Space Odyssey: Spectre-Chapter 477: Confinement

"Jace, The Elysium has almost arrived in the system. How is your status?" Jace heard over the communication channel after he took a step back.

"Alive. Tell them to come send someone to retrieve Marcus Trentwood’s corpse. He claimed to have been exposed to something called the ’source code’ while he was definitely exposed to something that rapidly increased his abilities although it was at the cost of his own life." Jace responded as he glanced back at the still standing bloodshot eyed corpse of Marcus Trentwood.

He was standing just on the edge of the atmospheric barrier. He had frozen standing up because the back of his body was partially in space. His eyes were bloodshot and his various orifices were in the midst of bleeding when he died. He had a moronic smirk on his face as he died, almost like he believed he would not die at that moment. In the middle of his forehead was a bloody bullet hole. Coming out the back of his were the brains and the back of his skull as they floated in space. The only thing that was disturbed on him were his clothes after Jace took the royal records.

"Understood. Do you need a pickup?" Ulin asked.

"Yeah, let me find the nearest airlock. The hangar looks like it will fall apart if we disturb it too much." Jace answered as he walked out of the door of the hangar and to the nearest airlock. As he arrived at it he received a request for a long range communication. He answered it as he disabled the other channels so he would not accidentally talk into them.

"Spectre Jace, please tell me this message is wrong. You did not kill Marcus Trentwood." Director Fenrir growled out. Sounding particularly angry.

"I did." Jace answered as he pulled a latch and prepared the airlock as the Nero Hawk came in to connect. "But for the record he was dying anyway. I just finished him off because he was spouting off some rather classified information that he managed to get a hold of."

"Jace, he was in the Imperium for the last several months. How in the world would he get classified information?" Fenrir demanded in an exasperated voice.

"That is what I would like to know as well. It sounded like he obtained it by exposure to this ’source code’ of the system. He was able to access both the royal records as well, I can only assume through artificial means as well." Jace informed Fenrir.

"Did members of your team hear anything too classified for them?" Fenrir asked after a moment of silence.

"That is correct." Jace answered as the airlock opened and he walked onto the Nero Hawk. The gravity switched on him but he just kept walking as he went to the pilots chair. He replaced Charlie in the pilots chair as the ship decoupled from the airlock. "I will have all members confined and under quarantine until you have someone clear them."

"Thank you, we will clean up the mess. But it seems we got a chunk of the Braggar’s Market personnel so at least this is not a complete loss." Fenrir declared as Jace could hear a chuckle in the background. "Stop laughing Dahlia. This is serious."

Jace raised an eyebrow as he signaled to Rook that he was taking the controls and then began flying the Nero Hawk away from the asteroid and past The Elysium. "I am heading back to the Princess’ Pride to deliver the royal records. Just ask Cain where they are when you get back. Is there any other crushing assignment that we might need?"

"Negative. Have a safe flight Jace." She then ended the communication and Jace switched back on his other channels.

"What was that about?" Bella asked from the back.

"Classified. How are all of your injuries?" Jace asked in turn as he activated the enigma and space slipped into the blur of stars as the wave rider engine functioned at full capacity.

"Bullshit." K responded groggily. "Trentwood definitely said something about his father being a spy for an emperor who definitely faked his death."

Jace slowly turned and looked at K who was swaying back and forth in her seat. He then looked over at Charlie who shrugged. "I administered pain killers. She has almost no filter at the moment. There were only minor injuries on the rest of them."

Jace nodded slowly before turning back to the console and sending out a message to Cain. Telling him to have quarantine and confinement protocols ready for the rest of this team. He would not tell them until they landed. Just in case.

"What about the rest of Cerberus?" Ulin asked with a sigh as she took off her helmet.

"The rest of Cerberus is either still recovering back at the Princess’ Pride base or finishing up the Kitinol swarm invasion. Their last message shows that they managed to prevent them from landing and are just blasting apart the last bits before they plan to return home." Jace answered as he turned around in his chair.

"What are we going to do now?" Bella asked as she glanced at K for a moment.

"Nothing. We are returning to base. If the rest of Cerberus was still in combat I would send you to join them. But because they are only on clean up we will only get in the way. So we are heading back and you will get some time off." Jace answered as he discreetly locked down the ship’s communications. He noticed Ulin flinched and looked at him but he just slowly and discreetly shook his head.

He then pulled up the helmet cams of all the entire team and watched through them. Rook and Charlie were mostly stuck on the ship. But the rest of them were interesting to watch.

Ulin had actually defended the bridge against a few attacks while the rest of them were moving throughout the ship. He had been wondering where the rest of the crew had gone. She only helped out a few times with finding information for the rest of the team.

Nulltone spent his time rotating through camera footage and looking at ship schematics. Mostly to help K and Bella navigate. Because Jace had only needed to see it once to memorize it. Which was not something most of them could do just yet.

Bella had actually followed K’s lead during the infiltration and attack. No notable achievements although her cam did catch K turning off her own camera right before a quick exchange between K and Marcus occurred.

Then there was K’s footage. Much the same as Bella’s but it did not have the exchange between her and Marcus. Although by all accounts it looked more like Marcus took advantage of her recognizing him.

Once he was done he set up a document and went through all of his recommendations. Then set it to send as soon as they arrived which only took about a few more hours which was mostly spent in silence as he watched the stars race past him as beads of light.

As soon as they were in the system he switched off the Nero Hawk’s wave rider engine. He informed the base they were back and heard Cain respond by directing them to a specific hangar. He flew the ship into the hangar and slowly landed it. Then he began powering it off and running through the post op checklist as the rest of the team packed up and got ready to make their way off the ship.

Since he was the only one at the front of the ship he was the only one to see the Military Police and the MILD investigators make their way through the hangar and toward the ship. He lowered the hangar for them as the first of the team made their way down.

"Jace..." Ulin looked at him as she handed her bag over to one of the investigators.

"Sorry, it is just protocol. You were provided with highly classified information that you were not supposed to have. So they are just going to take you in and ask you questions until you can be cleared." Jace informed them as he walked down the ramp. "Should only take a week at most."

Jace then walked past the investigators and Military Police as he made his way to the door where a small cart was waiting with a soldier from the Cerberus unit. Looks like one of the injured had recovered enough for light activities.

He tossed his bag in the back and sat down. As he rode in the cart that was snaking through the multiple paths he had a sinking feeling. Like something was wrong. He arrived home and walked into the garage. Finding it was left the same except the pair of trouble makers were watching television at the moment. Interestingly enough it was on the news.

"What are you two doing?" Jace asked.

"Watching the news. The Victorium Government is going to hold charges against the military for immoral crimes of varying types." Cho answered.

Jace chuckled and walked towards the fridge as he dematerialized his armor. He had some time so he might as well relax.

But after he grabbed a beer from the fridge there was a rapping against the garage door. So he walked over and opened it. "Huh..."