Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11), стр. 35
"You seem stressed, Admiral," her aide remarked as she blew out of the outer office, the young officer scrambling in her wake.
"Inform Captain Essel that the Defiant will be departing as soon as possible for the Concordian Cluster," she said, ignoring his question. "By the time I arrive, I expect her to be fueled, armed, and otherwise ready for an extended deployment that may include combat operations."
"At once, Admiral."
Kellea didn't slow or even acknowledge him as she pressed ahead towards her own destination. It would take the crew most of the day to get the battlecruiser ready to slip lines and break orbit so he had time to make some discreet inquiries before bumbling into a dangerous situation. She enjoyed the trust of the Terran military power structure right now thanks to her role in fighting off the Ull during an attempted coup by one of their own, now she had direct lines of communication to powerful people within Earth's intelligence service and navy that might shed some light on what was happening. One thing she knew for certain at this point…Seeladas was playing both sides right now and cutting her out of the loop when it came to revealing her plans. That made her leery of trusting the premier's intent when she orders the Cooperative's most capable battlegroup into a contested area. The whole mission seemed completely ill-advised, and she knew she had to proceed with caution while executing her orders.
11
Lucky began to understand what the ConFed crews were doing aboard the ship, but he was still unclear as to why they were doing it. He's been to the two forward magazines where all of the ship-to-ship missiles had their access panels open and teams of technicians were patching into the guts of the weapons with their own computers.
Since Nikain was a technical team lead and, ostensibly, familiar with their work, Lucky couldn't question any of the technicians without raising suspicions. From observation, he was able to glean that they were updating the missiles' targeting software as well as the encryption routines for command and control. The reason this didn't make much sense on the surface is that ConFed missile technology was on par with Eshquarian tech. Hell, in many cases, the ConFed missiles were Eshquarian tech. Furtively sneaking around in a fleet of abandoned warships, tinkering around with the armament, and using crews of hired contractors indicated to Lucky that something interesting was about to happen, he just wasn't sure what.
The fact there were no ConFed fleet regulars walking the decks in their light gray uniforms told the battlesynth that this was most likely an operation the intelligence service was pulling off alone. The Imperial ships would be a great tool for a false flag attack, except that they're flying the flag of an empire that no longer exists. Eshquaria was completely under ConFed control and any attacks by rogue elements at this point would be considered a criminal case.
With the information he had, Lucky gave a sixty-three-point-two-seven percent probability that the ships were being refitted and sold as part of an unsanctioned operation by elements within the ConFed intelligence apparatus. Over forty newer capital ships that had never been damaged or seen combat would be worth hundreds of billions of credits to the right buyer. The reason he didn't give it a higher probability was he had to assume any criminal organization looking to buy themselves a war fleet would have come up on Mok's radar. It's possible that a smaller nation like the Galvetic Empire might want to sneak the ships into their possession away from prying eyes, claim salvage rights, and then put them into service defending their system.
"Sir, Team Six is asking for you in the aft magazine. There are issues with some of the munitions running an older version of code."
"Thank you, J'huggon," Lucky said, pulling the tech's name from the files he'd taken from the real Nikain's neural implant. "Inform them I'm on my way, and next time, they need to page me on my own com unit."
"They said they've been trying, sir."
"One more problem to take care of," Lucky said, feigning disgust. "Just tell them I'm on my way."
He stormed out of the large bay that housed the missiles before they were fed into the launchers, pulling the com unit out and looking to see what the trouble could be. The unit was locked up and wasn't responding so he tried a full reset and continued on his way. He needed a reason to get his hands on one of the computers they were using to upload new instructions to the missiles, and the problem down in the aft magazine might be the thing to do it.
One of his sidearms and the portable slip-com unit were affixed to his side, resting safely underneath the projected girth of the alien he was mimicking. He thought about reaching out to Jason to let them know he was okay but decided against the risk for the time being. With the ship's slip-drive running, even a low-power com field might cause enough of a disruption to flag an alert and send security looking for what caused the interference. For right now, he was still on-mission and doing the job he'd set