Tara sighed as she pulled the neoprene knee sleeves up her legs, slipping them into place around her upper and thigh and knee, the familiar compression around her legs a comfort on her tumultuous thoughts.

The nagging guilt she’d be experiencing since her conversation with Aspen the other day in the back of her mind started to slip away as she stood and fastened her synth-leather belt around her core, the metal clasp tightening as she pulled the lever.

Bracing her core as she positioned her back on the bar, Tara’s mind took on a singular focus. She unracked the bar, feeling the whip of the stainless steel barbell as the sudden movement shook the weighted plates on either side of it. Taking a deep breath, she squatted low.

“Down, down, down… UP!” Her spotter commanded her, as the bar moved.

Grimacing and groaning as she brought the bar upwards, Tara felt her face flush with blood as she strained to move the weight.

After what felt like an eternity of struggle, she suddenly popped into an upright position, the weight on the bar whipping once more. Reracking the weight, Tara popped the lever on her belt and took a deep breath, ignoring the shouted congratulations around her as she sat down on a bench and pulled her knee sleeves back down.

Tara shook her head, her short hair plastered to her scalp with sweat. The small amount of distraction she was getting from the gym wasn’t helping. She knew she’d have to resolve her issue with Aspen to get any kind of resemblance of normalcy again.

She knew she didn’t regret telling Aspen about her parents and her mission. What she did regret was not going into the conversation with proof. She should have known better than to broach the subject in such a sudden manner.

This was the first time she’d ever made an error like this. She was letting her feelings for what was essentially a mission target that she had flirted with cloud her judgment - the same judgment that had been praised in the past and was the reason she had been chosen for this particular mission in the first place.

Tara shook her head again and\ stood and began to remove the plates from the barbell, her thoughts still on Aspen. The weightlifting was a nice distraction from her situation but she wasn’t able to focus fully. She clapped hands with her spotter giving her thanks, and made her way into the showers.

An unsatisfyingly short shower later, Tara sat on the edge of her almost too small bunk with her tab in her hands, staring at the blank screen.

Aspen had asked her for proof. Of course she would. Tara didn’t blame her, she would have done the same thing. Probably immediately.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Tara thumbed her tab to life and logged into the Meili’s secure network. Authorizing herself, she held her tab up and performed the rigamarole that was the biometric security system built into the service through which she got her orders.

After sweeping her tab’s camera around the small bunk room to show that she was alone, she was finally allowed access to the file system where her orders were stored.

Tara winced at the flashing red text at the top of her orders, CONFIDENTIAL, DO NOT DISSEMINATE. She winced again as she scrolled past the very next line of text which explicitly stated to not let Aspen know about these orders.

Tara scratched the side of her head as she pondered her next move. She’d need to find a way to get a copy of this information off of her tab and into her hands. Or find a way to show Aspen the information directly on the tab. Physical copies would be easiest, but the security system tied into the file system program on her tab wouldn’t allow her to print anything, and that was beside the fact that Tara didn’t even have access to a printer as it was.

Tara looked around the small bunk room, hoping for some kind of inspiration. The other bunks stacked three high around her were empty, all the other Marines elsewhere doing who knows what since they didn’t really have anything to do…

Tara spotted it. Her solution. It was a stupid solution. But one, nonetheless. One of the Marines in her squad was a nut for old cameras. And they had brought one. This particular camera was well over seventy years old, but it worked and she knew she would be able to take a picture of her tab’s screen with the old device and then transfer the files with its memory chip back to her tab.

Tara stood and snatched the old camera, rotating it in her hands as she searched for the power button. Finding it, she powered the old device and poked at the controls until she found what she was looking for.

Lining her tab’s screen up into the camera’s viewfinder, she snapped the first picture. The reality of what she was doing suddenly hit her, and she felt an immediate regret. Tara knew the consequences of her actions here if she were found out would be essentially life ending for her.

Shaking her head, she doubled her resolve to do right by Aspen and scrolled down on her tab, snapping pictures as more text came into the camera’s viewfinder.

Finished, she quickly ejected the memory card from the camera and plugged it into her tab and transferred the files over, then deleted them from the memory card. She stuck the card back into the camera and put it back where she had found it.

Scrolling through the photos on her tab, she nodded to herself. This was the best she would be able to do for Aspen’s proof.

Tara pocketed her tab and left the room in search of Aspen.

\\\

Several light years away, a notification popped up on a screen. The Marine behind the screen opened it and read the brief message contained within. He sighed, and escalated the contents of the notification up the chain of command… Operational Security personnel of his rank couldn’t do much about something like that.