3 days later, March 31st, 2264. 04:45 Veridis Prime – Northwestern Mountain Range
Orbital scans suggested that the base was not occupied. As a result of those scans, John ordered a less intense orbital insertion plan. They were fun, for the adrenaline junkies, but hell on the dropships. That decision was confirmed to be good when the planetary’s militia sent a sortie of attack planes over the area.
The sun was rising on the horizon as the first drop ship touched down in front of the research lab. As they departed the ship it was clear no one had been there for a very long time. The prairie grasses were overgrown and aside from an animal trail, there was no evidence that anything human-sized had walked through the grasses. The ramps to the base looked filthy and had no obvious signs of recent wear and tear.
The second dropship landed moments after the rear ramp of John’s ship lowered. His Broadsword-class power armor hummed as he walked down the ramp. With a couple of quick hand gestures and the squads grouped up and ran to their destinations, with John jogging behind them.
“All squads move out,” John ordered through the coms.
It was about a hundred-yard jog to the ramp for the squads and John. No one seemed to be in a hurry to get anywhere. The first two of the Marines that reached the door began working to get the door opened. A couple of them were disappointed when John hadn’t equipped the powered fist.
“No casting fist today, sir,” Lukas said.
“Yeah, that thing is a major pain in the ass to haul around. Vanessa, eta on the door?” John turned and smiled in his helmet, “But man smashing the shit out of stuff with it is fun as hell.”
“Fifteen seconds, sir.”
Lukas laughed, “A situational smasher, eh?”
Moments later Vanessa stood up and took a bow as the door opened. John smiled as he slapped her pauldron. He gestured for the squad to enter. John followed behind the last Marine. They spread out and were scanning the commons room.
“Lukas take your guys and scan the lab to our left here,” John said as he turned to face the waiting marines, “I want Nathan and David to secure this commons room. Vanessa, you take your group and clear the residential rooms over there.”
The Marines readied their guns and followed John inside the facility. They immediately followed directions and began sweeping the areas. David and Lukas were the first to finish their task, which allowed them to fall in behind John.
John had walked into the chief scientist’s office. He very gently pulled the cover to the terminal at the desk. No easy feat in the broadsides, but he was successful. And he didn’t break anything. A small blue device was attached.
“David, in here now,” John said.
The young private ran into the room, “Sir!”
John then set the pair's communications to private, “Be very careful and unplug that and set it in this case.”
John was reaching into a large pouch on his waist and had pulled out a small black case. He set it on the desk. David looked at the items curiously but did as he was instructed. The device was removed safely and placed in the box.
Curiosity had gotten the cat when John pulled out another box. Inside it was a similar device. David looked up at John and was just dumbstruck at what was going on.
“Now take this module here and plug it in where that one was.”
“Uhm, sure thing boss. Why are we doing this?”
John said quietly, “You need not know the why, only that it is necessary. And Private, this conversation and that box that you are holding never happened or don’t exist. Are we clear?”
David nodded as he carefully unplugged the device and plugged the new one in. He looked down at the device before putting it in the black case. He then picked it up and turned to face his Lieutenant.
“Uh, sir, what do you want me to do with this thing that doesn’t exist?”
“Bring it back to the drop ship and hand it to Jerad. He will log it into evidence,” John paused for a moment, “Take Lukas with you. Once Jerad has the box the two of you are to guard that box; it is to never leave his or your sight.”
David nodded and jogged out of the room. John motioned for Nathan to stay put at the end of the hallway. He was about to make a request when the rest of the platoon began getting lively on the channel.
“Hangar secure, generator is present,” Erica said, “I have a couple of people inspecting it now to see if we can turn it on.”
Derek then responded, “Entry made, squads have been dispersed and are beginning to sweep the facility.”
“Lieutenant, should we bring forth our NI assets?” Darryl asked.
“Yes, by the way, Erica, please keep a squad in the hangar. I also want confirmation on whether the servers are present or not,” John said,” Darryl, send a squad as an escort for our NI overlords to my location. I have something for them to review.”
Moments later Dexter Watanabe came onto the channel, “What is it, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure. That’s why I need your expertise,” John said, “I’m going to be clearing and inspecting the northeast lab.”
John had been kneeling at the foot of the desk. He stood up and left the office and entered the abandoned lab. Thankfully for his psyche, there wasn’t a horror scene present. Though whether or not there was in the past was a fair question to ask.
“Servers are properly fucked,” Arianne said, “No power but it looks like someone tossed a plasma grenade in this room.”
“Chief, unless you have thoughts otherwise, I suggest dismantling the server and inspecting the individual components on the ship to see if they are salvageable or not.”
Dexter spoke up, “Agreed, I trust your team to accomplish that task.”
Arianne said enthusiastically, “Understood sir, heading back to the bus to get crates to pack the servers into.”
John continued with his inspection of the lab. Each terminal was pulled apart, but no quantum computing device was discovered. That was to be expected, it would likely be too risky to have multiple devices in the same facility. Their rarity was likely another reason for their being limited to one per base.
05:25 Chief Scientist’s Office
Station Chief Dexter Watanabe and Commander Deborah Murphy walked into the office. Just as they entered it the lights to the facilities came on. Much chatter and thanking were made to the squad that got the generator turned back on, against the expressed orders of the two intelligence agents.
Dexter spoke on the company-wide channel, “God dammit. I said to hold off on powering up until we gave an all-clear command!”
“Sorry sir,” Erica said, “But that wasn’t us. The generator kicked back on by itself.”
“Nah that was us,” Darryl said, “Had a squad on the roof and they bumped the dish.”
“Whatever,” Dexter said sarcastically, “The terminals appear deader than dead so no harm was done.”
Dexter gestured to Deborah that he had the connection to Marine’s communication channel. They then looked at one another briefly before they both slowly walked to the desk. Deborah looked at Dexter and shook her head as she pointed at the device. Then her eyes bulged.
Deborah spoke on the Naval Intelligence’s private channel, “He doesn’t know what this is. I bet he called us to identify it.”
Dexter smiled as he moved to the desk and tried to activate the device, “We don’t have to lie to him about what it is. This one computing core appears to have been disabled, its pair is no longer connected to the server cluster. I told them they ought to stop using these bloody devices. While it is virtually impossible to track communications using them, but if a hostile party got their hands on it...”
“It’d be game over quickly for them,” Deborah said as she shook her head, “How in the hell does Lief not know of these devices?”
Dexter snorted, “Why would he? Why would anyone be using such old tech anymore? Besides, he’s not an engineer so stuff like this likely isn’t something he’d spend any time researching. Plus, the military versions of these aren’t discussed in depth, because of the utter lack of security. Not a good look on us.”
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“We need to contact them to review usage on all these quantum devices,” Deborah said, “We may even have to go dark until we work out another plan.”
“When we get back to the station, I’ll send our handlers a note to review and confirm what pairs they are in control of. At a bare minimum, they need to do an audit. Now we need to just bullshit Lief. There’s nothing the brash Lieutenant is going to be able to do.”
The doors to the room then closed suddenly. The familiar sound of a dual fusion core spooling up began to fill the room. A cloaking field then crackled as it was turned off. The hulking mass of a Broadside power armor that was being revealed towered over the pair of agents.
They took several steps back as John walked slowly toward them. The twin plasma blast gun hanging above his left hand was charging up. With his right hand, he drew a hilariously oversized yet incredibly deadly bowie knife.
“Traitors,” John growled.
Dexter shook his head, “Oh for fucks sake. Spare me your drivel. Deb shut that shit down.”
Deborah’s hand shot up. The moment she did that John’s suit temporarily went limp. The reactor wasn’t shut down though. It was powering the suit and the plasma gun was still drawing power from the core. But his advance was halted and his arms fell to their sides.
“You really think we didn’t have a kill code written into the underlying code for those things?” Dexter scoffed as he turned around to look out at the mountain range, “NI doesn’t want assholes like you running around in these suits without a way to shut you down hard.”
“Wow, even you didn’t know about the nanny systems we ensured were present,” Deborah laughed, “You should be thankful, they were partially created because of you. Not entirely, mind you, but you were definitely considered.”
“For an individual as smart as you think you are, I’m a bit disappointed in you not finding that,” Dexter chuckled, “Why wouldn’t a kill switch be built into a piece of hardware that could kill thousands?”
Deborah shook her head but then looked at Dexter, “How are we going to handle this?”
Dexter pulled out a syringe, “Dr. Norman wants him alive, but I’m afraid the best we can do is smuggle his corpse to him. I don’t feel like dying today. He won’t be happy, but his choice is either ensuring we can end this accursed operation or end up dying to this idiot’s vengeance.”
“Give me the vial, I’ll inject him myself.”
“Hold on.”
Deborah looked confused, “What the hell for?”
“We need to get our stories straight. We also need to sound surprised when we call out for medics. We cannot play this wrong otherwise focus is going to get turned to us,” Dexter sighed, “Though the development on these suits may be delayed for some time.”
“Bullshit, we’ve already been…”
Dexter shook his head, “This asshole has probably been running a running counter-intel operation and we both were on his finalized list. Why else are we both fucking here? Think a bit, you bimbo. The good news is they won’t be able to find out what he found though.”
The pair of intelligence agents looked out of the window and smirked. While they were caught, they had John right where they wanted him. Killing him would be relatively easy with the massive suit acting as a restraint. Or so they thought.
The familiar blast sound of discharged plasma, followed by the iridescent blue light that it gave off, filled the room. A three-foot hole was vaporized exposing the room to fresh air for the first time in months. Neither agent was prepared for what they saw when they turned to face John.
John’s suit was already moving and had lowered a shoulder driving Dexter into the wall. John spun around and slammed her right side with his arm, while the knife in his right hand pierced Deborah’s combat suit and the wall easily. She was lucky to be only pinned as her arm was very nearly severed.
Dexter ripped off his helmet as he fell to the ground and coughed up blood on the floor. Most of his ribs were broken, he was heavily concussed, and he had at least one spinal contusion. Unfortunately for him, John hadn’t even started with him.
John leaned over and picked Dexter up by the chest plate. His feet were dangling at least two feet off the floor. Dexter was having a hard time breathing with the amount of force John was applying to him. In a final act of petulant impotence, he spat on John’s skull-emblazoned helmet.
“Fuck you!”
“With pleasure,” John responded mockingly.
John casually aimed his wrist-mounted gun and fired off another blast. Dexter lost his right leg about two-thirds of the way up his thigh. The plasma blast cauterized the wound so bleeding to death wasn’t going to happen, but the gear he was wearing ensure that the rest of his leg would need to be amputated were he to ever hope to walk again normally.
Strangely Dexter let out no scream of pain. He blacked out immediately. John dropped him unceremoniously and leaned down and looked at Commander Murphy.
“Traitors… Was it worth it?” John spat out.
“You have no idea what you are doing. This is necessary.”
“To you? To the Confederacy?”
“To humanity you fucking idiot. I watched the videos. It all makes sense.”
John stopped and stared at her, “What the fuck are you on about?”
“Dexter shared the videos with me. If we want to survive, we need this work. We can’t rely on the random way we pass on our genes now. Doubly so since we have spread out so much. It is imperative to improve our species.”
John pulled the knife out unexpectedly. His left arm grabbed hers and pulled up. A silver flash appeared between the two which severed her arm. John then clubbed the Commander with her own arm. She fell to the ground screaming out in pain.
The hulking armor leaned down over her. The plasma gun was charging up again, but instead of firing it, John drove the coils onto the open wood he had just created. One more wound was cauterized. Unfortunately, the shock of such a wound, or that the clubbing struck her head, resulted in another unconscious agent.
John then commanded his VI back on the CNS Fargo to activate Dexter’s quantum device on the terminal in John’s room. Its order was to copy and transfer everything that it can. John didn’t really care what he received in enemy intel. The more the better.
At that moment, he was too focused on trying desperately to subside that murderous streak within him. The two agents needed to die, but they could be useful. There’s nothing worse than a traitor. Rogue officers, of which he was absolutely one, pushed the envelope of what was or wasn’t acceptable. But traitors working against the institutions they swore to uphold made his blood boil.
John stood up and deactivated the gun, “All squads, need medical teams to the Chief Scientist’s office. Our intelligence overlords were spies. One is without an arm and another a leg. I want them out of their combat suits and brought back to the boat. They are not to be harmed. I will personally kill, then airlock anyone that harms a single hair on their heads.”
Jerad spoke up, “Sir? Did I hear…”
“Dagger 2, get prepared to head back to the boat. I need those medics in the chief scientist’s office stat. I did not stutter chief.”
“Understood, dispatching them now. I’ll get Dagger 3 to launch as well.”
Lance Corporal Paul Williams walked into the room, “Holy shitballs. Uhm, sir, what do you want me to do?”
John pointed to the door. Paul read between the lines and immediately stepped outside and guarded it.
“Lieutenant, we are with Jerad now. The package is secured,” David said through their squad channel.
“Excellent,” John replied confidently, “Lukas, are you there, and do you see the black box?”
“Yes, sir. Do you just want us to wait here?”
“Yes, I will be returning with these two and heading back to the Fargo shortly. That box is to be guarded at all costs.”
“Lieutenant, I’m sending the rest of my squads into the base to help with the scan,” Darryl said over the platoon-wide channel, “Medics from Dagger 2 are converging on your location momentarily.”
“Thank you, good work,” John was still trying to eat his anger.
“Erica, coordinate with the other sergeants. I want y’all to finish the sweep of the base. Document everything.”
A pair of medics along with a couple of Marines came into the room. Each one took one of the agents. John’s choice of attack on Dexter ensured his survival once he regained consciousness. His fast thinking ensured Deborah wouldn’t bleed out. Of course, both of them were now missing limbs and Dexter was seriously banged up in addition to that.
Once the medics confirmed they were stable the marines moved them onto gurneys and delivered them onto the dropship. John followed them, still stewing in anger. If he didn’t actually need to get intel out of them, he would’ve ended them right then and there.
05:25 Dagger 1 In Orbit
The atmospheric turbulence disappeared as the drop shit transitioned from the atmosphere of the planet below into the cold void of space. There was a brief moment of microgravity within the hold before the anti-gravity plating turned on.
John was staring at a terminal skimming through the data they had received. The other cores they had in their position still worked, but Chief Watanabe’s core had been disabled. Not before a bounty of reports he and Deborah had sent to Dr. Norman.
While they were on their base the CNS Vigilant had dispatched nearly half of its support ships and three-quarters of its standing Marine platoons to investigate twenty research sites. It was the single largest deployment of assets since the operation began. The Fargo was ordered to return with as much alacrity as it could afford, though her orders were complicated with an active operation going at the current time.
Daggers 2 and 3 would ferry up the rest of the team within four hours. The facility was picked apart pretty cleanly. John had ordered every terminal to be inspected but had little hope of finding anything useful. Presuming nothing was found he suggested that the colony’s authorities dismantle and recycle this base.
Deborah began waking up but was surprised to find her strapped into a gurney, “What the hell happened.”
She frantically tried to get up but failed. Then her head was darting around. Her eyes bulged when she realized she lacked a left arm. Then the phantom pain registered as she let out a blood-curdling scream. It was stopped when she noticed a specter of death looming over her.
“Lieutenant Commander Murphy, I am placing you under arrest under article four-six-seven of the officer’s code of conduct. The charges you will be facing will be related to an unknown yet number of espionage charges, attempted murder, and misuse of military equipment,” John flashed an evil grin, “I’m sure there will be more charges as we investigate your doings more thoroughly.”
Deborah let out a quiet whimper and relaxed on the gurney.
“Because of the severity of your charges and your overwhelming guilt I am invoking the special clause,” John smiled as he loomed over her, “You’ll note that I didn’t say you were being charged with treason.”
“You cannot be serious. All of us, irrespective of what we may do, are afforded proper representation.”
“I’ve been busy,” John said menacingly, “As you are well aware, because of your position within Naval Intelligence, in cases where treason is provable beyond any reasonable doubt, we can receive an initial bench verdict and suspend all interaction with lawyers until our investigation is complete.”
“Oh… no…” tears were streaming down Deborah’s face as she whimpered.
“Commander, I am happy to announce that you were already found guilty of treason while you were knocked out. You have been stripped of your rank and your pension has been forfeited. You will also be required to pay a cash penalty of an amount I couldn’t be bothered to read. Use the time that you have left to see whether or not you believe in those ideals that have brought you so low, or will you attempt to find a semblance of redemption to the nation you swore an oath to defend.”
John loomed over her as a menacing goaler. Deborah was awash with emotion and regret. The shock of her wound shook her to the core, and she wondered if she really believed in Dr. Norman’s life-long mission. It clearly seemed that the ends were not justifying the means given the situation she found herself in. Her head was killing her, she regressed inward when she realized that she had the ignoble distinction of being knocked out with one’s own arm. That she no longer had any future was also weighing heavily on her.
A handful of people are tried and convicted of treason each year. Less than a tenth of them receive a speedy bench verdict. Those who do are put to death almost as if it were a matter of standard policy. That inner turmoil between being caught, facing death, and questioning her beliefs had taken full hold of her. Her only response was more uncontrolled crying.