Chapter 45
Chapter 45
The wait was over.
Caitlyn Staziak stood on the bridge, in the middle of multiple overlapping conversations, as Task Force 43 made preparations for the final phase of the operation. The last six hours had been nothing but non-stop motion, every crew member doing their best to check, verify, and secure everything that could and would be used. All the nervous energy and frustration that’d been building since the mission’s beginning was being channeled into this one moment, and she had to admit to being caught up in it.
The captain and Gaelio – Major Bauduin, she reminded herself – were in the center of the room, overseeing the chaos without jumping into it. Ed swept his camera this way and that, moving through the space in concert with the flowing energies of the bridge officers. The documentarian, on the other hand, lurked in a corner in the back of the compartment, trying not to become part of the story.
“T minus five,” Claire Heathrow announced from her position by the communications console. The normally jovial young officer now had an intensity about her that somehow didn’t clash with her easygoing personality, but made her feel like a genuine soldier. “All ships report ready.”
With the final signal from command came permission to speak with the other members of Task Force 43… and only those other six ships.
“Acknowledged, Lieutenant. I want a warning at T minus one minute,” the captain replied.
“Aye sir.”
The tension began building, peaking as Claire announced, “T minus one minute.”
“All hands, prepare for high speed maneuvers. Inertial compensation to maximum.”
“Inertial compensation to maximum,” the helmsman confirmed. “Course locked in, engine room reports ready for flank speed.”
“T minus ten,” Claire called out, causing everyone to tense. “Nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… mark!”
A shudder ran through the deck as the Slepneir’s engines fired up to their maximum thrust rating, pushing the massive cruiser to what were once impressive speeds.
“Entering optimum range for mobile suit launch in thirty seconds!” called out one technician.
Another added, “Target vessel beginning evasive maneuvers!”
“Adjusting course!” shouted out the helmsman.
A speck of light steadily grew bigger in the distance. Slight vibrations pulsed as the twenty strong mobile suit complement was catapulted towards the target, its exhaust plume clearly recognizable now. As the distance between the two ships closed, more features became recognizable, until the target was fully revealed.
The sleek lines of the white-gold hull marked this vessel as a custom yacht, a ship that would catch the eye of spacefarer, especially at its size – roughly half that of the Gjallarhorn cruiser. Paradoxically, it was the ultimate smuggler’s vessel – attention getting, but because it was owned by a wealthy magnate who sometimes rented it out, legally untouchable. At least, that’s the way things used to be.
“Beginning deceleration burn,” the helmsman announced as the Slepneir sped past the ship, where the Grazes were already beginning to swarm it. Staziak grimaced as the stars blurred as the Gjallarhorn ship rotated around one axis to face the target upside down, then rotated 180 degrees around another axis to match the target’s alignment. Her discomfort increased as she realized the other ship was moving straight at them, even though it seemed to be slowing down…
Finally, when the other ship loomed in the bridge window and seemed to hang there, motionless, the helmsman added, “Velocity matched with target vessel!”
“Boarding teams have deployed. Alpha team has successfully breached primary airlock, Beta team has—“ Claire Heathrow paused, putting a hand to the headset she wore. “We have shots fired! Beta has engaged with onboard security!”
Even though she couldn’t see his face, Staziak noticed the way the major’s fist clenched at the news.
The next hour or so was a running narration of searching and seizing every major compartment of the ship, with sporadic gun fights erupting in certain areas. Tallying things up in her mind, the documentarian noticed an oddity. In the pre-mission briefings she’d sat in on, the Gjallarhorn officers expected to face armed opposition at the entry points, bridge, engine room, and server room – basically, every place that was essential to entering or operating the ship.
So why were there guards on a personnel deck?
Her thoughts were interrupted by Heathrow calling Major Bauduin over. “Sir, Charlie Actual wishes to speak with you.”
The scion of House Bauduin cast a look in Staziak’s direction, and she just held her hands up in a “I’ll back off” motion. No need to get Ed in his face, especially when the camera man knew how to snoop in on a conversation.
“Force Actual here. Sitrep?” Nodding, the major listened to whatever it was the officer on the other end was saying, before asking, “What do you mean, ‘the intel was off’?”
Again, he nodded, before pausing. “There are how many people aboard?”
He placed a hand over the microphone. “Captain, we’re going to need the other ships to pitch on keeping watch over the prisoners. Our intel on the crew complement was off… badly off.”
As the captain snapped off orders, the major kept talking into the headset, trying to understand the situation aboard the yacht. Eventually, he gave up, and handed the headset back to his assistant. “Captain, I’m going to have to head over there to see what’s going on in person. I’ll need your reserve squad as an escort.”
The captain took a long look at the major, then turned and looked over his shoulder at the documentarian. Staziak tried to shrink into the corner she was holed up in, but she knew that they had her dead to rights. The second she could get over there, she would.
Sighing, the captain turned back to Bauduin and said, “You’ve got them. Hopefully, our guests will behave and not get themselves killed in the process.”
“Thank you,” the major replied, motioning for the documentary team to follow him. Once they stepped off the bridge, he stopped and faced them. “Listen up. According to regulations, I should not be allowing the two of you into a potential combat zone. But in the interests of transparency, I am – so do not get yourselves hurt or killed over there. Deal?”
“That sounds fair,” she replied. “And thanks.”
“Thank me when we get back,” he warned. “Because it sounds like there’s a total clusterfuck over there.”
They hadn’t made it to the airlock before discovering what a mess this operation was.
Gaelio and the two documentarians were initially surrounded by a fifteen strong Marine squad. Now, two fireteams led the way along one side of the corridor, followed by the VIPs, with the rest of the squad guarding the rear. The other side of the corridor had corpsmen running gurneys with wounded civilians and the occasional Marine to the sickbay.
It took a while to cross the umbilical connecting the two ships, but once they were there, a Marine sergeant was waiting to guide them. Mouthing Ignore them at the Marine, Gaelio asked for a situation report. What he got wasn’t encouraging.
“Sir, whatever intel HQ got about this ship, its crew, and cargo was completely off the mark,” he said, exchanging hand signals with the lead fireteam, which moved ahead to ensure the path was clear. “We didn’t find anywhere near the amount of drugs we were told to expect and… uh… the nature of the contraband…”
His voice petered off, and Gaelio decided to give the man a bone with a simple question. “What happened to those civilians that just got carted off?”
Even through the thick body armor, it was clear the Marine was cringing. “Uh… we think they… were trying to commit suicide.”
It took a few seconds for his brain to process that comment. “Excuse me?”
Motioning for the group to follow, the Marine continued his report. “We’re not entirely sure of the numbers, but it seems like a decent amount of the support crew are Human Debris – slaves. Quite a few threw themselves into crossfires while unarmed, so…”
God, this is a disaster, Gaelio thought as they stepped into an absurdly large recreation deck. There was a pool in the middle, surrounded by at least a dozen lounge chairs, and everything oozed of too much money. The opulence of it all was an annoying distraction from the fact that his subordinates had shot – if not killed – non-combatants, even if they’d tried to not do that.
As they proceeded to the crew decks, he noticed that there was a large number of boys and girls sitting along the corridor bulkheads, all roughly in the same age bracket as his sister. He was starting to ask questions, and he didn’t like the answers he was piecing together. Most notably, why hadn’t Todo picked up on this?
McGillis wouldn’t keep the Martian around if he wasn’t useful, so either he’d botched the job and covered it up, he’d been bribed to not talk about this, or… the reason they’d thought the ship was a drug smuggler was because they’d built it up as a smokescreen for the actual crimes being committed.
That has to be it, Gaelio mused. They must have built the cover story to make it easier to do business with their criminal associates, especially in the colonies. It’d have to be easier to grease palms if all everyone thinks you’re doing is moving drugs around, instead of… kidnapping kids.
Proceeding up towards the bow and bridge, they encountered yet another group of marines crowded in front of a large hatch. Gaelio racked his memory and realized that this was likely the owner’s cabin; he couldn’t remember the name, but it was some celebrity he’d heard of in passing. Before he could ruminate on that further, the officer in charge approached.
“Major, we could use your help here,” the Marine captain announced. “We’ve got ourselves a standoff situation.” The captain paused as he realized there were civilians present. “When we boarded, the owner was in the middle of… some activities with one of the kids here. Apparently, we interrupted things, and she… managed to serve some justice.”
Gaelio sighed. You couldn’t have phrased that more diplomatically? Having a Gjallarhorn officer verbally approve of killing criminals who victimized children was… Actually, he wasn’t sure anyone wouldn’t approve of it, besides criminals who did the same things. So that would make that a more mainstream position, which meant that including it in the documentary was the better choice.
“So, you need me to talk her out of there?” He somehow managed to keep a straight face and not show any irritation at having this problem dumped into his lap.
“Yes sir, that would be greatly appreciated.”
Gaelio pulled the holstered sidearm he’d been carrying off his belt and handed it to one of his escorts. “Any weapons I need to worry about?”
“No, the kid just had a butter knife.”
The scion of House Bauduin just raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as the Marine cracked open the hatch and shouted, “You dressed?”
He couldn’t hear the reply, but then, he was busy pantomiming to Caitlyn Staziak, telling her to not film the kid if she could help it. To her credit, the documentarian moved over to the side of the hatch and set up the camera to catch his profile, which was definitely a much better look than whatever mess was in the room. It was slightly distracting, but he could work with it.
“Should be safe to go in,” the Marine observed, “but if anything happens, clench two raised fists, and we’ll breach. We’ll try for a non-lethal takedown, but there’s no guarantees in this kind of thing.”
“Understood. Have your people standby.” Gaelio waited for the hatch to open fully, then put his hands up and stepped up to the edge of track. Inside, he could clearly see a panoramic window, a set of couches facing said window, and some railings that curved down to a second level. Judging by the geometry of the room, the bed was probably between the stairs and below the couches, which was a benefit, because that kept the body out of sight. On the other hand, that meant the kid could be hiding anywhere down there. “Hello? My name is Gaelio Bauduin, and I’m in charge of this operation. What’s your name?”
He almost didn’t see the brunette’s head pop up through the gap between a pair of couches, but once he did, he slowly turned around in a circle. “I’m not armed, see? You mind if I come in?”
The girl didn’t say anything, so he tried dredging up everything he could recall about hostage standoffs and talking down emotionally unstable people. Unfortunately, everything he could think of had to do with people on the verge of losing their livelihoods, which was traumatic, but not necessarily on the same level as this… even setting aside “stabbing someone to death with a butter knife.” Well, he had nothing to lose at the moment…
“I’m just gonna step in here,” he said, and put one foot over the track the door ran on. He waited a few seconds, then moved his other foot inside the room, then paused. “Want to talk?”
After half a minute, Gaelio decided to speak up. “I know the guys with guns are scary, but they’re not here to hurt you. In fact, everything that’s going on right now is about getting the guys that hurt you and putting them in jail, where they belong.”
He couldn’t get a great look at her face, but he could clearly see her eyes and the top of her head. There was something about the eyes that was familiar, something about the anger and mistrust that rubbed some brain cells a certain way. But he couldn’t nail it down, and that would’ve bothered him, if he wasn’t so focused on keeping her in his sights.
“How do I know you won’t shoot me? Like those people on Dort?”
Gaelio wasn’t sure what threw him off more – the fact that she spoke, or the fact that she brought up Dort. But he had to reply, so he kept things simple and true. “Well, the people running things at Dort were the Arianrhod Fleet. We’re the Outer Earth Orbit Regulatory Joint Fleet. Totally different. In fact, part of the reason we’re here today is to prove we’re not like the Arianrhod Fleet.” He gave the girl a grim smile. “It’s not like they ever tried to do anything about what was going on here, right?”
He could see her eyes dart around as she processed that. Then they sharpened back up. “I want to go back to my family.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you back to them,” he assured her. “If you’ll put the knife down and come with me, we can get started on that right away.”
“How do I know you won’t toss me out the airlock for killing him?” The words were so matter of fact that they were a punch to the gut.
“Well, for one, there’s a squad of Marines out there that’ll kick the ass of anyone who tried that,” he replied, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. “They really like what you managed to do. Second, my boss made it clear that the lives of people like you were higher on his priority list than… well, just about anybody running this ship.”
That was not an exaggeration. For this operation, a flow chart of priorities had been drawn up, with the preservation of all physical and digital evidence at the top. At the very bottom was the life of criminals being apprehended. In between was everything from victims (second from the top) to Gjallarhorn soldiers (second from the bottom, but with a very large gap between them and the criminals).
He personally wasn’t sure it was a great idea to let everyone know that taking criminals in alive was literally the lowest priority on this mission, but it sure did help morale for the troops to know their lives were valued more than a criminal’s.
Thankfully, McGillis had listened when he brought up the point that they needed to clearly establish that once captured, the criminals couldn’t suffer any mysterious “accidents” before they could be delivered for trial.
As the girl thought things over, Gaelio called over his shoulder for a blanket. He figured that giving her the ability to keep her face out of the video was not only a general positive, it might convince her of his goodwill. He did his best to keep her in his peripheral vision as he turned to accept it from one of the Marines, fully aware that this was a prime opportunity for a knife attack.
“Made up your mind yet?” he asked casually, as though he had all the time in the world. Now that the operation commenced, he was probably being bombarded with communiques from all the space based units, which would take forever to get through.
“I’m coming out,” the girl replied. Gaelio watched her head disappear behind the ledge, the rustling of the sheets and patter of feet on a carpet letting him know she was moving. She slowly walked up the stairs facing his right, one step at a time, pausing when the top of her head peeked over the top. He said nothing as she made it to the top, blood stained knife in hand, wearing a generic school girl outfit without shoes.
The girl sidestepped towards a side table by one of the couches and gently laid the knife there.
“Here.” Gaelio lifted the blanket in her direction. “This might make you more comfortable.”
She cautiously tiptoed towards him – like a stray cat, he thought – slowly reaching towards the blanket. As soon as she grabbed hold of it, she yanked it back and around her, sweeping the blanket over her head. She had a confrontational expression, practically expecting him to challenge her behavior, but he wasn’t going to rise to that bait, especially since he knew she was just being cautious.
He swept his arm in the direction of the door. “How about we get out of here? I’ll go first.”
Gaelio knew that turning his back on her wasn’t the smartest move, but it would show that he trusted her not to do anything dumb or crazy.
Hopefully.
He managed to not look back until he was halfway through the door, an appropriate amount of time he felt. Naturally, the girl was following him and stopped, glaring at him. “What?”
“Nothing, just making sure you were keeping up.”
Once he stepped through the door, he made a point to not look at her or touch her in any way, turning to the Marine captain. “Get this girl to the medics, captain. And make sure no one gives her any trouble.”
“Aye, sir!” The Marine snapped off a sharp salute, then motioned for the girl to follow, before snapping off orders to his subordinates to form an escort party.
As he walked off, satisfied in his resolution of the situation, he suddenly realized one crucial fact: he hadn’t gotten the girl’s name.
Keeping his expression in check, he began mentally sorting through which pile of reports was most likely to have that information.
“General, we have incoming status updates from North Atlantic Task Forces 3 and 4.”
MacGillis Fareed looked up from the tablet he was holding and looked around for the voice. Unlike what civilians like Caitlyn Staziak might think, one didn’t run a complex, globe spanning operation from an office with a temporary augmented reality setup. No, these sorts of things were handled from dedicated command and control facilities, specifically set up for these types of operations.
A brunette at one of the consoles was looking at him, and he turned his attention to her. “Report.”
“Both task forces have completed the objectives, but NATF 4 wasn’t able to apprehend the smugglers. Their sonar caught hull breakup noises after they tried to force them to the surface.”
The whole operation was a smokescreen, a sleight of hand trick to keep anyone from noticing he was focusing on a few specific targets. These two task forces, in particular, were just around to handle drug smuggling ships and submarines in international waters. Closer to the shores, as a sign of the cooperation he was trying to foster with the MNCEA, each economic block was responsible for interdicting criminals… with Outer Earth Orbit Regulatory Joint Fleet intelligence support, of course.
“Very well. Signal both task forces – once all evidence and prisoners secured, scuttle anything that cannot be stored aboard and move to support…” McGillis checked a different tablet, one with the force dispositions in that area. “NATF 5 and 6, should they need it.”
The young officer acknowledged the order, then turned back to her console to pass it on.
Soft footsteps behind him set him on edge. Intellectually, he knew only those properly cleared to be in the room were allowed, and that everyone in the room was at least nominally loyal. But the learned responses of the past, born from harsh lessons, never really faded.
“General, Task Force 43 has reported in.” That was Isurugi, his aide, and now McGillis allowed himself to turn towards his subordinate. The lieutenant from the colonies was keeping an eye on the highest priority missions in this grand scheme of his. They were the ones he needed to succeed in sufficient quantity to achieve his objective – the disruption, if not destruction, of Rustal Ellion’s blackmail network.
There was the extra element that Task Force 43’s mission had to succeed for other, more personal reasons as well.
“And?” The general kept his voice level and casual, as if this one mission had no particular importance.
“The target vessel has been captured, but there was an intelligence failure and the cargo was… not what they were told it would be.”
McGillis sensed that everyone else in the room was paying attention to them, despite looking like they were working. He was fine with this, because he wished it to be known that he reassigned people because of their job performance, not because they were compromised agents of Rustal Ellion. Shuffling them off to some useless backwater was, at the moment, much easier than any actual solution to the problem.
“I see.” His icy tone made it clear that punishments were in order, and if there was anything that he’d drummed into his fleet in the past few months, it was that accountability was the order of the day. And when things went really badly, one would face the negative consequences of that failure.
“Have Task Force 43 return to base as soon as possible, and get whatever after action reports they have available.” He paused. “Depending on how things went, commendations may be coming their way.”
The flip side of the accountability coin was that going above and beyond deserved to be rewarded. Commendations were the easiest way to do that, especially in the crowded, cronyism ridden ranks of Gjallarhorn. Loyalty had to be earned and maintained, and recognition of merit was one step in the process.
“Major Bauduin has already sent preliminary after action reports,” Isurugi replied, handing him a tablet.
McGillis nodded in approval as he began scrolling through the summaries. “Excellent. Make sure they receive whatever supplies and support they require.”
Isurugi acknowledged the order and departed, leaving the general alone with his thoughts.
The fact that some of the criminals aboard the ship were dead did not bother him at all. The fact that some of the victims were did, but he understood why they took their lives. He had only survived his own torment by virtue of focusing on Agnika Kaieru’s vision and the fact he would gain a measure of revenge against Iznario in the process. For people without even that sliver of hope for the future, death was preferable to a potentially worse future.
That said, the preservation of the evidence had been more important than either of those, and his forces had succeeded magnificently there. With the information in hand, he could disrupt Ellion’s blackmail network, destroying the Arianrhod fleet’s hold over the media and blinding at least some of its eyes inside the MNCEA. It would destroy any pretense that he wasn’t moving against Rustal Ellion, but at least he could play things off as naïve righteousness for a while.
But most importantly, the mission’s success ensured that the Outer Earth Orbit Regulatory Joint Fleet would be seen in a positive light by the general public. It was hard to argue that saving people from a fate worse than death wasn’t a good thing, so it would inevitably move public opinion for his fleet in a positive direction. He could then leverage that in the future, when he made his inevitable move against the Arianrhod fleet.
He was rational enough to not expect untrammeled success. Therefore, he expected no better than 3/5ths of his priority objectives to be secured. Once he had those secured, the chain reaction of purges and prosecution could not be stopped, no matter how hard Rustal Ellion tried to counter it. But he suspected that Ellion wouldn’t spend much, if any, political capital to save his levers of power. At best, he would use some expendable, deniable agent to try to stonewall or bail out a few of them, and leave most of them to their fates, while cultivating new leverage.
It would be a mild inconvenience, but it was one McGillis Fareed would exploit as much as he could in the time available to him.
So he settled back, and waited for what the rest of his forces could provide.
Author's Notes: Getting this in under the wire, what with Hurricane Ian on its way to Central Florida.
Weird case of life imitating art - I thought up the idea for what Gaelio would find way before the Epstein story broke, as a natural extension of the stuff that was going on in McGillis' backstory. Iznario was hanging out in an orphanage, why wouldn't someone else do that messed up stuff on a spaceship?
The wait was over.
Caitlyn Staziak stood on the bridge, in the middle of multiple overlapping conversations, as Task Force 43 made preparations for the final phase of the operation. The last six hours had been nothing but non-stop motion, every crew member doing their best to check, verify, and secure everything that could and would be used. All the nervous energy and frustration that’d been building since the mission’s beginning was being channeled into this one moment, and she had to admit to being caught up in it.
The captain and Gaelio – Major Bauduin, she reminded herself – were in the center of the room, overseeing the chaos without jumping into it. Ed swept his camera this way and that, moving through the space in concert with the flowing energies of the bridge officers. The documentarian, on the other hand, lurked in a corner in the back of the compartment, trying not to become part of the story.
“T minus five,” Claire Heathrow announced from her position by the communications console. The normally jovial young officer now had an intensity about her that somehow didn’t clash with her easygoing personality, but made her feel like a genuine soldier. “All ships report ready.”
With the final signal from command came permission to speak with the other members of Task Force 43… and only those other six ships.
“Acknowledged, Lieutenant. I want a warning at T minus one minute,” the captain replied.
“Aye sir.”
The tension began building, peaking as Claire announced, “T minus one minute.”
“All hands, prepare for high speed maneuvers. Inertial compensation to maximum.”
“Inertial compensation to maximum,” the helmsman confirmed. “Course locked in, engine room reports ready for flank speed.”
“T minus ten,” Claire called out, causing everyone to tense. “Nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… mark!”
A shudder ran through the deck as the Slepneir’s engines fired up to their maximum thrust rating, pushing the massive cruiser to what were once impressive speeds.
“Entering optimum range for mobile suit launch in thirty seconds!” called out one technician.
Another added, “Target vessel beginning evasive maneuvers!”
“Adjusting course!” shouted out the helmsman.
A speck of light steadily grew bigger in the distance. Slight vibrations pulsed as the twenty strong mobile suit complement was catapulted towards the target, its exhaust plume clearly recognizable now. As the distance between the two ships closed, more features became recognizable, until the target was fully revealed.
The sleek lines of the white-gold hull marked this vessel as a custom yacht, a ship that would catch the eye of spacefarer, especially at its size – roughly half that of the Gjallarhorn cruiser. Paradoxically, it was the ultimate smuggler’s vessel – attention getting, but because it was owned by a wealthy magnate who sometimes rented it out, legally untouchable. At least, that’s the way things used to be.
“Beginning deceleration burn,” the helmsman announced as the Slepneir sped past the ship, where the Grazes were already beginning to swarm it. Staziak grimaced as the stars blurred as the Gjallarhorn ship rotated around one axis to face the target upside down, then rotated 180 degrees around another axis to match the target’s alignment. Her discomfort increased as she realized the other ship was moving straight at them, even though it seemed to be slowing down…
Finally, when the other ship loomed in the bridge window and seemed to hang there, motionless, the helmsman added, “Velocity matched with target vessel!”
“Boarding teams have deployed. Alpha team has successfully breached primary airlock, Beta team has—“ Claire Heathrow paused, putting a hand to the headset she wore. “We have shots fired! Beta has engaged with onboard security!”
Even though she couldn’t see his face, Staziak noticed the way the major’s fist clenched at the news.
The next hour or so was a running narration of searching and seizing every major compartment of the ship, with sporadic gun fights erupting in certain areas. Tallying things up in her mind, the documentarian noticed an oddity. In the pre-mission briefings she’d sat in on, the Gjallarhorn officers expected to face armed opposition at the entry points, bridge, engine room, and server room – basically, every place that was essential to entering or operating the ship.
So why were there guards on a personnel deck?
Her thoughts were interrupted by Heathrow calling Major Bauduin over. “Sir, Charlie Actual wishes to speak with you.”
The scion of House Bauduin cast a look in Staziak’s direction, and she just held her hands up in a “I’ll back off” motion. No need to get Ed in his face, especially when the camera man knew how to snoop in on a conversation.
“Force Actual here. Sitrep?” Nodding, the major listened to whatever it was the officer on the other end was saying, before asking, “What do you mean, ‘the intel was off’?”
Again, he nodded, before pausing. “There are how many people aboard?”
He placed a hand over the microphone. “Captain, we’re going to need the other ships to pitch on keeping watch over the prisoners. Our intel on the crew complement was off… badly off.”
As the captain snapped off orders, the major kept talking into the headset, trying to understand the situation aboard the yacht. Eventually, he gave up, and handed the headset back to his assistant. “Captain, I’m going to have to head over there to see what’s going on in person. I’ll need your reserve squad as an escort.”
The captain took a long look at the major, then turned and looked over his shoulder at the documentarian. Staziak tried to shrink into the corner she was holed up in, but she knew that they had her dead to rights. The second she could get over there, she would.
Sighing, the captain turned back to Bauduin and said, “You’ve got them. Hopefully, our guests will behave and not get themselves killed in the process.”
“Thank you,” the major replied, motioning for the documentary team to follow him. Once they stepped off the bridge, he stopped and faced them. “Listen up. According to regulations, I should not be allowing the two of you into a potential combat zone. But in the interests of transparency, I am – so do not get yourselves hurt or killed over there. Deal?”
“That sounds fair,” she replied. “And thanks.”
“Thank me when we get back,” he warned. “Because it sounds like there’s a total clusterfuck over there.”
They hadn’t made it to the airlock before discovering what a mess this operation was.
Gaelio and the two documentarians were initially surrounded by a fifteen strong Marine squad. Now, two fireteams led the way along one side of the corridor, followed by the VIPs, with the rest of the squad guarding the rear. The other side of the corridor had corpsmen running gurneys with wounded civilians and the occasional Marine to the sickbay.
It took a while to cross the umbilical connecting the two ships, but once they were there, a Marine sergeant was waiting to guide them. Mouthing Ignore them at the Marine, Gaelio asked for a situation report. What he got wasn’t encouraging.
“Sir, whatever intel HQ got about this ship, its crew, and cargo was completely off the mark,” he said, exchanging hand signals with the lead fireteam, which moved ahead to ensure the path was clear. “We didn’t find anywhere near the amount of drugs we were told to expect and… uh… the nature of the contraband…”
His voice petered off, and Gaelio decided to give the man a bone with a simple question. “What happened to those civilians that just got carted off?”
Even through the thick body armor, it was clear the Marine was cringing. “Uh… we think they… were trying to commit suicide.”
It took a few seconds for his brain to process that comment. “Excuse me?”
Motioning for the group to follow, the Marine continued his report. “We’re not entirely sure of the numbers, but it seems like a decent amount of the support crew are Human Debris – slaves. Quite a few threw themselves into crossfires while unarmed, so…”
God, this is a disaster, Gaelio thought as they stepped into an absurdly large recreation deck. There was a pool in the middle, surrounded by at least a dozen lounge chairs, and everything oozed of too much money. The opulence of it all was an annoying distraction from the fact that his subordinates had shot – if not killed – non-combatants, even if they’d tried to not do that.
As they proceeded to the crew decks, he noticed that there was a large number of boys and girls sitting along the corridor bulkheads, all roughly in the same age bracket as his sister. He was starting to ask questions, and he didn’t like the answers he was piecing together. Most notably, why hadn’t Todo picked up on this?
McGillis wouldn’t keep the Martian around if he wasn’t useful, so either he’d botched the job and covered it up, he’d been bribed to not talk about this, or… the reason they’d thought the ship was a drug smuggler was because they’d built it up as a smokescreen for the actual crimes being committed.
That has to be it, Gaelio mused. They must have built the cover story to make it easier to do business with their criminal associates, especially in the colonies. It’d have to be easier to grease palms if all everyone thinks you’re doing is moving drugs around, instead of… kidnapping kids.
Proceeding up towards the bow and bridge, they encountered yet another group of marines crowded in front of a large hatch. Gaelio racked his memory and realized that this was likely the owner’s cabin; he couldn’t remember the name, but it was some celebrity he’d heard of in passing. Before he could ruminate on that further, the officer in charge approached.
“Major, we could use your help here,” the Marine captain announced. “We’ve got ourselves a standoff situation.” The captain paused as he realized there were civilians present. “When we boarded, the owner was in the middle of… some activities with one of the kids here. Apparently, we interrupted things, and she… managed to serve some justice.”
Gaelio sighed. You couldn’t have phrased that more diplomatically? Having a Gjallarhorn officer verbally approve of killing criminals who victimized children was… Actually, he wasn’t sure anyone wouldn’t approve of it, besides criminals who did the same things. So that would make that a more mainstream position, which meant that including it in the documentary was the better choice.
“So, you need me to talk her out of there?” He somehow managed to keep a straight face and not show any irritation at having this problem dumped into his lap.
“Yes sir, that would be greatly appreciated.”
Gaelio pulled the holstered sidearm he’d been carrying off his belt and handed it to one of his escorts. “Any weapons I need to worry about?”
“No, the kid just had a butter knife.”
The scion of House Bauduin just raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as the Marine cracked open the hatch and shouted, “You dressed?”
He couldn’t hear the reply, but then, he was busy pantomiming to Caitlyn Staziak, telling her to not film the kid if she could help it. To her credit, the documentarian moved over to the side of the hatch and set up the camera to catch his profile, which was definitely a much better look than whatever mess was in the room. It was slightly distracting, but he could work with it.
“Should be safe to go in,” the Marine observed, “but if anything happens, clench two raised fists, and we’ll breach. We’ll try for a non-lethal takedown, but there’s no guarantees in this kind of thing.”
“Understood. Have your people standby.” Gaelio waited for the hatch to open fully, then put his hands up and stepped up to the edge of track. Inside, he could clearly see a panoramic window, a set of couches facing said window, and some railings that curved down to a second level. Judging by the geometry of the room, the bed was probably between the stairs and below the couches, which was a benefit, because that kept the body out of sight. On the other hand, that meant the kid could be hiding anywhere down there. “Hello? My name is Gaelio Bauduin, and I’m in charge of this operation. What’s your name?”
He almost didn’t see the brunette’s head pop up through the gap between a pair of couches, but once he did, he slowly turned around in a circle. “I’m not armed, see? You mind if I come in?”
The girl didn’t say anything, so he tried dredging up everything he could recall about hostage standoffs and talking down emotionally unstable people. Unfortunately, everything he could think of had to do with people on the verge of losing their livelihoods, which was traumatic, but not necessarily on the same level as this… even setting aside “stabbing someone to death with a butter knife.” Well, he had nothing to lose at the moment…
“I’m just gonna step in here,” he said, and put one foot over the track the door ran on. He waited a few seconds, then moved his other foot inside the room, then paused. “Want to talk?”
After half a minute, Gaelio decided to speak up. “I know the guys with guns are scary, but they’re not here to hurt you. In fact, everything that’s going on right now is about getting the guys that hurt you and putting them in jail, where they belong.”
He couldn’t get a great look at her face, but he could clearly see her eyes and the top of her head. There was something about the eyes that was familiar, something about the anger and mistrust that rubbed some brain cells a certain way. But he couldn’t nail it down, and that would’ve bothered him, if he wasn’t so focused on keeping her in his sights.
“How do I know you won’t shoot me? Like those people on Dort?”
Gaelio wasn’t sure what threw him off more – the fact that she spoke, or the fact that she brought up Dort. But he had to reply, so he kept things simple and true. “Well, the people running things at Dort were the Arianrhod Fleet. We’re the Outer Earth Orbit Regulatory Joint Fleet. Totally different. In fact, part of the reason we’re here today is to prove we’re not like the Arianrhod Fleet.” He gave the girl a grim smile. “It’s not like they ever tried to do anything about what was going on here, right?”
He could see her eyes dart around as she processed that. Then they sharpened back up. “I want to go back to my family.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you back to them,” he assured her. “If you’ll put the knife down and come with me, we can get started on that right away.”
“How do I know you won’t toss me out the airlock for killing him?” The words were so matter of fact that they were a punch to the gut.
“Well, for one, there’s a squad of Marines out there that’ll kick the ass of anyone who tried that,” he replied, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. “They really like what you managed to do. Second, my boss made it clear that the lives of people like you were higher on his priority list than… well, just about anybody running this ship.”
That was not an exaggeration. For this operation, a flow chart of priorities had been drawn up, with the preservation of all physical and digital evidence at the top. At the very bottom was the life of criminals being apprehended. In between was everything from victims (second from the top) to Gjallarhorn soldiers (second from the bottom, but with a very large gap between them and the criminals).
He personally wasn’t sure it was a great idea to let everyone know that taking criminals in alive was literally the lowest priority on this mission, but it sure did help morale for the troops to know their lives were valued more than a criminal’s.
Thankfully, McGillis had listened when he brought up the point that they needed to clearly establish that once captured, the criminals couldn’t suffer any mysterious “accidents” before they could be delivered for trial.
As the girl thought things over, Gaelio called over his shoulder for a blanket. He figured that giving her the ability to keep her face out of the video was not only a general positive, it might convince her of his goodwill. He did his best to keep her in his peripheral vision as he turned to accept it from one of the Marines, fully aware that this was a prime opportunity for a knife attack.
“Made up your mind yet?” he asked casually, as though he had all the time in the world. Now that the operation commenced, he was probably being bombarded with communiques from all the space based units, which would take forever to get through.
“I’m coming out,” the girl replied. Gaelio watched her head disappear behind the ledge, the rustling of the sheets and patter of feet on a carpet letting him know she was moving. She slowly walked up the stairs facing his right, one step at a time, pausing when the top of her head peeked over the top. He said nothing as she made it to the top, blood stained knife in hand, wearing a generic school girl outfit without shoes.
The girl sidestepped towards a side table by one of the couches and gently laid the knife there.
“Here.” Gaelio lifted the blanket in her direction. “This might make you more comfortable.”
She cautiously tiptoed towards him – like a stray cat, he thought – slowly reaching towards the blanket. As soon as she grabbed hold of it, she yanked it back and around her, sweeping the blanket over her head. She had a confrontational expression, practically expecting him to challenge her behavior, but he wasn’t going to rise to that bait, especially since he knew she was just being cautious.
He swept his arm in the direction of the door. “How about we get out of here? I’ll go first.”
Gaelio knew that turning his back on her wasn’t the smartest move, but it would show that he trusted her not to do anything dumb or crazy.
Hopefully.
He managed to not look back until he was halfway through the door, an appropriate amount of time he felt. Naturally, the girl was following him and stopped, glaring at him. “What?”
“Nothing, just making sure you were keeping up.”
Once he stepped through the door, he made a point to not look at her or touch her in any way, turning to the Marine captain. “Get this girl to the medics, captain. And make sure no one gives her any trouble.”
“Aye, sir!” The Marine snapped off a sharp salute, then motioned for the girl to follow, before snapping off orders to his subordinates to form an escort party.
As he walked off, satisfied in his resolution of the situation, he suddenly realized one crucial fact: he hadn’t gotten the girl’s name.
Keeping his expression in check, he began mentally sorting through which pile of reports was most likely to have that information.
“General, we have incoming status updates from North Atlantic Task Forces 3 and 4.”
MacGillis Fareed looked up from the tablet he was holding and looked around for the voice. Unlike what civilians like Caitlyn Staziak might think, one didn’t run a complex, globe spanning operation from an office with a temporary augmented reality setup. No, these sorts of things were handled from dedicated command and control facilities, specifically set up for these types of operations.
A brunette at one of the consoles was looking at him, and he turned his attention to her. “Report.”
“Both task forces have completed the objectives, but NATF 4 wasn’t able to apprehend the smugglers. Their sonar caught hull breakup noises after they tried to force them to the surface.”
The whole operation was a smokescreen, a sleight of hand trick to keep anyone from noticing he was focusing on a few specific targets. These two task forces, in particular, were just around to handle drug smuggling ships and submarines in international waters. Closer to the shores, as a sign of the cooperation he was trying to foster with the MNCEA, each economic block was responsible for interdicting criminals… with Outer Earth Orbit Regulatory Joint Fleet intelligence support, of course.
“Very well. Signal both task forces – once all evidence and prisoners secured, scuttle anything that cannot be stored aboard and move to support…” McGillis checked a different tablet, one with the force dispositions in that area. “NATF 5 and 6, should they need it.”
The young officer acknowledged the order, then turned back to her console to pass it on.
Soft footsteps behind him set him on edge. Intellectually, he knew only those properly cleared to be in the room were allowed, and that everyone in the room was at least nominally loyal. But the learned responses of the past, born from harsh lessons, never really faded.
“General, Task Force 43 has reported in.” That was Isurugi, his aide, and now McGillis allowed himself to turn towards his subordinate. The lieutenant from the colonies was keeping an eye on the highest priority missions in this grand scheme of his. They were the ones he needed to succeed in sufficient quantity to achieve his objective – the disruption, if not destruction, of Rustal Ellion’s blackmail network.
There was the extra element that Task Force 43’s mission had to succeed for other, more personal reasons as well.
“And?” The general kept his voice level and casual, as if this one mission had no particular importance.
“The target vessel has been captured, but there was an intelligence failure and the cargo was… not what they were told it would be.”
McGillis sensed that everyone else in the room was paying attention to them, despite looking like they were working. He was fine with this, because he wished it to be known that he reassigned people because of their job performance, not because they were compromised agents of Rustal Ellion. Shuffling them off to some useless backwater was, at the moment, much easier than any actual solution to the problem.
“I see.” His icy tone made it clear that punishments were in order, and if there was anything that he’d drummed into his fleet in the past few months, it was that accountability was the order of the day. And when things went really badly, one would face the negative consequences of that failure.
“Have Task Force 43 return to base as soon as possible, and get whatever after action reports they have available.” He paused. “Depending on how things went, commendations may be coming their way.”
The flip side of the accountability coin was that going above and beyond deserved to be rewarded. Commendations were the easiest way to do that, especially in the crowded, cronyism ridden ranks of Gjallarhorn. Loyalty had to be earned and maintained, and recognition of merit was one step in the process.
“Major Bauduin has already sent preliminary after action reports,” Isurugi replied, handing him a tablet.
McGillis nodded in approval as he began scrolling through the summaries. “Excellent. Make sure they receive whatever supplies and support they require.”
Isurugi acknowledged the order and departed, leaving the general alone with his thoughts.
The fact that some of the criminals aboard the ship were dead did not bother him at all. The fact that some of the victims were did, but he understood why they took their lives. He had only survived his own torment by virtue of focusing on Agnika Kaieru’s vision and the fact he would gain a measure of revenge against Iznario in the process. For people without even that sliver of hope for the future, death was preferable to a potentially worse future.
That said, the preservation of the evidence had been more important than either of those, and his forces had succeeded magnificently there. With the information in hand, he could disrupt Ellion’s blackmail network, destroying the Arianrhod fleet’s hold over the media and blinding at least some of its eyes inside the MNCEA. It would destroy any pretense that he wasn’t moving against Rustal Ellion, but at least he could play things off as naïve righteousness for a while.
But most importantly, the mission’s success ensured that the Outer Earth Orbit Regulatory Joint Fleet would be seen in a positive light by the general public. It was hard to argue that saving people from a fate worse than death wasn’t a good thing, so it would inevitably move public opinion for his fleet in a positive direction. He could then leverage that in the future, when he made his inevitable move against the Arianrhod fleet.
He was rational enough to not expect untrammeled success. Therefore, he expected no better than 3/5ths of his priority objectives to be secured. Once he had those secured, the chain reaction of purges and prosecution could not be stopped, no matter how hard Rustal Ellion tried to counter it. But he suspected that Ellion wouldn’t spend much, if any, political capital to save his levers of power. At best, he would use some expendable, deniable agent to try to stonewall or bail out a few of them, and leave most of them to their fates, while cultivating new leverage.
It would be a mild inconvenience, but it was one McGillis Fareed would exploit as much as he could in the time available to him.
So he settled back, and waited for what the rest of his forces could provide.
Author's Notes: Getting this in under the wire, what with Hurricane Ian on its way to Central Florida.
Weird case of life imitating art - I thought up the idea for what Gaelio would find way before the Epstein story broke, as a natural extension of the stuff that was going on in McGillis' backstory. Iznario was hanging out in an orphanage, why wouldn't someone else do that messed up stuff on a spaceship?