[201-400] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 371: Rabant Clearwater

For Ves alone to try to circumvent these identity checks, he'd have to go through a lot of trouble. Luckily, he could turn to other sources for a more convenient solution.

Ves activated his desk terminal and logged into the Clifford Society's virtual portal. His virtual avatar emerged in the city before the mountainous landscape, and he quickly entered the shop region where he scoured for a provider of various shady services.

He eventually found the same shop which previously hacked the Dortmund's processors for him. Ves remembered that the shop offered a lot of other dubious services. He approached the bored-looking man sitting behind a shop counter.

"Hi. Can you arrange a secure second identity for me?"

"For what purposes do you wish you use your second identity?"

"To browse the galactic net and open a second account in Iron Spirit. I don't want any of it traced back to me."

The shop attendant yawned and waved his hand, summoning up a small list of relevant options. "Take your pick and pay up. You'll get your new credentials immediately."

Ves browsed the short list of options and realized that establishing a second identity came with a number of different origins.

The simplest ones consisted of completely faked identities. These would essentially be persons that some shady organization faked into existence by hacking the databases of a planet or state. Most of the time, the hacked planets or states consisted of backwaters with a poor level of monitoring, such as the Mancroft Independent Harbor.

These identities would be extremely shady and easy to mistrust. Many organizations on the galactic net even blanket banned anyone who claimed to hail from some of these places, or implemented rigorous background checks that his new account would almost certainly fail.

The next step up would be to assume an identity of a deceased citizen of a reputable state. These individuals mostly disappeared in ship accidents. Whenever a ship's FTL drive failed or went astray, the occupants wouldn't be heard from ever again. Officially, they'd be designated as missing, and over time they would be marked as deceased.

Identity forgers paid off certain local bureaucrats to quietly remove some individuals from the list of passengers. Officially, the passengers had never boarded the ship that disappeared into nowhere. On the record, they were still alive and well. They just decided to take an extended holiday to some isolated asteroid or something.

While the shop sold even more elaborate identities, Ves didn't have a use for them. After all, he only wanted to do some business on the galactic net. He wasn't planning on selling a physical product, which normally necessitated a much more rigorous false identity.

"I'll take the deceased ID option for a mech designer." Ves said.

"That will be five merits."

The shop actually overcharged Ves for the service. Each merit held an incredible amount of value that couldn't completely be expressed in credits. He doubted that forging a false identity of a missing individual cost more than a hundred-thousand credits.

Still, Ves could at least trust the shop to deliver on its promises and be describe. Otherwise, the Clifford Society would have done something about them by now.

If Ves decided to be stingy and asked for a black market referral from Dietrich, it would be a complete guess whether the forger stuck to the agreement.

A few minutes later, Ves gained the unremarkable identity of Rabant Clearwater, a novice mech designer who disappeared when the passenger ship he traveled on had been chased into FTL by pirates in pursuit a decade ago.