December 17th, 2267. 11:35 Vosture Prime – John’s Homestead

John looked up at the screen. He clicked a button from his chair which split the screen in two. The left hand of the screen was still tracking the Xenuian shuttle. The right hand of the screen pulled up local traffic and slip-wake alerts. A large wake was detected by the long-range scanners in buoys that were placed near the common slip space exit.

“Oof, that’s a big ass ship coming. Dreadnaught class?” John asked.

Elias looked up at the screen and shrugged, “I am honestly not sure. I was under the impression that a small flotilla would be sent.”

“Well, if these readings are right there’s just a single ship coming. But it’s a chonker of a ship.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Elias was utterly confused at the vernacular that was used.

“Whatever it is, it’s fucking huge. And singular, as in a lone ship. Do your dreads have the ability to dock ships to them or even have a space dock internally?”

Elias thought for a moment, “Well admittedly our Navy ships aren’t exactly my area of expertise or focus, but they can dock with one another, but not in slip space.”

“Fascinating, I would’ve sent a carrier, but a dreadnaught makes sense too. It ought to be armored and armed to hell and back. Plus, it’s not like they are carrying much,” John pointed at the ring, “That thing is damn near finished.”

“An energy source and some heavy-duty and very specialized conduit is all that’s left really. Of course, that’s a great oversimplification but I trust you won’t hold that against me.”

“Of course not,” John smiled, “Neither one of us is an engineer after all.”

“I must admit, you guys handled the initial character attack extremely well. Better than your candidate in fact,” John said, “He was frothing at the mouth and didn’t listen to anyone, much to his own detriment.”

“How did you find out about that old man?”

“Local website, there was a haters subgroup focused on Dale. It was easy to hate on Dale because he was a giant asshole.”

Elias nodded, “How I wish we had properly vetted the candidates. The most likely to accept money was obviously the most corrupt…”

“Y’all never presumed there might be skeletons in that guy’s closet?” John sounded shocked.

“We were not familiar with the full process that you used to elect officials. It was an unfamiliar process,” Elias sounded reluctant to answer the question, “Our political process is entirely different.”

“Your naiveté of our process has been plainly obvious. Do you really think this large conquest plan will work when you don’t even understand your enemy?”

“Do you understand the Alliance or the Union?”

“Like a family member? No. Some of their motives are patently obvious to see. But here’s the thing Elias, the Confederacy doesn’t want to take over their space. We have space to grow in other directions and numerous ripe systems to colonize,” John said.

“We will find a way, we always do.”

“I suppose I could say the same thing,” John said, “So, how’d discipline work in light of those shenanigans?”

Elias frowned as painful memories flashed through his mind, “The new work schedule, well the one I released after you orchestrated four more murders…”

“Technically only two, I didn’t murder the other two.”

“Semantics John, your actions directly put in motion the other two deaths. Our morale wasn’t great, but at that time I don’t recall any clear cases of disobedience or poor work performance.”

John nodded, “Fascinating, I didn’t think they would’ve rallied or continued to be as productive.”

“Well, the fear of dying helped to keep people from going too crazy,” Elias said, “If anything, the fact four people were killed at the same place really shocked our group to the core. I suppose congratulations are in order from a macabre place.”

“Yeah, that operation went about as smoothly as it could.”

“Why did you try to more directly kill our people at that point?” Elias asked.

“I wasn’t certain that it’d cause you to go underground. I had your new facility under observation, so it didn’t seem necessary to push the subject yet. And to go back to an answer you’ve heard several times,” John shrugged, “I still had no idea why it was that you were here. Though I was getting closer and closer to that reason.”

“How exactly were you helping William at this point?”

John smiled, “Like you, I had a copy of the questions. Plus, Dale was quite loud in his office about what the questions were, so it wasn’t hard to forward that information over to William to add to his preparation work. I did tell him to not count on all of those questions being asked, but to also not be surprised if they were.”

“Come to think of it, how often were you traveling into the city?”

“Oh, four to five times a week. Give or take a day.”

Elias’ heart skipped a beat. His eyes grew wide as he looked down at the floor. What did he just hear?

“Say that again please…”

“Oh, yeah, I found your hidden scanners pretty early on. I had my VI running a hard scan for any transmissions. Maybe a week later I had the ability to coopt your devices and ensure the only time you got me into the city was when I was on a simple supply run.”

“Oh my god, that’s…” Elias felt sick to his stomach, “How could we be so stupid.”

“It wasn’t a matter of intellect Elias,” John spoke with an uncomfortable familiarity, “You kept reacting to new things, you never had a chance to take a step away, take a deep breath, and review the whole situation. You went from one crisis to another.”

“That explains our devices out on the road, how did you spoof the network?”

“I won’t get into the specificity of that,” John said, “Suffice it to say Naval Intelligence has tools that override civilian tracking services. Or create fake ones.”

“When Renata spotted you on the dance floor you had to kill her. Otherwise, we would have eventually known that our tracking of you was not working.”

John nodded, “She caught me a bit off guard, but you are right. If she came back and told you that I was at a nightclub, what would you have done?”

“I would’ve searched our surveillance records,” Elias closed his eyes for a moment, “You didn’t know how quickly she’d report that finding.”

“I presumed that she’d do it as quickly as possible. I wasn’t going to wait around. I didn’t intend on ending Marion’s life but that was a happy coincidence for me,” John grinned, "When I'm at war I'm not going to skip easy pickings like that."

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“Are all your agents like you?”

“The majority of Naval Intelligence employees are desk jockeys. They write up intelligence reports, brief officers, and run operations. A small percentage, which still works out to a substantial number of people, actually are deep cover agents. Some are better at their jobs than others.”

Elias frowned, “Let me rephrase the question, are any as good as you are?”

John exhaled loudly, cocked his head, and thought. And then thought about the quest some more. Elias watched his facial features shift as if he was scrolling through a list of people. Moments later John responded succinctly.

“None are as good as I am, but I am the exception to the rule. I can think of at least a hundred operatives that could have handled this operation. And that’s ignoring our special forces,” John chuckled, “We have some that are designed to go into a territory and destabilize it. Others are just bad motherfuckers who will kill or destroy everything in their wake. To be fair to your team and my former peers, they would’ve sent a full team here in my place.”

“Hrmmm…” Elias said as he was thinking.

“Imaging them being let loose with general orders to create as much chaos as possible,” John said, “Tens if not hundreds of thousands of highly motivated and trained individuals all working towards one common goal. That is what we will do, we’ll lose their records and send them out to the general public.”

Elias smiled to himself. Thanks to this idiot he confessed to a supposed number of operatives that could work against the Union’s actions, ignoring their baseline military. That would be helpful. A detailed database and scanning of all citizens would be required to take proper control of former Confederate worlds.

“What would your military leaders do in that scenario?” John asked the question though he suspected he knew what the answer would be.

“Shared punishment with the general public. Anyone actively supporting them or doing so through looking the other way will share in their punishment.”

John snorted, “Yeah, that’s brilliant. That won’t drive more and more people away from your rule.”

“Of course, it would. When people realize they are beaten and there is nothing to benefit from supporting this traitorous element then they will fall in line.”

John shook his head at the naiveté that he had heard, “Those people aren’t traitors, their freedom fighters. They are patriots.”

“When we crush the military your holdings will belong to the Union of Xenu, anyone that fights against that would be a traitor,” Elias spoke proudly.

“Winning a war doesn’t mean that people’s loyalty will shift immediately to your side. It will take at least a full generation or two to shift that mindset, if not more,” John smiled at hearing these comments, “Are these views yours or of your superiors?”

Elias’ face scrunched up a bit to look like he was confused, “It wasn’t just my view, but it was shared by numerous intelligence agents.”

“Good luck with that plan,” John smirked, “You’re going to need it. In the event of our defeat, you are looking at decades of rebellions.”

Elias was processing what John had said. Yes, there were numerous people that could create havoc for the occupation forces. But Elias just didn’t believe that they were as good as John had said. John was a unique case, he had to be. He was an eerie combination of intelligence and sociopathy. A combination that would soon be no more.

Occupation plans were now roiling around within Elias’ head. His operation may be declared a pyrrhic victory, but he would at the very least contribute one more thing to the upcoming war effort. He would recommend to his people a new doctrine of engaging with the Confederacy. One way or another, they would succeed in their plans.

“Tell me Elias, I know in our shared timeline that I’m skipping ahead a bit, but did you look into any way of fudging the vote count?”

“Yes, those efforts ended in failure. Though that was the expected result,” Elias sighed, “While we are unfamiliar with your style of governing and choosing new leadership, we weren’t aware of what to expect from the polling places. The security of those machines was quite unlike anything we expected. As was the registration process of becoming eligible for voting.”

John smiled, “Ahhh, that’s the direction you went in. Getting more people to register to vote.”

“It was a delicate operation, made much more difficult by Kaius’ death.”

August 26th, 2267. 09:15 New Xenuvian Headquarters – Third Floor Office

Elias was leaning on a desk waiting for the last two to show up for the morning meeting. Neither Katherina nor Castor was scheduled to be working this morning. The slight delay was an annoyance, but it was at least understandable given the short notice Elias gave in calling the meeting.

Daphne sat in her chair that she had wheeled out from Elias’ office. She looked wholly uninterested and bored at being in the room this morning. A familiar look from her, but it didn’t seem that she was interested in rocking the boat anymore. The attitude was unwelcome, but her no longer being a cancer to the team was a welcome change.

Elias looked down the hall and saw the missing pair walk towards the office, “Ok, now that they are about to be here, and apologies to the two of you for calling you in on short notice,” Elias smiled, “So, last debate polling is fully updated. It’s forty-five percent for us, forty for William, and fifteen percent undecided. The election is a coin flip, what do we do to turn it to our side?”

“Voting machines are out. Kaius and I explored that option, but it is not happening.”

“Early voting starts on the first, the day after the final debate. Voter registration for the final vote needs to be done by September fifteenth,” Alberic said, “Early voting registration is due on the thirty-first.”

“We can’t buy votes,” Daphne said, “Not now, especially after the media is sniffing around the candidates’ backgrounds.”

Viviana nodded, “Agreed, that would not end well. But what if tried to bribe voters to vote for William?”

Draco shook his head, “What if they say nothing, take the money, and vote for him?”

“That’s too risky, we either give up a lot of money and give votes to our opponent,” Elias said, “Or it ultimately gets tracked back to Dale’s side, or someone wanting Dale voted in. The risk is too great.”

“General voter registration campaign,” Katherina said, “We have one unused political action campaign, fully legit too, to spread a voter registration campaign.”

“How would that not look like we are pro-Dale?” Castor asked.

“We canvas the non-voters in likely pro-Dale areas,” Viviana said, “Our registrars don’t recommend any candidates, they just get people registered.”

Elias nodded, “That’s how we do it. For every five votes we get on our side, I’d wager we get one, maybe two for William. Even at a five to three or five to four margin, that’s enough for us to take the win.”

“How much do you want to set aside to pay the volunteers?” Daphne asked.

Everyone in the room looked at her. None, besides her, thought about the cost of this plan. Then they all came to understand what that meant.

“Kaius and I had discussed that in passing but I don’t think he ever really dug into that. Set aside fully half of our available reserves to pay for registration bounties. Fifty credits per confirmed registration, double if the person is voting for Dale,” Elias ordered, “What’s that going to run?”

“There are thirty thousand unregistered voters throughout the central colony,” Alberic said, “If we stick to the city center, Highland Run, and River sectors that’s eighty thousand potential votes.”

“No, you have to exclude those convicted of felonies or have lost their voting rights. That’s twenty percent of those people,” Viviana said.

“I’ll set aside a bounty of eight million credits,” Elias said, “There’ll be group bonuses and individual bonuses available for top performers.”

“I hate to be that person, but this colony has twenty or twenty-five million people. Forty thousand votes may mean nothing, that’s less than a fifth of a percent. That’ll barely dent the surface,” Daphne said, “It’s a good idea, but it’s too little too late.”

Castor raised his hand like a schoolboy as his other hand was typing away at the console in front of him.

“We’re not in school anymore Castor,” Elias said politely.

“Sorry, Daphne, you aren’t wrong, but the thing is only six million voted in the last election.”

“If we can get one hundred thousand signed up to vote, and we get an eighty percent pro-Dale rate, that accounts for one and a third percent of the vote,” Elias said, “Presuming of course the past is a correct predictor of the future.”

“Effectively shrinking the margin of error to three and a half percent,” Katherina said as she leaned forward onto her desk, “We need our volunteers to target the right homes.”

“To be safe you are going to want to target one hundred fifty thousand voters,” Daphne said, “And set aside twenty-five million credits to pay for this. We have thirty-five million credits now, or at least did the last time I looked at the books.”

“We are running in the black to the tune of seventy thousand a week now,” Elias paused as he turned around and activated the holographic terminal and display.

Elias looked at the financials. It was a big risk, but in a perfect world, if they managed to sign up that many people who were likely to vote for Dale, that would give him nearly a two percent boost in the polls. It was so much money, but this late in the game there was precious little they could do otherwise to generate more votes.

“We can take things day by day,” Draco spoke cautiously, “If the media is looking into the candidates, then it’s safe to say several rather ugly things will come out. If they do, we can shut down the voter registration drive early, and save money.”

“Draco, you are in charge of this campaign,” Elias said, “Viviana, you are the back-up on this. I think everyone else has projects to work on, if the two of you can’t handle the other items let me know and I’ll divvy out that work to your peers.”

Castor, Katherina, and Viviana then left the room. They weren’t scheduled to work for another four hours. The remaining members got to work immediately. The mood felt bright and positive. Elias felt a touch of trepidation for spending that much money. Despite that, the election felt within grasp finally, for the last month plus it’s been one punch after another.