Top Brass

Top Brass Ch. 01

Author's Note:

This story takes place immediately after An Alien Entanglement Pt. 03. But you don't need to read that series to understand this one.

Disclaimer:

All characters presented in this story of 18 years and older.

Sitting in the dropship, Amanda crossed her legs as she scrolled through her datapad. She was trying to catch up on her review of the countless file reports that her subordinates had sent her. Letting out an irritated sigh, she put down her datapad and looked out the window.

"Director Harkless, we are approaching the Stillguard data farm," the pilot informed her. As the 28-year-old woman peered out the window, she saw countless gunships patrolling the airspace around the facility and little dots of what she assumed were soldiers marching around the base. However, they appeared as tiny as ants from her viewpoint.

Once her dropship had landed on the nearest platform, Amanda unbuckled herself from her seat and stood up. While her security detail was assembling itself, she made sure that she was as presentable as possible. Patting down her white pearly white military uniform, she made sure that there was no wrinkle or speck of filth on her. Untucking her black gloves from her belt, she slipped them onto her hands and straightened out her matching white collared cape. Using her datapad's blank black screen as a mirror, she made sure that her long platinum blonde hair was neatly tied back. Fluttering her piercing crimson eyes, she nodded, finding her looks to be very much in order.

Her pair of Sentinel Guards took their positions on either side of her, just to her rear. Their onyx black armor shimmered sinisterly; their visors glowed an ominous royal blue. As the hangar door popped open and lowered slowly down, Amanda tugged on her tight collar and took a deep breath. Once the ramp of the door had settled to the surface of the landing pad, Amanda strode down with every appearance of confidence. Her first step was the signal for her impeccably trained guards to follow her. As she emerged from the dropship's interior, her red pupils shrunk in response to the brightness outside. As she raised her arm to shade her eyes, her attention was caught by the speech of an approaching soldier.

"Director Harkless, Officer Murphy reporting for duty. Good to see you, ma'am," the officer reeled off as he saluted her with a smart snap. She just nodded in acknowledgment. "We weren't expecting you personally, Director. We were told to expect Warrant Officer Weston."

"These sorts of assignments would ordinarily be beneath my station. But since I was already on planet when whatever happened here took place, I decided I might as well come to see for myself," Amanda explained. "Oh, and Warrant Officer Weston will be taking over for me once I'm finished here." The officer nervously nodded. He seemed intimidated by Amanda's presence.

"So, give me a report on what happened here. I heard that there was a significant data breach that occurred at this facility, is that true?" she said, checking her datapad.

"Yes, ma'am. We have concluded that the perpetrators were able to access the lower levels of this facility and that they retrieved data we believe to be moderate to highly sensitive information," the officer nervously replied.

Amanda raised her eyebrow and looked up from her pad. "Moderate to highly sensitive? You aren't sure what they took?"

The officer shook his head and replied, "Em, yes ma'am... We're still narrowing it down." Amanda sighed in annoyance.

"So you're telling me that a band of outlaws managed to get into this

highly

secured facility, and breach our database? Stealing god knows what. That should be fairly hard to do, if not almost impossible without the proper clearance. I will need to speak with the facility supervisor after I'm done here," she said sternly.

"And who exactly were these perpetrators? Did they get away?" Amanda added.

"Based on our investigation, they weren't just your everyday outlaws. These were contracted bounty hunters." Amanda nodded. It would explain how they got so far. Some bounty hunters could be quite savvy. But such a major security breach should still have never happened.

"Well, the good news is that we managed to eliminate most of them. There were five of them, and we got four of those five," the officer explained. "They mostly consisted of hired guns, a modified Spectre Drone, and a notable netrunner that the Security Bureau already had on its blacklist."

"Four out of five? Where's the last one?!" Amanda jumped in.

"Er- that's the bad news... We don't know. We thought we had them all bottled up at the top of the facility, but they swarmed down the exterior wall above one of the city's utility trenches to the very bottom of the facility, blew a hole in the facility's coolant drain space, and managed to escape into the neighboring sewer systems," Officer Murphy rattled off, with every indication of embarrassment.

Amanda sighed in frustration. She was baffled at the scale of this cluster fuck: a naval intelligence data farm should be impenetrable, impregnable! "Tell me that we at least retrieved the missing data," she sighed. The officer just stood there awkwardly, too timid to figure out how to word even more bad news.

Under the strength of a withering glare from Amanda, he pulled himself together enough to say, "No... it's, uh, unfortunately, er, highly probable that the last surviving perpetrator escaped with the data..." Amanda closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her subordinate shuffled back a bit seeing her frustration growing: he didn't want to be anywhere around if a Director's temper exploded.

"Ugh... It's even worse than I thought," she muttered. "Alright. Tell me more about the bounty hunters you did manage to eliminate. I will leave the hunt for the one who got away to Weston. And please remind me later exactly who is supposed to be 'in charge' around here. I need to have a nice long chat with them," Amanda ordered. The officer just gulped and nodded.

"Yes, ma'am. Please, if you would follow me."

Officer Murphy guided the Director around the surface level of the facility, showing her where the firefights with the intruders had taken place. As they reached the main platform, Amanda's crimson eyes widened at the sight of a countless line of body bags. She also noted a pile made up of many scraps of Spectre Drones.

"Who were these people? They must have been carrying some serious firepower,"

she thought.

"So, here are the bodies of the perpetrators," the officer added, as Amanda was led to a separate group of bodies covered only by a tarp. Crouching down, she uncovered the tarp to reveal three bodies. She saw that one was a human female, another was a heavily modified drone, and the third was a very large Aristan male. Their bodies were littered with bullet holes.

"Where is the fourth?" Amanda queried, covering the bodies back up.

"The body of the blacklisted netrunner is currently being retrieved by the Security Bureau. They were pretty adamant about exerting control over the corpse. So I'm afraid you'll have to take that up with them. Apparently, the body was found in a makeshift server room somewhere on the city's outskirts. They say the person in question was connected to several rebel cells across this sector."

Amanda stood back up. "I think that's enough for now. Would you mind telling me where the supervisor is?" she asked.

"He is currently in the main command center of the facility. I'll inform him that you are coming to see him," he immediately responded.

"That won't be necessary," she stopped him. "Thank you, Officer Murphy. You can resume your duties." The man nodded, giving her one last salute before disappearing into the distance. Amanda let out a heavy sigh as she motioned her guards to follow her into the interior of the base.

As she walked, Amanda ground her teeth in annoyance. She was angry that something like this could have even taken place. The amount of incompetence displayed here was staggering. And even more embarrassing by Coalition standards. It was a sign of weakness. And in these parts of the galaxy, weakness is death. Amanda was determined to give whoever was in charge a nice padding down. As she reached the main door to the command center, the pair of guards posted there immediately recognized her rank based on her uniform, braced to rigid attention, and saluted her. They were also slightly intimidated by the sight of the Sentinel Guards accompanying her.

The doors slid open and she proceeded into the room. The sounds of people scrambling and pacing around resounded in her ears. She watched as people shouted at each other, arguing and gesticulating wildly. And in the center of the room was what looked to be the supervisor; clad in their gray uniform that fit their station. He was in the midst of giving a person a good padding down. As he finished chewing out the unfortunate victim of his attention and waved them away, he glanced over toward the door and saw Amanda standing there. He froze in fear at the sight of a Director of Highcom in his command center.

"CLEAR THE ROOM!" Amanda ordered. Everyone immediately jumped up or swiveled around in startlement. But as soon as they realized who had issued the command, they fell all over themselves in their hurry to exit the command center, leaving her alone with the unfortunate supervisor.

Once the room was clear of all the others, Amanda ordered her Sentinels to wait outside. Finding a chair, she picked it up and dragged it towards the profusely sweating supervisor. As she set the chair down squarely in front of him, he gulped and tugged on his collar. He was clearly affected by sheer fear and nervousness.

"Take a seat," Amanda suggested in an even tone.

"I'm okay, ma'am," he restlessly replied.

"Take - a - seat..." she repeated in an implacable voice which clearly indicated that the 'suggestion' was a thinly veiled order. The man nodded fearfully and obediently plopped down. Walking around the chair so he could see her, Amanda left him to wallow in his discomfort while she spent several moments inspecting the room. Every second of her silent disregard added to the supervisor's unease. Her aura radiated unalloyed intimidation. As he sat there, helplessly awaiting the moment when her attention finally focused back on him, he kept having to wipe off the sweat that was dripping from his forehead and stinging his eyes.

"So," Amanda said, finally breaking the excruciating silence. "You're the one who was supposedly in charge of this base."

"Yes, ma'am..." he replied timorously.

Turning back to him, she slowly strode up to him and read the name tag on his uniform. "Hm, K. Bridges..." she muttered, reading his name aloud. "Would you mind explaining what happened here?"

For the next half hour, under her excruciating grilling, Amanda elicited a full and detailed accounting of everything that had happened. The base's investigation had pinpointed precisely how the perpetrators had slipped into the base and how they had managed to elude most of the base's vaunted security. To the perpetrators' credit, Amanda had to acknowledge how well thought out and executed their maneuvers had been. Even when their escape from the facility had been thwarted, the heist team had resorted to a backup plan that had come perilously close to succeeding. And, without a still-mysterious report by someone who had walked off the street into a random Peacekeeper station, the intrusion might never have been detected at all. There was no doubt that she needed to pursue a painstaking rundown on protocol and security measures once she was done here. The necessity of that appraisal didn't alter how annoying and time-consuming it was bound to be.

And there was still this supervisor to deal with. "Mhmm, considering everything you've told me, it still doesn't explain why security seemed lighter than usual that night. Anyone with eyes should have noticed the discrepancies in the security feed," Amanda pointed out.

"Sorry, ma'am... It was the night of the celebration... I- I issued orders that our personnel could take it a bit easy for the night," the supervisor nervously revealed. Amanda raised her eyebrow. The break-in had occurred here amid the national holiday. Another example of the careful planning by the perpetrators of the data heist, which did go a long way to explaining the shoddiness and incompetence of the security arrangements for the night.

But an explanation wasn't the same as an excuse. Letting out a heavy sigh, she said, "You will clean up your mess here. I require that you provide me with a full written report of what happened here by tomorrow. I'm afraid a lot of what happened is going to fall on your shoulders, so you will also be written up. How harsh a punishment you receive will depend entirely on how thorough and honest your report is, and on how well you clean up this mess. If you do everything perfectly, I'm sure you'll receive little more than a slap on the wrist. But if you fail to handle everything to my satisfaction, well, let's just say that your future prospects will deteriorate dramatically."

The supervisor quickly nodded. "Now, go," she ordered. Getting up from the chair, he hastily exited the room. Tapping the heel of her black boot on the floor, she sighed once again and made her way out of the command center. Once the doors slid open, Amanda snapped her fingers to her guards and they immediately resumed their positions behind her.

Receiving a call in her earpiece, Amanda tapped on it and answered. "Yes, this is Amanda Harkless."

"Hello, Director Harkless. This is Fleet Admiral Leo Caseus."

Amanda's eyes widened as she walked. Why was the fleet admiral of this entire sector calling her?

"We need you over at planetary HQ as soon as possible."

"Yes, sir. I'll be there right away," Amanda responded.

"Good, we'll be waiting in the main meeting room in the command wing,"

he stated. Before she could even ask why he needed her, he hung up the call.

"We?"

she thought. But perhaps the attendance at the meeting would be fleshed out by whatever subordinates and other flunkies were needed to carry out whatever got decided.

Exiting the building, Amanda returned to her dropship and proceeded to the planetary HQ of Antares IV. As her dropship gained speed and altitude, she peered through the small window of her ship's cabin. Though many thought the city reached its full liveliness at night with all the neon lights ablaze, she preferred the daytime view of the city's high rises glistening in the sunlight. As they flew higher, Amanda felt a distinct rumble add itself to the ship's usual complement of in-flight noises. Peering back through the window, she saw an Ares-Class Destroyer flying overhead coming from one of the many naval shipyards located around the city, headed for the upper atmosphere. Reclining into her seat again, she checked her datapad and went through some of the files that had arrived earlier and that she had put off to deal with the crisis of data theft.

Amanda's dropship arrived at the planetary HQ and landed in the executive hangar bay of the large governmental building. As soon as her ship touched down, she promptly exited it and made her way deeper into the building. As always, her guards trailed closely behind her. As they walked through the building, she saw the bustling chaos of bureaucracy at its finest. Crowds of civil servants and elected officials mingled around in the lobby before dispersing into their designated wings of the building. And she observed a notable statue that displayed a Coalition soldier holding up a flag in the center of the lobby.

Entering the area of the building reserved for high-ranking personnel, she stepped briskly up to the front desk of that wing of the building. The man attending it recognized her as he looked up from his computer. "Ah, Director Harkless. How may I help you?" the receptionist asked.

"I'm here for a meeting with Fleet Admiral Caseus," Amanda told him.

"Ah, of course," he said, checking the screen of his monitor. "Just in time, they should be starting the meeting at any moment, so you can head in right now. They're expecting you." Amanda nodded and proceeded down the hall. Reaching the ominous main metal doors that led into the meeting room, Amanda motioned her guards to wait in front of them while she went inside.

The doors slid open as they detected her presence and she entered a black-walled meeting room. It was furnished with a large semi-circular table surrounding a central opening. The table's circular rim was penetrated only at the point closest to the room's entrance, where there was a space allowing entry to the central area. Mounted on the far side of the table was a large screen that displayed various graphs and compilations of sensitive information.

The expansive horseshoe-shaped table was relatively sparsely occupied, but among the few people seated were some of the most prominent heads of the Coalition's military presence. Amanda's crimson eyes widened as she recognized Senior Director Preston Cole of the Security Bureau on the right arc of the table. Seated just past him was Major General William Sinclair of the special forces division with some lower-ranking menial officers scattered near them.

The left side of the table was even more thinly populated. Sitting on the near side of that arc was Colonel Richard Pentecost of the Peacekeeper Corps. As her eyes continued around the table, Amanda saw Rear Admiral Sydney Sable sitting alone on the far side. Amanda was surprised to see Sable included in this group.

"Why are there naval personnel here?"

Amanda wondered. But, as she thought about it further, if the topic of data theft proved to be on the agenda, then the crime had occurred in a naval intelligence data farm, which might explain their involvement.

Although Sydney and Amanda had attended the naval academy together, they mostly saw each other more as rivals than friends during their entire tenure there. Hell, the rear admiral was Amanda's exact opposite even in terms of appearance. Sydney had raven black hair and piercingly Nordic blue eyes compared to Amanda's platinum blonde hair and crimson eyes. Although they didn't see eye to eye any more than their eye coloration matched, they each maintained a wary respect for the other.

"Just in time, Director Harkless," Fleet Admiral Caseus called out to Amanda. Turning her attention to him, she saw that he was sitting at the center of the table's arc, directly opposite the opening. "Take a seat and we'll get started." Nodding, Amanda chose an empty seat and sank into the comfortable upholstery.

For the next few hours, the discussion focused on the events that had transpired at the Stillguard data farm. Amanda was glad that she had altered her plans to personally inspect the scene, although initially, no one took advantage of her detailed familiarity. Most of the meeting was consumed by briefings presented by a couple of mid-rank officers. Amanda was beginning to wonder why she was even here. Perhaps her presence was just a formality since she happened to be on the planet.

"Do we have any leads on who contracted these bounty hunters?" Caseus queried.

"No, sir," responded Security Director Cole. "But taking into account everything we've learned about the perpetrators identified at the scene, they are known to have frequented a notorious hub where criminals, gang members, and other bounty hunters like to gather," Director Cole informed.

"Tell us more about this 'hub'," Caseus added.

"Located in an alleyway in the entertainment district of the city lies a bar known as The Afterlife," Cole elaborated, calling up a holographic map of the relevant area with the bar's coordinates highlighted in the center space of the table. "Our suspects were last seen at the indicated locale a couple of days before the security breach."