June 19th, 2263. 08:30 St. Mary’s Station – Marine Boardroom
John was attending yet another meeting discussing the task force. He was waiting for the right moment to instigate his trap. But the right moment was difficult to find, the conversation wasn’t at all going in the direction to easily plant this information in.
At last part of his setup plan was in place. Though it came at a cost of pissing off a fleet admiral. A fleet admiral that didn’t have John firmly in a doghouse until the previous evening. Burning bridges was something John was excellent at, but he was losing critical support.
“Lieutenant Lief, you will be heading to Tau Puppis system,” Admiral Nelson said, “What are your expectations of this system?”
“Nonexistent, sir. The colony there stopped sending requests to remove that lab two months ago. If their observations are accurate, they witnessed the group leaving the base,” John grinned as he reviewed the orders, “We also have five reliquaries to hand off to the CNS Apollo, so we should be meeting them in three days.”
The grin was ignored or overlooked. While the Marines onboard the Apollo will be grateful for the new Broadsword suits. More importantly, John just found his potential sacrifice for the greater good.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I hope it didn’t take too much convincing for Lieutenant Erickson to accept this addendum to your mission,” General Mizrahi said, “They did actually need that armor for their mission.”
John grinned, “I wish I could say it took hours and hours, but since we were heading out in that general direction, it wasn’t too terribly difficult to convince him. Plus, if the slip tide readings are accurate we’re in for a nearly three-week trip to our destination. A little break out of that red-hued hellscape isn’t the worst thing to happen.”
Internally John smiled, Admiral Nelson had unbeknownst to everyone set that up perfectly. John was working on a communications program on his data slate. With that, he will be able to get his bishop moved into place.
His next step would be to create some bullshit intel to anonymously pass on to the operations team. They would undoubtedly transfer it to Naval Intelligence or keep it amongst themselves. In either case, the guilty party would receive it and Dr. Norman would be able to react according to it.
“While we had requested to be a part of the Fargo’s next mission,” Commander Murphy said, “Due to the likelihood that the investigation will be a bust and given our workload we are better off staying on station instead of deploying.”
John grinned, “No issues with that from me.”
Commander Murphy shook her head, “Don’t sound too excited Lieutenant.”
“That isn’t excitement Commander,” John continued to smile, “It’s contentment.”
Commander Shephard was about to say something with Station Chief Dexter Watanabe spoke up, “Enough with the petty sniping. The preliminary evidence that we have from the enemy server hasn’t really helped us in any way. We have a substantial amount of research but scant few clues about operatable labs in our territories.”
John then spoke up, “We do know more about the new railguns they are developing, unfortunately, they aren’t doing anything that we haven’t already done in the past three decades. That holds true for everything except the new anti-material rail gun. As for additional research locations, there were no leads.”
“How do we expect to get all of this tied back to Dr. Norman? Unless I’m not overstating things, he’s done an excellent job of insulating his involvement,” Admiral Nelson said.
Watanabe shook his head, “His involvement is transparently obvious, but as you said nothing that we could use to bring to their government. That being said, there are no records indicating that they should do x, y, or z research. If that is happening it is entirely off the record.”
“How many data slates do we have yet to scan?” John asked.
“Thousands. It takes seven to ten days for our VIs to decrypt the easiest-to-access portions. And nine times out of ten after we fully decrypt the device there’s nothing on it,” Watanabe sighed, “We are still working on sites we hit at the start of last month.”
“I’d suggest switching gears decrypt from the recent bases we successfully raided and prevented wipe commands from being given out.”
“I’ll check with the teams to see if they are doing that.”
Watanabe looked pissed that he hadn’t thought of that. John was sure the stack of data slates they had in storage was epic. Commander Murphy excluding herself from the mission was surprising but not an unwelcome surprise.
The rest of the meeting was uneventful. Lots of talking and planning was done. Nothing really appealed to John. But the revelation that the Fargo was heading off to a likely dead lab and no NI presence on the ship made it the ideal operation to put to the test.
Three days later, June 22nd, 2263. 12:30 Beta Centrali System – Deep Void
The CNS Apollo was pulling up to dock with the CNS Fargo. She dwarfed the Fargo, who herself wasn’t a small ship. Both ships' directional thrusters were flashing bit by bit so they could align their docking ports. Once they were correctly aligned a command line was fired from the Fargo to the Apollo.
A walking ramp extended from both ships and connected to one another in the center. Following that the umbilical from both ships began to follow the command line. Like the ramp, they connected in the center. Both ships began to equalize pressure and pump the atmosphere into the enclosed space.
John was staring at Apollo in awe. She was a Scottsdale class heavy cruiser, which was one of the newest and largest class of cruisers in the fleet. There were more guns on the port side of the Apollo than the Fargo had in total. To most pirates, it was death incarnate, but even still certain pirate factions could inflict grievous wounds on a ship like hers.
Thankfully, Admiral Zhang had confirmed the repositioning was taking place and the stealth fleet would be in place two days before the Apollo would reach its destination. That was a load off of John’s conscience. That didn’t mean this plan was without risk. And it also means that the next steps for John were going to be incredibly sketchy. That plan involved him shutting down or compromising the communications system of both ships for the next two weeks.
For two long weeks, of which the Fargo would spend all but one day in slip space, the ship would be completely blind and silent to the outside universe. Unlike the Fargo, the Apollo was heading into a trap. They would neither receive nor send anything to indicate where or what they were doing until the last possible moment. And ultimately John’s set-up hinged on him doing something onboard the friendly ship.
If anyone uncovered the ploy on the Apollo it likely wouldn’t matter much. But if anyone uncovered it on the Fargo, he’d end up in a whole heap of trouble. John shook his head at his asinine plan, it was necessary, but it was high risk. It was as if he was daring a lousy actor to slit his throat.
But for now, he was waiting in the hallway outside of the main hangar waiting for the docking seal to be made. The viewport in the door showed flashing red lights. They stopped flashing and changed to yellow, indicative of a good seal but differing pressure. Then the green lights came on and the doors opened.
“Alright, chop chop, folks. Let’s get this done quickly and safely,” John said to his platoon.
Speaking of his platoon, they had drawn the short straw, along with the second shift in engineering to help move the gear onto the Apollo. What his platoon didn’t know was John had rigged the drawing so that they would be chosen.
“Lieutenant Lief, a pleasure to meet you. I’m Lieutenant Commander Daxson,”
“Sir,” John said as he saluted, “My team will assist in bringing the reliquaries onto your ship. I believe your engineering crew has the rest of the hardware necessary to install them, correct?”
Commander Daxson nodded, “They sure do. We are also receiving the spare parts and wiring harnesses too, right?”
“Yeah, they are on those grav-lifts actually,” John said as he pointed to the first wave of troops moving through the umbilical before turning to his marines, “Erica, one reliquary at a time. Don’t want them crashing midway between ships.”
Erica nodded and got her squad in position. John and Commander Daxson followed the first reliquary. He reached into his pocket and palmed a small external data drive. His next move would actually take place on the Apollo, but those thoughts were interrupted by the commander.
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“Tell me, are those suits as good as advertised.”
John grinned and nodded, “Better, take it from me with my first-hand experience. I thought the prototype suit I was working on was hot shit. Christ, it's nothing compared to the new ones. But they aren’t for every environment and are much harder to master.”
Commander Daxson smiled, “Yeah, but it can carry substantially more weaponry, right?”
“You are basically a walking tank. Want to punch a hole in a door or wall? Sure can,” John laughed, “Want to be a walking anti-tank weapon, can do that. How about being a walking artillery piece? Technically yes, but we haven’t tried that setup yet.”
“Kinda sucks the fun out of it, why hang back and lob shells at the enemy?”
John laughed, “Right? Punching people is so very fun to do. Oh, be really careful running these in cargo bays. We piled up shit near bulkheads and walls just in case. When you get moving in these beauties you have a hell of a lot of potential energy.”
“I will make note of that,” Commander Daxson said as they walked onto the Apollo.
“You guys bloodied the ship yet?”
“Nah, we just finished the trials with her. Hope we can get into it was some pirate scum soon.”
John grinned, “I doubt the pirates could do anything to her.”
Commander Daxson said confidently, “Woe is the foe that picks a fight with us.”
John fell a half step back as they walked down the corridor. The room wasn’t that far from their main docking port. He spied a black terminal coming up on his right. Just as he passed it, he inserted the small data drive smoothly and quickly into the port and continued walking with the group.
A door opened and the first reliquary was pushed into its new home. Pulled up his data slate and checked the status of his program. It was successfully installed and would transmit extra information to the intelligence team at St. Mary’s station.
“Alright, Commander, the first one has made it onboard your ship. I think we’ll have the rest moved over in the next thirty minutes.”
“Thank you very much, Lieutenant, tell Erickson that I owe him a bottle of his favorite tequila.”
John scrunched his face up, “Ish, tequila? He drinks that shit?”
Daxson laughed, “I much prefer a fortified wine or an IPA myself.”
“Bourbon and scotch are my alcohols of choice, suppose we are entitled on liking whatever we want too,” John said before quickly saluting, “Godspeed, sir. Enjoy the armors.”
Daxson smiled as he returned the salute. John followed the first team as they left the barracks. John retrieved the data device as surreptitiously as he had installed it on their way out. None were the wiser for his sleight of hand.
After John walked through the docking ring, he swung a right and walked to a terminal in the Fargo’s cargo hold. He reached into his other pocket and pulled out another external drive and plugged that into the terminal. A run-time was loaded onto the ship’s main computer.
It wouldn’t activate until they jumped into slip space. Like the Apollo, it would flash a message back to base. Having two ships confirm that John and his platoon temporarily transferred over to another ship would help convince the group back at the home station. That would also be the last message heard from the Fargo for the foreseeable future.
Sixty minutes later the pair of ships departed and were burning toward their respective jump points. Both ships transmitted the false change of plans. It would be a tortuously long two weeks for John, patience was not his virtue, and he desperately wanted to know if the trap was sprung.
Two Days Later, June 24th, 2263. 08:00 CNS Fargo—Captain’s Ready Room
Unfortunately for John, the ship’s engineer detected his shenanigans very quickly. But was unable to undo them or trace them back to anyone. Lieutenant Erickson knew better and instantly assumed, correctly, that John was behind the mysterious outage. Both men were staring at John in silence. The chief engineer looked like he wanted to flip the table and strangle John, not for doing what he did, but for making it so damned unbreakable.
Lieutenant Erickson spoke quietly, “I am only going to ask this once, but why did you sabotage our communications?”
“I was under orders to do something I cannot discuss with either of you. Our lack of communication was essential in order to accomplish this mission,” John stared back at Erickson.
“Son, if you don’t tell me how to undo the mess you created, I’m going back to engineering to get the biggest fucking wrench I have and throttle you with it,” Chief Engineer Omar Hizban spat out.
“I’m sorry but no, this is necessary. Neither of you can compel me to undo what I’ve done. You don’t have the rank to override that.”
“How in the hell did you do this?” Omar spat out.
John smiled, “I’m seriously impressed you found it. I figured I had eight or nine days before suspicions would really mount and actual evidence was found. I was hoping no one would find out. Clearly, my expectations of you and the engineering team were woefully deficient. For that, you have my sincerest apologies.”
Darryl rubbed his eyes then spoke up quietly once more, “You aren’t going to tell me this mission you are on, are you?”
“I am not, no. Not at this time. Suffice it to say I am risking much for doing what I’m doing.”
“Captain, just give…”
Darryl reached out with his arm to shush his engineer, “What if there is a need to contact command? Such as…”
John interrupted him, “Unless the ship is damaged then there will be no need to communicate with them. Also know, if you order the chief here to sabotage the ship, I am prepared never to release the communications system.”
“Captain, just give me five minutes alone with him.”
“Omar, he’d throttle you. It seems neither violence, subterfuge, or discussion is going to sway his mind,” Darryl then stared at John, “I’m going to note this in the log, and I will personally be taking this up with Admiral Nelson. You may think you have orders to do this kind of bullshit, but it is not acceptable to not loop me in at the very least. I am this ship’s captain, not you.”
“Understood. I will include you in the final debriefing when the mission is completed. I believe you will find my actions both justified and even understandable, if not acceptable.”
“Lieutenant, whatever leash our bosses may give you doesn’t apply to me. When you aren’t working with the platoon you are confined to your quarters for this trip. One of the security personnel will deliver meals to your room,” Darryl sighed, “Now get out of my sight.”
John stood up and saluted, “Understood, sir.”
He left the room. Omar slammed his fist into the table again. Curse words were said in his native tongue under his breath.
“He’s as smart as he is dangerous. I have never seen such a complicated mess of traps to get through,” Omar said angrily, “I’m surprised you are allowing him to work.”
“I believe him,” Darryl said, “About him having orders. If I had to guess, they came from Mizrahi or Nelson. They would likely be highly open-ended for him to be engaging in this manner.”
“That doesn’t help our position at all then. Whatever complaints we have will likely be swept under the rug.”
“Yes and no, if he’s right,” Darryl chuckled at himself, “Our complaints aren’t going to hold much water. If he’s wrong, it’s not going to be a good look. Possibly a career-ender in that case. The scary part is if he’s right, he’ll look like a fucking genius.”
“Fucking spook. Once an agent, always an agent. I’m surprised the Navy took him on,” Omar spat out.
“I’ve heard a whole lot of rumors about the why. Supposedly they wanted a mole in command to root out cancer that’s been plaguing it. But something happened between them awhile back.”
“Bullshit…” Omar said.
Darryl shook his head, “They tried to kill him and possibly the crew of the Des Moines when they got to safety. He ended up killing one of their agents at the station. And made the team there look like a bunch of damned fools.”
Omar stood up, “I’ll keep working at this since I have nothing better to do apparently, but none of us are very hopeful about getting control back.”
“I have a feeling once we jump at our destination the systems will magically work again,” Darryl stood up as he looked at Omar, “If my assumption about him is accurate.”
“I still want to hit the smug asshole across the head with my wrench.”
The two officers left the room and back to their duties. Which changed little besides the lack of communication. There was still plenty of work to do. Darryl was taken aback by John’s honesty, there was no attempt to deceive or spin a tall tale. Quite the opposite had actually happened, begrudging respect was evident in the words and tone of John.
Six days later, June 30th. 11:30 CNS Vigilant – Admiral’s Quarters
Admiral Nelson walked into his quarters. The moment the doors opened he took his jacket off and hung it over the back of his chair. He went to the kitchenette and poured out some hot water to make his favorite post-shift drink of tea.
As he set the mug down on a coaster he logged into his terminal and began reviewing ship movements. His work was quickly interrupted by the door’s buzzer. Admiral Nelson switched the screen on his terminal to see General Mizrahi at his door.
He pressed a button to open the coms to the door, “You may enter General.”
General Mizrahi walked in immediately and sat down at the chair across from him, “Bill, I’m sure you know that we haven’t heard from the CNS Fargo since its last burst transmission when they met up with the Apollo.”
“I have a feeling this is going to bite us in the ass. Our orders to him were…” Admiral Nelson paused, “Overbroad.”
“That son of a bitch. He’s not on the bloody Apollo,” Uri said, “God dammit, how did we not see that?”
“Now we need to play dumb. This is his counter-intel op. Once an agent…”
“Colonel Perentz is still seething over those reports. John is going to get ripped a new one by him.”
Admiral Nelson smiled, “I think we ought to let the good Colonel rip him good when they return. If he’s successful, then we may need to do some damage control for him. It’s a damn good thing he’s on our side. Except I’m sure he’s not made any friends on the Fargo.”
“That’s assuming they know he’s behind it. You know how he is.”
Admiral Nelson smiled, “He’s good but not that good. The question is how he’d play down or defuse the situation.”
“Well, he managed to make an entire world hate him. I doubt making a ship mad at him is going to make him lose any sleep at night.”
“No, I doubt it will. But what, or how, will he know this information leaked? That’s what I want to know,” Admiral Nelson said.
“That kid is thinking so damned many steps and counters ahead that it’s hard to tell. Obviously, his being on the Apollo…” General Mizrahi stopped and smiled, “When is the Apollo due to arrive at its target system?”
“Two days…” Admiral Nelson grinned, “Well, there we go. Let’s keep this to ourselves and not touch a thing.”
“I was thinking the same, my old friend. I’ll leave you be. I have some of that wonderful paperwork I so love doing,” General Mizrahi said sarcastically as he stood up, “I hope for your young lieutenant that he isn’t poisoning the well too much by this action.”
“I think when it comes to this operation Uri, the ends justify the means to him. There are no thin red lines or any moral complications to finishing the mission. He’d crack a world to resolve this mission.”
“Central Command thinks we’re going to capture Dr. Norman and bring him back into our custody.”
Admiral Nelson laughed, “Yeah, fat lot of luck of that happening. If John’s on that mission, and he will be, Dr. Norman’s days would be numbered. John isn’t above murdering him in cold blood. And I suspect his marines would do the same given the shit they’ve seen.”
General Mizrahi nodded, “Then we agree. We speak the words and orders but have no expectation or desire to see them follow through as written or spoken. Now the question I have is, is he right or did we just fuck up?”
“For his sake, I hope we’re right, because if not he’s in a whole world of trouble, and we may be not far behind him.”