Cortes Base, Tewanta A 7 A - 3306-07-08 15:01 GST
Commander Graves sat in the conference room in Cortes Base. With him were Field Surgeon O'Boyle and Captain Dubois, the commander of the base marines. The Captain was a big man, broad across the shoulders and trim. The sort of leader to stand with his troops on the front line. The Surgeon was his usual intent self. They were conferenced in with Colonel Bierski, and Admirals Schmidt and McDonald. The Colonel looked as fit and as strong as Commander Graves had ever seen him. Admiral Schmidt was in his mid fifties with a narrow face, and long lanky build. He looked drawn, his gaze slowly drifting off to the distance and then snapping back to focus on his screen. Commander Graves recognized the look: the stress of fighting a long battle and heavy responsibilities. Admiral McDonald was a tall and athletic with the smug confident expression of someone with zero imagination. He was the last of Colonel Cortes's supporters still on the command team, mostly because he was a dedicated follower and enforcer of regulations. Graves hated him.
"Gentlemen! As you are aware, we are in a struggle with the League of Tewanta and though we are fighting hard, the tide of battle is turning against us. We need options.", demanded Colonel Bierski.
"Our main issue is lack of trained personnel. Although, we have lost a lot of influence in recent times, our finances have never been more secure. Our troops are better equiped than ever. And we are using them as effectively as possible.", responded Admiral Schmidt.
"I concur.", replied Admiral McDonald, "We are making every effort."
Commander Graves stiffled a snort.
"Every effort isn't good enough!", bellowed Colonel Bierski. "If we lose Cortes Base, then The Order is finished! We have no other assets!"
"With all respect, I believe the Colonel underestimates our mobile assets, finances, and intelligence networks. In fact, we may be able to turn the loss of the base into a strategic advantage.", said Commander Graves.
Colonel Bierski frowned, drew a deep breath and responded, "In what way?"
"The League of Tewanta are allied with the Alliance. However, their intelligence and spy craft are sub-par for an Alliance organization. This facility could be prepared as an infiltration vector into Alliance communications."
"What about your current intelligence operations? Wouldn't they be affected?", the colonel asked.
"The sensitive analysis work could just as easily be carried out onboard a ship. Standard business class passenger cabins have the terminals and workspaces needed and our compute resources could easily be disguised as supercruise assist and docking assist modules. In fact, it may be an improvement on our current communications set up. We believe that The Buurian Protectorate have developed the capability of detecting the end points of WSTCP communications when one end point is in a system where they have assets."
Commander Graves noticed the look of alarm that flashed briefly across Colonel Bierski's face and continued, "Do not worry, sir. You are perfectly safe. The Buur Pit are currently engaged in some form of operation in the Pleiades Sector and CMDR Yaga Shura and the other assassins are deployed there, along with at least three fleet carriers. However, I do recommend jumping a few systems away after this conference, as a precaution."
"And your facilities, Surgeon O'Boyle?", asked the colonel, a note of relief detectable in his voice.
"Without a steady supply of condemned prisoners, the space I require for my research is modest. A class 7 cargo bay and a class 6 business class passenger cabin could easily be modified to house my laboratory and medbay.", replied the base's commander and chief medical officer.
"Do you have enough time to prepare the base, Commander Graves?"
"It'll take my team about 32 working hours to complete. Given the urgency, we should work 16 hour days. That will require medical support.", replied Commander Graves. Surgeon O'Boyle stared at him, knowing it was a step back onto Commander Graves's path of addiction.
Colonel Bierski sat with a deep frown. After what felt like an eternity to Commander Graves, he replied, "Do it!"
Cortes Base, Tewanta A 7 A - 3306-07- 11:07 GST
Commander Graves sat on a storage box with a laptop computer balanced on the thigh plates of his powered armour suit. The suit's helmet was on the floor beside him. He was in the room containing the life support system for Cortes Base with his laptop plugged in to a diagnostic port. In the distance, he could hear the muffled staccato of small arms fire. The League of Tewanta had breached the base ten minutes ago, and the Official Tewanta Order marines were providing heavy resistance. It was mostly for show: they wanted the invaders to believe they were gaining a valuable asset, rather than the security vulnerability that it actually was.
"LoT forces have checkpoint bravo dialed in. Falling back to checkpoint charlie.", barked Sergeant Kruger on comms.
Commander Graves ran the last tests on his current work, a time bomb software routine embedded in the life support computer. It would cause a fluctuating build up of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the base about a week into the future. This was a last minute addition to their plan suggested by Captain Fredericks. Their main work was a set of software processes that listened in on and made copies of all the base communications before they were encrypted or after they were decrypted. These copies were then sent along a hidden cable to a small mining installation about 25 kilometers north of Cortes Base where it would transmit on a scheduled basis via tightbeam maser to an Official Tewanta Order ship in orbit. The cable connection was physically hidden, and as far as the network operating system was concerned, it didn't exist for any process other than the spy processes. Those didn't show up for any normal diagnostic tools either. The team had modified the diagnostic systems to reinstall the processes, if they were removed by system maintenance somehow, and modified the life support system to make sure that the installer embedded in the diagnostic system was always there, and reinsert it if it wasn't. It would take a complete shutdown and reinstall of the base computing systems to remove the spyware. It was perfect: resilient and undetectable. However, Captain Fredericks pointed out that it was too perfect. The base would be considered suspect and would never be trusted with sensitive information, unless the League of Tewanta techs. believed that they had found all the tampered systems. So, Commander Graves and his team had added some easier to find sabotage. He was the last to finish up. The others had already evacuated.
The tests finished, and indicated that they had passed. Commander Graves removed the cable from the life support diagnostic port, packed up his laptop and stowed it in his backpack. He put on his helmet, drew his laser pistol, walked to the door. He opened it and peeked outside. It was clear. A sub-machinegun fired a burst of rounds distressingly nearby. Captain Dubois and two more marines came around a corner. He flashed the "okay" hand signal and Captain Dubois acknowledged it. One of the marines fired his assault rifle down the corridor from which they came while the other set up a proximity mine.
"The Crow is clear. All units fall back to checkpoint omega.", barked Captain Dubois over the comms.
The four of them made their way to the lowest level of the base. On three occasions, a tremor, followed by a dull thud, indicated the invaders had found a proximity mine. They entered a storage room. Sergeant Kruger and two other marines were there already, setting up an automated sentry turret and booby traps. Behind some crates, a doorway leading to their escape tunnel was visible. The booby traps, when detonated would collapse the tunnel. They had to hope they were far enough along, when that happened, to be clear.
Commander Graves ran into the tunnel, the marines and their officers following.
They ran for about 10 minutes when Captain Dubois announced, "I'm looking at the turret camera feed: they've engaged the turret! Oh, they've gone straight to plasma grenades!"
Commander Graves heard a roar and felt the shockwave on his back. It wasn't strong enough to knock him over but it was strong.
"With any luck, they will think they caused that themselves. Whatever they think though, they won't get to us through that end of the tunnel.", said Sergeant Kruger.
The seven of them marched on in silence through the dark narrow tunnel. After two hours, the tunnel widened slightly and they topped up suit batteries and oxygen from a small cache that was left there. Another two hours brought them to the exit of their tunnel. It was in a deep narrow valley about 20km north of Cortes Base. Just outside the exit, hidden under camouflage netting, were a small APC and two Scarab SRVs. The seven of them removed the netting and climbed into the vehicles and set off. They drove east along the valley floor for about 20km before climbing out of the valley. Then they turned north across an short plateau before plunging down into another deep valley. At the bottom of this one Commander Graves could see a number of ships: the Type 10 that Surgeon O'Boyle had selected, his Beluga, two Vultures, and three Viper Mk IVs. All the ships were dark and cold. When they reached within 500m the ships lit up in unison and access ladders and ramps were lowered. They quickly left their vehicles and the marines lobbed plasma grenades into them, before racing towards the ships. Commander Graves saw them explode as he ran up the Beluga's access ramp. Lieutenant Kohira was waiting for him at the top, and directed him to his acceleration couch as the ships took off. He had escaped. Only time would tell if his plan had worked.