"We still haven't found the true mastermind yet, but the warship that launched the cruise missile is still operating off the shore. Other than the self-proclaimed culprit who 'confessed' to being hired by you, the mercenaries on the warship have yet to be apprehended. They mostly avoid contact with the authorities and are refusing to respond."
Bu Fan was explaining to me what was going on over the smartphone. I nodded, then realizing that he couldn't see me because we weren't conducting a video call, I quickly cleared my throat and acknowledged his report.
"Typical. What about the navy? I imagine they won't react well to having a foreign warship intruding upon our territory."
"That's the problem. The warship is pretty elusive. The navy has dispatched a fleet to capture it, but it's pretty fast and evaded them. Worst, they would slip out of Hua Xia's territorial waters and stay just out of reach. When the navy pursued them, they would…just disappear from the radar altogether. Only to show up again in a different place."
"I see." I raised a hand and flicked my wrist, conjuring a new holographic screen. Scanning the blue-tinted window swiftly, I absorbed the news article and sighed. "Seems like the navy is doubling their patrols, but the warship is fast and stealthy enough to avoid the corvettes and frigates that the navy has patrolling the perimeter."
"Yeah. And they have pretty amazing anti-air capabilities too. They shot down our bombers and aerial reconnaissance drones with flak missiles."
This constituted war, so the navy was responding in force. However, it was very easy for a single warship to elude detection or the main force, disappearing into the fog of war and reappearing elsewhere to conduct hit and run attacks. Not that it had launched another attack again, but the fact that it had remained lurking along the coast was a clear sign that they still planned some sort of mischief in our territory.
"The naval admirals and their command staff are cracking their heads over how to deal with this," Bu Fan added. "But I have my own forces ready. We're trying to see if we can hijack the ship and capture those mercenary bastards. If we do, I think my men will be able to interrogate them."
He snickered ominously. "I have professional interrogators who can pry the information loose from their minds. We'll be able to find out who hired them, what their motives are, what other goals they have and why they are still sticking around, and the mastermind."
"Are you sure it'll go all that well?" I asked skeptically. "They tried to interrogate the fella who surrendered to them, but he hasn't cracked yet, despite the police's most skilled interrogators working on the case. The only useful information they pried was his admission that I wasn't the one who hired him, and that was only because they caught the inconsistencies in his tale."
"Well, we won't know until we try, right? That's the alternative? To do nothing?"
"I don't mean that…"
"Regardless, we can't achieve anything if we just give up from the start and do nothing. We might as well give this a try. There's so many more mercenaries on the warship, I'm sure at least some of them will crack. Obviously they would send the person most likely to resist interrogation when they tried to pull that stunt with you. I don't think all the other mercenaries received the same level of training, conditioning and indoctrination."
"Agreed. Then let's give it a try. Thanks, I'm counting on you."
"Yeah! Leave it to me!"
Unfortunately, over the next few weeks, Bu Fan's men failed to get close to the warship. Apparently it had heavy firepower and blew Bu Fan's ships out of the water.
"Sorry…" Bu Fan apologized when he turned in his usual report. "I didn't think the situation would be this bad. I lost a lot of good men trying to get near the warship, but the moment they spotted us, they blew us out of the water."
He sighed audibly. I allowed him a few seconds of silence, knowing that he must be under a lot of stress right now. The families of the deceased – men who had died under his command – would demand explanation or compensation. Then again, they were all men of the underworld, so this sort of thing might be normal to them. I didn't know and didn't want to know.
"One useful thing we did learn was that they can't detect smaller ships as well as bigger ships. My boats were able to get much closer to their warship than the naval frigates and corvettes."
"Not surprising," I replied. "It's more difficult for their sonar to differentiate a boat the size of a small whale from aquatic wildlife. Not to mention, even if they do detect your boats, they have the confidence that they can destroy them."
"I hate to admit it, but I'm not sure what else I can do at this point." Bu Fan sounded frustrated. "There's nothing we can do but leave it to the navy for now. They are the only ones with the firepower and durability to confront that warship."
"Yeah…" I was thinking hard for the moment. But I smiled. "Actually, there's just one thing I can help with. Wait for another couple of weeks and I'll be done. I'll contact you again."
As I hung up, I turned to study the half-completed war walker that I was constructing. Since there wasn't much I could do with the antimatter project, with my role in completing the antimatter container fulfilled, I had shifted my attention to other things while my research team continued to look for ways to produce more antimatter.
Inevitably, I had returned to building war walkers. When Bu Fan called me a few weeks ago, a kernel of an idea had formed in my mind and got stuck there. Without any hesitation, I had begun a new program for my war walker project. Or Mech Marine program.
Speaking of which, the marine corps was supposed to operate on both land and sea, weren't they?
With that in mind, and the warship off the coast nagging me at the back of my head, I had made several major modifications to the Hunter, and found that I had to revamp it totally for the purpose I had in mind.
Which was why I needed a couple more weeks…
Unfortunately, I had yet to finish my new project when something else happened to draw my attention away from my grand scheme.
"You've received a lawyer's letter," William Wang informed me, showing up in my laboratory. Or garage. I grunted as I twisted a spanner to put together several joints.
"Who's suing me?"
"Oh? So you already roughly know what's going on?"
"No, but I can guess. The Rong family is suing me…for something."
"You're right. They are pinning the death of their son on you. They claim that you were the one responsible for Riley Rong's death. They also tried to sue Lily Ling for seducing him and disrupting his social life…for tempting him and causing him to walk down the wrong path."
"Let me guess…that case immediately got thrown out of court."
"That's right. Lily Ling countersued them and now they end up having to pay massive damages for slandering her, and also for the psychological trauma that Riley Rong caused when harassing and stalking her."
William Wang began laughing. He strode over and beamed a holographic window from his smartphone to show me posts from forums and comments on social media.
"Best of all, because Riley Rong's fangirls all died during that cruise missile attack, there's no one to defend him online. Everyone is against him in social media. They are laughing at the Rong family for trying to blame the victim."
"Riley Rong shot himself in the foot by publicizing his attempts to pursue Lily Ling romantically and leaving a large amount of visible evidence online." I shook my head in disgust. "And the Rong family still wants to turn black into white? They really deserve it."
"Yeah, we got Avery Ku on the job. Your lawyer friend. He represented Lily Ling, and now he's volunteering to represent you in this case as well. He is vowing to sue their ass to oblivion. Uh, his words, not mine."
I couldn't help but grin. Avery Ku was one of my best friends, a lawyer I met while studying in Country A. I could count on him to help me.
"We'll leave the legalities to him. But if they want to sue me, they have another thing coming." I tapped my half-completed war walker with a plasma torch before I pulled the protective mask over my face and began welding. "We'll find further evidence…and find out who the mastermind is. Then I will sue the Rong family for slander, and also for damages…because their son dragged me and Lily into his own dangerous affairs by stalking her and thus making us a target along with him."
"Oho. You're really devious."
"No, it's just common sense. These rich people think they can bully people just because they have money? They want to use the law against me? I'm going to make sure the law bites them back in their asses." I cackled, my voice muffled by my mask. The plasma torch flared on and I continued to weld joints together. "They will soon learn that karma is a bitch."
"They really shouldn't have made you an enemy."
"Yeah," I agreed and switched off the plasma torch once I was done with welding armor plates together. I tapped it to test the tensile strength and was satisfied. "But it's not just them. The bastards who tried to make me their scapegoat and involved me in their cruise missile attack too – they will also regret making me their enemy."