May 23rd, 2263. 16:30 Imperial Cargo Transport Evergreen
The ICT Evergreen was a labyrinth of corridors and storage rooms. Unlike most cargo transports which could join multiple sections together, the Evergreen wasn’t built to transport bulk goods. People, pallets, and medium-sized consumer goods were its primary cargo.
The inspection of the ship, triggered by a review of their past shipping manifests, had been a mundane affair for the first two boring hours. However, the last forty-five minutes had been an irritating and somewhat embarrassing boondoggle.
John was running, or more accurately thundering, down the corridor. There was a long stream of curse words being said under his breath. He was chasing after who he thought was a crewman. However, it could be a stow-a-away too. It didn’t matter though, they needed to be apprehended.
“Woman I think, running down corridor alpha-two,” John called out to his squad, “Fast little shit.”
“Moving to cut her off at the lima junction,” Vanessa shouted out.
“They just passed the delta intersection,” Lukas said, “Right fucking ahead of me.”
Heavy breathing could be heard through the coms. The new Broadside class of power armor required substantially more effort to move. It was one of the few drawbacks of the suit. Its weight could also make certain environments dangerous for the user. John was cursing at himself and made a mental note to increase the amount of exercise his platoon did.
Thinking of dangerous environments for the briefest of moments, and not steering his armor correctly, led him to misjudge the turn. A very loud bang rang out throughout the interior of the vessel. A long dent spanning twenty feet by roughly a foot and roughly two inches deep was left in his wake. Eve flashed how much force was transferred into the wall to create it. He winced at the number that was displayed in his HUD.
John’s alternate route had him take the most optimal route to the intersection. The four-way intersection could be seen in front of him. At fifteen feet in front of it, he jumped and slid his armor through it.
His timing was impeccable. The individual they were chasing after entered the intersection at that precise time. She ran into him and fell over his suit. The dainty little thing put her arms down toward the floor and cartwheeled around.
Against any other person that may have resulted in a perfect getaway. Unfortunately for this individual, she was up against the most dogged pursuer in the known galaxy. And quite possibly one of the most athletic too.
With her momentum effectively halted the young woman stood still for the briefest of moments. What came next shocked them. The human tank they had run into displayed a surprising amount of agility as a large hand was now firmly gripping their right leg. Adding to that shock was them being ripped off their feet once again and being dragged with this suit of armor.
A squeak and then a scream was let out by the young woman.
But then the arm let go suddenly. She hurriedly went to get to their feet, but to their great horror, the suit of armor had deftly rolled and was on its feet, albeit sliding, and scratching the hell out of the floor, away from them. The truly scary part was a twin plasma blast gun was fully charged and aimed clearly at them.
“Move and your dead,” John commanded through his external speakers.
“I’m not with the crew!” exclaimed the young woman, “I’m trying to get away!”
Vanessa grabbed her shoulder and spun the young woman to face her. A red light flashed from the other forearm, scanning the young woman. Her right arm now holding her in place. She pulled at the odd necklace around her neck.
“Scans come back empty. This necklace thing indicates she is Jennifer Teal, a citizen of the Paledo colony,” Vanessa said.
John had deactivated his weapons. He shut off the external speakers and took several deep breaths. The blast gun had transformed into its non-combat form which recessed into the armor a bit. Though it was still easy to determine where and what his arms were.
He stood up and stepped forward, “Where the fuck is that?”
“Never heard of it, sir,” David said.
John shook his head.
Erica then spoke up from the cargo hold, “He wasn’t asking you, Private.”
“Oh. Really?”
“Where is that colony, Jennifer?” John ignored the Private and leaned down.
“It’s… in the Beta Occulus system…” Jennifer said quietly.
“Eve, where the hell is that?” John asked his VI.
“Sir, the star charts list that system as a potentially habitable system based on long-range scans,” Jerad said, “But it’s nearly two hundred light years outside of our borders.”
“It is two hundred six light years from our closest border to that system. One hundred eighty-nine from the Mercantilist’s closest system,” Eve said in a straightforward tone, “Sharing location here.”
John took his helmet off and kneeled down on a knee in front of their captive, “Alright Jennifer, you aren’t a citizen of the Confederacy. Why are you here?”
“Escaping the hell hole that I was living in. I was supposed to be married off to some pig. Seriously fuck that.”
“I can support that reason,” Erica said over their coms.
Arianna chuckled, “I can get behind that reasoning too.”
John grinned, “But that doesn’t explain how you grew up in a colony that far away.”
“Sure it does,” Jennifer began calming down and answered cheerfully, “I was born there. It was the first non-agricultural focused colony after our home world had reached an acceptable population.”
“Colonized by whom?” David joined the chorus.
“The Union of Xenu. Who else did you think it was?” Jennifer asked innocently.
John shrugged as he stood up, “Well that kind of explains things. There haven’t been official communications with your government in nearly seventy years. Erica, send a team up and bring her back onto the Fargo. She’ll need to have some medical scans and interrogated before…”
John paused and shook his head, “Young lady, am I correct in presuming you are requesting asylum?”
Jennifer nodded but had a confused look on her face, “Yes I do, but why are you presuming I am young?”
“Because you look like your twelve,” John said sarcastically.
Laughter could be heard from the different squad members over the open coms. Several of the girls scoffed at the laughter. Vanessa looked at John directly and shook her head.
“I’m twenty-two, not that it’s any of your business.”
“It is if you want to file for asylum.”
“Oh, ok then.”
“Go on with those two,” John pointed at a pair of his platoon in the old style of power armor.
The platoon then went back to their original business of transport inspection. There wouldn’t be any more excitement to be had on this day. For the Marines that is, they didn’t seem to give a damn about where the stow-a-away was from.
For John though, this was an absolutely fascinating change of pace. The Union of Xenu was broadly described as religious lunatics in the texts. Public opinion of them was not at all positive. Their coup and outright theft of military vehicles, irrespective of how old they were, still bothered a great many families across the Confederacy.
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Being able to interrogate someone with direct knowledge of how they lived was going to be amazing. Or at least it would have been when the captain of the Fargo informed John that he was not tapped to handle that task. The ship’s counselor received that job.
01:30 CNS Fargo – John’s Quarters
John stepped out of the shower. Beads of water rippled down his muscular frame. He took a towel and began to dry himself in the humid bathroom. A job that never felt like it was getting done because of the humidity.
He noticed several deep marks on his calves and thigh. The seam in his void sheathe wasn’t as smooth as it ought to be. John wrapped the towel around his waist and walked over to the terminal. Another note was quickly typed into feedback for the new armor.
The towel was taken off and John quickly pulled on his boxer briefs. He walked into the room and slid some gym shorts on and sat at his desk. A few buttons were pressed, and passwords entered before he could start reading the transcript of the interrogation of their asylum seeker.
“Twenty-five billion people live in their home world,” John leaned back in his chair, “How in the fuck did they pull that off? No way they could…”
The answer to his question was answered in the next paragraph. Artificial wombs were commonplace. Families were expected to have three or four kids themselves and raise another six that were ‘grown’ by the state.
It seems the number of state-grown children had been directly tied to their agricultural capabilities. On that note, John was taken aback by the number of stations above their home world whose sole purpose was to produce food. Even more surprising was that four entire worlds in neighboring systems were devoted to agriculture. That was in addition to three moons and another planet, in their home solar system that was already used for agricultural purposes.
“I mean they are better than the Alliance, but Jesus. What are they trying to do?”
Eve then interrupted John’s research, “John, I have completed the scan of all records associated with the freighter. There was no freight on board that could be tied to this group, though it may have previously held freight destined for the illicit labs. The CNS El Paso is currently inspecting a facility that they delivered goods to last week.”
John sat there in silence and stared at a scratch on the wall. He was deep in thought about how they were able to stay a step ahead of them. More than that, they were a step ahead of the premier intelligence department of the Confederacy.
“Eve, can you extrapolate how this organization is seemingly a step ahead of us at every turn. Use all known data to compile a list of likely reasons.”
“Estimate it will take seven hours thirty-two minutes to calculate this.”
John’s stomach then rumbled, “Time for chow and bed then.”
May 24th, 2263. 09:30 CNS Fargo – Boardroom 4A
“Our target had nothing of value related to this operation,” John chuckled, “On the other hand we did have a stow-a-way from the Union of Xenu. That was an interesting sideshow, and it was the first time we’ve gotten data about them in seven decades. A fat lot of good it does to get to Dr. Norman though.”
“I presume all of the materials on this new passenger of yours have been passed along?” Admiral Nelson asked.
“It has. An NI corvette is rendezvousing with us at Cortigus Prime in two days' time. She’ll be sent to a base in the Alpha Centauri system,” John said as he pressed a couple of buttons on his terminal, “I know this goes a bit off-topic but take a look at these genetic scans.”
Captain Elwood Henry spoke up, “You may want to speak about what looks odd. Most of us aren’t geneticists.”
“Fully half of her genes show significant tampering being done to them. What’s interesting is that while she is a baseline human, the enhancements she’s had done to her is a genetic dead end.”
“Xenuians cannot give birth to homo superiors or pluses?” Commander Jerilyn Barret asked.
“Technically they could but they couldn’t be this, well edited,” John said with a shrug, “We’re also looking at a sample size of one, which isn’t all that helpful to draw conclusions from. But we know their population is as large as it is because of artificial wombs. Families are huge because the state makes all adult couples take care of at least six additional children. Which means those religious zealots potentially modified themselves into a corner.”
Marine Captain Wahkan Onelesa spoke up, “Fascinating as this subject is, we do need to focus on our operations. The servers at our site were left intact and unwiped. Based on the recovered security footage their shutting down of the site was sudden and hectic.”
John leaned forward, “Any reason why they abandoned this one?”
“NI took over the investigation from us before we had a chance to really dig into things.”
“Do you still have a copy of the data?” John asked innocently.
“I’ll transfer it over to you.”
“Lieutenant, what are you thinking?”
“I had my VI run through all of our available data and extrapolate how this organization has managed to stay a step ahead of us,” John took a sip of water before leaning back in his chair, “The prime possibility she came up with is that they have a mole inside of NI or within the leadership of the operation. Given their rigorous scans and hawkish views on communication in general I don’t see how that could happen. The other most likely option, according to it, was corruption in the corporate world.”
“Which we’re actively seeing with how much equipment they’ve been able to order without anyone questioning a thing,” Admiral Nelson then looked around the conference rooms, “Why aren’t there any NI personnel at this meeting?”
“Commander Murphy indicated they were busy compiling the data from the captured servers and tracking down several fresh leads. They didn’t have an hour to spare,” Jerad said, “At least according to the email they sent minutes before this started.”
“Another reason the VI came up with was incompetence or malaise on our part,” John grinned, “Don’t really need to speak much more on that.”
“John, what are your plans when you get to your destination?”
“Jerad is going to take a team into the main city and work with its bureaucrats while most of us raid another site.”
“Is it active?” Captain Onelesa asked.
“The locals seem to think so. My senior leaders in the platoon and I are finalizing our attack plan, but I don’t see any impediments to finalizing that by the end of the day.”
“How is the certification process proceeding with your platoon?” Colonel Perentz asked.
“Everyone has finished their certification. I have six Marines assigned to the armor, besides myself, at all times. The remaining five suits will be rotating through the platoon, so everyone has a chance to use them. When push comes to shove our best will be in the suits.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to ask this question, but Lieutenant Lief, how are you so certain that NI cannot be breached?” Captain Onelesa asked.
“Agents scan every known format of communication. If you send dick picks to your girlfriend, wife, or lover they will know and have those pics available to themselves. Any emails you send, irrespective of what degree of encryption is used, they have. About the only thing, they can’t trace easily would be written messages.”
“Which would make any active espionage plots very difficult to pull off,” Commander Barret said.
“Yes and no, actively switching it up and changing focus would take a very long time to get word of. But compiling information? If I know my mission is to hoard data on subject x, doing that wouldn’t be difficult. Tracking that could be difficult unless an analyst were reviewing data logs for a very specific thing,” John said.
“This is wasteful speculation on a theoretical situation, of which there is no evidence to support, much less begin an investigation,” Admiral Nelson said, “Speaking of NI, their insistence at investigating the data and sites first hasn’t seen fit for them to assign an asset on your team. Lieutenant, servers that were not secured are to be left alone, otherwise, on this mission, you have carte blanche authority to inspect or review anything that is found.”
“Understood, sir,” John said respectfully.
“Captain Onelesa, unfortunately, your background prevents such an order from being given. All intel is to be secured and brought back to the fleet. Send John anything you find.”
“We haven’t touched any of the computers we recovered. We’ve scanned some of the data slates for items of interest but most of them were wiped. We expect to rendezvous with a friendly ship in thirty-six hours before heading on to our next target.”
“You are dismissed,” General Mizrahi said, “John, a moment of your time.”
People dropped off the call and filed out of the conference rooms. Jerad smacked John’s shoulder and grinned. A moment later it was just John and the two bigshots left on the call.
“John; Bill and I have been reluctant to speak publicly about the topic you casually brought up,” Uri said, “What if there were a leak?”
John shook his head, “Look, I don’t see it. I really don’t. There’s simply no way there could be that much rot in the organization.”
“You thought that of the Navy too at one time. And there was,” Admiral Nelson said.
“Truth be told I knew of the rot before I was in NI,” John paused and thought, “I really don’t think it’s possible for the NI to fail like that. Are there bad or compromised agents? Absolutely, hell I know of one I have to interact with far too often for my tastes. But actual traitors? I’m sorry it’s an interesting theory but not one that I think is possible.”
“I tend to disagree. NI over the years has done everything to cultivate its image and it ruthlessly culls and eliminates individuals that damage that image,” Uri said, “I’ve seen it before son. They don’t announce anything either. It isn’t a stretch to presume the rot that affected the fleets could affect them as well.”
“But transferring that kind of data would be difficult. As I said it would take more rot than Naval leadership had to enable that kind of transfer. And transferring enough data in a timely fashion is just not a reasonable outcome.”
“Could you do that?” Admiral Nelson asked.
“Well, yeah, but that’s not really a fair comparison. I can be a proper sneaky bastard if needed.”
“Keep your eyes open for any leaks. Speak to no one of them either. Not even us,” Uri said, “If we’re right, this could go sideways in a hurry.”
“We don’t know who to trust with this information. Even if you were a double agent, which at this point I sincerely doubt, you’d want to root out the truth.”
“Not a double agent, but I appreciate the vote of confidence. I suspect that if we want to succeed at this, we can’t be behind the eight-ball.”
“John, you are free to use nearly any means to acquire this information,” Uri said in his gravelly voice, “I cannot have you murdering people to resolve the issue though.”
“Understood, sir. I will comply, and if there is a leak I’ll find it,” John said confidently, “And plug it.”
The communication ended. John sank back in his chair. A loud sigh was let out as he stared at the main viewscreen. This operation had been stricken by incompetence for sure, but subterfuge? That was hard to believe. So how would he prove that something was happening? That would be the question to preoccupy his thoughts until it was time to go on their next mission.