The Last Praetorian (33 page)

Having only just docked and powered down the
Eternal
Light
, Jon was bone tired, but wanted to ensure that all was proceeding
smoothly before he retired for a well-deserved shower and hot meal.  However,
that plan had to be put on hold, when moving swiftly through the crowd, Paul
and Jason approached the Commander.

“Can we have a word, in private?” Paul inquired, motioning
towards one of the free observation lounges.  Jon raised one eyebrow
inquisitively, wondering why both officers were grinning as if they had just
been caught with their hand-in the cookie jar.  Jason in particular looked like
he was about to start walking on air in a cloud of self-congratulation. 
Curious to hear what his two senior officers wanted to discuss, Jon nodded his
head in agreement, joining them in the lounge and ensuring that the door was
firmly closed behind then.

“Lieutenant Edgar approached me a few minutes ago, with a
very intriguing proposition.  Timing is critical for us to pull this off, hence
I wanted you to hear this immediately.  Jason?” Paul said.

“Without realising it sir, the Syndicate have just handed us
the keys to their own demise,” Jason started off without any preamble.  He then
went on to describe the most ingenious plan of disinformation since the Allies
fooled the Axis into believing the completely wrong location and date for the
D-Day landings.  It was without a doubt the craftiest plan ever devised in over
800 years of information warfare.  It was ingenious.  It became simply known as
The Plan
, or its full name
The Plan to Discredit the Syndicate
Organisation Resulting in it’s Downfall
(THDSORID-1).

Jon was fairly certain that David had somehow been involved
in the naming.

The first step was already underway with the medical
attention being given to the families; Jason surreptitiously issued some of his
officers with portable holo-recorders to record the scenes.  Meanwhile the rest
of his team, that had been busy disassembling the freighter, frantically
reversed direction and started to put everything back; with subtle
modifications. 

For example, originally the freighter had belonged to some
long defunct shipping company, bought at a knock-down price at auction. 
However a few minor tweaks to the ships registry resulted in it becoming a real
freighter, owned by one of the Syndicates, shell, shell, shell companies which
was last reported lost somewhere in the Orion nebula.  Similarly a few boxes of
unused machine parts suddenly became a significant haul of contraband.  The aft
cargo bay became full with enough weaponry and explosives to start a small war,
all with their serial numbers and anything else that could be used to track
them removed.  Except for the odd missed number here and there, that tied it back
to another Syndicate shell company.  The ship’s computer meanwhile was packed
full of every-piece of intelligence about the Syndicate, their facilities,
ships, operations and accounts that Jason and his team had managed to gleam
over the past six months.  All nicely encrypted so that it would not appear too
obvious…

In all, within the space of 24-hours, the nondescript
freighter was turned into an intelligence treasure trove that pointed a
‘come-and-get-me’ arrow straight back to the Syndicate.  It was simple,
straightforward and would have been blatantly obvious as such to the first
person that came across the ship.

Then, after the medical team had given a clean-bill of
health to all the prisoners, they were all helped back onto the ship, with
assurances that they would be returned home.  The ship’s navigational computer
was wiped of any information about its point of origin.  The destination was
programmed into the autopilot for
Transcendence
, a bare 5 minutes in FTL
from
Terra Nova
.  Once all systems had been checked, and then checked
again, the ship was allowed to depart and stage two of
The Plan
was put
into operation.

Not having a high degree of confidence in
Transcendence
docking control, and less in the Confederation military to bother to actually
investigate a nondescript freighter just floating off the station, Jason made a
few calls, anonymously.  He called every media outlet on the station and
casually suggested to them that the story of the decade, no, the century was
going to drop out of FTL into their lap, in, oh, twenty minutes and that they
would have to be quick off the mark to get an exclusive. 

Transcendence
station had never seen a stampede like
it, nor were they ever likely to again, as hundreds of reporters,
correspondents, cameramen and news anchors made a beeline for the docking port.
A large proportion of the station population followed them, on the assumption
that if a few hundred people were making a mad dash off the station, perhaps
they knew something that they didn’t and should be followed…just in case.

Hence there was quite a welcome committee at the ready when
the freighter dropped out of FTL almost on top of the station, before powering
down the engines.  Finally station security, with the backing of confederation navy
personnel towed the freighter into dock and popped the hatch.  Of course, by
then it was far too late to cover-up the contents of the freighter as dozens of
families, dehydrated, hungry and bewildered stumbled off the ship, into the
arms of the waiting media.  It only took a few innocent questions to discover
that they were recently rescued slaves, which set off an all-out media scrum. 

As one news anchor summed it up on the nightly news.  “Ships
frequently go missing… But how often does a ship, full of recently freed
slaves, just appear?”  Meanwhile Confederation Navy officers started to debrief
the victims and search the ship with a fine tooth comb…

With information scarce about the origins of the ship,
rumours became rampant, speculation fever pitch.  One enterprising reporter,
pretending to be family, managed to conduct a brief interview with one of the
prisoners before he was hauled out by station security.  During the interview
it was claimed that they had been rescued by a group of Marines… Navy
switchboards throughout the Confederation lit-up as a million and one people
called to confirm if it was true.  The Navy refused to confirm ‘unsubstantiated
rumours’.

With the ship becoming the lead news item on every network,
Jason and his team leaked the first scrap of information, that the ship’s owner
and registration had been identified.  Hordes of investigative journalists were
quick to investigate the company, which… did not exist.  The shell company was
owned by a parent company, which… did not exist.  However, this had a shared
ownership model, with a company that, did not exist…they kept digging.

The next day, further leaks were reported.  Jason and his
team supplied all of these, anonymously, once again.  It was reported that
illegal weapons had also been found on the ship, speculated to belong to the
same slavers who had taken the victims captive.  A few serial numbers had been
found, belonging to a company that did not exist...  The Confederation Navy was
incredulous, as it seemed that leaks were occurring
before
the
investigative team had even found any evidence.

The Galaxy News Network (GNN) were the first to report a
breakthrough in the story when one of its investigative reporters had tied
together the parent company of both the ship and the company that had purchased
the arms found in the freighter.  The ‘Chamber of Commerce, Business and
Shipping,’ was an inter-system, logistics conglomerate, with offices in most
major systems.  Their data-net crashed, when it received 3.2 million hits within
the space of twenty minutes after the broadcast.  They refuted all knowledge of
the ship, weapons or captives.

Finally a small regional news syndicate announced the icing
on the cake that it had managed to obtain actual footage of the rescue! As
their data-net did not even last ten minutes before it crashed, it was jointly
agreed that all the major news networks would broadcast the recording
simultaneously (although GNN did start the broadcast a few minutes early,
claiming that their chronometer was fast). Viewing figures for the footage set
a new record, at it’s peak it was claimed that 1.2 billion confederation
citizens tuned into the live data-net feed.

The cinema on
Terra Nova
was reconfigured to show the
live broadcast, however as this was unable to contain the entire crew complement,
the engineering team piped the feed through all the station’s holoprojectors. 
However, pride of place at the front row was reserved for Gunny’s Marines and
David’s security team that had carried out the operation.

The broadcast commenced with the
Eagle One
docking at
the Syndicate Station and the Marines restraining the stunned maintenance
team.  Gunny and the Marines rushing into the prisoners’ gaol, with Gunny
shouting, “We’re the Marines, here to rescue you!” closely following this.  Jon
thought the background music swelling to a crescendo at this point was a
particularly good touch. 

Gunny meanwhile had gone an interesting shade of pink.  Leaning
forward in his seat Jon patted the embarrassed Marine sergeant on the back. 
“You and your team did good Gunny, real good.”  Meanwhile the Marines, always a
riotous bunch, yelled out “Hu-Ra!”

The scene then cut to a wide-angle shot of the Marines
escorting the rescued families through the station, frequently encountering
heavy resistance designed to stop the attempted rescue.  All in all, Jon
thought, it was an inspired piece of editing by Jason and his team.  He would
have been the first to nominate them for a New Hollywood award for editing and
post-production.  After all, the entire recording was complete fiction, having
been edited to turn the entire order of events on its head to make it appear a
rescue, when in actual fact it been a daring raid to obtain the computer core.

Meanwhile the Marines had finally made it to the freighter
and after ensuring all the rescued families were aboard the freighter departed
the station, only to be warned by the recently arrived Syndicate reinforcements. 

“Unidentified ship – this station is private property
belonging to the Chamber of Commerce, Business and Shipping.  You are ordered
to power down all systems and surrender, otherwise you will be destroyed”.  Jon
thought that bit of editing was a particularly good touch.

Meanwhile what followed was a horrific attack on a
vulnerable, defenceless freighter, full of starving families, women and
children…  That just so happened to appear invulnerable… and per-chance to
completely obliterate any attackers!

Straight after the broadcast of the recording it cut to a
press conference that had been hastily convened on
Transcendence
by the
Confederation Navy.  The young, baby faced Navy spokesperson was categorically
denying any Navy involvement in the incident.  This was having the opposite
effect of making the Navy seem even guiltier, as while the Marines had not worn
any identifying insignia, they were obviously Marines, hell; they had even
announced themselves as Marines!  Even the Navy spokesperson seemed uncertain. 
After reading the prepared announcement, the spokesperson inquired if there
were any questions, he seemed to be particularly dreading the questions…

One proactive reporter was straight out the chair
inquiring.  “Can the Confederation Navy confirm which active unit these Marines
belong to?”

The response from the spokesperson was automatic.  “All
active military deployments are classified and I cannot comment.” 

Jon almost fell out of his chair with laughter; the
spokesperson had practically contradicted his own earlier statement.  You could
see onscreen the spokesperson hesitate for a moment, then with a fish out of
water expression, you could see him think,
Doh!
  No further questions
were permitted and the spokesperson made a hurried exit.

Unable to think up excuses for incarcerating the freed
captives for any longer; the excuse to the Judge that they needed to remain
secluded to aid in their recovery was only going to last a few days at best,
the Confederation Navy released the freed prisoners into… the open arms of the
awaiting media.  Having lost everything in the Syndicate attacks that took them
captive, Jon certainly hoped that one or two of the families at least managed
to negotiate a richly paid media exclusive.

In any case, it had an even more electrifying impact than
Jason and his team could have wished and prayed for.  The media coverage was
wall-to-wall, of terrified families, fearing for their lives, after having
already lost their livelihoods, in tears describing their rescue by the
Marines.  One pretty, dark haired little girl held up the teddy bear that she
had been given by one of the Marines when she was frightened by the medical
check-up. 

Jon made inquiries around the station, but none of the Marines
recollected giving away a teddy bear, or at least was willing to admit to doing
so.  Personally, Jon had his own suspicions.

Suffice to say that calls to the Marine’s recruitment office,
already up by 200%, skyrocketed by a further 600%.  In counterpoint, the stock
price for Chamber of Commerce, Business and Shipping (CCBS), already trading
down 20%, fell a further 60%.

Another switchboard that also quickly became overloaded was
for the Senate Office on Eden Prime, flooded by calls from indignant citizens
demanding to know what action was to be taken by their government against
CCBS.  Senators, a fickle species on a good day, always quick to detect the
changing winds of public perception were lining up to sign-up for the newest
Senate sub-committee to investigate the activities for CCBS.  Of the 280
senators, representing each world in the Confederation, 270 voted in favour, 9
against, with one vote uncast (he was in the wash-room and missed the vote). 
It did not make much difference to the voting citizens, as he, along with the
other nine senators, was not put forward for re-election the following year.