Chapter 20: Tragedy of Nox 5

After Elmyra has made the decision to transfer the full control of the company's financial and management side to Charles the butler, she has always wondered whether that directly leads to her being in that position because Charles is not who he presented himself to be, or maybe something else, or someone else is working behind the scenes to take down the company.

However, journeying back to the time when it was merely days after she announced the transference of the company to Charles and Elmyra fully steps back from the company matters, he has finally started getting some deals done with a few smaller and newer companies. In that time that Charles is meeting and NOT kicking out buyers that decided to buy low, Elmyra has packed everything up and decided to go on a trip herself and investigate the tragedy of Nox 5 herself.

She always had a feeling that something else is behind the planet's destruction, perhaps a weapon of sort, and it was simply too unlikely for her parents to actually make a series of technical and management decisions that leads to the planet's and hence the company's downfall. Sure, if you want to cut the cost of the mining infrastructure building as well as using the older and more unreliable mining equipment, you can put yourself at a position where you are more at risk.

But nothing like what happened. That was simply unthinkable.

Elmyra is thankful that she never appeared in any public announcements unlike Charles who did it right away on the first day of his new job. She can still move around without any problems, and she took a normal ship from the mansion's hangers and got on the journey towards Nox 5 once more.

The standard protocols for any destroyed planet is a system wide traffic flow reduction and a planet wide lock down. An unstable orbit caused by high energy dynamic events could lead to a chain of events which will lead to more damage, so the Galactic Government has always made sure to start modelling what is going to happen as soon as the accident occurred. The thing with the post modern era and planets is that there are simply too many planets around, so it is not even really worth it to rebuild Nox 5. The most sensible option would be simply to locate another Nox 5 and tow all of the previous orbiting habitats towards their new home.

The only kind of activity on the planet's are the teams of investigators and engineers who are travelling around and performing scanning operations of the planet's surfaces in order to model and simulate what could have happened. Elmyra send them a message about who she is and what she has done, and they were actually quite sympathetic towards her. When she requested that she be there to assist with the modelling and analysis, they hesitantly agreed, as a student of the Galactic Institute of Science and Technology is famous for her academic ability and intelligence.

'So this is what we have found so far.' The chief engineer welcomed Elmyra as an unpaid intern to the team, despite she probably having the fattest bank account even after the tragedy of Nox 5.

'Initially, the first accident appeared to be the explosion of equipment at the criticla points of the structure. In order for the total collapse of the mining colony, there is a certain threshold amount of energy that needed to be released, and any simply explosion will not be enough.' The engineer explained, 'stacks of explosion at all of the critical points of the structures and their back up positions will do the job, and that's only the minimal requirement.

'What about the second one?'

'The first explosions not only affected the structures above the mines, but also below.' The engineer pointed his fat fingers towards the scans of the sublayers of the planet, 'Nox 5 has been a young and unstable planet since the beginning with the continental shelves still violently bumping into each other. That's what makes mining here excessively difficult but also valuable.'

The movement of the shelves are what keeps pumping up the rare metals onto the upper layers of the planet's surface that allows them to mine it.

'The explosion shattered the current shelve that's supporting the entire mini-continent in this region, and the stored up energy has a chance to be released...upwards.'

'So really, everything happened as a result of the chain reaction after the first explosion.' Elmyra said, 'or really...detonation.'

'Legally, we cannot say that.' The chief engineer said with a forced smile, and everyone in the meeting room knew what both of them are implying, 'however, it would be really difficult for the explosions to occur at all of the critical points of the mining system in such a short amount of time when fixing it or evacuation is impossible.'

'Do you have access to records of all of the device movement logs of the mining colony?' Elmyra asked, and the chief shook his head.

It seems like she knew where she would be going next. After the shortest internship of all time, Elmyra is heading towards the headquarter of her parent's planet, located in one of the more central planets closer to the galactic capital. It was a moon of a gas giant that is fully converted into a office and living area, though from the reports she has been getting since the first day she sat her butt onto the president's seat, it must have been completely desolate by now.

The journey took another two days, and she took that time to formulate her next steps.

The third moon of the red gas giant Baccus, suitably named after Roman God of alcohol, is where the company's head quarters is located. However, when Elmyra's ship entered the system and decelerated using the planet's gravitational field, she saw thousands upon thousands of ships parked in the low orbit of the moon.

'What the hell...' Elmyra said as she activated the parking permit and send it towards the traffic control.

'Permit denied.' The droid operated traffic control replied, 'please stay in higher orbit or travel at a later date after the granting of a valid parking permit.'

'What the hell do you mean permit denied?' Elmyra shouted into the mic of the communications system, 'I am Elmyra Zin! Can you not recognize this ship?'

'Do you want to speak to my manager, Karen Zin?' The droid replied mechanically.

'What? Karen?' Elmyra tilted her head sideways all confused, what the hell is the droid talking about?

'...Hello, this is Jojo, the manager of the traffic control?' Before Elmyra has a chance to react to the droid's sassy programming, a human voice came through, 'how may I help you today?'

'I am Elmyra Zin, and I am the daughter of the founders Zin foundation of Mining and Manufacturing. That is not the point, however, as this ship is registered under the priority vehicles list for parking around here.'

'Ah, have you not seen the news?' Jojo nonchalantly answered, 'the company is s.....s...s...s...soooooooold!'

'What?' Elmyra slammed her hands into the counsel in front of her, 'the entire company? I thought it was just the mining colonies?'

'Check the news, lady.' Jojo replied, 'all of Zin Foundation now belongs to Infinity, and today is the day of moving in. Apologies.'

Then, the transmissions have ended.

The tiny ship Elmyra travels in doesn't, and the service on the planet's has also been taken down. So now she is stranded in both the digital and physical world.

Elmyra can feel herself biting into the walls of her cheek. The official protocol for all of the mining colonies is that all of the decisions and movements for the equipment will be logged and stored in the records building of the company. She knew exactly where that building is, hell, she can already see it from here, but without access to the building, she will never be able to figure what and why the accident has happened.

Looks like she isn't going to be able to do this the legal way. Elmyra shook her head and made up her mind. With one hand in the control and one foot on the accelerator, the ship she was in fives right through the cluster of floating ships right towards the records building. In moon cities like Zin Foundation, there are no such things like air defense systems and orbital cannons, rather there are shields that covers the airspace up to right above low orbits where the ships park. Hence Elmyra is already within the shields and literally an arms reach from the records that she longed.

She can almost hear the patrols yell and shout when she made the move, however, she literally has nothing to lose. Legally, nothing can be traced back to the company, now that the company is no more. all the repercussions would just fall onto her shoulders, and as she has just learned, Elmyra Zin meant nothing.

From the rear cameras, she can tell a few ships are in pursuit, however, they are not moving as fast as they would have. The top of the building opens up as it detects the approach of a ship and it swallows Elmyra's ship whole. Once the ceiling of the top floor has returned and the entire landing zone is repressurised, Elmyra can finally step off her ship. Of course, she took along a single light blaster with her in order to protect herself.

'Sir, are we not going to pursue her?' The pilot asked as the pursuing ships decelerated until just above the building that Elmyra has just entered.

'No, the cleansing team is already inside, so she would already be dead.' The traffic manager replied from the communications channel, 'now let's go focus on the real business.'

The top of the buildings for most moon based structures are typically a modified hanger bay that can be depressurized and repressurized on request that allows for space ships to very easily land and park in. This function is programmed into most of the systems by default and is active almost all the time. Though landing with a space ship doesn't quite have the clout and attention of landing with a helicopter back in the modern ages, the extra bit of convenience is still why most structures utilizes this design. If anything, the hard metallic structures will form an extra layer of protection against space debris should the shield generators fail.

Elmyra walked through the chilly hanger as she wrapped herself even tighter in her jacket. Her short black hair tied in a bun and her guggles turned on. Taking the headquarters blueprint from home, she overlaid the map with what she is seeing and headed straight for the operations records room. Back when she was still the CEO of the company not that long ago, she has a universal access to all of the files. She tried to use it to access the locked gate into the building, and it worked as she expected.

Charles, regardless of his business decisions, are simply too busy and too alone at this point to think about terminating her personal account and access into the building. When companies hand over in this age, most of the software and hardware systems have already been optimized for the use of the previous company. This is what the cleasing team is for.

In most cases, the cleansing team is simply in charge of resetting all of the systems and clearing away all of the items that have been deemed useless or unsuitable. However, in some particular cases of corperate takeover when physical resistances are shown, the cleansing team can take on a more bloody role. The universe is far to big for all of the injustices to be able to addressed, and this is simply one of the things the Galactic Government allows discretely to keep the key players in galactic economy happy.

That means if the cleansing team sees Elmyra trying to access some of the previous files, they are authorized to eradicate her if any resistance is shown.

Elmyra is not going to back down from seeking the truth about her parents death, and the cleansing is simply here to do a job.

As Elmyra is walking along the top floor corridor and heading down to the records level three floors below, she can already hear the sounds of footsteps and people chatting from even further down. She suspects that her entry may already be known, so she has to move quickly.

With the universal access, she actually just went through the offices of economic records, management and human resources records and headed right into the operational records. There in this minimalist office, multiple data terminals stood tall like pillars and Elmyra ran towards the nearest one and turned it on.

'Access Nox 5 operational records.' Elmyra whispered into the voice activated control, and soon the files she has always been looking for is now in front of her.

'We know you are here...' Someone's voice echoed in the hallway outside, and it sounded like that person does know where Elmyra actually is. But as she expected, the cleansing team is aware of her presence in this area. She calmly pulls all of the most recent operational records starting from a week before the first accident up until the most recent as much as her personal interface can allow in ten seconds before shutting off the data terminal. The room returned into the darkness quickly, and Elmyra hid in the shadows in the corner of the room behind yet another terminal. From her estimation, the cleansing team would not have even covered the floors beneath her current floor yet.

She slowed down the breath, pulled out the blaster and points it towards the door.

The shape of a single men appeared through the window, and the head turned left and right as it continues to move through the corridor looking for the intruder. All of the records rooms are the arranged the same way in terms of hard ware, so for him it was merely another floor of rooms to check out out of all of the other generic floors. The cleansing team was alerted that there is an intruder that has landed in the building, and they are to deal with her.

However, from the sounds of that, it won't even be any resistance. So they simply do a paper scissors rock to determine who is the lucky one to 'take care' of the intruder. Despite what he may be allowed to do legally to this person, he would have to find her first.

'Is the monitoring system still on?' Elmyra wondered, then she connected into the terminal in front of her and also quickly offloaded the access into the monitoring system for the entire building using her universal access before turning it off once again. Then, by using her personal interface at the lowest possible brightness setting, she overlaid the reconstructed 3D imaging footage within her goggles. Now she could not only see the entire blueprint of the building, but also know where everyone is.

The people downstairs are still making slow progresses, and records room would literally be the last place the new company needs to move in on day 1, so they actually have plenty of time. The lone cleanser has now turned around in the corridor. Using this opportunity, Elmyra ran all the way through the corridor and returned to her ship.

When she sat back onto her ship, her pulses are racing and sweats almost filled the entire goggle. Unlike many others in this story, she has no combat training of any sort, being merely a team sport athlete for most of her life. If she gets into a fight with a member of the cleansing team, she would be disarmed in an instant, and most likely disgraced right after.

With full thrusters on in her ship, she escaped the headquarters just as the fleets of ships are moving into the various compounds. They paid her no attention surprisingly, and things have been working out very smoothly.

Setting the destination to her mansion, she then proceeded to work her way through the operational records.

The day before the first incidence, a list of maintenance and repair procedures were done on the structures that failed in the first incident. And a week prior, new replacements were delivered and installed.

Looking through the details of the new replacements, they are all high energy related and nothing mechanical. They are in charge of managing the drills and the overeall mine energy systems, distributing the power generated from the fusion reactor to all corners of the colony.

She went further back and wondered what sort of issues has prompted the replacement of items. There were a note made by the chief engineer that justified the purchase:

An unstable energy core of sorts was identified deep within the planet's core. The regions of rocks dates back to the birth of this planet, and there are lots of stored up energy in the surrounding crusts as well as lots of energy readings that we don't quite understand. Caution is required, and the previous structures and equipment are experiencing unexpected failure, possibly due to the repeated pulse like energy outputs.

A quick schematic of the purposed origin of the pulses is attached alongside the magnitude of the energy pulses, and the solution is also shown. A high energy stabilizer ordered from guess who...Infinity.

Elmyra has heard of this device before. As a matter of fact, one of the departments at the Galactic Institute of Science and Technology actually has one of the more advanced versions. This one made by Infinity seemed similar, however, it doesn't appear to do its job, as one of the bigger recorded pulses exceeded its potential and caused the very first accident.

Was it really Infinity's failure that caused the downfall of her parent's company? And in that case, is this a transient event, or have they been planning the take over of the company for an extremely long time?

Elmyra wondered. Then she sends a transmission towards Charles and reported on her findings. He may not be pleased with what she has found, but if they let the news out, perhaps they can get something back from whatever deal that Infinity has offered.