"What'd he say?" Taylor asked over his shoulder.
"We might have a— Ah, he wasn't in," Jacob quickly amended his answer as Zadra walked into the room escorted by Mettler.
"Who wasn't in what?" she asked.
"I tried contacting Captain Webb to let him know where we were and that Scarponi was on this world, but he wasn't in his office," Jacob said, not lying but certainly withholding the entire truth from her. He didn't distrust her specifically, but she was still a foreign national with no clearance for sensitive information.
"What's our next move, LT?" MG asked. He was stuffing his face again, taking advantage of the better food after the slim pickings they had on the Eshquarian gunboat on the flight out to Theta Suden.
"As soon as we've narrowed our search area to a few blocks, we'll need to get live intel," Jacob said. "For right now, I just want to confirm identity and observe. Scarponi is with another human collaborator, and we don't know the strength of the Ull contingent here."
"What if I happen to be observing that piece of shit and he walks close enough that I can pop him without being exposed?" Mettler asked. "Like, it's the perfect shot. Scarponi would just be standing there with no civilians in the area or Ull near him and I would just send a single shot to put him out of our misery?"
"Identify and observe," Jacob said firmly. "If you run across something you think changes the mission complexion, call it in. Murph, I assume this safe house is fully stocked with weapons and com gear?"
"All that plus local clothing, Nexus access points, and currency," Murph said. "There are even a couple decent disguises in there that will mask our species."
"Start kitting up the gear with MG," Jacob said. "Zadra and Taylor will get us a location and we'll get started. It's early morning local time right now. I want to be outfitted and moving out of here by late afternoon. Get to it."
"Wow, you NIS slugs really know how to plan for a party. Why is this place here in the first place?"
"Classified," Murph said, brushing by MG and turning on the rest of the lights. The room they were in was a hidden vault under the subbasement that served as both a fortified panic room and a well-stocked armory.
"You ever been out this way before?" Mettler asked. He'd not been given a specific assignment, so he'd tagged along with the other two. He said that when Zadra would work with all four of her arms it gave him the creeps.
"This is only my second assignment," Murph said. "I completed my training about the same time you guys made it through NAVSOC prelims."
"I was grandfathered in," Mettler said. "I'm ex-Force Recon so they let me skip all the indoc bullshit. I did two months on Restaria training with the Galvetic Legions, two weeks in the infirmary recovering from that, and then it was mostly classroom work prepping for what we'd run into out here."
"I'm one of the few who wasn't prior U.S. or British military in this outfit," MG said. "I enlisted thinking I was going into the Navy, but after my physical fitness test, they pressured me into joining the Corps. I was almost all the way through Basic when I was approached by a Navy lieutenant about volunteering for a new composite force that was being propped up. I signed the paper once he said it came with an automatic step promotion and bonus pay."
"My story isn't too far off from yours," Murph said. "I was in my second year at Ohio State when the money ran out. It was either saddle up with crippling student loans or see what this new space military could offer. I took all the aptitude tests and was contacted by someone in Washington DC asking if I was interested in serving my planet in alternative ways. It turns out they were recruiting for the NIS and skimming off all the recruits that showed certain aptitudes on the tests."
"So, the NIS takes the super smart ones and lets the dipshits through to become officers in the regular Fleet. Sounds about right," MG said.
"Actually, it had little to do with IQ," Murph said. "They look for your ability to pick out patterns, notice obscure details, and mostly just match up psychological compatibility for intelligence work."
"Speaking of bullshit stories and lying-ass punks on our team—"
"I don't think that's what we were talking about," Murph objected.
"—what do we think of our new LT? Are any of you buying that he's some fresh greenhorn right out of the Academy? Is he one of yours?" MG asked.
"Even if he was, I couldn't tell you," Murph said as he began pulling weapons off a wall-rack and handing them to Mettler to check. "But as far as I know, Brown is a legit newbie second lieutenant who got conned into taking a commission into the Marines so he could be a ground team commander in Scout Fleet. Mosler told me he has some special family connection and that's why Webb wanted him."
"I still don't buy it," MG insisted. "Yeah, at first he didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground—remember when he froze up in that apartment and almost got pasted?—but now it's like he's been doing this for years. I mean, shit, I have been doing this for years and seeing these aliens still freaks me out sometimes."
"I literally shit myself the first two times I stepped off a ship and had to talk to an alien." Mettler shrugged. "It's not a natural thing to fly away from your home planet and have to interact with all these different species."
"Only the first two?" MG asked. "You have me beat. I pissed myself twice in one day on Restaria. Every time one of those goddamn Galvetic warriors would roar at me, it was all I could do to keep anything in my body. Piss, puke, shit, you name it, it came out of me during that training course. I tried to convince them it was a natural defensive response in humans that would allow me to escape but, apparently, they were well aware of our species by that point."
"Hence the rigorous psych profiling we go through before being tapped for exo-Solar duty," Murph said. "Lieutenant Brown's tests indicated he was especially suited for this type of work unless Commander Mosler was lying to me."
The trio worked in silence for the next hour, pulling equipment and putting together individual kits consisting of local clothing, com gear, weaponry, and some specialized equipment that was designed to work with Taylor's neural implant so they could slice into networks and override security systems. Murph opened another safe within the armory and pulled out a pile of local currency and ConFed credit chits and distributed those among the kits as well, carefully annotating how much he'd taken in the log.
"We've still got a lot of time before we head out," MG said, looking at the mission computer on his wrist. "Let's just go down the line and everyone check everything over one more time."
They each took a turn going to each pile and verifying that all the weaponry and equipment was in working order and ready before hauling it all back up to the main level and locking the armory. The tracker team still hadn't come up with a firm location for either human they were after, so Jacob ordered them to get some rack time and that he'd wake them when it looked like they had something to move on. Murph would have preferred to stay and watch the search but the long day was catching up to him and it didn't look like Taylor or Zadra needed his help.
Chapter 23
"They're right here."
"What am I looking at?" Jacob asked. The view on the monitor was from an orbital perspective and all he could see were rooftops that all looked the same.
"It's a maintenance overflow facility for the city's public transport fleet," Taylor cut off Zadra before she could offer another sarcastic reply. Over the course of the last week, her casual insults and flippant behavior had been fraying at their nerves.
"It's still owned by the city, but isn't used anymore since the smaller street cars have been replaced by a new mag-lev that runs through the center. This building used to be where they'd store the units that were waiting on parts or to be decommissioned completely."
"Do we think that this group has some relationship with the government on this world or are they just opportunists?" Mettler asked.
"It's likely they paid off some low-level bureaucrat to write up an authorization for them to be there," Mur
ph said. "It's effective, untraceable, and far cheaper than trying to buy or rent a space. I can almost guarantee Hollick set this up for them, it's right out of the NIS field manual."
"I like it for our purposes, too," Jacob said. "Low civilian traffic, multiple observation points all around here, here, and here."
"Or…we could have Sully take that gunboat and fire torpedoes here and here," MG said, pointing to the two main service entrances of the building.
"Out of the question," Jacob said firmly even as Murph opened his mouth to shoot down the idea. "We're not opening fire on a— You know what? That's a stupid suggestion, I'm not saying anything past no."
"I wasn't being serious," MG grumbled. "Mostly."
"How do you want the team deployed, LT?" Murph asked. "I assume someone will have to stay behind to keep our VIP company?" Jacob had actually forgotten that Weef Zadra would not accompany the recon team, nor could she be left alone inside of an NIS safe house. He looked around at his team, trying to pick which of them was non-critical for the mission, and came to an uncomfortable realization as to who that person was.
"I'll stay behind," he said. "Murph is in command of the operation."
"You sure about this, LT?" Taylor asked.
"You guys all know what to do…so go do it," Jacob said. "You're all trained and have the needed experience and I can't afford to pull one of you off-mission to sit here so I can be where the action is. I'll be monitoring you over coms, and this is going to be just a simple sneak and peek."
Over the next twenty minutes, the team pored over the available data on the target location and began assigning observations spots to individuals. After the first few minutes, Jacob sat back and watched as his team of pros put aside the bickering and bullshitting while they quickly and efficiently set up a plan of attack that would minimize the risk while making sure the building in question had complete coverage. The young lieutenant tried to not fixate on any single detail and, instead, opened his mind up to absorb the planning session and pick up the methodology and rationale behind his peoples' decisions.
After they'd all agreed on how they would execute the mission, he couldn't help but be impressed. When they were aboard the ship and traveling, the Marines had seemed surly, borderline lazy, and not particularly bright. Now that the ground op was starting, their focus was laser-sharp, and Jacob could begin to see why they were considered elite. The attack on Niceen-3 hadn't been a good opportunity for him to see this side of them because the ambush happened so fast and in such close quarters that it was a survival situation more akin to a melee than a precision planned op.
"Don't take any unnecessary chances out there." Jacob had pulled Murph aside for some last-minute instructions as the others mounted up and moved to the rear exit of the safe house. "I'll have Sully on standby for emergency dust off if we've miscalculated. Just remember that this isn't actually our mission, she is."
"Don't worry, Lieutenant. I'll keep an eye on them." Murph winked at him, and Jacob couldn't help but be jealous of how relaxed and eager they all seemed. Pros.
"Go. Get it done."
"Where is he?!"
Admiral Remey had been terrorizing Captain Webb's staff for the better part of two hours, trying to bully one of his junior aides into divulging where the slippery NAVSOC chief had snuck off to. At first, she'd been discreet with her queries, right up until she figured out he wasn't on Terranovus and tracked his movements to one of NAVSOC's two command and control ships that had departed the system weeks ago.
"As we said, ma'am, he doesn't clear his movements with us," Lieutenant Commander Waterman said. He'd taken it upon himself to be the liaison between Remey and the rest of the office staff, which had quickly turned into him being the admiral's punching bag whenever she got an answer she didn't like.
"Very well," she said calmly, handing him a data card. "I'd hoped to talk to Captain Webb face to face before implementing this, but I feel he's left me no choice. Here are authenticated orders from Earth authorizing me to assume command of the NAVSOC group should I deem it necessary."
"You're kidding," Waterman deadpanned, seeming to forget he was addressing an admiral. He reached out and took the card, pulling out a tablet, and inserting it to read the orders.
"Not at all," Remey said. If she was peeved about his lack of proper customs and courtesies, she didn't show it. "This office has been under observation for some time, and the unaccountability of Scout Fleet operations in particular have greatly concerned the admiralty. There have also been...security concerns…that have only raised further questions. Captain Webb fleeing during an extremely sensitive mission while I've been here observing is beyond suspicious. Given that, he's left me no choice but to step in. Do you understand your orders?"
"Yes, ma'am," Waterman said reluctantly. He'd authenticated the orders with Taurus Station's own network and had quickly read through the pertinent parts, enough to know that Remey was really stretching the scope of her orders, but could still be considered technically correct. What the hell was going on here?
"Are we going to have any problems, Commander?"
"My staff and I are professionals and respect the chain of command, ma'am." Waterman's posture stiffened and his voice took on a brittle edge. "We will do our jobs to the best of our ability."
"Excellent. Then you may start by tracking down the Kentucky and two teams out of 3rd Scout Corps," Remey said.
"Which teams, ma'am?"
"Obsidian and Diamond."
"We'll start right away."
Waterman could feel her eyes boring into his back as he retreated. He was loyal to Captain Webb and believed in what they were doing in NAVSOC, but he was also a naval officer that had sworn an oath to obey the chain of command and all legal orders. His personal feelings aside, he had no choice but to do as Admiral Remey had requested and do his damnedest to track down the captain's ship. Finding two Scout Fleet teams that were in the field would be next to impossible. By design, the only way they would find either team was if they checked in or returned to base. Hopefully, he could make Admiral Remey understand that.
“Specialist Williams, please send out a meeting request for the operations staff.” Waterman flagged down one of his admin personnel. “Flag it as urgent and set it in Conference Room Three for thirty minutes from now. Attendance is mandatory for anyone on the recall list that’s currently on base.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
Waterman rushed to his own office to prep the brief he would give to his people, explaining that they were tasked with tracking down the boss and that, for the time being, he was no longer in command. Captain Webb had handpicked most of his staff, so Waterman expected a combative, uncooperative group. While it was his job to execute the admiral’s orders, he couldn’t blame them if they wanted to sandbag in a misguided attempt to help out their CO.
“I need to PT more while on the ship,” Murph huffed as he climbed up a maintenance ladder that led to the rooftop. His observation post would allow him to see the main bay doors that had been used to get the automated street cars into the facility.
Once he was up there, he stole a quick glance at the target building before breaking out his recording equipment. The windows had all been blacked out, and there wasn’t any sign of anybody on the ground. He put aside the tripod he’d been carrying and set the multispectral imager up on the ledge, as well as the laser microphone, the latter of which he aimed at a window on the second floor where the schematics Zadra had dug up indicated was a cluster of offices.
“Birddog One is up,” he whispered after keying his com. “Front of building is clear.”
“Birddog Three is up,” Mettler’s voice came over the channel. “Rear entrance is secured and clear.”
“Birddog Four is not in position,” MG said. “The planned observation point is too exposed…moving up two floors. I see what looks like an unused storage or manufacturing space with a few broken windows I can exploit.”
“Two, are you good?” Murph
asked. “Two?”
“Birddog Two is not showing up on the net,” Mettler said. “No sign of trouble. Maybe he has com issues.”
“Press on,” Murph said. “We’ll deal with that when we can. Birddog Actual, copy that Two has dropped off the net?”
“Copy, One,” Jacob’s voice came in thin and distorted over the low-power tactical coms. “Concur with onsite assessment…proceed at your discretion.”
Murph took a moment to reflect on Brown’s surprising level of maturity and lack of ego when it came to stepping aside for the good of the mission. Most lieutenants—especially Academy grads—were a bit prickly and defensive when it came to any perceived slight against their authority or abilities. It made most overcompensate and, more often than not, led to poor decisions in the heat of the moment. Murph had been pleased that Lieutenant Brown had come to the conclusion on his own that he would be more of a liability than a help, thus saving the team from having to point it out to him.
The beep from his equipment signaling it was ready shook him out of his reverie. He ducked back down behind the retention wall and viewed the building through the small monitor, hit ‘record,’ and settled in for a long, boring day. Peeking up over the edge and exposing oneself was for amateurs. The observation equipment Scout Fleet ground teams used was designed for stealth and flexibility. If needed, Murph could have the data transmitted to his mission computer, the terminal in the safe house, their ship, or all three.
The problem was that Elton Hollick was quite familiar with Terran equipment and its capabilities and would likely either have countermeasures or detection equipment of his own set up. Murph had mitigated that risk by placing actual observers at each point and having the gear hardwired so it wouldn’t transmit a data stream and give itself away. It took the microphone a few minutes to calibrate at this range before anything legible could get through. At first, all he heard was the hum of machinery that one would expect in a large, empty building. The air handlers alone would drown out most conversations if they were running. Soon enough, however, a few snippets of conversation began to get through the noise.
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