1 Mission Failure

The transmission crackled through the vast expanse of deep space as the sleek, advanced spacecraft hurtled past a giant, sunset-coloured planet.

The ship's engines roared as it chased after the other highly manoeuvrable spacecraft, agilely avoiding several asteroids.

A chime sounded from the intercoms, signalling an incoming transmission. The voice of the mission leader, Jonas Fischer, boomed through the cockpit, "Apollo to Bishop, can you hear me? We need you to take out that enemy vessel before it reaches Imperial Jurisdiction."

"Bishop here; roger that," Raffaele Koch, the skilled pilot of the spacecraft, replied coolly as he expertly navigated the treacherous asteroid belt, deftly avoiding the massive space rocks that threatened to collide with his vessel.

Raffaele's fingers danced over the controls as he aimed the ship's advanced turret gun at the enemy starship that was scissoring around the space rocks in front of him. The ship shook slightly as Raffaele opened fire, unleashing a barrage of laser blasts that pummeled the enemy spacecraft.

"Warning. Approaching Imperial Jurisdiction. Space combat is strictly forbidden," the fighter's AI notified, causing Raffaele to increase the ship's speed as he saw the slowly visible planet.

A new transmission crackled through the comms, interrupting Raffaele's thoughts as he piloted his advanced starfighter.

"Terminate mission now. Target is within Imperial Jurisdiction; mission control has deemed mission failure."

The voice of his team leader, distorted by static, cut through the cockpit. Raffaele cursed under his breath, his gloved hand gripping the throttle tightly as he pulled it back, stopping the sleek vessel. He watched as the other starfighter disappeared into the vast galaxy, their engines leaving trails of shimmering plasma in their wake.

Combat within the Imperial Jurisdiction was strictly prohibited by its strict security protocols, leaving Raffaele with no choice but to abandon the mission or risk becoming a wanted criminal in this dominion.

With a curse, he flipped off the universe in front of him before leaning back in his seat; tired, he's been chasing this wanted notorious criminal from the United Space Federation to here, it's taken no less than a good hour or two along with several advanced time-manipulation technologies, but in the end, the rat had managed to escape.

Frustrated, Raffaele checked the state of the ship; the status window on the dashboard indicated a few scratches here and there, half a fuel tank left, and enough ammo to last until he returned to his home planet.

But seriously, what kind of ship was the criminal piloting?

Raffaele had difficulty keeping up with the criminal despite flying a SSS tier ship made by the largest corporation on his home planet; it wasn't cheap and definitely not something that should've been quickly overtaken.

Raffaele swiftly turned the spacecraft before replying to his mission leader, "roger, Bishop coming home."

Double-checking that the ship could do a few more time wraps, he set up a route for warp-speed travel, but a new transmission crackled through the comms before he could initiate the ship's system to auto-route.

"Negative. We've received intel on a nearby planet rich in precious minerals. We're tasking you to go and scout it out; this mission will replace the one you've just failed."

Raffaele paused and frowned, confused; replace? He's already failed the mission; in normal circumstances, there's no such thing as replace, or so that he knows of from the twenty years he's worked for the org.

A notification flickered to life on Raffaele's dashboard, distracting him, displaying a set of coordinates for a planet just over two hundred million kilometres away.

Hesitating when noticing the small, greyed area on the universe map indicating that it had been unexplored, Raffaele had questions about what intel they gathered that his ship didn't even have information on.

"Roger that," Raffaele replied over the comms before setting the route from the given coordination; it wasn't like he had a choice anyways; seeing that auto-route was disabled, he manually steered his starship around and increased the ship's speed before flying towards the destination.

As his sleek, state-of-the-art spaceship hurtled through the vast expanse of space, Raffaele's attention was suddenly drawn to a new message from his mission leader, appearing on the starship's dashboard.

[Bishop, be advised. We've received intel that the planet you're headed towards is under the control of a ruthless pirate faction. Proceed with caution.]

Again, with the intel, shouldn't you have notified me that first? Raffaele thought, slightly annoyed as he increased the ship's speed.

A chime alerted Raffaele to an incoming call, startling him.

Scared me to death, Raffaele thought, grumbling as he mentally accepted the call without checking who it was, set the ship to auto-cruise and typed a brief acknowledgement back to his commander before taking control of the joystick.

"Greetings, Father. I see you've finally gotten used to the new AI-embedded system," the young man on the other side was the first to speak.

"Well, isn't this my long-lost son? To be precise, I have been attempting to reach you for seven months. Your assistant informed me that you were unsurprisingly unavailable; I wonder what rat dragged you here today, " Raffaele spoke with disdain towards the young man on the other end of the call. He continued without pause, "I must inquire, have you contacted your mother recently? She has been quite concerned about your useless well-being since you disappeared."

"I maintain a daily correspondence with my mother."

"But seven months to return a call from your own dad? What kinda son are you?"

With a chime, a new mail arrived in Raffaele's inbox, sent by his son, Alistair, who he hadn't heard from in seven months; he listened to the reply, "I have been making noteworthy advancements in a recent research endeavour."

There was a pause while Raffaele mentally opened the file his son sent him and read through the brief content, "we have made a notable advancement with our current project; though unstable, we were able to transfer a person's consciousness into an AI system, which resulted in an interesting case of cyber-running for some, though they didn't last very long," his son slightly muttered, seemingly annoyed at the end before continuing normally, "the test subjects we used were not of high quality, which led us to a standstill. So after several discussions with my colleagues, we agreed that you'd be the perfect person to undergo the experiment as you had the highest merge rate with the AI in the last project."

Raffaele broke the silence with a sudden burst of anger, his fists clenched tightly as he glared at the dashboard. "So you've come wagging your tail here to the high-quality test subject? You have been absent for extended periods, only returning when it suits you," he said, his voice low and controlled. "The last time you asked for my assistance, it resulted in a near-catastrophic incident with cybernetic technology. And now you expect me to participate in experiments on my brain? I think not."

"You have arrived at your destination." The cold automated voice of the ship's AI spoke along with a chime of notification before the ship slowly halted, indicating Raffaele's arrival. As he viewed the toxic, red planet, Raffaele expressed his dismay, "These days are proving quite tiring."

"Are you within proximity of the Imperial Jurisdiction?" Raffaele clicked his tongue, annoyed when he heard his son's question.

"You got the AI drilled inside me and know my exact location; why ask? This useless device of yours seems to be working one way but not the other," Raffaele muttered under his breath before setting the sensors to begin scanning the planet.

"Initiating scan. Planet detected. No other vessels were detected in proximity. Initiating large-scale scan. Stand by. Do not deactivate the vessel engine." The mechanical sound of the AI assistant bound to the ship spoke before several laser beams were shot towards the planet, the dashboard before Raffaele changed to the status window, and the detected substances were picked up through the scanner.

"Father, you are above an inhospitable planet under the control of a particularly nefarious organisation, Rat Seed."

"Rat Seed? What kind of tasteless name is that?" Raffaele leaned back in his chair before rubbing his slightly sore wrists.

"They are currently gaining infamy within underground circles for their illicit smuggling and trafficking of extraterrestrial species and have established extensive connections with various distinguished intergalactic noble factions," Alistair reported.

"Ah, it all makes sense now. A trash org needs a trash name," Raffaele clicked his tongue in distaste.

"I suggest you abandon your current mission; running into those guys is not a good idea."

"I can't; it's an order from above. Anyway, aren't you doing dodgy crap at your company? Is it even legal to infuse human consciousness into an AI?"

"There's no law stating otherwise; I can't tell you much, but just know that I would not be in trouble by the current project."

"Who the heck cares if you're in trouble or not? Just don't make your mother worried."

His son chuckled before asking, "so, are you interested?"

As Raffaele opened his mouth to reply, a weird sense of stillness overcame the space, causing him to pause with a feeling of dread welling up in his stomach. Sitting up, he clutched the joystick, glancing between the near-completed status window and the planet before him.

"Father?"

"Wait a damn minute, let me focus."

"Is there something the matter?"

However, before Raffaele could reply, a black hole unimaginably opened up before him; he didn't even have time to curse before he was sucked into its vicinity within a millisecond.

The line was cut off, and all the person on the other side could hear was a deafening silence.