Chapter One Hundred and Fourteen: The Long Haul
Northwind, February 15th, 3026
"Easy on the crane!" Romano yelled at the idiot lifting the rubble out of the way. "You nearly crushed some of my people."
"Sorry Colonel," came the response. "Controls are a bit touchier than I remember."
"Just take it slow," Romano said as she smoothed out her voice. "It'll take a while to get this finished."
"Yes Ma'am." The crane operator responded as he slowly eased the rubble off of the roadway they were clearing.
"Alright, now that the roadway is clear, I want everyone in either their HAZMAT gear or Mithril," Romano said, "Sharpshooter shipped us a bunch of the older Mithril suits to be used for cleanup, but more than half of you are newbies who aren't certified on them." She sighed, "So we'll be spending a couple of days getting you trained up, and then you'll be paired up with the Oppies as they go through and start the cleanup."
"What are we going to do with all of the irradiated material?" Someone spoke up. "Because we can't just bury it here on Northwind."
"We've got a couple of Mules lent to us from the cleanups operations in Ozawa." She responded. "Those crews are already used to handling the material, and have been doing it for the past two to three years."
"You heard the lady!" A noncom broke up the Q&A session. "Now let's get you all to the spaceport."
"Yes Sir!" They responded as they loaded up into the trucks and headed for the spaceport where their delivery from Sharpshooter was waiting.
Later that day…
"I forgot how shiny the suits always look at first." Romano said to Godbolt as they sat in an upper story looking at the people getting trained on their new Mithril suits.
"Did you know that we call the new recruits on Kentares "Shinies?" Godbolt asked with a chuckle.
"No, but I can figure out why." Romano laughed in response. "At least you didn't do something stupid like color code the armor to signal rank. "
"Believe it or not, that was actually an idea that R&D tried before Peterson nixed it in the prototype phase." Godbolt said. "The very first prototypes were all white too."
"Well, at least now they're that gunmetal gray, and you can paint them over quickly." Romano said in response.
Liao, March 20th, 3026
"How did we not have something like this before now?!" Colonel Vincent yelled as she took cover behind Colonel Packer who was in his suit of Mithril. "Because no one else thought about making infantry viable in a fight again." Packer moved over to a nearby concrete barrier so that Samantha Vincent could stop using him as cover.
No sooner had they gotten into cover before a fireteam of Mithril clad infantry fell through the air on their jump jets, taking out the MASK team that were trying to eliminate the two COs.
"How the hell did they breach our perimeter?" Packer asked the fireteam leader.
"Tunnels sir," The Corporal responded. "They killed a dozen of us who were on break before we were able to respond."
"Everyone's suited up now though right?" Packer asked, setting his priorities. "We need to go over everything here and make sure that there aren't any nasty surprises waiting for us."
"Yes sir," He responded. "The perimeter team caught a bunch of them in sneak suits at the same time they launched the attack from within."
"I know that one." Samantha said as she pointed at one of the dead men. "He was a support staff member of the Reserve Cavalry."
"He must have helped them figure out what the right time to strike was." Packer said. "Good thing we didn't take more damage than this."
"Corporal, have a fireteam break off and go check on Colonel Vincent's people, MASK might have tried to wipe them out too."
"Yes sir." He responded, using a small slate on his left inner arm to navigate through the comms channels. "Diverting a couple of fireteams now."
"Good, now let's head to the command center, I bet we weren't the only things hit." Packer said as he turned away from the corpses and began walking to the room they had set up as a Command and Control center, not being willing to use equipment that may have been compromised by enemy forces.
Capella, April 7th, 3026
"Colonel De Salvo." Hanse shook the Blanford's Grenadiers CO's hand. "I wish I could say that it's a pleasure to meet you, but given the circumstances…"
"I don't like that you're here on a Capellan world." De Salvo said honestly. "But it's better than the alternative currently."
"We brought extra engineering teams to check for any NBC's that you might have missed." Hanse said to Peterson. "I heard you had some MASK prisoners on my way in?"
"Yes, Jones worked them over with a full suite of the improved Narco-interrogation drugs and they gave up a lot of potential intel." Peterson said with a frown. "But this is the original founding world for the Capellan Confederation, and it may take us months or years to make sure everything is stable enough before we can move onto Sian."
"I brought garrison forces, but I agree." Hanse replied. "While I want Mad Max brought to a court for his crimes, I don't think that we'll be able to move on until June or July at the earliest."
"Is it that bad everywhere?" Peterson asked. "We haven't been able to get the Interdiction lifted yet."
"Northwind was nuked as I'm sure you all know, but MASK cells everywhere have been using WMDs in order to deny worlds to any potential invaders." Hanse said with an angry expression on his face. "He doesn't seem to care about his nation surviving after this is all said and done, only that no one is able to make use of anything when he's dead and gone."
"There are billions of people on many of these worlds." De Salvo said with shock in his voice. "Is he trying to kill everyone who might have been loyal once?"
"We actually have gotten word of a number of Capellan forces cooperating with invading forces to help get rid of any MASK cells, much as you did here." Hanse said with a small smile. "My hope is that integration will come a little bit easier after this mess, and that we can recover from this stronger together than we did as two separate nations."
"We did get some word from the Taurian Concordat." Hanse said with a smug look. "The Taurians pushed all of the way to Grand Base and are probably going to be able to push up through to around Sian if Zarantha and Thomas play their cards right."
Kentares IV, April 4th, 3026
"We got the last of the NBC weapons that were stashed and ready to be used." Dunham said to all of his team leads. "And we got the last of the intel that they had to offer." Dunham stood up and began to pace. "You see, we monitor everything that comes to Kentares, and our security has only skyrocketed since the Comstar and original MASK bombing." He sighed, "So, the only way that they could have gotten anything in was if there were a traitor."
"Wait." Dunham held up a hand to stave off the protestations of innocence. "We aren't going to be revealing who the traitor was until we have all of the evidence that we need to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt."
–
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Hours later…
"Are you sure that this is going to work?" Rook asked Dunham. "Because I think that this is a dumb plan."
"It'll work, it's easier to find the evidence when they're panicked and trying to hide it then it is to go looking for it in everyone's trash or something." Dunham said as he took a drink of a popular sports drink. "And, everybody lies, especially in this business so we'd be jumping at shadows all day, at least this way we keep all of the records that they're trying to erase and can nab them afterwards." He pointed out the man they were surveying. "He's been doing this for a long time, see how he's not moving in a hurry, but looks like he's doing his normal work?"
"Yes," Rook said. "If it weren't for me literally having all of the drives here networked in order to copy all of the data over, I wouldn't even believe you."
"Ice cold that one." Dunham said as he took another sip. "We'll nab him before he gets on a Dropship headed out in a couple of weeks."
"Why would he wait a couple of weeks?" Rook asked. "Wouldn't he be trying to get away as soon as he could?"
"No, he requested vacation two weeks from now, and he documented it and everything six months ago, even bragged about his travel plans." Dunham explained. "This way it looks like he's just doing everything normally until he vanishes during his vacation and that's when I'll have a wetwork team grab him."