Chapter Text
Kim Minseok stood in front of the cold, metal door that separated him and the daunting task that had been assigned to him and his team. His hand laid flat on the cool metal that felt like dry ice under the palm of his hand. He knew who was standing behind that door, waiting for him, and was unsure if he was ready to face the judgement that would be apparent on their face. For a long moment, Minseok listened to the steady heartbeat that was drumming in his ears. He counted them, and counted them, until that cool metal door quickly and suddenly slid open to reveal the very face he was expecting.
“How did it go?” Junmyeon pushed his hands into his pockets.
Minseok took a millisecond to compose himself, straightening his back and looking Junmyeon in the eyes, “You already know how it went, you predicted it yourself.”
Minseok took a large stride forward, and began charging through the cold, gray air hanger, straight toward the conference room that had been assembled for his team. A team that had been constructed to combat and downsize rowdy space pirates, who were a royal pain in his ass.
Minseok could hear Junmyeon’s steps desperately trailing behind him as he grabbed the door handle and threw open the door to spot the other three members of his team. Kyungsoo lifted his head from a stack of blueprints that he had been mulling over all morning and shot Minseok a contemplative glance. Minseok pushed further into the space, Junmyeon still trailing behind him, found his space at the head of the conference table, and sighed.
“Will someone please care to explain to me as to why Kyungsoo is the only one who has been doing any real work today?” Minseok slammed the palm of his hand down on the table, causing Chanyeol and Sehun to jump in surprise. “We have a band of space pirates on the loose out there, and you two are sitting here twiddling your thumbs like you have nothing important to do.”
Junmyeon cleared his throat in warning. Minseok knew he was always hard on Chanyeol and Sehun, but he also knew that being hard on them pushed them to work harder. If it wasn’t for their impeccable skills, Minseok probably would have done away with them long ago. Sehun was one of the best pilots in this system, and everyone but Sehun knew it. More so, if it wasn’t for Chanyeol’s talent in creating fighter ships, particularly the stealth fighter MK-326, he knew that ACE would be nothing.
Minseok let out another long sigh, “Look, I’m sorry, but the Captain has been jumping down my throat all morning because of these pirates, and now we have been assigned the task to visit their leaders for peace treaty negotiations.”
Kyungsoo set the pen he had been holding down on to the table and pushed the blueprints away, “So what you are saying is that we have to do all of the boring work.”
Minseok glared in Kyungsoo’s direction, “What I’m saying is that you all need to pack your shit and get in the 326, as soon as you can, we’ve got a long flight ahead of us.”
Minseok stood from his chair, gathered the blueprints Kyungsoo had been focusing so diligently on for the last week, and stormed from the room. This time Junmyeon did not follow, and Minseok preferred it this way. For a long time, Minseok had always been a lone wolf, and was ACE’s most prestigious stealth assassin. When the Captain decided that Minseok needed to put together a team of experts to combat this pirate issue, he had been against the team formation. He never worked with a team before, and it wasn’t easy because of Minseok’s reclusive tendencies. He was contracted by the Captain to do solo jobs, and solo jobs only . It was the only stipulation that Minseok negotiated at the signing of his contract. That had been nearly nine years ago. About five years in, a rise in space pirate activity spiked. Their ultimately goal was to terrorize the citizens and convert them to a newer, more unstable political power that had been born out of hate. The Captain argued this was a problem that was far too large in scale for Minseok to handly on his own, and ordered him to put together a team of highly trained individuals to help him in diminishing this new political power. Despite his initial resistance, Minseok couldn’t be more grateful to the people who had been forced into his life.
Minseok climbed the ramp into the 326, and went straight for the super computer. He shoved his hands into his pockets and fished out the operation card that had been supplied to him. He inserted the card and plopped down into the seat with a soft thud, and watched as four operative profiles categorized themselves on the large screen. Minseok knew they weren’t anyone from the ACE organization, which must have meant they were associated with the pirate band somehow. He stared at the photos that were attached to each of the profiles, and he stared at them hard . The longer he looked at the photos, the more he wondered why they looked vaguely familiar. Minseok shook the feeling away as soon as he noticed the outline of Chanyeol and Sehun’s silhouettes on the glare being cast onto the computer screen. Minseok extracted the operation card from the computer, and stood to greet the two.
Minseok went to open his mouth when Sehun walked past him in a determined concentration. Minseok knew that look on Sehun’s face whenever they were about to leave for a mission. Sehun’s natural talent was flying, and whenever he flew it was as if the rest of his surroundings ceased to exist. It was as if he adopted mental tunnel vision; he would become selective about whatever information went in and out of his mind. Minseok’s jaw went slack and then turned to Chanyeol who stood there patiently waiting as Junmyeon and Kyungsoo were climbing up the deck with bags slung over their shoulders.
“Where are we heading?” Sehun shouted from the cockpit while flipping a million different switches.
Minseok’s head snapped in Sehun’s direction, and not too long after that so did his feet. Once he got closer to the pilot’s chair, Minseok rest his hand on the back of the chair and looked onward, “Apparently, this meeting has been arranged to be located in an operational space station just right outside of Callisto.”
Sehun halted, the one hand he had on the steering wheel tensed around the handle. He cleared his throat and nodded in Minseok’s direction, silently dismissing him.
Minseok patted the back of Sehun’s chair before walking off to find Junmyeon and Kyungsoo.
“Callisto?” Kyungsoo arched an eyebrow as he sunk down into the seat that Minseok had been inhabiting prior to their arrival, “Really?”
Minseok nodded mindlessly nodded, looking to Junmyeon for some kind of reaction.
“Callisto is pretty far out.” Junmyeon noted, “Why would the Captain want to set up the meeting there of all places?”
Junmyeon looked toward Sehun, who was in the process of raising the ramp of the 326, cleared his throat and lowered his voice, “We all know that Sehun doesn’t like to go anywhere even remotely near Jupiter, and now we are being forced to dock and meet at one of its space stations?”
Minseok lightly shrugged, “I don’t like it anymore than any of you, and Sehun knows it’s nothing personal. It’s just business.”
“But Callisto?” Kyungsoo repeated, “It’s a four day flight at the least. Are the band of pirates really that far out that we have to meet them at Callisto?”
Minseok rolled his eyes and pulled the operation card from his pocket again, reaching past Kyungsoo’s head and sticking it into the reader. The four operative profiles that had been downloaded onto the card shot up onto the screen. Minseok minimized the profiles to go over later, and went straight for the secure operation details file. He could feel Junmyeon’s eyes on his back as he quickly dismissed the four unknown operatives.
As the operation details surfaced onto the computer, Minseok sat in the chair directly next to Kyungsoo, “According to the Captain, the band of pirates have been lurking around Neptune for the last couple of weeks, and have been causing all sorts of disturbances. Some of the reports that have come in describe that there seems to be some internal struggles within the pirates’ group, and a select few members have been identified. The Captain wants us to meet with the leaders of their group, again, to try and negotiation some peace terms to keep them from disturbing the lives of the citizens.”
Kyungsoo slouched in his seat, “If they weren’t willing to negotiation terms back when they were terrorizing the citizens of Mars, what makes you think they are going to want to negotiate terms now?”
It was more so a rhetorical question than a legitimate one, since there was no questioning the decisions of the Captain. Minseok fell back into the seat as the 326 roared to life, leaving the chair to softly vibrate against Minseok’s back.
Minseok closed his eyes and felt the ship shoot into the light that would soon melt into darkness.