Week 02: Two Hats, Same Job [Unedited]

"This is Boyd," he greeted with a winded voice into his Ear-To-Mouth Com on coincidence of him leaping down from the cockpit of his fighter to a crouched landing. Nimbly, the Enforcer bounced behind the cover of some dense brush which served as a perimeter for a farm that happened to be peculiarly tied to the outskirts of the Power Authority.

The office phone from Boyd's investor cover was being forwarded to his Ear-To-Mouth Com while he moonlighted during the day at his black ops location. Combat gear adorned him rather than the expensive fashion choices of nice button-down shirts and crisp pressed slacks. The Enforcer was comfortable in the corporate element but uneasy because there was literally nowhere to stash his Triple Action LUNC because the handgun was too large for an ankle holster, and he currently wore two in opposing hip holsters. That was the occupation of a specialist. This job was simple because orders were orders, and a laser pulse would get between any distraction and carrying them out. This was black-and-white, so there were no gray areas of cutthroat politics - only mission objectives to be achieved. This was him, in his natural element.

As the fighter took off vertically while swaying the brush underneath the force of its thrusters, the ship turned on target of a surprisingly crisp and bright sky for a synthetic planet before skipping out of the visual range of the near vicinity and into a safer element of airborne stealth. Half-listening, Boyd continued the conversation, "Yeah, I've got a slight touch of fever. It's high," and worked his way over to a tree that marked a southeast corner in accordance of where the front of the Power Authority complex sat - well at a distance from the target location and much to his liking. He took a seat with his back up against its stump and brought his left arm around in front of him in order to access the minicomputer on the wrist portion of his combat gear's sleeve.

Numerous gridded panels of camera angles on the tiny minicomputer screen instanced various different vantage points for Boyd to be able to choose from, and they were all in brilliant definition. The Power Authority was constructed like a factory in the middle of a city block. This was why the pasture did not quite seem to fit. Perhaps, beautification purposes were the intent of its uncanny landscaping. But the area did not appear to be otherwise bland or industrial - nothing short of clean and glistening with the daylight specter of brightness and warmth. In places where vertical architecture was the norm, the tall buildings often became a dank eyesore, but the highrise construction of this setting was somewhat artful by how each aerodynamically rounded spire poked at the skyline and accentuated it with a futuristic surrealism from an illusion of tapered cutlery, and the Enforcer would know - spending as much time skimming over the tops of the skyscrapers as he did.

"Thank you for your concern," Boyd replied of the heartfelt wishes from whoever was on the other end of his communications feed. "Hopefully, I'll be back at somewhere near half-strength tomorrow."

Black-gloved fingers tapped about the minicomputer's display to select the panels that Boyd most wanted to see. Using the hand gesture of touching the center of the picture that he wanted and flicking his thumb and middle finger apart across the screen caused the shot to zoom in and refocus to a clarity which was indiscernible from standing right across from the object that the most hidden of cameras was capturing. To the west and north sat an accommodating, hybrid assortment of ship ports and parking lot spaces. Shuttles were not overly-sized seeing as though they could fit about ten passengers, so it was not uncommon for them to land right next to a car. Heck, it took up less space than a bus with its retractable wings and could reach the other side of Dio Qze in no time, so the challenge of seeking out employment for people who lived in less populated regions was all but eliminated. For those who lived within the immediate city limits, actualized shuttle service alleviated the hassle and congestion of rush hour. One more means of travel being added to the public transportation quagmire made all the difference in this world.

With the outside of the building sufficiently scoped out, Boyd decided to use the voyeuristic eyes of the Space Force in order to check out the inside. But first, he needed to end the one-way conversation that was going on in his ear, "Sure. Certainly. No, it was no trouble. Before I let you go though, was there any answer on my proposal? Maybe it'd be worth my while to come in despite the way that I feel. Nothing yet, eh? Okay. Will do. I'll talk to you. Bye."

All of this technological prescience was made possible by the Enforcer's targeting feed that piggybacked off of the read-only database from the Space Force's communication beacon network which stretched across much of known space like aquatic buoys, connecting up a majority of the universe the way that the internet had once connected up Earth. Serving a cherry picking function, it not only had the ability to see through walls and relay the once thought to be private information all the way back across parsecs with zero latency but it also erased the biometric data of Boyd and his accomplices from record so that they could not be identified, located, or tracked via the same methods. It was the ultimate tool for seeing to the task of universal domination. It was the perfect tool, if used sparingly, in espionage for netting strategic advantages. It was the only other tool that an agent of black ops would never want to leave home without. And...it was not working. Shielding.

"So much for the easy way in," Boyd sighed before he switched off a blacked-out panel which was supposed to be an open view of the Power Authority's innards in favor of a data profiler screen that would allow him to start cataloging the building's entrants.