Retribution, Part VI: Prelude

Caldari Prime
Orbit

22:37 1-7 YC115

Ryven waited. The airlock was depressurized, utter silence broken only by the sound of his breathing in his sealed dropsuit. A red flashing warning light indicated the impending opening of the external doors. Each flash was reflected in the slick black of his helmet's faceplate, and he was crouched, poised to propel himself toward the target.

His mind drifted to the past few days of preparation. He had awoken on the 9th and made his departure as Huola's star was rising over the manor. He had glanced back mournfully, reluctant to leave Shalee behind, but knowing he had to see this through. Even Tiger had agreed with him on that. Although, that was likely because Tiger wanted Ryven gone, and the possibility of Ryven suffering extreme bodily harm was not something Tiger was likely averse to.

He had made the trip to Leela's safehouse, careful to cover his tracks. With her assistance, the code was extracted from the nanochip he had retrieved rather messily from General Ikaren's neck. Leela had fabricated a transponder for his dropsuit and programmed the defense codes into it. Ryven wondered if this operation would have even been possible without her assistance. He decided it would have, but the risk would have been multiplied to a ludicrous degree. He would have to get her a thank you gift.

The rest of the preparations had been largely moving assets into place. Leela would be his source of intel. She was patched into a fluid router comms channel routed through a series of nearby comms satellites, automated orbital installations, and into his helmet. His ex-fil was set to pick him up at one of a series of sites that could be chosen on the fly. He had the comms for that set up on a seperate circuit.

He was carrying only a small arsenal of weaponry and equipment. The dropsuit had built in stealth technology, motorized joints and muscle amplification tech, and combat optics and mapping that interfaced with his capsuleer implants. Considering all that, he was remarkably lightweight at only 450 lbs and 6'7" tall.

His reverie was broken by the sudden opening of the external doors. The space between the doors widened and the bustling surface of Caldari Prime loomed ahead of him. However, his target, a Charon class freighter, the [i]Lysander[/i] loomed even closer, a mere 10 km away. The tiny shuttle was on a parallel course and speed with the freighter, thankfully.

Ryven pushed off the airlock wall with a powerful kick, firing a set of twin thrusters in his suit's backpack to accelerate. As he hurtled through the space between the two vessels, he considered how tiny he was. Just a speck, black against black, traversing the gulf in absolute silence. He was utterly alone, isolated from the universe and yet at once an integral piece of it. Everywhere he looked silent behemoths went gliding through the void. He wondered if this is what it was like to be lost overboard at sea with dark shapes circling and gliding above and beneath. He shivered involuntarily, thankful the distance was closing.

At the last hundred meters, he flipped so his feet were facing the Charon and fired his thrusters to decelerate. His feet touched the blue gunmetal hull of the freighter and Ryven activated electromagnets in the soles of his boots.

The walk to the external maintenance hatch was a short one, only 50 meters or so. Freighters are largely unmanned, and as such, he was unhindered in his efforts to open the hatch and float, weightless, into the shaft that went the length of the cargo bay. Ryven glided half the length of the bay before he reached his target.

Ryven had chosen this freighter due to its highly explosive cargo of rocket fuel and munitions, namely 100,000 torpedoes. He intended to use an explosive to set off the fuel, which would detonate the massive cargo of missiles. This would provide a very effective diversion.

"Leela."

Her voice replied crisp and clear in his helmet. "Target is in the building. His family is not present. Mission is green."

Ryven nodded, then rolled his eyes at the pointlessness of such a gesture. "Thank you, Leela. Apprise of any changes."

"Good luck."

Ryven placed the explosive, a small device less than half a meter square. He pushed off and glided back out of the shaft, again magnetizing to the hull of the ship. He began the long silent trek to the other side of the freighter.

When making reentry into a planet's atmosphere, care must be taken to do so at the proper angle. Too steep and the dropsuit's thermal shields flare out and the wearer burns up into ash miles above the planet surface. Too shallow and the poor bastard goes skipping like a rock off into space. Thankfully Ryven's suit was able to display the correct glide path on his helmet's HUD.

Ryven reached his drop point. His target coordinates were entered in to his glide path navigation program. A countdown to drop was ticking in the corner of his HUD. He crouched, deactivating the magnets as the timer reached one. He pushed off at an angle, firing his thrusters to line up with the markers on his HUD. He watched his velocity indicator, and checked the distance to the freighter. 22km. He pulled out the detonator. 24 km. He flipped off the safety. 26 km. He pressed the button.

The sky above Caldari's capitol erupted into brilliant bluish white and an assassin sailed unobserved toward his target.