going to agree to sign some ambiguous agreement."

"You sure?" Theo asked. "You'll lose a significant portion of BSE's income if you stop selling those thrusters."

Alex smiled. "No, I won't. Omni's info is old if they still think those thrusters are my bread and butter. I've already started transitioning away from the older style of thrusters. I'm simply going to switch to compressed plasma ejection and sell it at the same price as a standard retrofit. The price will barely offset the cost of my manufacturing, and I know I can manufacture them for far cheaper than Omni can. Let's see them compete with that."

The rest of Beatrice's stay was a short one. She managed to produce the document that was asked for, which clearly stated Omni's name and the agreement to stop producing the pulsed fusion thrusters. The other parts consisted of dense legalese to avoid actually stating that Omni had done anything illegal and that they would not compete against each other on pulsed fusion.

That last bit was important because Omni's first draft of the contract was far more expansive. Theo thought Alex might be a bit overwhelmed by all the legal jargon, but the man turned out to be one of the shrewdest contract lawyers Theo had ever seen, which must have annoyed Omni to no end since the contract had to go back and forth a dozen times before each side was happy.

It was all a load of bio-waste at the end of the day, but it was the best Alex was likely to get in the form of an apology or an acknowledgment from Omni that they were going to stop trying to destroy BSE.

Theo was glad to see Beatrice go as well. The woman was escorted back up to the same ship she arrived on and sent packing with the rest of the crew, minus the captain, who had been arrested and was serving time for failing to comply when ordered to by Captain Ramirez.

Alexander could have commandeered the ship, but it wasn't worth much and it was the easiest way to send the Omni operative back to where she came from without having to get personally involved.

All in all, the encounter went far smoother than Theo expected, except for the actual message that was sent to the STO ship. Alex had shown him what it said.

"I miss our time together, Teddy."

He didn't quite know how to feel about that being used as the trigger code for the devices. While he had indeed had a fling with Beatrice, that had ended when he realized she was simply using him like she did everyone else.

***

A day later, Theo was asked to come to Alex's office.

"You wanted to see me?"

"Please, sit."

Theo sat and Alex pulled up a video feed. He recognized it as one of the ones coming from Alex's new satellites.

The resolution wasn't the greatest, but he could see a ship appear from the jump point before making its way farther into the system. When it was passing one of the system's gas giants, three gunships came around the dark side of the large planet and intercepted the vessel. When they left again, the first ship was nothing but an expanding field of debris.

The image froze and the three ships were highlighted and digitally cleaned up slightly. It still wasn't the best image, but you could see they were different from the gunship that Krieger and the fleet had captured.

"I assume the ship that got attacked was the Compton?" Theo asked.

"Yes," came Alex's reply.

Theo nodded, not surprised. "Then those were likely Omni gunships. It appears my previous employer wasn't too happy about Beatrice's failure here. What system was that?"

"A few jumps from Varlen. It will likely get blamed on pirate activity, but that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is how those gunships got into the system without being detected. Those aren't stealth ships."

Alexander was right about that, those looked like wraith-class gunships. He wasn't familiar with them or Omni possessing any sort of stealth tech, despite the ship's name.

"What if they were there before your satellites went up?" Theo asked.

"It's a possibility," Alex admitted. "They did return to the dark side of the planet after the attack, so we have to assume they are still there. I need to deploy a task force to scout each system thoroughly, but I don't have any justification for it yet. Deploying the fleet right away would alert Omni that we have early warning and detection systems up."

"Use your upcoming trip to STO space as an excuse."

Alex paused at Theo's suggestion. "That's a good point. The Tempest should be ready in a few days. Once the ship is complete, Ramirez can take his task force and clear the systems one by one."