Three Square Meals Ch. 100

The young lieutenant hesitated for a second, then asked timidly, "Want to join us for a drink? Lincoln said he's buying."

Murphy froze for a moment, suddenly realising just how much he'd missed that sense of camaraderie with his wingmates. "Actually, I really would, but I need to see the Captain. Can I take a rain check?"

She beamed a bright smile at him. "We'll be there for an hour! You'll probably need a drink if Gator gives you a bollocking!"

"See you later then," he agreed, waving her goodbye.

It didn't take him long to reach his Flight Captain's office and after knocking politely on the door, he heard his commanding officer call out for him to enter.

Captain Lewis gestured to one of the chairs facing the desk. "Take a seat, Lieutenant Commander."

Murphy was automatically on his guard, something in the other man's tone making the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He sat down and studied his old flight instructor warily. "What is it, Gator?"

Captain Lewis sat back in his seat and steepled his fingers. "I've seen the completion times your wing has been logging on the training course. You've managed to shave seven minutes off the previous record logged in a Rapier, and you're nearly two minutes ahead of the next best score for a Claymore."

Allowing himself a small smile, Murphy shook his head. "The lead's now up to two minutes, six seconds, we set a new record this evening."

Leaning forward in his chair, Lewis fixed him with a stern gaze. "Murphy, are you cheating?"

"Fuck no!" Murphy snarled, bristling with anger. "We've been working our balls off! Anyone who says otherwise is lying and probably just jealous!"

Lewis didn't seem ruffled in the slightest by the outburst. "Yes... I've seen how many flight hours you and your wing have logged." He studied the younger man, knowing that the matter would have to be handled delicately. "I've also received a complaint... or should I say... concerns have been raised."

Murphy frowned, his mind abuzz. "This is the first I've heard about it. No one in my wing has raised any objections with me!"

"Nor would they," Lewis said quietly. "I've spoken to all of them; they hero-worship you, Murphy."

Eyes narrowing in irritation, Murphy scowled. "Binary..."

"He's worried about you, Ryan... we both are," the Captain said, giving him a look filled with sympathy. "What you've achieved with your new wingmates is nothing short of remarkable, but this kind of intensive training is bordering on the obsessive."

"They're all good people, they can handle the pressure," Murphy said obstinately. "Besides, they know what's at stake... We need to be at the peak of our game both in flight discipline and aerial marksmanship! I just wish the rest of the Wing Commanders would take training their rookies just as seriously."

Lewis watched him for a long moment. "I'll let you continue, but you need to cut back on the hours the moment any of your wing show the slightest sign of excessive fatigue."

"That's fine," Murphy agreed, fidgeting in his seat. "Is that all, Captain?"

"I also want you to get some counselling sessions," Lewis replied, his voice firm and uncompromising. "After Regulus, you didn't-"

He was interrupted by an insistent chime on the comms interface floating above Lewis' desk. The Captain glanced at the scrolling data, then he did a double-take, his eyes widened in horror.

"What is it, Gator?" Murphy asked, half-rising from his seat in alarm.

The Captain froze for a moment, then rotated the holo-interface around so that the young man could see. Murphy stared at the battle plans for the defence of Terra, feeling a deathly chill wash over his body as he realised he'd be facing Kintark in battle again... in less than eight hours.

Murphy rose from his chair, a bitter expression on his face. "Still think I was training them too hard?"

***

John stepped out of the equipping frame in the Dojo's armoury, watching Irillith as she waited for him by the door. Her face was set in a carefully controlled expression, but her angular Maliri eyes were deeply troubled.

Sakura gave him a quick hug and planted a tender kiss on his cheek. "That session was really helpful, thank you."

"Glad it was useful," John said, glancing at her and smiling. "I appreciated the distraction."

The Asian girl returned his smile, then gave Irillith a respectful nod before she departed through the door.

John watched her leave, then focused his attention on the patiently waiting Maliri girl. "I'm all yours, honey."

Irillith was about to follow after Sakura, but she abruptly changed her mind and strode into the Dojo instead. Puzzled by her choice of destination, John followed after her, then stood to one side as she programmed a new location into the holo-suite. The wooden dojo faded into blackness along with its spectacular view of mist-shrouded Mount Daisen. When the replacement scene burst into life, John had to wince against the brightness, his eyes taking a few moments to adapt. To his surprise they now appeared to be in a beautiful meadow, with radiant sunshine beaming down on what could only be described as a glorious summer's day.

The Maliri girl tilted her head back and held out her arms, as if soaking in the heat from those rays. "After everything I've just trawled through, I needed to get away from the darkness..." she said softly, before lowering her arms and letting out a heavy sigh.

John walked over and placed his hands on her hips, drawing her into a hug. "Did you find Jehanna?" he asked, his voice tense with worry.

She looked at him with a pained expression. "I'm so sorry... I couldn't find anything definitive. Whoever took her must be running some kind of black-operation where they're keeping everything off the grid. I've been through the military archives on Mars, all the key T-Fed security servers, and searched through anything linked to the Admiralty. Time is accelerated in the cyber-realm and I've just spent the equivalent of fifty hours ripping apart everything I could find with Buckingham's name on it."

"Did you get much dirt on him?" John asked tersely.

"Not much more than hints and rumours," she replied with a frustrated scowl. "He's definitely dirty, but he's also very careful and keeps anything incriminating off the network. Luckily for us, Admiral Weber isn't quite so meticulous and he's been acting as Buckingham's go-to-guy. I've seen a few veiled references to something called 'Tartarus' in Admiral Weber's data logs, but he's never gone into any detail. I sent off some data-probes to widen the search and they traced more references to Tartarus in private messages between special forces troopers... I think it might be some kind of secret base."

"Any way we can track it down?" John asked, ears pricking up.

"Not from what I've uncovered so far, but I've got some ideas to help narrow the search. I need to discuss it with Sakura and Calara, as I think their experience with Mikaboshi might come in handy." Sensing John's disappointment, she added, "I did find something else that Buckingham was involved with... it's unrelated to Jehanna, but worrying nonetheless. Do you remember Calara was trying to track the Nymphs by checking out their history?"

"Yeah, but she ran into a brick wall. It was all locked-up with Admiral-grade security clearance," John replied, before frowning in irritation. "Shit! I meant to ask Charles to look into that."

"There's no need," Irillith replied, shaking her head. "That information was supposedly classified as top secret fifty years ago, but the timestamp was fabricated. Those records were sealed only last week... it was authorised by Fleet Admiral Buckingham himself!"

"Why would he be interested in the Lenarrans?" John asked, shocked that Buckingham would get involved.

Irillith met his startled gaze with one of certainty. "Because you are? You did broadcast a public appeal asking for leads on the Nymphs... In any case, both he and Weber have been actively trying to track down any living Nymphs. Weber sent a report to Buckingham listing the names of citizens who apparently had a Nymph in their possession. I cross-checked and all four previous owners have just had unfortunate accidents and are now dead..."

"So those bastards must have taken them!" John snarled, his anger flaring. "Jehanna going missing, the Nymphs, Devereux, the Kintark, and the Kirrix... I should have put that fucker down the moment he threatened me!"

"I think you're going to need Alyssa to tear those secrets out of him. Unfortunately for us, he's been too guarded over the network for me to be a big help," she said with regret. A wicked smile slowly spread across her face as she continued, "But the military on the other hand... they place far too much trust in their cyber-security..."

Irillith smirked to herself as she remembered her assault on the Terran Federation data archives on Mars. It had been... liberating... to throw all subtlety aside and literally rip apart those data fortresses. She could only imagine the shock and horror that those server administrators must have felt, watching her demolish their pitiful defences and knowing there was nothing they could do to stop her. They had tried of course, but short of actually shutting the servers down, all their best counter-intruder applications had been like wheat before a turbo-charged threshing machine.

Irillith had a look of grudging respect on her face as she said, "Some of the things High Command's been involved in would make a Matriarch blush. The Maliri are less prone to acts of civil disobedience, so the Matriarchs have never really had to crack down on insurrections in the same way. The Terran Federation has had a long and bloody history of rebellions, and High Command is brutally efficient at ending them."

John let out a heavy sigh. "Trust me... I know."

She cupped his cheek and gazed into his eyes. "The Siege of Galon Prime... I knew you were involved in that battle, so I scoured the official and unofficial reports for as much information as I could find."

He looked away, unable to meet her look of concern or bear the sympathy he saw there. "Leave it in the past, Irillith..."

The Maliri girl slipped her arms around him and pulled him into a hug. "No, you need to hear this."

John flinched and tried to pull back. "No, I don't want to talk about it."

Irillith's eyes narrowed and she held on tight, refusing to let him walk away. "The sector governor might have been a despot and caused all those systems to revolt in the first place, but the rebel siege was causing widespread food shortages and starvation. Thousands of innocent civilians on Galon Prime were dying; lifting the siege was the right thing to do! High Command underestimated the size of the rebel forces... you just did what you had to do to win the battle."

He froze, his expression filled with pain. "It was my idea to rush the Command Ship and take them in a boarding action. The carnage on that battleship... I've never seen anything like it! The rebels refused to surrender so we were forced to wipe them out to a man. Our forces didn't do much better... out of a complement of 300 marines, 274 were killed between that boarding action and repelling attacks on the Invictus. I lost so many friends; men and women I'd known for years..."

"I know," she murmured, slowly embracing him again. "But what happened afterwards wasn't your fault."

John slowly shook his head. "We smashed the fleet and annihilated the rebels... that set the tone for the reprisals. They killed over 200,000 rebel civilians in the orbital bombardment of Ostigrad city and that was just the start..."

"I've read all the classified files, I know everything," Irillith said quietly, lifting his chin with her finger so that he'd make eye contact with her. "High Command always intended to make an example of the rebel capital; Fleet Admiral Sutton had everything planned out in meticulous detail two weeks before you even lifted the siege. The brutality of the reprisals had nothing to do with the battle you were involved in."

"Wait.. what?" John asked her in bewilderment.

Irillith's tone was firm as she continued, "Sutton was under enormous pressure at the time. Buckingham was campaigning heavily to replace him as Fleet Admiral and he wanted to make a bold move to suppress the rebellion, to show how decisive his leadership was... However, Buckingham outmanoeuvred him and started stirring up public outrage at the rampant civilian death toll. Six months after you retired, Sutton was charged with crimes against humanity and Buckingham was promoted to Fleet Admiral."

John wavered, stunned by what she'd discovered. "But I always thought..."

"Alyssa told me why you never talked about the battle, which is why I investigated," she said, stroking his back soothingly. "You did your duty and fought bravely against terrible odds, but you bear no responsibility for anything that happened to those civilians."

John was quiet for a long time, then hugged her back fiercely. "Thank you... You've no idea what a weight that is off my shoulders; I've been carrying that guilt around for years!"

*I know,* Alyssa told him, her voice swirling through his mind.

Irillith gave him a tender kiss. "I guess that's one less we owe you now," she said with no small amount of satisfaction.

"I'm not keeping score," John said, with a grateful smile.

The Maliri girl enjoyed the close embrace, then said softly, "There's more you need to know..."

He pulled back to study her pensive face. "What else?"

"I dug through everything I could find about the Brimorians, looking for clues about the Abandoned," she explained. "Rachel was right... they are definitely the descendants of Terran colonists that settled on the Callopean Shoals."

John nodded, not surprised to hear that confirmed. "She made a very convincing case, it all fit together perfectly."

"Yes, Rachel is quite remarkable," Irillith agreed, before going quiet for a moment. "John, do you remember you told us that thousands of colonists had been killed in the fighting?"

"That's what I remember reading," he said, trying to recall the archived news reports. "Obviously the colonists were still alive though, so High Command lied to keep news of their capture out of the media."

"That's not all they were lying about," the Maliri girl said, shaking her head. "A century ago, all the Gaia-class planets in the Terran Federation had already been discovered and colonised. When the Callopean Shoals were discovered, they found a dozen systems all containing beautiful atoll-covered planets that were perfect for Terran habitation. There was a huge rush of colonists all eager to stake their claim on virgin worlds..."

John froze as he realised what she was leading up to. "How many?"

"23 state-sponsored Eve-class colony ships, each containing 10,000 colonists," Irillith replied in a subdued voice. "High Command estimates place the number of colonists captured at over 264,000 when you include all the independent colonists and transport crews."

"How the hell did they keep that secret?!" he asked in stunned amazement.

The Maliri girl frowned as she replied, "Through ruthless control of the media. There were rumours of course, but they were denied or suppressed by the authorities. A handful of doggedly relentless journalists refused to give up, but they were... dealt with. Without a public outlet, the rumours quickly faded away."

"And since then, there's been five generations of Abandoned..." John murmured, his eyes widening.

"That's right," Irillith said, nodding as she saw him began to realise the magnitude of the problem facing them. "If we assume the Abandoned women are having upward of at least... twenty children each generation, we're looking at an unprecedented population explosion."

"What kind of numbers are we talking about?" he asked with trepidation.

"I've discussed it with Rachel but there are too many variables to make any kind of precise estimates..." She paused for a second, then fixed him with a solemn stare. "Best guess? Maybe a billion people... with an upper limit of perhaps ten billion."

His eyes widened in astonishment. "You've got to be fucking kidding me?!"

"I wish I were..." she replied quietly. "Out of those initial 260,000 colonists, perhaps 50,000 might be women of early child-bearing age. Assuming no fatalities in the gene-splicing process, those first generation of women might go on to have twenty children each, birthing perhaps 500,000 second generation females. Then assuming each generation after that has twenty children, you're looking at 5 million women for the third generation, 50 million for the fourth, then 500 million for the fifth."

"Helene's generation..." John murmured, astounded by the numbers involved.

"Those figures are conservative estimates," Irillith reminded him. "If a larger number of women from the initial colonists were genetically modified and each generation had thirty children each, the actual numbers could be far, far higher... From what we've gathered from Helene and her sister Yasmin, the Abandoned start getting pregnant at a young age, so it's entirely plausible."

"Breeding a slave race..." he muttered, sickened by the thought. "If their population has grown that huge, they must be spread throughout the Brimorian Enclave... I can't believe they're all confined to Brimor."

"That's a reasonable assumption," she agreed. "Even though the Abandoned are poorly educated, the Brimorians obviously find them useful as an agricultural labour-force. It would make sense to disperse your new workers to all planets where crops are grown and harvested... There's scores of oceanic worlds within Brimorian territory and they've claimed just as many continental planets which are just as viable for that kind of agriculture."

"I'll have to speak to Helene again and try to find out what I can about their towns or villages," John mused, wondering just how much the sheltered aquatic girl could tell them.

Irillith gave him a sad smile. "I found out plenty more about the Terran Federation's misdeeds, but none of it is urgent and I've dropped enough bombshells on you for one night."

John glanced up at the shining holographic sun. "I can see why you felt like you needed to cleanse yourself; I feel dirty after this conversation and not in a good way..." He turned back to Irillith and kissed her gently. "Thank you for looking into all that... and for Galon Prime."

"It was an unpleasant task, but helping you made it all worthwhile," she said, holding him close.

They embraced for a long moment, until the door behind them swished open, the quiet sound followed by the staccato click of heels. John turned and saw Alyssa waiting for him by the doorway, a fond smile on her lovely face.

Irillith gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "I'm heading off to bed... goodnight, John."

John accompanied her to the door, then politely waved her through as he offered an arm to Alyssa. "Bedtime for you too?"

"In a little while," she replied, her smile turning coy. "Let's head to the Lagoon..."

They followed Irillith out into the corridor, but instead of taking his other arm, the Maliri walked ahead of them with an exaggerated sway of her hips. John was mesmerised by the sight of those two compact globes rolling in the clinging material of her dress, knowing the pleasures to be found with her luscious body. When Irillith reached the grav-tube, she turned to glance at him over her shoulder, a satisfied smirk on her face. Her bewitching spell was finally broken when she stepped inside and floated up in the blue anti-gravity field.

Alyssa laughed, the wonderful melodic sound echoing down the corridor. "You've both got one-track minds! I enjoy getting reamed as much as the next girl, but she just adores it!"