CHAPTER 290: CHAPTER 290 OFFER OF COOPERATION

’He certainly chose a weird one. I don’t really understand what he’s thinking.’

Avery and most of the other competitors wore perplexed expressions after Jack Huxley made his choice on what the final event in the competition would be.

There were some that would have prioritized his skillset that was more geared towards quick maneuvers, but he had not shown any interest in any of these.

From the start he was going to pick the one he had, as if he already knew that it would appear on the list.

"I see. So, we’re going with emergency evacuation and extermination of hostile space monsters for our finale." The head of the organizing committee said. Seeming a bit unenthusiastic by the less sensational event that Jack Huxley had chosen.

He most likely wanted something that was going to be a bit more exciting, and this event was going to be the most difficult and intensive to set up.

Obviously, they could not initiate a real space monster attack on a station or planet. Meaning that an inordinate number of resources were going to be necessary to simulate the situation. In fact, it would not be possible to do so within the Dramid System. It would need to be held somewhere else where the population would not be disturbed by a large stretch of space and a planet being commandeered for the event.

With all of the pertinent information having been given, and the next four events decided on, the meeting came to a close.

"I guess that we better go and get prepared. Tomorrow is going to be a big day." Kasandra said, standing up from her seat.

Avery had the same thought and stood up so that they could quickly had back to the Dauntless.

There were going to be three different events tomorrow, and they would be starting off with a free-for-all battle. Though there was not much time left, he wanted to do what he could to get ready.

Except, before the two of them could exit the room, someone moved to block their way.

"It’s a pleasure to finally get to meet you, Avery Asteria. I’m sure that you already know, but I’m Liesel Kaizer."

With her hand outstretched, it was obvious that she was looking for a handshake from Avery.

For a moment he hesitated, trying to figure out what her intentions were.

He doubted that she was trying to pull any sort of malicious stunt, so in the end, he accepted the handshake and offered a greeting of his own.

Yet, the moment that he clasped hands with Liesel, he felt something resting in her palm being passed over to him.

Almost immediately, he recognized the shape and feel of what the item was.

’A micro data card. What’s on it and why is she suddenly giving this to me?’ Avery thought, wondering what could have prompted this turn of events.

Still, he accepted the data card from her. Making a scene here would not be beneficial to either of them, and there was nothing compelling him to access the device even if he did take it.

There was a possibility that a virus of some kind had been hidden in the data stored within the item, though Avery doubted someone like Liesel who was clearly proud of her skills and abilities would resort to such an underhanded trick. One that was more likely to come back to bite her than be effective.

"Well, I just wanted to properly introduce myself to another up and coming mercenary. I’d planned on doing so during the backstage meeting after the promotional concert, but things did not work out then. I heard that you got dragged into quite a bit of trouble."

"Yes, I did. Things never seem to go quite the way that I’m expecting." Avery said, smiling widely, and hinting that he wanted to leave.

"I suppose that is all I had to say for now. Good luck on the battlefield tomorrow."

With that, Liesel Kaizer took her leave and headed over to where her copilot had been waiting.

Now that their unexpected interaction was over, Avery and Kasandra left the room. All the while, Avery’s thoughts were drawn to the data card currently resting in his hand.

When the two of them got back to the Dauntless, Avery immediately grabbed a spare tablet and inserted the data card.

Of course, before doing so, he made sure the device had no meaningful information on it and disabled its ability to connect to any networks or other nearby devices. Just in case some sort of malicious program had been loaded onto the card.

Fortunately, it seemed to be clean of any malware, but just to be sure, Avery left the Dauntless briefly and connected to a public network to send the data over to Grito so that he could analyze it.

It did not take too long for the genius Baccigan to analyze the information held on the card and assure Avery that everything was clean.

"Got it. Thanks for all your hard work Grito. I don’t know what we would do without you." Avery said appreciatively over the call connected to Grito lab.

"This is what I joined your team for, and I’m certainly happy with the results. I have access to far more material and specialized tools than I ever had before. Sometimes the work really piles on, but it’s at least all interesting. I could not be more pleased."

Grito then went on a tangent talking about everything he was working on, and some conversations he had had with his uncle and Ardesen about all manner of topics pertaining to engineering.

Avery only understood about forty percent of what Grito was saying, since a lot of it had to deal with technical terms he did not know.

As soon as an opportunity to end the conversation without being too blunt about it, Avery did so.

Once he was back on the Dauntless, he inserted the data card into the onboard computer system and accessed it.

"This is contact information for a specialized and encrypted means of communication, right?" Kasandra asked, peering over Avery shoulder at the console he was using.

"Yeah, looks like it. But it only allows us to receive transmissions and then reply. We can’t send out any messages until we receive one." Avery said, having analyzed the functions of the data.

Nevertheless, this would now allow the Dauntless’ communication system to receive and decipher a new type of signal.

This would allow for discreet contact with anyone else that knew how to transmit the specific type of wave pattern. Of course, Liesel was likely the only one around that could do so.

The real question though, was what she planned on doing now that she had a means to contact Avery discreetly.

He could think of any number of possibilities, but it was impossible to pin down her intentions considering how little the two of them had interacted so far.

"It doesn’t look like she transmitting anything right now."

As Kasandra had pointed out, no frequency that the data card allowed the Dauntless to pick up on and decipher was currently being sent.

That meant that Liesel either had no plans to contact Avery immediately, or while he was making sure that the data card was not filled with viruses, she had attempted to send a message but was unable to get through and had given up for now.

"If she had something important to say, she’ll contact us eventually. Let’s focus on running some battle simulations against the other competitors for now. We’re going to be fighting all of them tomorrow and I want to be ready for it." Avery said, activating the Dauntless’ virtual training mode.

...

When the next day came around, Avery and Kasandra hastily got ready and then followed the instructions to the area where the free-four-all battle between the eight competitors would be taking place.

The location was usually an area of open space, but some obstacles mimicking asteroids and space debris had been add to give everyone some cover that they could take if it proved necessary.

"Okay, we’ve arrived. I’ll anchor the Dauntless in place." Kasandra said, entering a few commands into the panel in front of her.

Each of the competitors had been given different starting positions that made it so that they were all equal distance from each other. That way there should not be in advantages in terms of distance.

Not long after the Dauntless came to a standstill, a transmission using the frequency that Liesel had put on the data card she handed to Avery came in.

Accepting the call, Liesel and her copilot appeared on the Dauntless main viewscreen.

"I’m glad to see that you installed the program so that we could talk without being overhead. I figured that there was only a fifty-fifty chance of you doing so."

"Yeah, well I suppose I was just curious what you had to say. You do come from a pretty famous line of mercenaries, so I doubt you set this up for some frivolous reason." Avery replied.

For just a moment, Liesel smile cracked when Avery mentioned her lineage, but she quickly fixed it back into an affable grin.

"That’s correct. I wanted to discuss something important about the fight we are both about to partake in. How would you like to team up with me?"

Having already anticipated that something like this might have been the reason that Liesel wanted to contact him discreetly, Avery did not show any expression of surprise.

Still, he was a bit skeptical about Liesel’s intentions.