In it for the Money?

The rest of his return goes by uneventfully, and, with the path he chopped himself, much faster as well. After quickly checking on his terraforming probe (which has 20 hours remaining), he enters his spacecraft with exactly one full oxygen pellet left. He would really love a shower at this point, but he has to be satisfied with a change of clothes, a meal, and some rest. He wakes up with 11 hours left to go and his ex-girlfriend in front of him once again "Get out of my head, Zoe is none of your business!", he yells at the ship. He’s surprised by his own anger at this inanimate object and decides to step out for a while. With his one oxygen pellet, he figures he might even find some more valuables. He doesn’t have enough to go all the way back where he left off, so he tries the opposite direction instead. And sure enough, after a while of breaking through some dense foliage, something appears in front of him that is definitely not natural. The architecture looks like the Àrsaidh buildings they learned about in the introductory course: massive, cyclopean constructions with mostly plain and unadorned surfaces (and when adorned, showing mostly geometric shapes or patterns), almost always built in A-metal or local stones. The standard layout for an Àrsaidh site is usually organic, sprawling when possible, and somewhat maze-like.

This site in particular seems rather small in comparison though, overrun with the familiar red bushes and partially collapsed. Having his fair share of experience with quickly estimating the structural safety of the mines back at his old job, Ray would never even enter this building if he didn’t have to, but alas… He decides a quick in-and-out just as soon as he finds anything at all would probably be the best way to go.

With his combat knife at the ready and hyperaware of his surroundings, he approaches the building. He carefully places his steps and peeks into a hole in the wall. He can’t discern what he is looking at, all the appliances in here are entirely unfamiliar to him and partially covered in overgrowth. Still moving carefully, he pulls out the survey scanner and grins when the device tells him there is quite a bit to be gained here. Trying to touch as little as possible, he squeezes through the hole, and swiftly picks up the data crystals as well as the lone alloy cube the survey scanner showed him. Then he leaves as quickly as he came.

Raymond breathes a sigh of relief. With this haul, his future at Karum Station is at least somewhat secure and he can even make a small dent into his debt. A drop in the ocean, to be sure, but it’s a start. With such a successful first mission, he may even be able to negotiate with section lead Jean to have her block other divers being randomly assigned the ‘Last Magnolia’, so he can figure out what to do about the leafglider and further explore the site he happened across.

He checks on the terraforming probe when he returns: about 10 ½ hours left. The time goes by without much happening and just like that, his time on this planet is over. 24 intense hours and against all odds, he is still alive.

Ray watches the red bushes get smaller as he takes off, but the g-forces knock him out cold before he can see what the white layer visible from both orbit and ground looks like in the middle. When he regains consciousness, his craft is already back in hyperspace.
A week passes in a sort of blur for Ray. Little moments from his time on RT Kobaloi 5560 keeps replaying and mixing with memories from back home. At least he can tell it’s all in his head this time.

After his arrival back at Karum Station, he immediately gets to work checking and cleaning the loaned gear, returning some leftovers, and handing in his finds. River Jean pays him a visit to make sure he’s doing everything correctly but otherwise, Ray is on his own. It’s already evening when he finally leaves the hangar area, in his bag only what he took on the trip and a piece of paper with the discovery he vowed to keep secret.

Ray is just about to turn the corner when he bumps into an imposing man in a KSA uniform – Nikos Tsakiris. Nikos wastes no time and goes: "Ah, I was hoping I’d still catch you. Congratulations on your first successful mission. I’m going to need you to tell me where Addison Cheng is." Ray looks at him confused: "What do you mean? He should be in his room", "He should be, yes.", Nikos replies patiently. "And he isn’t? Okay. Well, I don’t know where he is, he didn’t tell me if he had any plans". For a second Nikos looks him in the eyes, probably to gauge if he is telling the truth, Ray assumes, and returns the look. Then Nikos nods and says: "If you find him, let him know I can’t protect him if he did what I think he did. Congrats again, see you around." And then he walks off without further hesitation and without giving Ray a chance to ask what Addison did to get in trouble this time. Raymond sighs, he doesn’t really have the energy to go looking for Addison right now, so returns to his room for now. To his surprise, this is also where he encounters the man himself. Addison is once again looking out Ray’s window and with a sort of gloomy expression, but his face lights up when he hears someone come in and turns around to find Ray. "First things first, I was bored and it’s really shitty to only leave a note like that. But I’m happy to find you’re still in one piece, good job!", he greets Ray, who replies: "Uh, thanks, glad to be back. What are you doing in here?". "Oh, just laying low until the dust has settled. Don’t worry, they can’t prove anything". "Right, about that: Nikos Tsakiris wants me to tell you he can’t protect you. What did you do?"

Addison grins: "I might have used Nikos’ security pass to duplicate some tourist IDs and distribute them among our… less lucky colleagues so they can afford to stay here and hopefully get a bigger haul on their next trip out." A questioning look from Ray makes him add: "I’m the Robin Hood of Karum station!" Robin Hood, like the story of the three ghosts, naturally being another warning tale of how you need to protect your hard-earned wealth once you attained it. "Have you forgotten about the part where Robin gets killed by a falling tree when they chop down the forest he was hiding in? Besides, I think you may have fucked over Nikos", Ray counters Addison’s enthusiasm, but Addison doesn’t let this get him down: "Aw, come on, did he seem mad to you? He knows I was doing the right thing." Ray keeps his judgement of the situation to himself, if Nikos is okay with potentially losing his job over Addison’s infraction, then that’s his business.

The next day, Ray catches Addison up on everything that happened during his exploration and lets him in on his plan to pay Dr. Correa another visit, but not of the leafglider. Addison says: "Oh, that reminds me, Nikos mentioned that they reviewed the survey scanners of previous missions to the area and yours was the only one with the body’s molecular signature on it. So it definitely wasn’t missed by earlier divers, it only got there sometime before yours and the mission before that." Ray acknowledges that contribution and asks: "Speaking of Nikos, what do I do if he seeks me out again?"
"You don’t need to do anything, I’ve told him where I am and he should be around today. I want to introduce him to the person who helped me with this and who can get him out of trouble. The ‘Ghost of Karum’, if you can believe it", he says, looking at Ray as though he was supposed to be impressed. He gestures half-heartedly and Addison jokingly scolds him: "Oh Raymond, you have so much to learn."

Some time later that day, there’s a knock on the bathroom door and Ray yells "Come in", to which Addison steps into the room, behind him a woman that he presents with a flourish "The legendary, one and only ‘Ghost of Karum’, Ingunn Einarsdottir!". The woman enters, bemused but with an eyeroll: "Sonny, I told you to not make a big deal out of this, that’s how they catch people"

"Sonny?", Ray now sports an amused smile and it’s Addison’s turn to roll his eyes and poke Ingunn in the side playfully: "Yeah, she insists on using this nickname. She’s the only one who is allowed to call me that. In exchange I spread rumors about the wild and outlandish deeds of the Ghost of Karum. Naturally, this lady is still a fantastic hacker, but if you think she once went and selectively turned off the lights in the station so they spell ‘Fuck you, Aliens’, then I’m going to have to disappoint you." He chuckles, and Ray gets the impression that the two are great friends, but he still doesn’t know enough about the station to get that reference. Ingunn eyes Ray critically: "I checked you out and you seem okay, which is also what Sonny said. But just to be clear, you’ll still have to earn my trust and if you tell anyone anything about what I do, I will know. That said, I’ve heard our little humanitarian aid last week stirred the pot more than expected and you’re willing to help. That may be necessary because Sonny isn’t 100% yet and the coding I do is only part of successfully hacking a system. People forget the analogue fraction." While they wait for Nikos to arrive, Addison tells Ray stories – occasionally interrupted by Ingunn if the embellishments get out of hand - of their friendship and their work together: semi-regular hacking of Karum to make life more bearable and some deep diving so it’s not to cover their tracks.

A while later, the group hears a knock on Addison’s door. He gets up and opens, Ingunn and Ray hear a few hushed words exchanged before Addison returns with Nikos in tow. He nods to the two of them and sits down at Ray’s table: "So, I assume you were in on this too?", he asks in Ingunn’s direction, but she remains stone-faced. He sighs: "I’m not here to arrest you, but you guys screwed me over and you need to fix this. What about you, Silt?". The addressed defends himself:"I had no idea and I agree with you, we need to figure something out. What exactly happened?" "I assume Addison took my access card when I came to check on him last week and used you guys’ shower." He explains, his gaze resting on Addison, who, for the first time, looks slightly ashamed. Nikos continues: "They used the card to access to the secured server-room and duplicated the ID codes on file there and put them on empty cards." Ingunn replies: "If this was true, hypothetically, one would obviously be able to tell from timestamps that the codes were accessed at the shortly after Mr. Taskiris’ card was used to open the door, and hypothetically, it also would have been smart to have maintenance performed on the surveillance camera usually pointed at the entrance at the very same time."

Nikos grinds his teeth but doesn't say anything. Addison chimes in: "The one advantage we have is that Arsaidh technology can be unpredictable and if we come up with the right story, we might just get Nikos off the hook."They sit in silence for a while, thinking, until Addison reluctantly says: "I have something, but you're not going to like it"