Wilson Port, Tewanta - 3305-07-17 07:17 AM, Galactic Standard Time
Commander Austin Graves sat down at his console in the Official Tewanta Order war room in Wilson port. He had had four hours cot time and was feeling, if not refreshed, then functional. He quickly reviewed the events of the night. Firstly, the good news. Central Command had taken on the task of directing strategy. They had taken his report on board and gone for a full mobilization. Lucrative wetwork, black ops, & combat missions were funded. Authorization for the use of performance enhancers and combat stims was granted. However, that's where the good news ended. There were a number of setbacks.
The least of the problems was that his distraction plan had utterly failed. He had hired some privateers to attack Black Wildwood Ranch. He had hoped that this distraction would divide the Buurian Protectorate forces for the initial attacks. However, due to bad luck or superior intelligence gathering, some independent pilots from The Buur Pit dropped into the region surrounding the installation just before the pirates made their assault. The pirates saw two Corvettes and a Cutter drop from supercruise just before they did and decided to break off from their attack. Worse than that, they put two and two together and came up with five, and now suspect him of setting them up for an ambush. They have vanished and are ignoring all attempts to make contact. Those assets were now out of action.
The next most serious problem was that the main force assaults were not going as well as planned. Central Command had taken his warnings about The Buur Pit CMDRs seriously and had organized the initial strikes to be hit and run attacks on Buurian Protectorate forces. Unfortunately, the strike forces were too small, so about half of the engagements were won by the opposition. It was only a matter of time before The Buur Pit pilots managed to get to a Conflict Zone while the engagement was still ongoing. It happened five times since the war started. Twice it went badly. The other three times it went disasterously: CMDRs VenomX, Petrenus, & Tomasson each wiped out a spec ops wing and went on to rout The Order forces. Central Command has since changed tactics and has ordered attacks in force. That way the numerical superiority of The Order could come in to play. If only The Buur Pit pilots could be neutralized.
He had a plan to do just that. He had hired an assassin from the Empire to deal with them for 1 MCr per pilot. The assassin had arrived yesterday and had been provided with access codes to the security camera network. However, the assassin was supposed to check in three hours ago and didn't. The security cameras only showed him entering his hotel room. He hadn't been seen since. The officer that he had just relieved had sent a security team to the hotel room, but the assassin was not there. The room just contained two business suits, toiletries, a flight suit with remlok, and a travel case with three empty slots for a disk shaped object 10cm in diameter and 3cm deep, but no person. The bed hadn't even been slept in.
Commander Graves logged into the security system and check the audit logs to see if the assassin had used the access codes. He had at 8 PM on the camera outside the hotel entrance from a terminal in his room, and then again at 10 PM to the same camera from the same terminal. Seven minutes after that his access codes were used to access 25000 other cameras in the space of 30 seconds, from the first camera he had accessed. Just before the assassin was due to check in, all 25001 cameras spontaneously rebooted themselves. Commander Graves paused staring at his terminal. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. He then opened his eyes and sent a message to the information security team letting them know about the security breach and another message to station operations telling them to schedule a firmware upgrade for all 412311 security cameras in the station. He felt sick to his stomach.
Other than the footage of him entering the station and the access of the security cameras there was no trace of the assassin. This worried him deeply. What had happened? If the opposition could neutralize a highly skilled assassin and hacker without leaving even the slightest trace, then the situation was dire. He could only hope that the assassin was still pursuing his mission.