NOVPUBAs a public transport landed, three figures that were seated near the front got up and immediately left the vessel.
From the airport, they took the shortest route to the exit and quickly made their way to the vehicle they had rented to use while in the city.
"Olivia, was it really necessary for us to do all of that? We could have just had Ezra, or even the Alliance Police drop us off." The bespectacled girl with short black hair sitting in the vehicle's passenger seat complained.
"Come on now, Havanna. It might seem excessive, but our leader ordered us to do so, and the captain agreed. You can't deny that there are some dangerous people after us right now. It's best that we are cautious." A younger man with spikey brown hair and a single mechanical arm sitting in the back responded.
"You're such a suck up, Rorson. Can't you just admit that you thought all the transport swapping we did was tedious. Nobody is going to go through that much trouble to follow us."
Olivia closed her eyes tightly and took a deep breath as she held in her frustrations.
The two members of her crew that she had picked to go along with her had been arguing for nearly the entire time.
They were both competent mercenaries, and while onboard Olivia's ship, they never seemed to have any problems. Though, that was mostly because they hardly interacted and stuck to their own jobs.
Now that they had been forced into close proximity, the two of them turned out to react like oil and water. They seemed to not be able to stand each other.
"Rorson, Havanna, I get that you were both enjoying the leisure time we've had on the Alliance Police base and didn't want to leave, but Avery's given us a job to complete. You're both getting paid extra for this and it will be a good chance to show off your abilities. In the future, the two of you might get to captain ships of your own. I can tell you now, our leader is not the type to be satisfied with the size our group is at right now. He has ambitions for a lot more than merely the four vessels currently in our group." Olivia said, hoping to get the two of them to behave better.
Obviously, she could have just ordered them to do so, but she knew that it would be more effective if it was what they wanted to do, rather than just her telling them.
And fortunately, it seemed that her words had gotten through to the two of them.
Before being abducted and forced into servitude by Iniquus, both Rorson and Havanna had been trying to save up money for their own vessels so that they could take on more lucrative jobs.
The colonies they had been on had a lot of work busting up local gangs and providing private security services.
However, few mercenaries dreamed of spending their entire careers in one place. Nearly all of them wanted to traverse the stars and go wherever they wanted while making money and having fun. Rorson and Havanna were no expectations, and the prospect of possibly piloting their own ships in the future got them to stop quarreling.
'Finally, some silence. I'm glad to see that they've got their priorities straight.' Olivia thought as she started up the vehicle and lifted off into the air.
Soon they had joined the city's traffic and were heading towards the central magrail station. The first order of business that they were going to be investigating was the abnormal shutdown of the system a couple of days ago.
When they arrived, Olivia took the lead and walked confidently towards the nearest ticket machine.
While the device's main role was to allow people to buy tickets for all of the public transit vehicles going in and out of the station, it also served as a terminal that could be used to access information and call for assistance.
Most of the station's functions were automated, so only a few people actually worked in the place. To get into contact with one of them, Olivia followed the instructions Jasmine had given her and eventually scanned her terminal when she had brought up the proper program.
A moment later, a small spherical drone that floated in the air popped out of the machine and turned towards Olivia.
"Follow me special investigator. I shall take you to the station master's office." The little drone said before turning around and flying deeper into the station.
After a couple of minutes of walking, the three of them reached an area that was restricted to the public and blocked off by a solid metal door.
However, thanks to the small robotic guide, the door promptly opened up for them.
Without anything left to impede their way, they walked inside and soon reached the station master's office.
Inside, they found an older woman wearing the station's uniform hastily typing on her computer.
Once she noticed that she had guests, she stopped working. But as she turned around, Olivia, Havanna, and Rorson noticed the heavy bags under her eyes and the district demeanor of someone that was overworked.
"So, you're the ones sent by the chancellor as special investigator. I nearly felt my heart jump out of my throat when I received that notification from the system that you were here."
The station master met them with a smile, but it did not reach her eyes. She was obviously nervous and annoyed to be dealing with this intrusion.
Unfortunately, she could not just disregard them.
Thanks to Jasmine reaching out to her mother, Olivia had received a temporary job as the chancellor's special investigator. A rarely used position that the chancellor of Azade could give out when they wanted something looked into, but it was outside the purview of the usual authorities. n𝚘𝚟𝚙u𝚋.co𝚖
"Yeah, I'm Olivia, and these are my two aids, Havanna and Rorson. We've come to look into the malfunction that occurred a couple of days ago."
"That's what I figured, but I don't know what interest the chancellor has in this. It was just a minor mishap with the code after one of the programs were updated. Though, it certainly has given me a lot more work to do." The station master said, a dead look in her eyes as she glanced at the messages and files that required her attention. Clearly her state of exhaustion came from this incident, and Olivia's arrival was surely not helping.
"Chancellor Rhinelander cares about all of her citizens, and no issue is too small. That's why I've been sent here to look into this."
"It truly was just a minor accident. There's really nothing more to find out about it than some human error."
The station master then pulled up the reports that had been written up after the problem had been identified.
Everything seemed to be as she said. Some older, redundant code in the system, had caused a malfunction with an update that had been added to the electromagnetic trains' speed regulations. Which had recently been increased thanks to more efficient magnetic field configuration that was now being implemented.
Everything seemed to be in order, and the incident had come about simply because of simple a simple mistake.
Nothing particularly bad had happened, and once the source of the problem had bene found, it was quickly corrected and the electromagnetic trains were up and running again without problem.
"And how do you know that something like this won't happen again?" Olivia asked after reading the report.
"Well, that's part of what I'm working on right now. The techies… I mean, our technical experts have been identifying any other redundant code and making sure that it won't be a problem if we update the system again. I can assure you; this isn't worth you or the chancellor's time."
"Yes, well, we'll be the judges of that. I need access to the current system and the one before the update. It doesn't need to be the main one, it can just be backups that are not connected." Olivia said without relenting.
The station master tried to get the three of them to leave without pursuing the matter further.
At first Olivia thought this might be because she was involved in some way, but she was not displaying the signs a guilty person usually did and it seemed she wanted them to go more to save herself from the trouble of extra work.
Eventually, she realized that Olivia was not going to be leaving until she got what she wanted and made the necessary arrangements to gather what she had asked for.
Fortunately, as a precaution, the main station hub in the city kept backups of the system running the entire transportation network. With up to five past instances of the system saved and ready to be implemented again just in case.
Around a half hour later, multiple large external drives that held the data of the city's transportation system arrived. These were copies being given to Olivia custody.
"Good luck with it. There's a lot of code there, and you're just going to find the same things that we did. It's all just a waste of time if you ask me." The station master said as they left.
Olivia, Havanna, and Rorson followed the guide drone to an empty office room and began setting up to have the data analyzed.
Of course, they were far from qualified to do so. But, they had two adept Baccigans that were just a call away, and more than happy to offer their assistance.
