Chapter 9

Fleet had sent a cruiser with an escort destroyer to pick me up.

For the record, they were ‘just passing through’ and were able to give me a ride. Secretly, they were here for me. Military Intelligence really wanted someone’s head on a plate for these attacks. Anyone who can arrange both an explosion on a Navy ship and two attacks by pirates is a person of great interest to them. Agents from MI planned to use me as bait to draw out the bad guys.

Reluctant as I was about the idea, I decided to go along, it was better than looking over my shoulder the rest of my life.

On board the EOH Wang Chung, I spend my time in discussion with engineers and intelligence. The engineers wanted to hear about my lost fifteen years and all about constructing the station, again.

Intelligence also tried to train me how to be more covert. It was a fun couple of weeks.

I even got to help work on the engines. Go, engineers!

Arriving in the America sector (sector 5) and the Capital planet, signaled that the party was over. Time to go back to work.

This was to be an attempt to draw my assailant out. The Navy wanted me to speak to Senate committees on piracy, prisoner of war rights, and naval forces integration. I was not the expert, just a witness to these meetings. I was asked to comment and give personal experiences. Basically, a dreary day filled with useless talk. I really hate politics.

The first attack came on the second day, and it was very very public. My security team and I had just sat down at a local cafe for lunch. There was an explosion in the kitchen. A bluish white mist began to fill the room. The diners that were closest to the kitchen began grabbing their throats and crying out in strangled pain. Blisters began being formed wherever the mist touched exposed skin. My escorts grabbed me and literally tossed me out into the street.

Someone used a form of weaponized chlorine gas on the cafe. Fatalities included the kitchen staff, twenty civilians, and one agent from my detail. Things just got real personal.

The attack proved one thing, we seemed to have a security leak. No one had our schedule, it was not written down. We had picked our dining location at random. NCIS was brought aboard the investigation. Their agents sprung into action, investigating everyone. Not one person was left to chance.

A break in the case came when checking government bank accounts. One of the security public surveillance monitors had received an unusually large amount of credits the day of the attack. Interrogation led to a PAC (Political Action Committee). Staffers had been instructed to be kept aware of my location 24/7. The orders had come from one of the owners. Finding the owners got kind of murky after that.

NCIS was still investigating when the second attack occurred.

My team and I had just entered the reception hall when shots rang out.

“Down, down” screamed my bodyguards.

“Shooter on your left, check right!” one of the other guards yelled, as we took cover behind a fallen table.

The other guests were scattered in all directions. Gunshots rang out as personal security teams and gunmen battled it out across the room. The security forces were not as professional as mine was. Random guests were getting shot!

My face was pressed flat to the floor. I had an agent covering me.

I didn’t see it when a trio of the gunmen, using human shields, rushed our position. I heard the screams as my team shot them down.

“Alive, we need them ALIVE!” my team had switched to stunner’s, but some of the contract security had opened fire, within seconds the gunmen were all killed. Unfortunately, so were the hostages.

The noise in the hall dropped as the cries of the wounded took over.

My team finally, allowed me to sit up. All that I could see was the piles of the wounded and of the dead. The charging gunman after being stunned had been shot numerous times. Paramedics were torn from saving the wounded guests. To try to save at least one of the gunman. In the end, none of the assailants survived.

Needless to say, I wasn’t invited to any more events.

NCIS saved the investigation.

Communications between the latest bounty hunters and a local law firm were revealed. Records, taken from the firm, linked it to the PAC group and ultimately the Buckley family.

The evidence was still circumstantial, however. The investigation ground to a halt.

Then it happened. Computer records from the NCIS investigation, somehow, were leaked to the press identifying the Buckley’s as persons-of-interest.

Because of all the innocent lives that had been lost, even the Buckley’s allies were screaming at them. The political tide had finally turned.

Right or wrong, it became a trial in the public eye.

NCIS and other government agencies were tearing into the Buckley families lives. Family skeletons and scandals were being exposed.

Something had to give.

We left for my new post on the regular shuttle, no task force this time.

The Navy published my interview with some of the local newsies where I emphasized that I trusted my fellow crew members in the Navy. The Navy hoped to guilt anyone who would take credits to help kill me.

Here I was, right in the middle of it all.

The Admiralty was at a loss for what to do with me now. After much discussion and turmoil, I was given two options.

Remarkably, they let me choose rather than ordering me.

Go to ground. Allow my family in Hong Kong to protect me was one option. Or I could travel to my next assignment and trust the Navy to keep me safe.

Both really hard decisions. My father was a high ranking planetary militia officer. His troops would help, but did I really want to put their lives in front of mine?

I chose to move on with my next assignment. The Navy was my life. I trusted the people that I work with. You have to trust someone to survive in space. I got lucky. The new assignment was my dream job. The New Madrid shipyard and repair facility.