In this new draft chapter from my upcoming first novel Ragnarok Conspiracy, Pete gets an encrypted message from his brother Robert asking him to find out about Rachella.

Note that this is still a work in progress and an unedited draft. All feedback is highly welcomed. If you didn't read my previous chapters, please look at the index at the bottom of this post.

While I do attempt to write each chapter for part one, two and three of this novel in such a way that it works as an independent part of flash fiction, reading the chapters from start to end does, I hope, add an extra dimension.

Have fun reading and I hope you are enjoying the story so far.

I am looking for beta reading input. Please comment your feedback below regarding this (or any of my other) chapter(s). I'll upvote any constructive feedback and will run a @croupierbot mediated lottery with whatever the SBD part of the payout will end up as for this post.

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Ciphers

Randstad conurbation, August 31 2047

How could a brainy little nerd like Robert be such a total moron?
Pete’s geeky little brother had sent him a short message using the book-shelf crypto scheme that Pete and Robert had used as little children when they played spy.
Al great if you want to hide the 'content' of a message, but utterly useless for concealing the origin of the message.
The stupid wanker. So much for the practical application of a triple nine intelligence.

With quantum slicing, public-key encryption had become less secure than even the most basic caesar cipher, so using their childish encryption scheme for confidentiality might have been a decent idea, if Roberts prime concern should not have been hiding his very location.

A location that the tosser might now just have given away by sending this encrypted message. That stupid little love struck brad quite clearly wasn’t thinking. Or if he was, he was thinking with the wrong organ. It seemed Robert had been so tied up in what seemed to be an impossible love interest, that he hadn’t considered that things other than confidentiality might be at stake here.

“Pete, I am OK. Need to know if Rachella survived. If she did, let her know I am ok and Send her my love. Regards, Robert”

That was the message Pete had received.

With the substantial encryption overhead from book shelf crypto, the message had taken up a full week of someone’s data quota for sure. Pete had been smart enough not to log into his own global communications endpoint, but every global endpoint was traceable at least to the conurbation from where it was accessed. Further, black market datacom was expensive, so sending this message must have cut deeply into Robert’s limited financial resources.

So much trouble and so much exposure to danger just to find out if his teacher was OK? And then the “send her my love” part! Robert wasn’t the kind of bloke to use the L word casually, so what was up with that?

Had his kid brother been shagging his teach? Damn, Robert!
Given the type of girls Robert had thus far been dating, this all didn’t quite fit. The thought of Robert switching from twenty-year-old sack of bones geek girls to, judging from the class picture Pete had found in Robert’s apartment, a somewhat aged but very much well-proportioned piece of tits and ass was quite outside of Pete’s expectations.

A God damned Milf, twice his age and fucking married as well! What the hell have you been up to Robert?

With all the stuff Robert had risked to find out if Rachella was alive, walking past her house was the least Pete could do for his brother.

This was her house right there. As Pete walked past Rachella’s family home, he casually glanced through the window, or so he meant to do. Rachella had been quite alright from the look of it. First Pete’s eyes had spotted two young children. A thin girl that was probably something like 12 years old, and a boy of about nine. The boy was sitting at the kitchen table while the girl was busy putting down the clean plates, apparently preparing for dinner.

As his eyes moved on, Pete spotted Rachella’s silhouette at the stove. The lightning in the kitchen was such that it emphasized the feminine round shapes of Rachella’s silhouette and what a silhouette it was. Before Pete realized what he was doing, a big “WOW” came from his mouth and what Pete had set out to be a casual stride came to an abrupt end as Pete found himself halted in his track totally captivated by the sensuous curves that made up Rachella's silhouette.

Only a second later, or maybe two, Pete managed to take his eyes away from Rachella. As Pete’s eyes locked with two stern looking eyes, eyes on a somewhat familiar face of a person now sitting at the kitchen table, shivers went down Pete’s spine. As he realized the familiar face was that of one of the New Zion operatives that had visited him at his apartment, most likely the same person who attacked his brother, his blood turned cold.

Shit, bloody hell, agent fucking Bridgewater! As he observed the agent’s swift response to his presence, Pete realized he had to run. His feet, however, were slow to get that message. Agent Bridgewater was coming for him! Need to get moving!
As Pete started running, he just managed to witness the oddest of scenes unfolding.

As agent Bridgewater was starting to move towards the door, Rachella slapped him on the back of his head, in response, the operative not only seemed to abandon his approach, he made his way back to the dinner table while displaying an air of submissiveness.

As Pete ran away from Rachella’s house as fast as was humanly possible, a realization came to him. Rachalla was not what she seemed to be! This university professor wasn’t a helpless woman at all. Robert was in deeper shit than Pete had believed so far. The bitch as a God damn New Zion commander!

Need to get a message out to Robert. Wherever Robert is right now, he needs to move. But above all, he needed to steer clear of this woman.

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Index

If you enjoyed reading this chapter, please have a look at the other chapters I've posted on steemit so far and follow me for more installments from this series:

Part One: Beginnings

1. Dakila
2. John
3. Gwen
4. Bjarne
5. Rachella
6. Pete
7. Wietse
8. Xavier

Part Two: Concequences

1. Gwen
2. Dakila
3. John
4. Pete
5. Bjarne
6. Wietse

Part Three: Robert

1. Carnage
2. Soviets
3. Debrisphere
4. Roughnecks
5. Fiat 500
6. Lecture
7. Caverns
8. Cipher
9. Confrontation

Part Four: Midgard

1. Tables Turning
2. Trolls
3. Captured
4. Mindless
5. Reset
6. Air
7. Coordinates
8. Forgotten
9. Foreign Dreams

Part Five: Nilfheim

1. Perseus-Pisces
2. Holocene Past
3. Jötnar
4. New Allies
5. Old Enemies
6. Whack-a-mole
7. Antifragile
8. Cold start