The captain went over to the far side of the room to pour himself a drink. Normally he would ask her if she wanted one as well. He didn’t today. He walked back to his neatly organized, mahogany desk and sat himself down. ‘Now that we’ve dealt with this whole you and Voss business, there are some important matters which I want to discuss with you. Take a seat.’

She sat down in the chair the captain pointed at. She hated those chairs. They were way too big for her and always made her feel small. Today even more than usual. She suspected the captain had ordered these chairs to be made so sizeable on purpose. A way to make his visitors feel smaller and easier to manipulate. She tried to straighten out her black uniform a bit in an attempt to regain some decorum. It wasn’t much, but it was all she could do to regain some of the dignity that she had lost during what had just transpired. The way the captain had humiliated her in front of Voss had been almost too much to bear. Even after knowing him for all these years, it still shocked her that he could treat her like that. It had been a long time since she had liked the captain. Now for the first time, she felt true resentment. The captain’s presence was becoming repugnant to her. Like a stubborn wart that was impossible to get rid of.

The captain spoke with a distant, authoritative tone. ‘You do realize how lucky you are that you have me watching over you, don’t you? If it wasn’t for me, you’d have been kicked out of the Fifth a long time ago. There are many who want to see you gone, both in the lower and higher echelons of our organization. Nobody likes an arrogant know-it-all, Vanmire. You’d do best to remember that I’ve shielded you from a lot of things and that my powers within this organization are not limitless.’

She felt her blood boil beneath her skin. For him to take on that tone after what he had just done to her. For all the nice words and smiles, the captain was a ruthless man. The kind of man who’d happily break dozens of his subordinates if it served his purpose. She couldn’t let him break her though, not without a fight. ‘Just don’t, Joakim. Today’s been bad enough. I don’t need you acting like you’re some goodhearted savior right now. I’ve done at least as much for you as you have for me. Don’t forget that it was my mission that you’ve paraded in front of the higher ups. I did all the work. You got all the glory, and then you reassigned it to that dimwit of a Verstate. And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, you humiliated me in front of that recruit.’

She feared the captain could explode into anger at any second now. Instead, he turned on his charm. ‘Cassandra, don’t you understand? I had to. You were stepping out of line. I had to remind you of your place. Do you really think I receive joy from punishing you? You and your actions forced me, really. I had to remind you of how the Fifth works and how this station is run. Did you really think that you’d get away with how you treated ordnance and supplies? Our personal history isn’t some sort of hall pass you can use to get what you want. You best start remembering your place and how you got here, Vanmire. I made you what you are today and I can unmake you if I have to.’

She tried to fight back. ‘You made me what you wanted me to be! You came to me. You got me into the Fifth. You put ambitions in my heart, and now you threaten me because I refuse to act like your perfect little servant.’. The words came out weak and desperate. He had her by the throat and there was nothing she could do about it.

The captain gave her a grim stare. ‘You’d better be very careful, Cassandra. I’m this close to finishing you and your career.’. There was no anger in his voice. He had said it with the same neutrality with which you’d say two plus two is four. He had simply stated what both of them knew to be true.

‘Please, Joakim. Don’t…’

A knock on the door interrupted them. The faceless ones had returned. That meant that Voss had received his lashes and this whole ordeal wouldn’t be held against him anymore. If only things were as simple for her. She wouldn’t be let off the hook as easily as Voss was. Recruits and privates had no idea how good they had it. No scheming or backstabbing. All they had to do was follow orders.

The captain completely changed tone and subject as soon as the faceless ones entered. Typical. He always did. He always wore that captain’s mask of his in public. Always acting the stoic wise man. If only he’d been more like that in private. Her hands and wrists were tingling. She slouched further into the chair, trying to find a way to make it feel less uncomfortable. She felt weak and defeated. Everything she had worked for the past year. All her planning and plotting. It had all been for nothing. He had her back in his grips. That mission had been her way out. Her ticket towards promotion. A chance to become a captain and gain her own command somewhere far away from this man. He had been a step ahead of her though. Now for the first time, she doubted whether she’d ever get away from him. Stuck in his web like who knows how many other subordinates.

‘Let me get straight to the point with you, lieutenant.’ He spoke gravely, like he carried a lot of weight on his heart. ‘There have been disturbing rumors. Tales carried forth by merchants. Whispers of war.’

‘War?!?’ This was the last thing she expected to hear from him. She bounced up from her slouch and repositioned herself forward in her chair. ‘Surely that can’t be? There hasn’t been war for hundreds of years. If that’s true…’

‘If that’s true, it could tear the whole universe apart.’ he finished her sentence.

This shocking turn was hard for her to process. Just a minute ago the captain had been threatening to destroy her career. Was this some kind of test? Was he just messing with her? Two minutes ago she would have assumed that was the case, but the captain never messed about when his faceless guards were present.

‘Are you sure they’re not just tall tales and an overactive imagination of some bored, drunken sailors, captain?’. The tingling in her hands intensified. As if dealing with the captain wasn’t bad enough, she now had to worry about the prospect of the all consuming destruction that war would bring with it.

‘No, I’m not sure. None of us are. Nobody in our cluster seems to know. At least that’s what they all say. Hard to tell these days what other planets are doing since that darn scourge lockdown isolated us all. For all we know there are planets in our cluster making secret preparations for war. Hell, they might even be planning to strike against us.’

‘Surely nobody in our cluster is planning to strike against us? We’ve got good relations with every planetal government here. All war between us would accomplish is a complete breakdown of production and trade, captain. A mutually assured destruction.’

‘Rationally there’s no reason to believe anyone would want to strike against us, lieutenant. But things haven’t been very rational the past few years. Paranoia has gained a hold over the empire. Think of it from a paranoid perspective. Fosfat has a bigger production capacity than the next three planets in our cluster combined. Our population is the biggest and if that isn’t bad enough, we can’t feed ourselves. Fosfat doesn’t even produce half the food it needs to keep its population fed. We’re completely dependent on their food exports.’

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The captain let a silence linger after finishing his sentence. She knew exactly what that meant. It was a test of her deducting prowess. He expected her to reach the correct conclusion herself.

It took her a few seconds to flesh out her thoughts. Today’s stress and fatigue caused her brain to move slower than usual. ‘...In other words… We’d have the means and every reason to do a preventive strike on the planets in our cluster and subjugate them.’ she concluded.

‘Indeed we would. Can you see now how fast paranoia can escalate?’

‘Fast enough that our old bastions are already being restored to full capacity, isn’t it captain?’

‘Sharp observation, lieutenant. Also fast enough that whole new divisions have been hastily assembled with the sole purpose of designing new warships and planning large scale weapon production.’

‘It’s that bad already, huh? What do we know about what’s actually going on though?’ The tingling had crawled up to her elbows now. She estimated that it would be mere weeks before rearmament and ship building would begin. With the spaceport’s construction docks operating at full capacity, the first ships could be rolling off the line within a year. It would be three years at most before the Fosfation military reached the point where it could successfully invade other planets; and who knew at what stage of military build up other planets were?

The captain, knowing she was building doom scenarios inside her head, tried to assuage her. ‘We’re not at a full blown war yet. All we have is sailor reports. There’s a chance this whole thing is overblown. Everyone we interrogated told different tales. Nobody seems to have a direct source. The stories vary wildly and none of them seem to have witnessed anything directly. They do all point towards the same thing though. Somewhere around the far flung eastern reaches of the empire, something is afoot.

Some reports only spoke about seeing one or two warships of unknown types. Others spoke of worse things. There have been some anecdotes of massive battlestations and entire fleets of warships. Some sailors even spoke of rumors about massive recruitment drives. Civilians drafted into armies by the millions. I personally find the more dramatic reports hard to believe, lieutenant. How any sailor could know anything about recruitment drives, happening down on the planets off the spaceports they visit, is beyond me. Fact and fiction often intertwine in these sailor stories.

The only thing that does worry me, lieutenant, is that every sailor we spoke to is scared to venture east. These are rough, experienced sailors, and they’re scared. This tells me that there must be at least a kernel of truth to their reports’

The captain sighed. When he continued talking, it sounded more like he was talking to himself than to her. ‘First the scourge and now this. Worst case scenario, this could mean the end of the empire. It could mean the end of Fosfat. We can’t take any risks, lieutenant. We need to discover what’s going on and we need to be prepared for whatever is coming.’

The captain’s revelations disturbed her at a deep level, but there was one thing that didn’t quite add up. A protrusive thought kept nagging at her. ‘That all sounds wild, captain, but isn’t this something the imperial government should deal with? Why has there been no response from them to deal with this threat, captain?’

‘I don’t know, lieutenant, but it surely isn’t helping. I hope they’ll respond fast because it won’t be long until the paranoia will target them too. One can’t help but wonder why they aren’t responding. Either they can’t, or they don’t want to. I honestly don’t know which one would be worse. Either way, we can’t sit around and wait for the empire to fix this situation.’

‘So we should take matters in our own hands? Find out what’s going on and form our own response?’

‘Exactly! And that’s where you and Voss come in, lieutenant.’

This was quite the turnaround from everything that had just transpired before. Mere minutes ago, the captain was threatening to finish her career and now he wanted her to lead a mission that could decide the fate of the whole planet? It didn’t make any sense to her. ‘Why us, captain?’

‘Because it’s a completely clandestine mission, lieutenant. Top secret, off the books. You’re the only officer that’s officially suspended right now.’

‘I’m suspended?!?’. That bastard! A suspension was a permanent stain that would haunt her for the rest of her life. A cruel punishment for one minor error. He couldn’t be serious…

‘Relax, lieutenant. It’s just an official formality so that I can send you on this mission. Complete it successfully and your suspension will be undone.’

She didn’t like this, not one bit. The captain’s words meant nothing. Suspending her benefited him way beyond this mission. It meant that he now had complete control over her. If she did anything to displease him, he could have her court martialled. He could simply deny the existence of this mission and they’d trial her for stealing the ship they sent her off on. Doubts crept back into her mind whether there even were any reports of war. Was this just another of the captain’s tricks? A way to get rid of her for good? But then again, that bastion was operational again. Surely the captain wasn’t in the position to order such a thing just to set up one of his ruses? And why would the captain want Voss on that mission? Why not someone more reliable?

‘It doesn’t make any sense, captain. Even if I’m the only officer you can send, then why do you want Voss? It will take several weeks before he’ll finish his basic training. Weeks that we shouldn’t waste if war is indeed coming. Why not let me pick my own crew and we could be off before tomorrow.’

‘Hah you must think I’m stupid. You’re not picking your own crew, lieutenant. I can’t risk news of this mission leaking out in any way or form. Besides, there’s nobody to pick. We’re stretched to the limit right now.’

‘Surely restoring the bastions doesn’t take that much of our capacity, captain? Does it really have to be Voss?’ She didn’t like this one bit. The captain had her by the throat and she knew it. If she didn’t complete this mission successfully, she’d be done for. And to have to undertake such a mission with Voss… Someone who had proven himself to be an unreliable operative. She’d have to find a way to keep him in line. Something that would have been enough of a challenge if he was part of a larger crew, but now it would be just the two of them. She knew she had to plan this thing out properly. The next few weeks would be filled with long days.

The captain pointed at one of his cabinets and one of the faceless guards walked over to get something. ‘War isn’t our only problem right now, lieutenant. The scourge is still a threat and there are domestic affairs threatening us.’. The faceless one brought a file over and gave it to the captain.

‘I don’t get it, captain. Domestic affairs? What’s that got to do with the Fifth?’

He sighed. ‘We’ve sent a good chunk of our operatives down to assist Fourth branch. There’s been a lot of unrest down in the slums lately and the higher ups have ordered every force out there to help out in any way they can.’

‘Unrest? Are the gangs at it again?’

‘No, it’s worse than that.’ The captain opened the file, turned it around and slid it over to her. In it was a red, yellow and blue image of a hand outstretched upwards.

‘What’s that supposed to be?’ There was an annoyed undertone in her voice. This wasn’t the time to have her play silly guessing games.’

‘It’s the symbol of a new religious cult. Apparently there are currently several of these cults spreading throughout the slums. They’ve become a real problem and central government wants them squashed at all costs.’

‘Cults? I thought religion was dealt with a long time ago? I didn’t know there were still people falling for such superstitions.’

‘They’re slum dwellers, lieutenant. They’re stupid. They’ll fall for anything. These cults are spreading lies. Telling them they’re being oppressed by an evil system. They speak of a day of ascension when residents revolt against the citizenry and then magically get picked up by space ships, to blast into space after destroying us. Have you ever heard something as stupid as that? As if those fools could ever rule themselves.’

‘I don’t know, captain. There seem to be quite a few intelligent residents. The ones in our program are far from stupid for instance.’

‘Dig through enough dirt and you’re bound to find a few nuggets of gold, lieutenant. That doesn’t take away the fact that ninety nine percent of slum dwellers are disorganized, dumb brutes.’

‘Sounds like these cults are turning them into organized, dumb brutes then.’ she quipped.

‘Exactly. Which is why they need to be squashed out now before they cause real problems. Last thing we need are large scale slum revolts whilst we’re dragged into war. Every branch of government has been ordered to send whatever operatives they can spare. I have no one else to send, other than you and Voss, lieutenant. Trust me, if I had other options, you wouldn’t be going.’

The captain grabbed the file, slid it back to himself and closed it, before giving it to one of his faceless guards. The guard walked back to the cabinet and restored it.

‘That will be all, lieutenant. You’re dismissed.’

‘Wait, what? Aren’t you going to give me the details of this mission?’ she asked incredulously.

‘No, lieutenant. No more plotting and scheming from you. You’ll find out together with that recruit of yours, right before you depart. If he survives, that is. And you better hope he does..’