It's risky, but you take the colonels offer.

The next day you wake up and have a nice breakfast of some local fruits and pastries with Shade, as you discuss you plan to take up Colonel Grimes on his offer, and see what juicy info and opportunities you'll be able to take advantage of while working as his assistant. He does scare you, and you get the impression he knew you weren't being honest when you spoke to him, but he still made you the offer, and if he wanted to capture you and claim whatever bounty there was, you suspect he could of easily done so. You get dressed into a respectable outfit, consisting of some tight jungle camo legging which you fashion from some smart cloth, some comfortable and sturdy boots which you get from a nearby store, as well as a white tank top and some black sunglasses, you also apply some lotion to your skin which will protect it from the sun, insects, as well as working as an antiperspirant. You fill out the form that the colonel gave you, giving your name as Vala and just leaving the surname blank, as well as faking a few other details, before finally heading to the office that you were told to head to.

You arrive at the tall glass structure, which serves as the head office for many of the various mega corps on the planet, it seems this building in particular houses all the bio tech research corps, studying the fauna and other life forms, and finding ways to monetize their discoveries, producing a variety of stimulants, cosmetic gene mods, even medical treatments and **** can end up being developed as alternatives for people with allergens or even just for planets where alternatives are scarce. You see a myriad of lab coated people walking briskly across the floors, up staircases, into rooms, always in a hurry, you see the occasional supervisor or corporate suit walking about at a slower pace, with the other staff member avoiding eye contact as the prowl the walkways between meetings. The lobby itself is awash with a pristine white floor, with many offices divided up with glass panels that seem to turn from transparent to opaque with a simple gesture for the more private meetings. There is a huge fountain complete with its own mini eco system of local plants which that surround the fountain which is in the shape of a large rocky water fall, the sound of running water is rather refreshing compared to the manic bustle going on further in the lobby and on the cat walks and stair cases above.

You walk over to the reception and see a seated blonde hair man sitting at the station quickly using finger gestures to sort through the various screens he has open, as he works away at forwarding a small army of hovering robots to their various destinations, to deliver the messages, and or packages as they fly in through a specialist entrance. You stand and wait for a pause in the mans workload, while you notice a small bead of sweat on his forehead, which you assume is from the frantic pace of his work, as you notice that despite being a giant glass building on a jungle planet, the building is nice and cool, rather than like a green house that you'd imagine it should do. His name holotag reads the name Matt, he seems to be in good shape, which you imagine must be from all the rapid movement of reacting to the rush of his various tasks, hes dressed in a smart shirt with a plain black tie. After a minute he finally sighs before taking a moment to compose himself before looking up at you with a false smile.

"Good morning Miss, how can I help you today?" Matt asks as you catch him looking to the side as another small robotic drone floats lazily through and awaits for his input.

"I have a meeting with a Colonel Grimes, regarding a vacancy, he gave me this form, and told me to meet him at this building." You say with a smile as you hold out your form for Matt.

"I doubt that, no one told me about any new vacancies, and I highly doubt the head of security for this entire district would hire someone who just arrived to this planet yesterday a job." Matt says as he pushes the paper back to you. "Now if you are looking for jobs, there are plenty of opportunities that you can apply for via the many corporate kiosks or comm networks." Matt says as he looks over to his growing army of floating bots and he rubs his forehead with frustration.

"Now now Matt, that's not a very friendly way to greet a guest." A deep commanding voice says from behind you, which causes Matt to jump to his feet and bows, you turn around and see Colonel Grimes as he swaggers towards the desk, you look over and take a second to compose a calm smile as you nod and smile at him. "Now this young lady might be new to the planet but she is here to fulfill a role for me, the fact she's new is actually one of the reasons why I asked for her to apply." Colonel says in a calm and yet commanding tone, which even makes you feel uneasy, not to mention how Matt is reacting.

"Of course, I'm so sorry Sir, but I need some sort of heads up, we get so many people trying to get jobs, how am I supposed to spot the real ones from the fakes." Matt says as she stutters to try and salvage himself from this situation, although your instincts tell you the smarter approach would of been to apologize take the verbal punishment, and pray it ends there. The colonel stares into Matt's eyes until Matt sits back into his seat and look down to the floor.

"For starters I don't answer to you, secondly my business is almost always classified, so thanks for ruining any pretense of keeping this low key, and finally If you are having trouble telling the fakers from the real applicants, and don't bother to even read the application form, then maybe you should apply for a role elsewhere and hope your successor does a better job than you do." The colonel says in a cold and calm manner, which again chills you and even leaves you feeling sorry for the poor man, even after brushing you off. Then within seconds the steely gaze and scowl of the Colonel's rugged face soften as he turn on the spot and faces you, a smile affixed to his face. "Welcome to our lovely building, If you'll follow me, my office is on the top floor and the elevator shall provide as a means to discuss business privatley and also give you a run down of the layout of this hotspot of Corporate research and development." Colonel grimes says as he gestures with one arm the direction to a large lift who's shaft runs from the center all the way to the top of the building, as his arm moves, you notice the large and intimidating side arm tucked into a chest holster, which makes you feel uneasy as you are reminded once again of the risk of walking into the lions den, but you think of the possible rewards and steel your confidence before your fear betrays you as you slowly walk towards the elevator with the Colonel following to your side, his tall stature almost casting a shadow over you as you pass the fountain, a sickly sweet smell emanating from the local plants, before the colonel places his palm over a scanner pad and the elevator doors silently slide open, as you step inside and wait for the Colonel to select a floor.

As the elevator slowly rises a uneasy feeling weighs on you as you look out through the large glass panels in the elevator as it slowly ascends, you look out and see more lab coated clad employee's rushing on walkways and ducking into offices with data tablets, and over technical equipment in toe. You look up at the Colonel's clean shaven and grizzled visage as he looks out at the passing floors and people. An uneasy silence builds as you start to regret your decision as you slowly climb and climb the building as each floor passes, the sheer scale of what is in front of you starts to take its toll, you begin to wonder just how many different offices and staff are working here, and how many corporations even have staff here, how do you even police the in fighting and corporate espionage.

"Impressive isn't it?" The colonel says, his sudden voice making you jump slightly.

"Very, I've never seen so many people all rushing about, outside of a big space station or a starport on a high populations planet." You say as you smile and look back out into the passing view of the offices and walkways.

"Yeah, we have 40 different Mega corps staffed here, all in the same business, making the same discoveries and fighting to publish and modify their findings into a product they can market first. With in each of these groups you have about 20-30 scientists, 2-3 supervisors, and one corporate rep, with maybe some administrative assistants, not including the volunteers they have for testing, and the labor they have getting the samples, and transporting goods and research off world." The colonel says with an unusual sense of pride in his voice.

"Wow, how do you even keep the peace with all of them competing for the same resources and coming to similar conclusions, not to mentions the security for the expeditions and ensuring nothing bad gets in or off the planet itself." You ask with a smile as you look up into his prideful face, as you know he'll take great pleasure explaining how he runs a tight ship.

"Well we have an arrangement with all the mega corps that want to work on this planet, a set of strict regulations that if not followed means we will eject them off the planet and confiscate their findings or works to sell on. You see we provide security for this planet, and it's in our best interest to keep the peace, and make everyone's life here more pleasurable and painless as possible, with the punishment so strict for breaking this, it's in the corporations interests to not push us. The contract with our mercenary group is with the owner of the planet, so our payments secured regardless of discoveries, or lack of them, the owner gets a cut of the profits made on any projects or products as a result of research here. The corporations that settle these planets, don't want to jump into an R&D market, when they can let it out to all the mega corps, and get paid regardless who comes out on top, they get paid with the only risk being how much the worlds research will yield, but then again it can take decades before the Megacorps give up, and all the while they are still leasing offices like these, so even the barren wastelands usually break even in the end." The colonel says with a smile as he leans back against the wall and watches the offices slowly pass by.

"Makes sense, but what's stopping outsiders or rival mercenary groups?" You ask as you spy a poor scientist drop something and its contents spill onto a floor, only to have the contents catch ablaze and several lab coated people rush about to extinguish the fire.

"Well we had a lot of in fighting in the early days, but wars are costly and casualties and injuries are high enough on some worlds with the environment alone, so we reached an accord with the Core government, that outlawed open conflict on settled worlds, and established a contract bidding system, with harsh penalties for the groups who fought openly and tried to undermine the efforts of other merc groups. It seemed that fighting just wasn't profitable anymore, so now we enter bids to the planet owners, and if there ever is a dispute or conflict in need of resolution then we have to fight it out on an unsettled planet, or some kinds of honor duel system. As for outsiders, well as the law of the planet, we're free to do what we like with the people we catch, which is usually enough to dissuade people after a few examples are made." Colonel Grimes says with an uneasy smile on his grizzled face, a look which makes you feel uneasy and unsure of your plan. Although the elevator finally reaches the top floor and you arrive to a large corridor with huge offices, all adorned with various names including ranks, and decorations with the Crimson Blades insignia embalzed across them.

You follow the colonel out of the elevator, as he strides across the dark wooden floor, his boots giving off a heaving footstep with each step as he leads you to the end of the corridoor, where the largest office stands, with two large doors with the name Col Grimes written in Gold lettering adorn them. You opens them with a strong hand gesture as if throwing open two large pairs of curtains and the door swings open and reveals the stunning view from the top floor office. The are many decorations adorning the room, from weapon racks, and old armors in glass cases, with all manner of weapons from the simple to the extravagant and downright unwieldy looking weapons. There are medals and plaques as many holo picts of the colonel with various important looking people.

"Welcome to my office, now why don't you take a seat here, and we can talk about the role I have picked out for you." The colonel says as he pats a large Red chair with a tall back, before walking behind the large shiny and metallic Desk as he casually removed his heavy side arm holster and drops it onto the table, with a loud resounding clang echoing through the room. You silently gulp before seating yourself in the surprisingly comfortable seat, while the colonel seats himself in a matching chair across from you.