When John and Anne boarded the ship, they were escorted to the Captain where they showed him a suitably redacted version of their orders. He assigned one of his crew to give them an orientation of the ship and show them to their quarters where they could settle in to wait. They’d decided it would be better to keep quiet till after the Freighter left Cambridge Station, so they retired to their quarters to review what they knew about the issues plaguing the Academy. Anne gave John a full briefing on the layout, and the procedures they were expected to follow while they were there. They had three sets of orders to operate under. The first set, which was only to be revealed to a third party if their mission was severely compromised, or when it was completed, covered the full scope of their planned activities at the academy. The second set was the set they’d shown to the Freighter Captain and told them to report to this ship for delivery to Boontang. The third set was to proceed to, and register at the Academy for the Command Course, these were the orders they needed to show when they arrived there.
Finally, a little over two hours later, the Freighter undocked from Cambridge Station, and their journey to Boontang began. After discussing the best way to behave on the ship, they decided they should just be two newly minted, fresh-faced Lieutenants who’d only just been selected to attend the Command training and were excited about it. They made their way to the mess, talking excitedly about their upcoming course, and what they’d be doing on the way. The crew of the Freighter they were on pretty much kept to themselves, so John only had Anne to keep him company. When they were alone together, Colin and Anne talked about their lives before they’d met. She admitted her despair to him when she was on the Pirate ship before his Troopers rescued her and the others. Anne told him she thought he was destined for something truly unique, then laughed. When he asked her what she found funny, she said it was the name of the ship he was commanding when he rescued her, FNS Destiny. She said it was an omen and if he would allow it, she wanted to be there to help him along the way. After this, they lapsed into a companionable silence.
The trip lasted slightly over a month, then they were at Boontang Station, preparing to leave the Freighter. After Colin and Anne had disembarked from the Freighter, they made their way to immigration control, which was once again manned by some petty Official who wanted to play childish games. This time, John managed to keep a lid on his temper, so they didn’t come to the attention of the security guards near the gate. Eventually, the Immigration Official let them through, and the two Officers made their way into the Shuttle that would take them down to the Academy.
All the passengers on the Shuttle were young Naval Officers, all on their way to the Academy to begin one of the training blocks. The trip to the surface was uneventful, except the pilot thought it would be fun to practice his combat landings. The shuttle’s sudden jerky movements caused a couple of the Officers to be sick during the descent but, John and Anne weren’t among them, they’d both experienced worse in the past. Still, they pasted wide-eyed, terrified expressions on their faces for the benefit of any observers. After landing, the young Officers left the shuttle and were met by staff from the Academy. The Academy Staff hustled the trainees into a vehicle, not unlike a bus, for the trip to their destinations. The Academy Staff were not at all complimentary about the unfortunates who’d been sick during the descent, abusing and sneering at them for their weakness. As they boarded the bus, John and Anne both noticed the air smelled dry and dusty. There was a breeze coming in from the west, but the air was hot and dry. The immediate surrounds had a reasonable amount of vegetation, though, so John surmised that perhaps there was a desert to the west of their current location. When the trainees and Academy staff were all on board the bus, it set off for the one hour trip to the Academy. As the bus drove east, it gradually descended from the plateau the Shuttle base was located on, and the landscape became greener, with the vegetation becoming thicker.
When they arrived at the Academy, Colin saw that the facility was set in beautiful, lush gardens, with the buildings dispersed around them. The Academy is an enormous facility. In fact, it is several institutions, all grouped together under one banner. Consequently, check-in for some of the more advanced training blocks isn’t in the central administration building. One of those training blocks is the Command Course, which is run from a facility some distance from Central Administration. The bus dropped all the graduates bound for Central Administration first then the remainder were taken to the Command Training Centre. John noted, besides Anne and him, there were twenty other people, from three different species, intending to undertake this course. When the bus arrived at the Command Training Centre the remainder of the trainees disembarked, collected their kit, and the bus roared off into the distance, leaving them standing at the entrance with an outraged-sounding drill instructor. While he was bullying them into line, John noticed the air here was quite humid. John thought the humidity quite surprising after the dry air at the Shuttle Station. After everyone was finally in line, the drill instructor marched them inside for registration. After the formalities had been completed, he marched them down to their quarters to divest themselves of their kit. The students barely had an opportunity to stow their equipment in the lockers when the instructor was back in their barracks, screaming for them to move their sorry arses back outside. The instructor very succinctly explained this was not a holiday camp and they needed to get moving. John decided he was lucky Anne’s parents taught him what to expect so he could just go with the flow. John had used the last five months to prepare himself mentally for this, so he managed to bear the abuse without too much difficulty.
Over the next few weeks, everybody settled into the routine of the course. They were up at five AM, outside in the cold, early morning air to do an hour of Physical Training (PT), then back inside for a quick shower and breakfast, followed by classes and Exercises for the remainder of the day. Each night, they would study and try to complete assignments till lights out. The course was intended to push the students to the limit, to see where the limits were so the Navy knew what the graduates could deal with. There were minimum standards, and nearly a quarter of the students were washed out in the first two months. There were three attempts to sabotage John’s efforts in that time, but he knew the stakes and was being particularly paranoid, so he picked up the sabotage before it became a problem. During those first few weeks, John made no attempt to contact any of the backup team, he wanted to keep them in the background till they were needed.
One of John’s backup team was the drill instructor who’d met the trainees when they were delivered to the center. As he observed John and Anne, he found himself increasingly impressed with their capabilities. He’d heard stories of their achievements in the past and hadn’t given the reports much credence. Now, the Agent realized, if anything, the reports were an understatement, he was becoming a true believer, these two really were as good as he’d heard, perhaps even better. The Agent had been told the total was far more than the sum of the parts with them, as he watched them, it was evident there was no exaggeration in that. It was almost as if John and Anne were telepathic. When something happened that required a response, they would respond as one. It wasn’t long at all before these two were the acknowledged leaders of the class. It was no wonder, they built a team from this group of self-centred individuals far more quickly than the Agent could’ve believed possible. More importantly, John and Anne achieved it without violence or threats. These two Officers did it simply by not reacting to threats from others, or by laughing off digs at their personalities or their abilities, helping the people who needed it and by almost always being right. At the same time, they were willing to let the others make a mistake if the mistake didn’t put themselves, or someone else, in danger. The instructor only saw John become violent on one occasion. One of the trainees tried to bully one of the female Officers. John intervened when he caught the bully in the act, knocking him about a little to get his attention then pinning him to the wall one-handed and
warning in an icy voice that he would never, ever, tolerate anyone treating another Officer that way. None of the trainees ever crossed John again. John’s command presence was off the scale, more than one person, including instructors, wilted when he did nothing more than look at them, particularly if they’d said or done something stupid.
The people in John’s backup team weren’t the only ones to notice his, or for that matter, Anne’s, abilities. Fortunately, few of the people around them including most of the backup team knew exactly who John and Anne were. There were some people, enemy operatives, within the training team who looked on in alarm at John and Anne’s successes. These agents wanted to shut them down, permanently. Attempts to sabotage them were unsuccessful, they were too observant and foiled every one of the attempts, in fact, the sabotage only made them look better in everyone's eyes, including the Academy Commandant’s. The operatives would have to arrange an accident to remove the problem once and for all, but this required a little time to organize, in the meantime they’d have to watch these two very carefully indeed. The enemy operatives could see, not only were these two superb, but they were lifting the performance of everybody else around them, and that couldn’t be tolerated. Finally, the enemy agents decided to revert to some of the more traditional methods they had for dealing with problems, starting with finding the weakest link and using a little intimidation.
The first John knew something was wrong, was about two-thirds the way through the course, when one of his classmates suddenly began to perform poorly during one of their Exercises. Till then, he’d shown a lot of ability, and John saw him as a top-notch Officer for the future. The rest of the team could pick up the slack, but John was worried, he could see the fear in the man’s eyes. Performance continued to deteriorate for several more weeks, till, in the end, the trainee was quite severely injured in an accident. When John replayed the events back in his mind, he realized his classmate deliberately allowed the accident to happen. John already had his suspicions, but with this incident, his paranoid tendencies kicked into high gear. When he glanced in Anne’s direction, John could see immediately, she was on the alert as well. John couldn’t do anything immediately, so decided to try visiting the injured man the next time there was an opportunity. In the meantime, John and Anne decided it was time to very carefully contact their backup. The two of them had been cultivating the idea that they might be lovers, without ever being seen doing anything someone might see as proof. They were always together when they had the opportunity, and clearly, they had a connection, it just wasn’t the type of connection any of the many observers thought.
Both John and Anne had a cryptographic code stored in their implants, along with a list of dead drops where messages could be left for the support team. John very carefully composed a note to the support group, telling them to be ready, everything was about to come to a head. John also asked if he and Anne could be allowed to visit their injured classmate at the infirmary, as they thought he knew something useful for their mission. The next time they had a free period, the two Officers went for a walk around the grounds, all the time watched by two separate sets of eyes. When they arrived at the location of the dead drop. Anne sat on a wall, laughing and flirting with John, as she carefully, and unobtrusively, placed the message where it needed to be. Few people knew this was the location of a dead drop, and the enemy spies never picked up what the two Officers were really doing, but the DNI agents knew exactly what was there.
Later that day, one of the gardeners received a cryptic message telling him to check a specific dead drop. The gardener worked his way to the location and quietly, unobtrusively, retrieved John’s message. Again, while there were several watchers, the only one who knew what the gardener was doing, was a member of the DNI team. When the team leader saw John’s message, he began quietly notifying the rest of his crew about the upcoming events, then arranged for John and Anne to be permitted to visit their teammate at the base clinic. When those tasks were completed, he took the next opportunity to drop a code phrase into a discussion he was having with the entire trainee team, letting John and Anne know they’d be able to visit their injured teammate the next day when they had a few hours of free time. That afternoon, there was yet another attempt to sabotage one of the Exercises, one that may have been fatal if it was successful, but this time, Anne picked up the problem and quietly brought it to the instructor's attention. None of the other trainees knew what was going on behind the scenes. To them, John and Anne were nothing more than two other trainees, admittedly, they were two very talented trainees, who made everybody look good in the eyes of the instructors as well, but still, two trainees just like the rest. When John returned to his quarters that night, he found a small, cylindrical object sitting on the desk. He knew what it was, DNI agents had shown him one, and taught him how to use it before he left Cambridge. It was a surveillance scrambler, a new device that only recently became available to DNI.
Next day, John and Anne went to visit their teammate in the facility clinic. He took the scrambler to the clinic with him but didn’t activate it straight away. When John and Anne walked into his room, their classmate broke down crying, feeling they should hate him, but here they were visiting him, apparently concerned for his health. Anne took the lead with bringing him back from his depression. When she finally had him where she needed him, she glanced at John, and he activated the scrambler. As soon as he felt the vibration in his pocket to tell him it was active, he nodded to let Anne know it was time to begin. She decided the blunt approach would be best, so, she said the two of them were on a mission from DNI. She reassured him that he wasn’t in trouble, and asked him who’d been putting pressure on him. He was clearly frightened, not for himself, but for someone else. Finally, after a lot of coaxing, he told them everything. I turned out he was having an affair with another Officer. He thought it would cause a lot of trouble for his lover if it came out. Although she was not in his chain of command, she was a little more senior than him. He was willing to give up everything for her. Anne finally managed to convince him to tell them absolutely everything by promising his lady would be protected. After he’d told them the names of two instructors who’d threatened him, they started setting up the conversation so they could turn off the scrambler. John added his own wrinkle by randomly turning it on and off a few times during the remainder of the visit. If it was noticed at all, they expected it would confuse whoever had surveillance running on them. After John and Anne had returned to their quarters, they managed to engineer an innocent sounding conversation with one of their support team in which they dropped the names of the enemy operatives. Nothing much could be done about these people yet, but now they had an idea of who to watch. The only problem was they were quite sure these two weren’t the only enemy agents, so they had to be careful not to let their guard down in other directions.
The course continued, their injured teammate came back, they’d convinced him to still not perform at his best, to make sure they had to carry him so he wouldn’t raise suspicions. He did as he was asked out of duty and on the promise his lover would be protected. He was being pressured to sabotage things during the Exercise, so Ann and John told him to do as the enemy wanted, then made sure they, or the instructors they knew to be loyal, checked everything before the Exercise proceeded. This kept everything completely consistent with the pattern John, and Anne followed from the first day of the course. In the enemy camp, the frustration with this group of Command class students was increasing, almost exponentially. No matter what they tried, they only had limited success with the whole idea of discrediting and sidelining the more talented students. The two students the enemy operatives most wanted to shut down were simply too good, running rings around them at every turn. Finally, they decided an assassination was necessary. John was to be the target with Anne as a secondary goal. When the decision was made to attempt to murder at least one of these two, they had to find a suitable time, place and method to carry it through.
T
he Alliance Agents decided to implement their plot during an Exercise scheduled for only three weeks before the course ended. Success here would play right into Alliance hands. The Alliance Agents expected it would unsettle the remaining students at least enough for them to struggle with completing the course. John started to feel the prickling between his shoulder blades as the time approached. He knew not to ignore this feeling, he’d felt it often enough when trouble was about to descend on his head. The night before the Exercise was to start, John activated the surveillance scrambler in his room then set his bed up to look like someone was sleeping there before quietly leaving the building. This was not the first of his forays to visit one of the training facilities at night, he and Anne took turns whenever they thought the trip was needed, it was one way they’d been able to find sabotage so consistently in the past. Before, coming to Boontang, both John and Anne acquired an assortment of light, easily concealed tools, and weapons, with the expectation they’d need them before this course ended. John had his full assortment secreted about his person, including a couple of compact stunners. Each of these only had enough charge for seven shots before the power source was completely depleted, and the last two shots wouldn’t take the recipient down for any longer than a few minutes, but they did give John the ability to take an enemy down at a distance. John stealthily made his way to the building where the next day's Exercise was to be held and conducted a visual inspection of the entire facility. He found what he expected to find, noted its exact location, carefully disabled it, then moved three surveillance cameras so they could keep the area under constant observation. John also identified two sites where a sniper could hide. Again, he managed to move surveillance cameras so these two sites would be under surveillance. When all the preparations were completed, John quietly made his way back to his bunk to catch a little more sleep before he needed to wake for the day's activities.
Star Man 2: Star Rise Page 6
