Need for Leads [Mars]

Summary

A Federation Agent is on a mission to track down hijackers who stole a Urite Crystal shipment and possibly harmed his crew, including Silvia, with a crucial clue pointing towards Venus.

Abstract

The protagonist, a Federation Agent, is recovering from a severe leg injury sustained during a hijacking of a Urite Crystal shipment. With his crew member Silvia and two others taken hostage, he is determined to find the marauders and recover the stolen goods. Despite the tracking being disabled, Silvia managed to send a message from Mars, providing a starting point for the investigation. The agent has a limited time frame to locate the hijackers before they can move the shipment to another planet. He deduces from a graffiti message left by Silvia that their next destination is likely Venus. The urgency is heightened by the shipment's security protocols, which require the three crew members to enter certification codes every 24 hours to prevent the cargo from self-destructing.

Opinions

The agent believes the hijacking incident has reinvigorated his sense of purpose, despite the personal cost.
He acknowledges the need to remain objective and not let emotions cloud his judgment, recognizing the high stakes of the mission.
The agent interprets Silvia's graffiti message as a deliberate clue pointing to Venus, showing trust in her ingenuity and their shared knowledge of mythology.
He considers the presence of Urite crystals on Mars' black market as evidence supporting his theory about the hijackers' trail.
The agent prioritizes Silvia's rescue over the recovery of the Urite shipment, indicating a personal attachment to her safety.

Tracking Down the Hijackers on Mars

Having come off the worst vacation ever I’m eager to get back to work. Almost losing my right leg from being seared by the deadly effects of a hi-frequency laser gun has added anger and a renewed sense of urgency to my mission perspective. Fortunately the bio tech used to repair the damage to my leg has restored all structural and muscular tissue to full working use. Unfortunately it took three solid weeks for the repair and recovery.

Time to turn the tables on these marauders. They have my full attention now after almost destroying my leg during the hijack of our last Urite Crystal haul. Silvia’s willingness to remain as crew member and hostage is the only silver lining — unless they’ve done harm to her and the other two members required to manage the ships security protocols.

‘Expecting the unexpected’ is such a trite expression, but so very appropriate in this case. In retrospect, maybe the close encounter with the Urite hijackers was what I needed to reinvigorate my sense of purpose as a Federation Agent, sans the injury and near fatal experience. My motivation is at an all time high now, and if tracking down the marauders and recovering the stolen Urite shipment wasn’t motivation enough, adding Silvia’s rescue to the equation only serves to intensify this resolve.

Regardless of resolve or motivation level, I can’t let the feeling of ineptness from being hijacked and severely injured overwhelm my ability to think clearly and look at this objectively. This is too important to the mission — and too personal now — I can’t make anymore mistakes.

The shipment tracking was disabled shortly after the hijacking, but Silvia was able to get a message out from Mars so at least I have a starting point. They have a three week lead due to my recovery stint which means I have approximately 6 weeks to get a lead on their next destination before the shipment can be relocated to any other planet in proximity to Mars. Since their initial destination was Mars, they only have a few options: Stay on Mars; Go back to Oberon (highly unlikely); Take a perilous jaunt to one of Jupiter’s moons; Or head to Venus.

After arriving on Mars it wasn’t difficult to ascertain the location of the message Silvia sent. The low frequency point to point transmission only contained her signature and was sent from one of the transport bases used to fuel and service interplanetary spacecrafts. Whether they know Silvia is an expert telecommunications agent for the Space Federation is immaterial at this point because they need all three crew members to keep the shipment moving.

The three person integrity security protocols are the only reason they need to keep any crew members with the shipment until they arrive at their final destination. Without the scheduled certification codes being entered every 24hrs by the three crew members the shipments cargo bay will self-destruct.

At the signals origin, a Helios interplanetary transport maintenance bay, I found a seemingly innocuous wall of graffiti just outside the female comfort room. Many of the graphic poems and seedy artwork appeared to be signed by whoever had left them. Two things in specific were signed with initials “SG” In typical graffiti artists flair: “Aphrodite is still the brightest star in my life,” and “Taoot unicorns are not mythical creatures.” If I hadn’t seen the initials I probably would have overlooked the scribbling as typical weigh-station grime art. The initials “SG” had to stand for Silvia Golden. I was betting my life and career on this assumption, but my gut was all-in on this being the clue I desperately needed.

Not being sure what the cryptic unicorn message meant didn’t dissuade my quick interpretation of the other phrase. It wasn’t clear or obvious, but Silvia had pointed me to their next location by knowing my love for star gazing and Greek Mythology. This has to be her way of pointing me at the variable Roman God given name for Aphrodite, which just so happens to be Venus.

There was also conjecture and scant evidence that an appreciable amount of Urite crystal had recently been dumped on the open and black markets here on Mars within the past few weeks. But based on the intel gathered from a few local disreputable sources, the amounts of market-ready unregistered Urite crystal wouldn’t equate to a full transport shipment, and the smallish amounts mentioned by first hand accounts were definitely not substantial enough to measure authoritatively. However, these indicators of the presence of fresh Urite crystals further improved my confidence in the validity of the trail we’re on.

Ruling out the possibility that they’re still on Mars, and assuming the cryptic message left by Silvia was indeed a pointer, means getting to Venus as quick as possible is now this missions top priority. If the trail goes cold then we’ll most likely lose the shipment, but in the back of my mind it’s more important to rescue Silvia than the shipment of Urite.