Coming Home, At Least For Now
08 Oct 2020Lord Scarfinger
... Pope closed the door behind him and walked over to MacEllister, who now stood in front his office window. "You sick, boss?" Pope asked him seeing the coffee mug on the desk instead his hand. "No, why?" Pope silently gestured at the mug on the desk. MacEllister said laughing: "A John-coffeemug fusion didn't happen yet. But if I'll ever lose a hand, I might get a prostetic mug instead." Pope cracked a smile at his old friend and superior. "What is that important, for you to come here and embarrass me in front of my secretary? You better have a damn good reason, if you wanna keep your rank, IC Randy Pope." Another smile on MacEllister's face."Don't you worry, I got a reason. You better seat yourself, before I tell you what I found out." Pope said with a serious tone. The director took a glance at his agent and then did as he was told.
Pope got straight to the point: "Good, now that we've settled this, let me begin. I discovered something while surveiling Mar Ris. A way bigger threat than his Shield Of Justice movement. As I was listening in on his comms I always got some strange signals, didn't give them much thought at first. But they occurred more frequently than just some random distortion, so I had a closer look, or listen should I say. But couldn't quite make out what they were. So I brought them over to the communications techies, and had Sub Lieutenant Ichika Kryon look at these weird signals. She found out that these were encrypted messages and had originated from the system 482 light years away. Non Arduan signals. It seems they were sent from these Insectoids, the Thargoids, through some sort of of comms beacon of unknown origin to a translation device on Ris' desk." MacEllister's eyes widened as heard this, having seen everything during the war, yet this news made him feel a chill through his body.
"And that's not all," Pope continued. "These encrypted messages, at least what we could make out of it, said that a Thargoid ship is on its way to intercept the Perseverance on its maiden flight. The same time our intel tells us, the Shield Of Justice plans to capture it. And that they want to meet him a few "stidas" before, because they want some sort of information. That device Ris has, doesn't always seem to properly translate. So Kryon, not only a comms engineer, but a language specialist as well, thinks that the word stidas means hours. Yet we can not be entirely sure. There had been several communications back and forth, but one sentence kept always repeating at the beginning. What are you? Every time they got in contact, this came up from their side."
MacEllister's mind went wild now, he had sent another agent, Lt. Garen Han, to retrieve Dr. Rask from the Ark. As Pope pointed out before, Section 6 intel indicated that these Shield Of Justice goons will try to capture the Ark in a few hours, before it is set to take its first flight around the system. Not knowing that these goons are already on board. So that means that the Thargoid ship probably is already around but hasn't appeared on any Arduan scanners or whisker satellites zipping around the planet and its moons.
"I need to get Han out of there, can't lose him. That means ignoring the radio silence as well, though Han requested it." he thought to himself. He hoped that Garen would answer, but as stubborn as this agent was, the possibility was quite low.
"Pope, we got a massive problem now. There is another agent up there with the crucial mission to bring Rask in for interrogation." MacEllister said. Pope simply replied:"Well, shit." As everything Section 6 does, this mission was a covert operation, so not even its own agents know about any mission unless they are assigned to it.
Having learned about this now, Pope also knew that possible mission orders were complete silence, and that his boss had to break the silence now. What he didn't know was that agent Han requested this, instead of being orders. Pope never met Garen, nor knew his rank, but was hoping for his fellow agent to have the brains to answer the comms link. These are rarely broken and only if absolutely necessary. And it was indeed. He could see on MacEllister's face that he seemed to have the same thought.
The director lit up his encrypted comms panel and tried to reach out to Garen, who sat in a Viper somewhere in Ardua's orbit. MacEllister saw that his call was received, though got no reply by the agent. He once again sent out a message to Garen and got ignored yet again.
MacEllister was furious, yet there was nothing he could do. Pope's remark didn't help either at this moment. "Guess he doesn't like you, boss." he said with a chuckle. "Fuck you!" MacEllister shot back, not being amused.
Not knowing what went down above him in Arduan space, he finally got through to Han, but what came back infuriated him just more.
"Han." Section Six Directior John MacEllister's voice crackled furiously into existence. "Where the hell have you been? I've been trying to contact you since..."
"MacEllister. I'm returning to the capitol now. You need to get the higher ups up and ready to receive my debriefing." Garen cut in, ignoring the agency director's tone.
"What? I need a sit-rep. Now. And we are not on a first or last name basis, lieutenant. You will address me as, sir. Understood?" MacEllister barked.
"Don't have time for this." Garen muttered while plotting a route for Ardua into his navigation system. Lieutenant? He had forgotten what title the agency had given him.
"Make time, agent." MacEllister shot back.
"Why would it ask me the same thing he did back on the ark?" Tukka's voice suddenly cut in between the two men.
"Who is that?" MacEllister demanded.
"Tukka." Garen placed his hand on her cheek, gently directing her eyes to meet his own. "I need you to return to the back and strap yourself in. Okay?"
"Was that Dr. Rask?" MacEllister's voice again echoed within the cockpit.
"Get them ready, sir." Garen let a bit of sarcasm seep through with the final word of his first sentence, then added; "we are all going to have a lot to discuss."
Before Pope could open his mouth MacEllister gestured an imaginary zipper in front of his lips, just as a sign to shut up as long as it is not an important or objective remark.
All Pope said was:"This is gonna be interesting. Shit's about to hit the fan."
MacEllister just stared silently at him and started to contact, Ford, Idle and the rest of the council. Wondering what actually happened up there.
As Garen Han's Viper went out of glide mode above Lentia's sky, he could see Walllace Monument in the distance. Sitting atop the highest hill, it paid homage to Tiare Wallace, the legendary pilot and later ambassador for earth's refugees on Ardua. She heroically somehow managed to "crash land" the plummeting generation ship on the continent's, now known as Mercia, unpopulated northwestern coast, instead in its vast ocean. Asked why she chose the hard landing instead the probably softer water dive, she bluntly replied:"While this thing was a ship, it is not a boat. It was built to float in space not in water. We might have lost more people drowning."
Wallace was of earth's hawaiian descent.
Also known as the treaty forger. She played a major role in negotiating and creating the treaties with the Taari and Voltecs, which lay the foundations for humans to settle on Mercia and Udaak and become part of the Arduan society.
Her powerful slogan was chanted for generations to come:
STRONG, TOGETHER WE ARE
STANDING AS ONE, THE FUTURE, WE ARE
FOREVER, TOGETHER, ARDUANS, WE ARE!
And is engraved for eternity on her Monument.
Which, even in five decades of war and division, always was protected by all sides. No faction ever dared to even scratch it.
Han went straight for the landing pad on top of the Wallace Tower building. Which held the headquarters for Section 6 and the Arduan government.
"Coming home, at least for now." he murmured to himself as he approached the pad.
He took a glance back at Dr. Rask, who seemed to be very week and asleep. "No wonder after what happened to her up there." he thought.
He was quite sure some of the finest soldiers and agents awaited him and his guest to escort them safely to the debriefing. Wherever that might be...
D. Jehle 10/5-8/2020
Contains samples from "Secret Agent" by Zamen Kensata