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“I don’t think he liked me very much,” said Rick.
“Like I said, military don’t trust Directors.”
“Well I better go get ready,” said Rick.
“For what?”
“To go down to the planet.”
“Um, I going to have to say no on that one,” said Jennings. “Sir, please understand while I would follow any order you give, I have standing orders to protect government officials. The standing orders supersede any order you may give. However, I can let you into the operation room.”
Rick wanted to object, but he knew it would do no good. Like it or not he was now a government official. He was also certain that Hobbs had reinforced that standing order. So instead he asked, “What is the operations room?”
“It would just be easier to just show you.” Jennings waved his arm and left his office.
Rick followed wondering what this was all about. He realized that they were heading to the flight deck. He was surprised when Jennings opened a hatch just before getting to the flight deck.
“This is the operations room,” said Jennings.
The room was 6 by 9 meters and crowded with people and equipment. What stood out to Rick the most was that one wall was covered in monitors. Most of them were blacked out, but a few were on and showing weapons being loaded. Rick realized that these must be helmet cameras. There were three officers sitting at a bench behind the monitors.
“Are we online?” said Jennings.
“Not yet, they are just taking off from the flight deck,” said one of the operators.
There was very little room for Rick to walk around in this room. Everyone was busy getting preparations made for the mission.
Jennings started to explain what was going on. “Each soldier has a video pickup on the helmet. We will be able to see what’s going on at all times.”
“Can they hear us?” said Rick.
“No, the only one that we will be able to contact is Stanton, and only if we unmute him from our end. In an operation like this we don’t want to distract our men.”
“Fine, but once they have Collier, make sure they get any computers he has in his apartment.”
Jennings smiled and said, “Director Thompson, please don’t take this personally, but this is a military operation. So let me tell you what is going to happen. They are going to go in and get the target. They are going to contact us to confirm that it is the right target. At that point I will give further instructions, such as getting any computers and hard drives form Collier’s apartment. I know how you must be feeling right now, but can I give you some advice?”
“Sure,” Rick really didn’t know that much about military protocol and was glad for Jennings guidance. Yet he was a little upset about the way Jennings spoke to him.
“I know you are a new Director, but you need the people under you do their jobs. Standing over their shoulders giving orders is demoralizing and can undo the confidence of the person.”
Rick already knew this; the question is why he forgot? He realized that this was coming from a man that was used to giving orders. Someone that had the respect and admiration of his crew. He also realized that Jennings was trying to enlighten the ignorant, not belittling the stupid.
Rick felt that he was in the ignorant category, so he didn’t take offence. “My assistant said much the same thing, but never explained why.”
“Sir they are about to touch down,” said the officer in the center workstation.”
“Sounds like he is a smart man,” said Jennings with a smile then he turned his attention to the monitors.
The man on the right said, “Video pickups are coming online.”
Rick found it interesting that one by one the monitors came on. They were all showing very similar sights, but each had their own point of view.
The men were looking at each other from across the shuttle. Stanton’s view was a little different. He was standing in the front of the compartment looking back on the men.
Rick got the overall feeling as to what was going on. This took away the feeling of being left behind.
Jennings leaned over and whispered, “Please be quiet. We have an open line to Stanton, but we don’t want to distract him unless necessary. Remember this is a combat situation.”
Rick understood and whispered back. “I thought that this was a simple extraction?”
“One minute to touchdown,” said Stanton over the intercom.
“Not to these guys, it’s not. If they get lax they die. So they go in expecting that everyone is going to start shooting at them.”
Rick thought about that. Not letting these men get distracted was not protecting them. It was protecting any noncombatant they came across.
“Touchdown.” The soldiers were out of the shuttle and on the ground in very short order.
Rick was fascinated to see the events unfold. One of the soldiers was looking down at a scanner while the rest were looking out at the snow-covered landscape looking for threats. The man with the scanner was in no one’s view so Rick could only guess that he was at everyone’s back and they were protecting him. “Ten meters in that direction,” said the soldier with the scanner.
The group moved as one in that direction. Three men started digging in the snow as the rest took up defensive positions.
In less than a minute they unearthed the steel wheel that unlocked the hatch. In another few seconds they had the hatch cleared of the snow, but the handle wouldn’t budge.
Stanton said, “We’re going to have to blow it.”
He was talking to his men, but Jennings grabbed the mic and said, “Is that wise?”
“We talked about this on the way down,” said Stanton as the men were continuing to work on the hatch. “We are going to blow it up and away. There is a 300-meter drop that should deaden the sound. I only hope we don’t have to blow the inner hatch. If we weren’t running out of time I’d look for a different way.”
As Stanton finished speaking the men was handing him the detonator. Jennings paused a half second and said, “Proceed.”
To Rick it seemed like Stanton and his men were no more than a meter or two from the explosion. Yet they seemed calm and collected and the hatch went straight up and away from the area. Before the hatch even hit the ground the men were going down the hole.
Rick was amazed at how fast they were moving down the ladder. The rungs were moving by at an incredible rate of speed. It wasn’t until Stanton was at the bottom looking up that he saw why they were moving so fast. The solders had hands and feet on the outside of the ladder using them as brakes as they slid down.
Stanton opened the final hatch and dropped down into the hallway. He covered his men as each dropped down in turn. Once they were all down they moved into the complex.
It was not surprising for Rick to see that Collier’s apartment was only two doors down from his escape hatch. Had they come in the normal way; Collier would have had time to escape. He didn’t think that Collier would ever imagine that anyone would ever come in that way.”
They were at Collier’s door one of the men were hotwiring the door. “Prepare to breach,” said Stanton. The man made the final contact and the door slid open. Stanton’s men rushed into the room.
Collier was standing in the living room in his underwear. Rick could see a range of emotions on his face. He was looking for an escape. Once he realized that there was nowhere to go, Collier gave up and put his hands on his head.
Rick whispered to Jennings, “Captain he is a former Director of the Wilson Corporation. Can we show some respect? Let him put on some clothes.”
Jennings looked at Rick with a kind of alright look. He picked up the mic and said, “Stanton, get him dressed. Grab the computer and any files you can find and get it back to the shuttle. You need to lift off in ten minutes.”
“Acknowledged.”
Now that they had Collier Rick had a question that he had been thinking about for a while. “Captain. If Collier was going to use that as an escape route, where was he going? I mean its cold outside. By the way where is Graham?”
Rick could see that Jennings was thinking about his question. But he answered the second question first, “I think we left him in my office.” Then he reached over to the intercom and said, “Captain to Command deck.”
“Yes Captain.”
“I want a scan of the area. Give me a five-kilometer radius from where the shuttle touched down.”
“Yes Sir. What are we looking for?”
“Any space worthy ship.”
“Yes Sir.”
“Sir they are secured and ready to leave the planet.”
“Very well,” said Jennings. Then he took the mic. “Stanton.”
“Yes Sir.”
“Because of who we are dealing with I want you to keep a video recorder on him until we have him in the brig.”
“Understood Sir.”
Three monitors had Collier’s face in them. Most of them had blinked out. Rick could see by the movement that the shuttle had taken off. There was nothing to do until he could talk to Collier.
“Director if you would accompany me to the command deck,” said Jennings to Rick.
As soon as they stepped out of the operations room, Jennings saw a passing crewman. “You, do me a favor and go to my office and get Mr. Graham and take him to the command deck please.”
“Yes Sir. Right away Sir.”
On the way to the command deck Jennings said, “I remember what you told me about Pacifica if Collier was being chased he would want to get off planet.”
“That is exactly what I was thinking,” Rick was glad that he didn’t have to explain himself. “I need time to talk to Collier.”
“What did you have in mind?” It seemed that Jennings was thinking along the same lines.
“We need to get back to the Wilson corporation. However, once we are in Wilson space we don’t need to be in a big hurry to get home.”
“How much time do you need?”
“I don’t know every interrogation is different. Anything from a couple of hours to a couple of days.”
“I don’t know if I can hold off that long, but I’ll see what I can do.” As he said the last he opened the hatch to the command deck. They went inside and Bannic was already there and standing next to Henry’s station.
“Mr. Henry did you find anything?” said Jennings
“Sir you’re not going to believe this,” said Henry.
“What have you got?”
“You asked us to run a scan and we found a snowmobile. I didn’t think anything about it at first until Mr. Graham showed up. He said that we should scan in a straight line from the shaft past the snowmobile to the mountains. While that wasn’t part of your orders I did it anyway because of how fast Graham found Collier. This is what we found.”
The view on the science station was a wireframe view of a cavern. It had ten levels each level was filled with one-man fighters.
Rick counted them twenty rows thirty fighters in each row. “That’s 6000 ships.” Well at least Rick knew where some of that money went.
“Good job Mr. Graham, what made you think of this?” said Jennings.
“Follow the money. Collier had this storage facility built several years ago with one of his shell companies.”
Rick had a feeling of agitation. He knew that he could not leave those ships behind to attack more outposts. “Captain, we have to destroy those ships.”
“Director, May I have a word with you in my office?”
Nothing else was said until they were in Jennings office with the hatch shut. Then Jennings said, “Sir forgive me for putting it this way. What the Hell do you think you are doing?!”
Rick was slightly taken aback by this, yet his anger would not be dissuaded. “We need to destroy those ships.”
“No! we Don’t!”
“We could lose millions of lives if we leave those ships behind!”
“We could also lose millions of lives by starting an interplanetary war!”
The last statement through a bucket of ice water on the flames of Rick’s anger. In a softer voice he said, “What do you mean?”
Jennings could see that the danger had passed. At least Rick was now willing to hear what he had to say. “If we fire on that cavern the planetary defense system will activate. Right now all we have is supposition. We believe that those ships belong to Collier. We don’t know that for sure.”
“But Graham said,”
“All Graham said was that Collier built that facility. Come on you were an investigator. You know the difference between knowing something and proof. We can’t start firing on an independent nation without showing them the proof. We would look like the aggressors. That would cause a war.”
Now that Rick had set his anger aside, he could see the logic in Jennings refusal. “So what do we do now.”
“The only think we can do. We get back and report.”
“Yeah, but...”
“No buts,” said Jennings. “We have Collier. Without a leader I don’t think there will be any more attacks. Historically speaking any group like this usually shattered without a leader. The splinter groups fight for power among themselves.”
“Okay,” said Rick with an air of defeat. He knew that the time they got back the ship would be gone.
“So with that said,” said Jennings. “Do you still want to interrogate Collier on the ship?”
Rick thought about that for a moment. He could start the interrogation on the ship, but would he have time to finish. “No, let’s get home as soon as possible.”
“Yes Sir, we’ll head back as soon as the shuttle is secured,” said Jennings opening the hatch and headed for the command deck. Rick followed for lack of anything better to do.
As soon as Jennings opened the hatch to the command deck he started barking out orders. “Navigation set course for home. Use the most direct route possible. Prepare to break orbit.” He looked over at his first officer. Has the CEO’s Shuttle landed yet?”
“Not yet Sir, it will be in the bay in three minutes.”
“Good, get underway once it’s lockdown.” Jennings went over to sit in his chair.
For Rick it was a moment to catch his breath. In truth he had nothing to do until he got home. He had time to reflect on what Jennings had said. He was right an illegal extradition was one thing, firing on the planet was something else. After all Hobbs did tell him not to start a war.”