Feeling a bit down.

[Corsair]

[font=Times New Roman]The trip to Bretonia was monotonous, a lot of transport shuffling. Matthias had to stick to civilian space lines to avoid rousing suspicion. New London rolled by through the window, lit by the pulsing lights of the trade lane. He didn't talk with the other passengers, preferring instead to stay in silence. His music player blared music from across the sector; Kusari garden tunes, Bretonian drinking songs, Rheinland patriot chants, Libertonian techno. It helped to pass the time.

In Manchester, Matthias boarded the final transport to Liberty. This would be the hard part, as Manchester was where the immigration and customs office was located. Hours of wrestling with the staff in that building ultimately paid off. James Maddison entered a Bretonian citizen and exited a Libertonian. Upon boarding the transport, his luggage caught up with him. There was a new briefcase in among with his bags of clothes and hygiene materials. He hauled all of it into his cabin and checked the room for bugs. He found a security camera in the wall above his bed, but saw it had a blind spot in the far corner. That is where he opened the briefcase, and found a stack of papers. They were letters from his 'family', wishing him luck and enclosing a handful of credit cards for buying food for a few days. The letters were written in code, and he used a blank piece of paper to begin taking notes as he scanned his disguised assignment.

The goal was to place sabotage charges throughout Baltimore Shipyard in eight weeks, when a Bretonian shipwright would be visiting to unveil plans for a new civilian transport line; however, he was to place the charges in places where they would be found. When the station went placed in lockdown and quarantine, Matthias was to contact the shipwright who was actually Rheinland agent. The agent would give Matthias his report, and then would arrange a patsy so that Matthias could escape and return to Rheinland.

It would be a risky and complicated mission, but Matthias' training had prepared him for it. After he had memorized his assignment, Matthias shredded and ingested the note before vomiting it into the toilet in his cabin. It was a crude but effective way to dispose of the translated message while passing it off as space sickness. He kept the original letters from his 'family' in case he ever needed to refresh his memory.

The transport shook slightly as they made the jump into California. In another hour, they would dock on Baltimore Shipyard and his assignment would start. There was a lot of preparation to work out before the Agent arrived on the shipyard and delivered his report. Matthias already had his social interactions worked out. He would have to forge realistic friendships with his co-workers and use that inside knowledge of their lives to select a patsy to take the fall for him when the time came to execute the sabotage. To make things even more believable, he was prepared to forge a romantic relationship with the most suitable man on the station. Matthias was married to a man back in Rheinland, but they both knew what it meant to be an undercover agent.

Matthias packed up his luggage and prepared to unload. To kill time, he wandered into the ship's mess and socialized with the other passengers for the first time that week. He laughed, joked, and gave the appearance that he was a simple Bretonian shipyard worker. He had mastered the slang and was now trying his hand at Liberty's variety. In order to give the best performance possible, Matthias had no prior experience with Libertonian speech. He really would have to learn it as if he was a beginner.

He learned that most of the other people on the transport were not headed for Baltimore, but there was one man who would be disembarking with Matthias. He was a Liberty-born Bretonian citizen who was headed back to his homeland to work. The man's name was Jack, and Matthias noted that he was very attractive; he had the tough build of someone who hauls metal beams and welding equipment all day. His blonde hair was a darker shade than Matthias' natural color. Jack's blue eyes were flecked with hazel. And from what Matthias could tell, Jack was flirting with him. Matthias smiled and flirted back. Perhaps his eight week stay wouldn't be so bad after all.

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