Blue Star Enterprises

Katalynn strode into Alexander's workshop a few hours later. "You're in luck, Jarl Kane. With a bit of physical persuasion, my people managed to convince the Loki aboard Valkyrie to come down and speak with you. He's in your office."

Alexander winced at that. "Roughing the man up wasn't necessary."

She snorted. "He wasn't harmed, just brought against his will. I suggest you go speak with Loki before he finds a way to escape from your office. Two of my people are ensuring he stays there, but you never know with them."

He sighed in exasperation and headed for the door, but he paused when Katalynn didn't join him. "You're not coming along?"

"Nope," she stated with a smile. "This is between you and Loki. The less I get involved, the better."

"If you're going to remain in my workshop while I'm in the meeting, try not to break anything."

She laughed at that and headed for the door.

Their paths diverged at the exit. Katalynn headed toward intake while Alexander headed toward his office.

When he arrived, he found two local guards there as well as the Asgardians. He turned to Damien's people. "Would one of you run to the detention center and retrieve the man in cell five?"

The closest guard saluted. "We were notified ahead of time. Someone should be arriving with the man shortly."

Alexander nodded in thanks and turned toward the door flanked by the Asgardians. They nodded politely and opened it for him.

The first thing he saw was a man pacing off to one side. He began to speak as Alexander entered.

"Have you come to your senses and decided to let me go? I told you there is no reason for me to speak with Jarl K–Oh. Jarl Kane."

He stepped into the room, and the door shut behind him.

Alexander recognized the man, it was the same bald and bearded man who had answered his Qcomm message to Katalynn a few months ago. The same one who looked weirdly familiar even back then. "I know you from somewhere, don't I?"

"I can assure you, we have never met, Jarl Kane-"

Alexander didn't believe him. As soon as the lie left the man's mouth, Alexander jacked his processing speed to the max and did an ad-hoc image comparison search.

It was ad-hoc because Alexander had no way to actually create a program within his mind. Let alone one that was able to catalog all the people he had met in his memories.

While he didn't forget anything, that didn't mean he had perfect recall. He had to actively search his memories to find connections. It came easier with technology than it did with people, to his great annoyance at times.

He flashed through all the images of Lokis he had met while on Asgard and lined them up side to side as well as overlaying them over the nearly frozen image of the Loki in front of him. None matched the man, even adjusted for distance.

Of course, it wasn't going to be that easy. Next, he raced through every single person he met on Asgard, then the Asgardians who stayed on Eden's End. No luck.

His search expanded to all of the people on Eden's End. With nearly twenty thousand people, many of whom Alexander had seen in person, that took nearly a minute in his highly sped-up timeframe, which was less time than it took the man in front of him to finish lying to him. Again nothing.

He was missing something. He expanded the search to every single memory of seeing someone since he first woke up.

A match appeared almost immediately, and Alexander let his processing speed return to normal. The man in front of him had just finished his sentence as steam rose off of Alexander's body.

When the man noticed this, he stopped mid-sentence to stare at Alexander in shock. "-Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Alexander said in annoyance. "Certainly better than a man who should be dead. How are you, by the way, Vice Admiral Fletcher?"

Loki's expression changed. "Dammit. This is exactly why I didn't want to come down here."

"Why are you alive and pretending to be a Loki?" Alexander demanded.

"Look, Kane, I'm not who you think I am. Just pretend I was never here."

Alexander barked out a laugh. "Are you mad? Krieger needs to know you're alive. Hell, the STO needs to know as well. They sent Willard out here to issue me a summons for an inquiry on your death."

Before the man could respond further, there was a knock at the door. "I brought the prisoner."

"Send him in!" Alexander called back, standing between the door and Fletcher to ensure he didn't attempt to run. He didn't, he just stood there with a sour look on his face.

The other Loki entered the room and glanced back and forth between Alexander and Fletcher as the door closed. The new Loki smirked. "Well, this looks like an amusing situation. I take it that our esteemed Jarl here has deduced who you were, brother?"

A single curt nod was all the response Fletcher gave.

"Wait?" Alexander stated. "You're not pretending to be a Loki?"

While the second Loki laughed, his amusement with the situation obvious, Fletcher looked even more sour.

"He is what he is," the second Loki stated. "You would know what that means if we had spoken. I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you."

If Alexander could get headaches, he would probably have one right about now. "I think I'm starting to understand why the general Asgardian population dislikes your type. I want a straight answer on what the hell is going on here."

The second Loki gestured to Fletcher before sauntering over to one of the chairs in front of Alexander's desk and taking a seat.

Fletcher grumbled slightly but started to speak. "Kane, I've always been a Loki, I was born into the order, like all Lokis are."

"So you pretended to be a Vice Admiral within the STO? Why?"

The second Loki cut in with a light titter, earning Alexander's focus. "You don't understand how we operate; that's why Pembrooke was never able to root us out on Eden's End and never will be able to."

"He found you and rooted out all the corporate spies," Alexander said in annoyance.

The second Loki smiled, leaned back in the chair, and crossed his legs. "Did he? Or did I do that to make contact with you? I'll share a little secret with you that very few people know. The reason why Lokis are so good at maintaining our secrecy is that we don't rely on tricks to make it happen, like the corporate goons do. When we take on a role, that is who we become. The ability to mentally separate our persona from our role as a Loki is trained into us as soon as we show signs of the gift. Usually, that occurs at quite a young age. Not all of the people born into the Order are able to accomplish that, mind you, but all of our field agents are."

Alexander narrowed his avatar's eyes at the man. "What are you talking about and why are you telling me this?"

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"Truth builds trust," the second Loki stated. "I would have told you this months ago if you had ever come to speak with me, but I miscalculated how busy you would make yourself after my capture. I can see why, given your recent STO visitors and the news they brought."

"You seem awfully well informed for someone who was stuck in a cell by themselves," Alexander stated.

Loki shrugged and smiled. "You can't expect to lock up a lifelong spy and assume he doesn't have the ability to get information."

"The other Lokis," Alexander grumbled.

"Despite what you might think, we aren't here to cause you problems, Jarl Kane. We're here to prevent them. That was why I sent the message to Asgard through the Qcomm. We knew you would intercept the message based on the information you gave the Lokis back on Asgard. I was chosen to be the representative of the order that would explain all of this to you."

"You have a funny way of showing that. Your little message could have gotten Katalynn killed."

"Unlikely," the man stated. "We knew Isbjorn's strengths and weaknesses as well as Katalynn's. The man would have never made a good King, too many corporate hands filling his pockets. We were ready to step in if Lagertha Char ran into trouble."

"If you knew that, why didn't you stop him?"

The man sighed. "That is not our role. We try not to intervene directly in the succession as that causes hard feelings if we back the wrong side. At most, we try to guide outcomes. The only reason we were prepared to step in against Isbjorn was due to his STO connections. Thankfully, that was not needed. Katalynn's unaided win looks much better than if we got involved, and our people aboard his fleet are still in place. It's a win for everyone. You did a good job of hiding your stealth project, but once we became aware of the help you were providing her, we knew the Lagetha had a decent chance of coming out on top. Alerting Isbjorn of her return set the stage and kept him from calling a vote early. The rest was up to her, and she succeeded, I might add."

"And almost died because of it," Alexander stated. "If your role isn't to stop people like Isbjorn, then what is it, and what does it have to do with him?" Alexander demanded as he pointed toward Fletcher.

"To understand that, you need a bit of context as to how the Loki Order came to be. In the beginning, our role was a simple one. We were to ensure the survival of the Asgardian people during the Shican War. The Loki squadrons were composed of men and women who were forced to endure long stretches in space alone, waiting for the enemy to appear so we could alert the next system. Our ancestors voluntarily took on those roles because they knew it meant the difference between survival and death. Once the war ended, we were no longer needed, but the experience changed the survivors. Weird things happen to people when they are left alone in space for an extended time. Sometimes people's minds form personas to protect them from the harsh realities they face. In medical terms, it is sometimes referred to as dissociative identity disorder."

Understanding crashed into Alexander. "Holy shit! You're all insane, literally. All of you pretending to be the same entity, it makes so much sense now."

The Loki tsked at Alexander. "You sound like the doctors who tried to cure us after the war. To us, it was never a disease. We prefer to think of it as a survival mechanism because it helped us protect those we cared about. The remaining pilots who survived learned to harness the gift to live normal lives. When the Union encountered the STO after the war, we knew what we needed to do. We reached out to the Asgardian leadership and proposed restarting the Loki squadron as an information-gathering network. With our goal being the survival of the human race from both alien and domestic threats, such as the corporations."

Alexander rubbed the top of his frame in frustration, the sound making both men grit their teeth. He quickly stopped and lowered his hand. "I maintain my previous statement."

The second Loki shrugged. "You wouldn't be the first to think that, and I doubt you will be the last. As for how our friend over there comes into the picture, we didn't simply restrain our presence to Asgardian space. We set up cells within STO space, and those people took on the roles they were assigned."

"And how many Lokis are in high-ranking positions like Fletcher over there?"

"Not as many as we would have liked, but enough to ensure the corporations haven't been able to completely monopolize the STO yet. Losing Fletcher hurt us quite a bit, though."

Alexander wanted to scream and point at Fletcher, who was very much still alive, but he restrained himself. "I regret asking any questions here, but I'm probably going to regret these next few even more. How many Lokis are in key positions on Eden's End, and why me?"

"Key positions? None. Like I said, Jarl Kane, we are not here to get in your way. Only to prevent problems. You've moved so fast to deal with any that have cropped up that we haven't needed to move those people into more advantageous positions. As for why you, I think you already know why."

"My alien heritage?"

The Loki sitting in the chair nodded. "It both concerns and fascinates us, that is true, but more than that, you are a Jarl."

Alexander let out a long sigh. He had suspected something like that to be the case. There was no possible way the Lokis had remained ignorant of his origins with all the rumors and actual information going around. That was even before Alexander knew Fletcher was a Loki.

The second Loki clapped his hands and smiled. "Now that we have that business out of the way, you called us here for a reason."

"I'm not sure I want to disclose it to people who are clinically insane," Alexander muttered. "And what am I supposed to do about you?" he pointed to Fletcher.

"Nothing. Fletcher is dead, and that is the cleanest break a Loki can have from a former persona. Most of the time, the person simply vanishes, leaving people wondering what happened. It's always messy when that happens, it also leaves a chance for that person to return at a later date. Since Fletcher is dead, I have no intention of ever taking on that persona again, so I recorded his knowledge in a data dump. Once all his knowledge was secured, I spent time returning to my original persona and purging Fletcher's memories from my mind. What remains of my time as the Vice Admiral will fade into the recesses of my mind like a dream."

Alexander found out he could shudder in revulsion, but it was more of a strange yet equally disturbing electrical feedback inside his body. The idea of simply erasing a part of yourself disturbed him on a level that even Dalton, Harlow, and Arkonis' actions hadn't done. He really wished he knew why he felt that way.

He took a moment to gather himself before speaking. "If it wasn't for Katalynn telling me to speak with you, I would send you both back to her fleet. That being said, I'll be monitoring your use of this asset very closely."

Alexander strode past the Loki who used to be Fletcher, making the man step back, as he moved behind his desk.

In order to present the comm node tech to the Lokis, Alexander had been forced to declassify it.

He made a gesture, and the holo sprang to life with the external schematic of the device. "Welcome to the future of information gathering. This is an FTL comm node."

Instead of the shocked surprise Alexander had expected to receive, both men glanced at each other before turning to Alexander.

It was the second Loki who spoke. "You are a few years behind the times, Jarl Kane, but I'm impressed that you managed to crack Qcomm tech so soon."

"What?" Alexander asked in confusion. "When I visited Asgard, your people didn't even know how to change the settings on a Qcomm, let alone know it was possible to intercept communications."

"True, they didn't, but the STO chapters have had access to the tech for a long time. We tend not to share technology, because that would give away that we are actively spying on the STO and the corporations."

Everything Alexander learned about the Lokis made them seem more and more deranged. Yet somehow, their madness worked. He glanced at the Fletcher Loki. "You've already deployed stealth comm satellites, haven't you?"

The man nodded. "Fletcher did."

Alexander had suspected something like that back when he visited Varlen; it was what gave him the idea to do something similar, but he had assumed Fletcher was using it for his own ends within the STO.

"How big is your network?" he demanded. If they told him that they had full coverage across all of STO space, Alexander was probably going to snap, because that would also mean they knew about the pirate build-up long before it became a problem.

Fletcher Loki was the one to respond. "Despite Fletcher's ability to seemingly siphon money from nowhere, the man had only been able to build ten such satellites."

Hearing the man talk about himself in the third person was weird.

"Are the satellites still in operation?" Alexander asked.

"I haven't looked at the information in months, but we could provide it to you." Another shudder ran up Alexander's body as the man – he decided to stop thinking of him as Fletcher – continued. "The satellites should be fine, but we have no access to them. The closest one is in Varlen. If you would like the coordinates and trajectory, the Lokis can provide that. Based on your questions and the fact that you brought us here, are we to assume you have your own stealth network setup?"

The fact that both of the Lokis perked up at that annoyed Alexander, but he was already this deep, he might as well wade through the rest of the shit to get them onboard. He retreated mentally to his mind-space and took a calming breath, then he refocused on the two. "Yes."

Alexander went into details on his network size and coverage, both men seemed overjoyed to learn that the border with Xin was covered as well as a small part of the STO nearest Unokane.

Then he saw something he wished he could forget. The second Loki formed a persona then and there, one to act as a high-level technician for the covert project. The man's whole demeanor changed, and he blinked a few times in confusion before seeming to snap into focus. He saluted.

"Thank you for this opportunity, Mr. Kane. You won't regret hiring me for this position."

The other Loki held his finger to his mouth as Alexander tried to say something. Without so much as another word, the second Loki-turned-technician hustled out of the room to his new job.

"Fresh personalities can be brittle. You asking him strange questions would have broken it, and that's never a good thing. Now, if we are done here, Jarl Kane, I must return to the ship before I'm spotted."

Alexander wanted to ask more, like why Fletcher had sent the alien ship and all the research to him, but he held himself back. If the man couldn't remember, then he wasn't about to tell Loki about it.

He needed to have a pointed conversation with Char and find out why she hadn't told him all this beforehand.