The Colonel replied, “With bringing the new Hawks online we are going to have a lot of training to do. If there is any way we can help the Admiral to clear the bugs out of their systems I say we put a full effort forward on it right now. Anyone with an idea of how we might do such please speak up.”
Rita responded, “I have a thought. What if we have the Admiral send out his ships one at a time into the Fasture nebula? We can have a signal ship sitting in there listening for any external attempts at communications. We would log them, ion bomb the ships and then move a team in to clean it up, all under cover of the nebula. As far as the Durians would know the ship was destroyed. If it works we can then look at moving it out to free space for a similar exercise.”
“I realize that this first ship would need several weeks of testing to determine if it was clean. After that the testing should go quickly. We will never be 100% sure, but I believe we can get close. I realize that it’s not a rapid solution. I think we can verify the result though.”
The discussion continued well into the afternoon before it was decided that Rita���s idea had merit. We would have the Admiral arrange for one of his ships to venture into the Fasture. Rita would assemble and train a team to do the sweep of the ship. If all went well the first of the Admiral���s ships would be liberated. It was requested that the first captain and ship be Cortes and the Ranger.
Chapter 13
With the Admiral Zimmerman alliance well underway I turned my attentions back towards the Delvin sector. I would be pulling Frig away from his lab duties for a flight out to check on our scout ship���s status. The Colonel would be taking the Slaughter and the Swift would be riding in her hull.
I made my way to the bridge with Frig in tow. “Sir, I don���t see why I was needed for this mission. I have important things to accomplish in the lab. Certainly anything we discover out here could wait for your return. You will have to return to base before launching any attacks. I could be informed then.”
I replied, “Well if you have to know, I can���t live without your company. Your witty remarks fill a void in my��� OK, I can���t even say that with a straight face. I asked you along to get you out of the lab. I think the projects you are working on are all consuming and they are not going to be solved today. Sometimes a break is necessary and I felt it was something you were in need of.”
As we stepped onto the bridge the Colonel called us over, “Grange! Get over here. It���s almost 0800. What have you been doing all morning!” I coyly replied, “Sleeping?” the Colonel responded, “Sleeping? What are you with child? Marines don���t sleep past 0600 Grange. You need to be up and at ���em early.”
I replied, “Well Colonel, I guess that���s why I���m the President. I get to make the command decisions and this morning���s decision was to sleep in for a few extra minutes.” The Colonel let out a humph sound.
I responded, “What has you riled up this morning Colonel? First, Frig here is complaining that he had to come along and now you. Some days this job just doesn’t pay enough.”
The Colonel spun his command chair around to face me fully, “I’ll tell you what is bothering me. It was that meeting with Zimmerman yesterday, he just did not seem like himself. At least not the way I remember. The old Zimmerman was a take charge guy. He certainly would not have abandoned his command knowing that it was bugged. He would have taken immediate steps to remedy the situation. I don’t know who that was back there, but I am not convinced it was Zimmerman.”
I replied, “I only met him once so I could not say one way or the other. Is there anything that you could ask him that only he would know? You served with him. There must be something that only the two of you are familiar with.”
The Colonel thought for a moment, “He did chew me out for diddling his daughter. She was 12 years my junior, but she was not fresh out of the box if you know what I mean. She was an ensign and was also under his command. I think he was more embarrassed about her actions than concerned about what I had done. She was transferred back to the Grid and I was given nasty assignments for a month, but it all blew over.”
I replied, “Well, that certainly sounds like something he would not forget. And you no longer report to him so it won’t hurt you to bring it up. If he can answer your questions about that would you believe it was him?”
The Colonel sat back in his chair, “I suppose that would do it. That whole incident is not something in any service records. He certainly would not have filed any reports about that. If you put me in a room with him for ten minutes I will confirm or deny that it is Zimmerman.”
We were half a day into our journey towards the Delvin sector and the Colonel had the ship turned back. We would arrive before the Admiral was to set leave for OpCon. The Colonel would have his discussion.
When we landed I called George into my office as the Colonel headed to see Zimmerman. When George arrived I greeted him and asked him to sit, “The Colonel seems to think that Zimmerman might be an imposter. He is questioning him now. If it turns out that he still has doubts I want you to do a complete physical on him and tell us if he has been cosmetically altered to look like Zimmerman. Then I want blood samples that can be compared against those in the Grid military files and if those things don’t check out I want you to run a regimen of the truth drug through him to see what he knows.”
George replied, “Don if he is not the real Admiral then we just gave up our whole operation.” I replied, “That is why we are back here George. If we catch him now a minimum of information has been given out. The soldiers back on OpCon do not have a clue as to where we were going or even who we were. The worst case scenario would be for the Captain of that frigate you initially landed on to put out an APB on Rex Bumbalee. If that happens we may have to close our operations on the Grid.”
“If we can find out quickly if the Admiral is real or not I can fly back to OpCon and deliver a message to the Captain. If he knows the situation I am sure he will do his best to protect us. I had no indication at all that he was a Durian plant.”
Colonel Harper sat in a room with Admiral Zimmerman, “Admiral, I just wanted to go over a few things with you. First, I would like to apologize for what happened between us so many years ago. I knew what was going on and I still went ahead with it. That has been sitting on my chest for a number of years and I just wanted to clear the air between us.”
The Admiral sat silent. The Colonel continued, “I was hoping you could find the words to forgive me.” The Admiral squirmed slightly in his chair, “Of course I can forgive you, it���s all water under the bridge. I would prefer that we just move on from it.”
The Colonel eyed him suspiciously, “Well, Admiral, it���s not every day that a man can confess to having an affair with another man���s wife and he is so forgiving. I don���t think I would have it in me, you are a better man than I.”
The Admiral then perked up, “We all have our marital problems Tom. We have managed to move beyond it and so should you.” The Colonel���s eyes narrowed as he stepped in front of the Admiral and placed his hands on either hand rest of the Admiral���s chair, “Who are you? Because you sure as heck aren���t Michael Zimmerman. If he had found that I had an affair with his wife he would have jumped from that chair in a rage.”
The Admiral attempted to feign anger, “Now look, I forgave you so let���s move on. I don���t have to sit here and take your wild accusations!” When the Admiral tried to get up from the chair Tom Harper did not move, “Your ass is not going anywhere. You are not Michael Zimmerman, but we are going to find out who you are. Dawson, Riggs!”
The Colonel���s aides came through the door with their blasters drawn. “Keep an eye on this snake and if he gets out of his chair I want you to pump a charge into him that will blow his chest wide open. Don���t shoot him in the head because I want him to feel it and see it when it happens. The Colonel walked to the door, “Math
ews! Go fetch me Don Grange and the Doc!”
Mathews turned and headed off for his task. Ten minutes later I arrived with George. The Colonel spoke as the Admiral sat nervously in his chair, “Don, this is not Zimmerman, he gave himself up a bit too easily. The Admiral attempted to stand but was pushed back into the chair by Riggs. As I stepped in front of the chair he again attempted his ruse.
“Don. You know me. I am Admiral Zimmerman, get this crazy man and his goons off of me and let���s get down to business on that cooperation. Every minute we waste is a minute we will never recover and a minute further from making something happen.”
I leaned in and took note of the beads of sweat on his forehead, “I didn���t know the Admiral personally. I only met him a couple times briefly. He seemed like a good man, a leader. He would never sweat under circumstances like this because he would be insanely mad. You did a good job with your acting, whoever you are. I just hope the Admiral is still out there and has not been harmed. If he has, you are going to live a miserable existence for whatever time you have left!”
George stepped up and began to examine the Admiral���s face, “This is high quality work. Other than a slight variation in tone the skin grafting is superb. It all looks very natural, but it has been altered. You see Admiral, when incisions are made it becomes near impossible to perfectly match the contour of the underlying layers back to each other, especially if the layers are not the original match. That���s why we surgeons make incisions in out of the way places, makes them much harder to detect.”
“I would say this man had a wider nose and eyes, a narrower forehead, his ears have definitely been moved and reshaped and his eyebrows thickened.” George looked back at me, “His surgeries were much more extensive than yours Don. I would guess they were done in a series over six months at least. And I really like the way those brows were feathered to give a continuous look, very professional work.”
George stepped back and the Colonel again stepped forward, “Just give me the word Don and I will start tearing this creep apart bit by bit. He will squeal out whatever information we want before I am done with him.”
I placed my arm on the Colonel���s shoulder, “That won���t be necessary Colonel. He is going to tell us everything he knows, we are then going to use the truth drug on him and compare notes. If there are any indications of lies it will become very unpleasant for him. If he cooperates, he may just survive this whole thing in a comfortable cell.” I leaned in close, “It all depends on him.”
The Colonel huffed as I turned back towards him, “Don���t worry Colonel, if he is uncooperative in any way I will turn him over to you.” I then gestured for Riggs and Dawson to pull over two chairs. I sat down in front of the imposter. “Well?”
The Admiral began to speak, “I will cooperate.” The Colonel could be heard grunting behind me. “It does me no good to resist since you already know I���m not Zimmerman. My real name is Rodney Turk. A Durian came to me three years ago when my two youngest daughters came down with Malian flu. I didn���t want to lose them. The Durian offered me a choice.”
“If I was to cooperate, my daughters would be cured; else they would be left to die like so many others. Since my wife passed my daughters have been all that I lived for. My oldest, Molly, had already been through the loss of her mother, I couldn���t stand to see her lose her siblings too. The Durians offered an alternative and I jumped on it without thinking.”
Rodney attempted to get out of his chair and Riggs pushed him back, “They are going to kill my girls Mr. Grange! I didn���t know what deal I was making at the time, but there was no way out once I was in. Everything I have done has been done to protect my daughters. The Durians promised they would be well cared for and that what I was doing at OpCon was going to help us win the Milgari wars.”
“I have done everything they asked and up until you showed me all of this I thought I was doing the right thing. You were right Mr. Grange. The Durians are playing us for fools. If I have compromised the Grid���s security then I not only did my daughters wrong, but every Human as well. Just tell me what to do and I will try to fix it. Just promise me you will try to help my daughters, they are innocent in this.”
I turned back towards the Colonel, “Send a couple men to collect his children. Use the resources of Jeb and Doris to make sure it is done quietly and without leaving tracks. Make sure those girls are clean of any Durian tags too, have Doris get them new clothes.” The Colonel winced, gave an evil look to our captive and then headed out the door.
I returned to my questioning, “Let���s start at the beginning with your training and work our way forward to when they made the swap for the Admiral” Rodney sat back in his chair, “I was taken from the Grid on a small craft. It docked with a Durian ship and the operations began. The recovery was long, but my girls were alive.”
“I had no idea what I was being made over for until the Durian doctor who had performed the worked handed me over to a military officer. That is when my indoctrination and training began. My girls were alive and they showed me videos of them playing happily, they thought their father was away on work. The Durians provided enough credits where they could move into a better place and pay for a caregiver.”
“To me I was willing to do just about anything the Durians wanted. They had me convinced that what I was doing was going to help the Grid, so I trained and cooperated as much as I could. Tell me what father would not be interested in the continued safety and health of his children.”
“As the training went on they began to show me video after video of the real Admiral. Coaches guided me until every look I gave or response I said was something that could have come from Zimmerman himself. Once I had reached a level that they felt was fully believable they arranged for the transfer to be made. The Admiral was invited onto a Durian destroyer and the swap was made. A small diversion was used to separate the Admiral from his men and I was thrust into my roll.”
“When we returned to OpCon I was now in charge of the whole operation. I was bugged by the Durians and at first I was told almost everything to say. I received the odd look now and again, but I was accepted fully by the Admiral���s own men. Because of his past they follow him almost religiously.”
“After the exchange the Durians were given a permanent office and no one seemed to mind because they were selling us very much needed war-fighting upgrades for our ships. Again, I thought I was doing the Grid a huge favor. Over the last six months however, I noticed that production of new ships had almost come to a complete stop. When I questioned them they gave me a story about how we would be ramping up for a much higher production soon.”
“You had asked before if the Durians had been in my office and did I have any gifts in there from them. The answers I gave were yes and yes. They had me give the go-head to my entire staff to accept trinket gifts for their offices. I���m sure they know every move and every plan that has been discussed in the last six months. The transfer took place almost one year ago to date.”
I stood and began to pace the room, “So, for a year the Durians have been expanding their influence on OpCon. Have you ever suspected that any of your staff have also been replaced? If I was the Durians I would want a safety net. Replace a few other key players that do not know of each other and you have a little failsafe for your operation.”
Rodney thought for a moment, “A number of the staff have been given tours of a Durian ship. They could have replaced almost every member of the team over the last year. I would not be surprised if the entire staff were imposters. I would not win any awards for my own intelligence, but from what I have seen these Durians are highly skilled and very thorough.”
We continued to gather information from Rodney Turk throughout the day. He was an open book. I had Frig, Gy and Rita in a nearby room devising strategies for ridding the Admiral���s force of Durian influence. When the day had come to an end I called in the council for a me
eting. The Colonel spoke first, “I know each of us was excited to some degree about the thought of joining with the Admiral���s force. It looks like we are once again back on our own.”
I stood and raised my hand, “I don���t think we are on our own Tom. We need to turn our efforts towards purging the Durians from the Admiral���s force. I���m going to ask Doris to replace the caregiver of the girls with one of her own, she can make up some story of Grid health services or business licenses or something to get the other one out, just in case they are a Durian plant.”
“Once we control the situation we will secure the girls and move them off station. Doris can setup a fa��ade so the Durians believe they are still there. Once we have them Rodney here will be working for us. He is going to convince the Durians to move the entire fleet into the Fasture and from there they will conduct a major operation to find us. Only they will not be looking anywhere close to here.”
“I have a plan to liberate those ships. We will know the location of each during their hunt for us and as such we can setup a location where we try to hit as many of them as we can at the same time. We sweep them from a cloaked location, fire off a negative ion bomb and then we board and remove any Durian beacons.”
“Frig will have an app that can be loaded into their comm system to keep it from sending out any info to the Durians. We will also run a minor field from Yacabucci���s generators to keep any other stray signals from being sent out by other means. George is developing a scanner that will tell us if any officers or men on-board have been altered. With a small team, we should be able to clean that entire fleet in a day.”
“After those efforts are complete we will send the Admiral���s fleet to a new location to await orders. Every computer and every automated system will have to be removed and destroyed. The Admiral���s fleet will be out of commission for some time. Our efforts will then be turned towards cleansing OpCon.”
AMP Blitzkrieg Page 14
