Chapter IV
MarkWarrior
Well-known member
Chapter IV
Date: August 23, 2856
Location: Luyten 68-28
“Two Yardships, that are about halfway repaired,” Captain Daksha began. “And an entire fleet of SLDF warships that are near scuttled wrecks. Aside from one or two of the least damaged, it will take years, if not decades to repair the fleet here. So I hope that you have some good news, Major. Because this was not what we had hoped for.”
“Thankfully, only a handful of the people on the ground were combatants, and they all surrendered quickly,” Elizabeth began. “We also managed to capture the head of the facility. We’re waiting to see the results of a soft interrogation before we make any judgments though.”
“The preliminary questions that we’ve been asking have been positive though,” The lone Terran Hegemony Intelligence officer spoke up. “It seems that this was the station where careers went to ‘die’ for lack of a better term.”
“We need more people,” Elizabeth replied. “So we’re beginning a solid vetting process. The plan is to cycle them back to Bolthole while we arrange for this ‘Comstar’ to continue getting their regularly scheduled reports.”
“And when they inevitably send more people here?” Daksha asked.
“Then we get more recruits,” Elizabeth shrugged. “We’ll have to leave that part of the plan for later, for now, we have to focus on what’s right in front of us. For now, this site is secured, and we have the engineers to continue repairing the yardships in the bays.”
“But we don’t have the crews for them,” Daksha sighed. “We face something that we’ve never experienced in our time in the military. A lack of manpower.”
Date: September 1, 2856
Location: Halifax City Northwind, Federated Suns
“We are going to have to hold you folks for a bit,” a uniformed man in Davion colors informed Major Capell and Lieutenant Brown. “It normally wouldn’t be much of a problem, but given the Capellans have been advancing, we’re a bit on the defensive as of late.”
“That’s fine,” Capell replied. “Can you give me a timeframe on when we’d be allowed to go hiking a bit?”
“Hiking? In this weather?” The Davion glanced out the window at the snowstorm outside.
“Look, this is something of a pilgrimage for me and my brother. Our grandparents were from Northwind, and we’re hoping to see if their old house is still there in the mountains.”
“This blizzard’s supposed to last for the rest of the week,” the officer sighed. “If nothing comes back in the negative, you’ll be free to travel once the local governments give an all-clear.”
“That’s all I needed to know, thank you for your time, mister?”
“Oak, Francis Oak.”
“Then me and my brother will get out of your hair, I’m certain that you have other things to do.”
“Welcome to Northwind,” Francis smiled. “Enjoy your stay.”
“So, it looks like we’re going to have to bunk on the Messenger for a little while,” the two men stepped back onto the aerodyne dropship. “That gives us more time to go over and make reports on the intel that we pulled from Comstar’s databanks. The more that we get done here, the less we have to do when it comes to the future.”
“Right,” Goldstein sighed and rubbed at eyes with deep bags underneath them. “I’ve finished decrypting the few files that were hidden and encrypted. I also sorted the remaining files in order of what looked like priority communiques or information. Now, I’m going to pass out for the next twenty-four hours. The rest of you can have fun looking everything over.”
“Don’t look at me,” Brown glanced at Capell. “I finished the work that I was assigned, you’ve got the report on your desk. But there’s a lot more data than we expected to pull. It’s as if Comstar trusts in their encryption matrices above any enemy's ability to crack them.”
“Something to do later when we establish a solid profile.”
Bryn grabbed a ‘Noteputer and began going over data with the analysts and THIC agents. If he was going to be stuck here for a little while, he might as well be productive.
–
–
“So, we’re going in full cover I guess,” Brown looked at the half-meter snow that covered the ground outside of the dropship. “Otherwise we’d rent a snowmobile or something.”
“Something like that,” Bryn stepped out of a nearby cabin, dressed in warm winter clothes with a nice set of boots on. “Make sure you’ve got layers on and that your bag’s packed. You’ll need your SLDF ID and a firearm or two if we get hit by any ambush predators out there. We’re going to have to bus out to a town called Shawshank, and then we’ll hike out from there.”
“This is going to suck, isn’t it?”
“If it were easy, it wouldn’t be known to the Black Watch.”
The two men then left the dropship and headed out of the spaceport, Teams One and Two would hit the HPG while they were gone to collect more data points. But Major Capell and Lieutenant Brown had another task to do, and it lay in the frozen and cold wastes of the nearby mountains.
“So, are we really going to grandma’s house?” Michael asked once they had gotten off of the bus in Shawshank and begun walking up into the mountain range.
“Kinda,” Bryn replied. “It’s half code, and half truth. One of the founding members of the Black Watch retired to Northwind about a century or so back. But the thing is, you never really retire from the Black Watch. You simply know too much for that to be allowed. So, she became what we call ‘Grandmother’. And the plot of land she bought was turned into something a bit more useful.”
“Useful, how?” Brown quirked an eyebrow.
“You’ll see when we get to the cabin. If it’s still there, that is.”
So they plodded on through the snow for a few days and nights, and the local star warmed them slightly even if it wasn’t hot enough to begin melting the snow.
“We’re about a kilometer away now,” Bryn finally spoke.
“And we hiked out here, why?”
“Because we’re not casting suspicion on ourselves by doing it this way,” Bryn shrugged. “The last thing we want is for MIIO or the Capellans to catch wind of us. So we’re doing things slow and methodically.”
“Still, this is a lot of hiking for one facility,” Brown sighed. “I figured it’d be shorter than this.”
“It’s just up ahead,” Capell grinned. “We’ll be there shortly and then you’ll see why it was hidden out in the middle of nowhere.”
–
–
“It’s a log cabin,” Michael deadpanned. “You brought me out here for a lone solitary log cabin.”
“It’s nicely furnished though!” Bryn patted the other man on the back before heading to the ancient liquor cabinet. “They’ve got some nice stuff here too, 2750 Glengarry Reserve? Man, that stuff has a nice kick to it.”
“Please tell me we didn’t come all this way for a bottle of liquor?” Michael sighed.
“Nope,” Bryn pressed his thumb against a panel inside of the liquor cabinet, a few minutes later, the sound of an automatic door sliding open was heard. “Come on, help me move this out of the way.”
The two of them picked up the beframe and moved it to reveal a small hatch in the concrete.
“Shouldn’t someone have found this by now?” Brown asked.
“Not likely,” Capell shook his head. “This thing is shielded from pretty much every form of scanning known to mankind. And if you’re in the bunker underneath, then anything aside from a direct nuclear strike will be shrugged off.”
“And down the rabbit hole, Alice went.”
“Look, I just want to know where you’re taking us,” Jane Agnis repeated as she was escorted onto a dropship. “I’m not going to fight or struggle, but if you’re planning on killing us, why go to all of this trouble?”
“Kill you?” A man clad in a Black SLDF uniform raised an eyebrow. “No, we’re just making sure that you can’t communicate with your superiors. Everything will be explained once you reach your destination.”
“Conclusion,” James Durante muttered behind her. “We’re fucked and going to die horrendously.”
“I don’t think that’s quite it,” Jane whispered back. “They’ve not hurt any of us since the Precentor surrendered. And they’ve been disciplined as well. Not like what we’ve seen from the Capellans or Kuritans.”
“I’m just saying, this is just like the tactics the Maskirovka use back home. They lull you into a sense of security, and then, when you least expect it, there are cuffs and you’re thrown in the Gulag.”
“Hey, you two,” the uniformed soldier addressed the two of them. “The Major wants to speak to you.”
“Why?” Jane asked. “I’m simply a janitor and maintenance person.”
“Because Major Hazen just got to look through the personnel files. And both of your names came up. So I’m going to escort you both to the Precentor’s office. You’re not going out on the Abyss. You’re staying here, along with the rest of the people whose names were flagged.”
“Great,” James sighed. “Whelp, forced labor for life it is. Let’s go ahead and get it over with.”
“Moron,” Jane chuckled. “I think things are going to be just fine.”
Edit in place of Author's Note: The total number of people that the Hegemony Remnants have at their disposal numbers around 5k. That's in total. So they don't exactly have a lot of ability to take and hold territory at the moment.
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