Blip\u2026blip\u2026blip\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2026is\u2026that? <\/em>The young Comstar communications technician fiddled with some dials and pressed some buttons, assuming the stray signal was noise generated by a local quasar. As he locked on and isolated it, a burst of data nearly burnt out his terminal\u2026and then all was quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hesitantly, he called over Ivan, his wheezy supervisor.\u00a0 Ivan\u2019s eyes went wide as he scanned the data, and he inserted his data fob into Max\u2019s terminal, downloading the files to his personal cache before deleting them from the young man\u2019s device.\u00a0 \u2018Nothing for you to worry about\u2026this never happened.\u2019\u00a0 A sense of menace came into the man’s watery gaze.\u00a0 \u2018Is that understood?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Yes, sir,\u2019 Max said, his voice quavering less than it might have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n __________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ivan stared at the data a long time, his mind swirling. He referenced and cross-referenced against Comstar historical records and logs. \u2018It has to be,\u2019 he muttered under his breath. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He knew if he did this wrong, some busy-body bureaucrat would fumble the whole thing. Checking his credit balance at Comstar bank, he pulled a crypto-rod from his supervisor\u2019s safe. Using one for personal reasons could put him in jail on a backwater mining colony for the rest of his life, but he knew how to fix the records so it would never be missed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inserting the rod that would make tracing of his transmission impossible, he spoke slowly and clearly into the microphone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018I\u2019ve found something\u2026need to meet\u2026yes, you can invest\u2026hire mercenary company\u2026beyond the rim\u2026Lostech\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blip\u2026blip\u2026blip\u2026 What\u2026is\u2026that? The young Comstar communications technician fiddled with some dials and pressed some buttons, assuming the stray signal was noise generated by a local quasar. As he locked on and isolated it, a burst of data nearly burnt out his terminal\u2026and then all was quiet. Hesitantly, he called over Ivan, his wheezy supervisor.\u00a0 Ivan\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fringewar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}