Chapter I – Into snake’s nest

Special Federal Agent Nick Iron was riding elevator. He felt very uneasy, as he was scheduled to meet topmost leader of agency, mighty general Berger. Iron was not the only one to feel bad about visiting general. Berger was known as person without piece of heart, capable of sending best agents onto suicide mission without telling them what they are going into. "Listen carefully, agent! You have been assigned for a mission!" Berger really knows how to give orders in loud voice, so loud everyone always remembers all the mission details.

"Yes, sir," replies Iron. "Shut the fuck up, I was not asking you anything! You have mission! You leave today 8 pm galactic time, via regular line to planet Colonia XII. Yours mission there is to dispose of governor Gesman silently as well as his closest co-workers. They have been reported to plan act against Federation." Nick silently says to himself that those governors should already understand that they’re under surveillance all the time. "You will travel silently," continued the general, "your luggage with standard equipment was already boarded. You are dismissed!“ So it is, thinks Nick, I am going to kill some guy. Mission like any other in special agent’s life.

Thought there is something strange, he can feel it by hidden sense of secret agent. The look of general’s eyes, lots of sweat on his normally dry face. That is indeed strange to Nick. Who knows, maybe he had way too much beer last night. Boarded and placed in his cabin, agent checks his luggage. Hidden bottom reveals standard Agency equipment: laser knife, fireblast gun, made to turn everything in front of user to ash - not precise but damn lethal and laser gun, indeed dangerous weapon in trained hands. Then there was a belt with force field generator. Iron whistled, as he was surprised. Worker in agency’s ammo and equipment storage and also his good friend and occasional lover gave him newer model, which was just in testing phase and was not scheduled for use yet.

Force field belts were based on micro scaled nuclear cell that gave power to field generator to create invisible bubble around its user. However, there were many pitfalls of this systems - it used energy of incoming particles to stop themselves - basically stronger laser beam or thermal shot came to protected person, greater was chance to leave without injury. But to assure user wont get suffocated, shield allowed air in and out. This allowed slowly traveling objects, like slow bullets to penetrate shield as well. However getting such firearm and knowing how to use it was neither easy nor common.

Captain speaks into ships speakers system, saying takeoff will occur in minutes. Flight assistants are rushing through the corridors to check if all passengers are seated properly in their cabins. All looks okay. Take off. Spacecraft Oportunity lifts up as eight vertical ion thrusters are set on full power. Ship lifts up into sky and slowly turns its nose to face sky. Without gravity normalizing pads in floor of ship, all would go unconscious in seconds. Captain orders to shut off auxiliary motors and power up main ones. They are fast accelerating nearly to speed of light. Sun becomes spot in rearview cameras. Subspace jump in three, two, one.

All gets suddenly silent, though some passengers are falling unconscious due to strange nature of jumps. Ship is now sweeping thru subspace, and will be doing so for at least four weeks. Agent Iron goes out of his cabin to get some food in spacecraft’s restaurant. He actually wonders why place with two huge machines and one very plain robot that serve you something from cans and tubes is called restaurant. Maybe that’s because serving robot always serves food with glance of real waiter. Time is slowly passing on spacecraft and nothing important is happening for some time.

One day, a drunken man beats up his wife in their cabin, which ends up in placing the drunken guy onto lower cargo deck, where is a cold and dark jail. That kind of lock up that makes you sober fast and forces you to rethink your actions. Finally, journey is going to its end.

As soon as the Oportunity touches the ground of Colonia XII, experienced eye can tell there is something unusual happening. Laser gun towers that should be guarding spaceport against attack from above are pointing down towards the spacecraft and there is coming vehicle with lots of armed policemen. Police units with their guns unlocked and ready to fire instantly surround ship. Cargo bay doors open as well as passenger doors at side and there is stairwell coming down. Before anyone can leave the ship, police rushes in. Nick Iron finds himself in situation with police officer pointing his gun against Nick’s face.

Prologue

Prologue.
Nowadays Star Federation consists of Earth, where from men originally started to travel into space, and more then four dozens of other inhabitable planets in solar systems across this piece of our Galaxy. Over centuries, Earth’s politics have turned calm and all states finally joined together. However, other planets of Federation were not as that peaceful place. Some of planets were colonized, as there was no human life on them.

On some, there was a life present, however people there were centuries behind compared to Earth’s level of technology, those were given technology in exchange for mining permits on their planets, as gold, titanium, iron, uranium and other elements were still needed, as Earth was completely sucked dry. The purpose of planet colonization was obvious.

Federation needed rare elements like iron, gold or titanium to produce more spacecrafts. There was also an element found on one of first man voyages into other solar systems, it was called maranet. It was used to power new generation of spacecrafts and allowed faster subspace traveling; shortening subspace travels from one planet to other from years to just weeks.

On the other hand, colonists were not only miners; they also used to breed a livestock, as natural proteins showed to be necessary for health of infants. No product of factory could just satisfy kids nutritionally needs and rate of crippled children had begun to grow rapidly. As governors of colonized planets were mostly independent on Earth’s government, governors sometimes were not behaving as law required, in fact, they went stealing and killing and tried to became independent on Earth. This could have not been allowed. For purpose of dealing with matters that threaten Federation itself, Federation Secret Investigation Agency (FSIA) was set.

It had many agents and one of those agents was Nick Iron.

Pre - prologue

This blog bears title "Special Agent Nick Iron -- A sci-fi blog-series by Richard Szlachta". It actually gives a idea what is this going to be about. You can read my sci-fi novel here, part by part, as it gets written. Because its on blog its blog- and because of sliced nature, it is called -series. Hence the name blog-series. 
I will be not boring you with talk about the piece itself, you can go on reading just right now. Enjoy!


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