Strat-3 Chpt-9

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==Strategos (A Great Captain Roberts Tale!!) - Part 3 - A Light In The Black - Chapter 9==
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===Decks and Desks of Horror ===
Beni Leintz-Hertzinger volunteered…
…for the promise of an adventure with one of the Blessed Ones. She'd worked hard in Marine Basic to get here, and part of her resented being…held back, working for an Outie. She knew those feelings were morally wrong-Her Ladyship made the decision, and the Blessed One had already…but…
But.
The NCO from Evanescent was a planetborn from a hick colony named 'Northsun' and seemed to disregard all the proper forms of address in favor of a truly impressive command of invective and obscenity, chattered in a nearly untranslatable drawl.
Beni knew, in the fore of her mind, that it was wrong to judge Zachariah for his fluid accent and provincial views-the man was clearly competent.
"Anchor." she anchored on command, as the foreigner triggered the cutting charges to free the stuck airlock door.
Somehow, this almost made up for his impossible accent, constant swearing, and general lunkish provincialism, because instead of shattering the lock, the tiny driblet of cutting mix broke the hatch loose without destroying it.
"Lights, and Two, you're behind me." Zach-the-sack said it almost clearly.
She hefted the support-configured Mauser pulse laser and followed him into the airlock.
And got her first real shock.
There were corpses in the airlock, dressed in SLDF uniform.
Dried and mummified.
Hands locked around weapons and tools, and frozen where they were grappling to the death.
"Oh, this is going to be fun." Zach muttered. "Two, find the light switch, I'm still reading power in here."
"Aye Sah…" she couldn't make herself move.
She kept staring at the dead.
"Oh Dios Muerto!! Recógete, puta estúpida, y deja de mirar a los muertos, no pueden hacerte daño!!"
She didn't know what he said, only that it sounded awful, and threatening, and broke the hypnotic state she was in.
She found the panel in the airlock, and activated lighting and monitors.
The rest of the squad crowded in, closing the outer door and cycling the inner after deploying a 'baggie' temporary air curtain.
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The inside of SLS David R. Ray looked like a crime scene. "I don't think they're going to put up a fight…anymore. Everyone stay sealed up!!" Seron's voice came over the common channel, adding, "Shuttle bays look like a battle happened, and the sides were Star League Crew versus Star League crew."
"Squad, sling weapons." Zachariah ordered over the squad's channel, "I'm running an NBC trace analysis now."
<<"What's your speculation, Seron?">> Director Roberts' voice on the comm.
"Not sure yet, we're going to be taking samples for deep analysis, but this kind of fight...leaving the ship like this, it does not happen 'naturally', Over."
"Ballpark me." Beni found the younger voice oddly chilling over the channel.
"Aggression drugs maybe Or a psychoactive introduced into life support? The uniforms have the same unit patches, so the combatants were all from the same organization up here, Squad three?"
"Checking now." Zachariah's tone was cold and calm, more like a machine than the Blessed one. "I read…SLS David R. Ray DDG-13421, Seventh Fleet, SLDF, Over?"
"Same down here in engineering, looks like someone was trying to dig into the heat-exchangers, either during or just before the fight broke out."
“That would seem to confirm our working hypothesis that this vessel was part of General Kerensky’s original operation against the OWA during the Uprising period. I would recommend maintaining full EVA protocol and a scrub before return.”
"Roger that, Ma'am." Seron's voice was not hollow like Zach the Sack's, Beni found the tall man's tones…soothing. "Corpsmen, pick some bodies to autopsy, I want to know if these people went ape over a virus, drug, poison, or boredom. We're going to be staying on suit air for at least eight more hours. Acknowledge!"
"What should I be doing?" Beni asked meekly.
Zach turned, "You're tech-trained, ayah?"
"Yes."
"Good, we're going to continue our part of the mission while the Corpsmen figure out what killed the crew, we're going after the ship's data logs and internal security cams-that's..where?"
She looked around and let her imagination sort the damage, "Three decks up, port-side near the Core." she affirmed.
"You've got point, lead on."
Each deck was a new scene of horror, some of them, not just horror, but perversions.
Beni felt ill by the time they reached the EE Bay below CIC.
Golden Hind had taught her much about how to live on a ship and even conduct a boarding operation but they could not prepare her for the realities or horrors of actually doing it for real for the first time.
"It's not always like this, is it?"
"No, usually they're alive and shooting." Zach said, "Not…this… this is a special kind of horror, it doesn't let you get into a combat mindset, you just have to see it. Not the best experience for newbies, Hell, this shit is disturbing to me and I was on the Devil's Breath liberation, and Michtal."
“All our marines with experience are retired. They told stories about what they found at Lutyens 68-28, but seeing it. We needed to do more and sooner.”
"Two, I've fought this war for the last four years, and none of it was adequate prep for this." Zach said, he sounded sincere, "NOBODY is prepared for…this."
“Thinking about it I would be afraid of someone who was.” She nodded.
"That's good thinking, but remember, to the kids you're leading?? You need to sound confident on the channel, because they're relying on you, and if you sound scared, or shocked?? That can screw them up, comprehend?"
“Yes. I am responsible for them and I must do right by them.”
"Exactly." he said, "that's the right access?"
She started to nod, remembered the suit, and said, "Yes…hooking up now."
She stilled her nerves and let her fingers do the working, undoing the necessary lock-screws and bridging connections through her tech-rig.
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===Hello, Are You Real?===
"The good news, is that…
… we can safely recover our Marines." Stacey explained, "The bad news, is that we were wrong, and someone altered the records."
"What am I looking at?" Amanda asked.
"A Chemical Weapon. Hallucinogenic, artificial, triggers aggression factors into overdrive, sort of an airborne and water soluble PCP on steroids." Stacey explained, "The logs show a stop at Sevon V and Cerberus on their way out here, and a stop for work at Quatre Belle, which was an SLDF Fleet base when they visited, where, among other things, the life support was serviced."
"High concentration trace in the filters?" 
"No, time release canisters spliced into the ship's potable water and air filtration and treatment units. This was done to them. Someone did it deliberately."
"Kind of a shoddy chemical weapon, it took this long-" Lori noted.
"Not really." Amanda said, "Code Bravo Zulu X-ray sixty two. It was a pilot program to increase morale and combat efficiency." It was Amanda's mouth, but Desmond speaking. "SLDF special projects wanted to increase the effective efficiency of Star League forces dealing with insurgents."
“So either they miscalculated or someone figured it out and tampered with the system. Neither option is very appealing.”
"I would say, given the project was abandoned shortly after Forlough was called home to Terra in the Reunification War, that someone found the recipe and thought 'Hey, let's use the Terran's weapons against them!' myself." Desmond said, "The program dates to the early Reunification, Amos Forlough's troops were part of the testing."
"Thus, how it got onto an SLDF ship in…what?"
"Logs say twenty-seven-sixty-five (2765)." Lori mentioned, "That's the last log entry. That ship's been out here since before the Amaris Coup…some other David R. Ray with the same Destroyer Hull number was fighting for Kerensky in the civil war."
"Would Outworlders do that?" Larry asked.
Amanda answered, "My brother was lured into polluting food supplies with Milkseed. A few civilian contractors at the SLDF base could possibly be turned, so it's possible."
"The Vincent hull is RWS Omen, somehow the Rim Worlders got a Vincent 39 at the same time SLDF was an exclusive user, same timeframe…"
"Yeah, they just got their asses beat and died in normal fighting, though their logs show they were supposed to be working with the David Ray." Stacey commented, "Both coming out here, to hit a suspected terrorist hold…"
"The first casualty of that kind of war isn't truth, it's decency." Larry noted, "Truth is second, followed by anyone too weak to fight back or too slow to escape."
"What do you mean 'that kind of war'?" Stacey asked.
"Covert wars." Larry stated, "The kind that the higher ups deny are happening, they cover it up as 'peacekeeping' or 'field exercises', or anything but attacking, because it's politically…unacceptable to admit it, even if everyone but the civilians in the government know it's going on."
“And with the Uprising already started by that point it would be easy enough to hide. Hell I doubt Kerensky even knew this was happening.”
"Report from the station coming in."
"Let's hear it."
Carlos Ituralde's voice was shaky. "Sirs, Ma'ams…I think we're gon' need some of the smart guys down here."
"Smart guys?"
"It's a Lab. The logs down here term it 'high energy physics', and does anyone know what 'anti-matter' means? They've got four kilos in stabilized steady-state magnetic bottles."
“It means you do not press any buttons unless you are absolutely damned sure what they do.”
"Also there's this funny message on the screens."
'Visual?"
Hello, are you real?
"Oh, shit."
“I have the full extent of human vocabulary at my disposal and I’d say that about sums it up.” Stacey added.
"Mister Carlos! Look around, you and your team, look for anything you've seen on Port Orphan." Amanda ordered.
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A few minutes is all it took.
The visual from Carlos's helmet cam showed a Nirasaki 400 computer core wired up to a section of extremely expensive laboratory equipment. The kind that nations sink budgets into and get blown up a lot over the last 400 years.
"We found another one…Christ." Amanda whispered.
"Lab…Caspar core…what would they…what were they doing out here?" Larry wondered.
"Science." Amanda said, "They were doing the kind of science nobody's done in centuries out here…and the 'Anti-terrorist' mission was to shut it down, I'm willing to bet!!"
"Why that?"
"Because Terrans have to be first., they crave it, anyone gets ahead of them on anything, or looks like they might, they come in and stomp them down!!" the young woman almost snarled. "Desmond calls it 'The Mother Doctrine'!!"
“Given the situation I think it best you go ahead and make first contact again. My Star League ID headers might prove counterproductive.”
Amanda nodded. "I'll be coming over, everyone on the station stand away from anything that even looks like it might connect to a breaker, switch, or data port!!"
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