TRANSMISSION 06: Connect The Dots

WELCOME TO THE A.R.M.I. INTEL-AN LOG FACILITIES
PLEASE RECONFIRM YOUR CODE-WORD CLEARANCE
PROCESSING...
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ACCESS CONFIRMED
INPUT INFORMATION QUERY
SEARCHING...
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SEARCHING...
5 LIKELY MATCHES CONFIRMED:
INPUT DATA DATED 04-01-11; KEYWORDS “SCOPES” “MAZZOLA” “BLAKE”
INPUT DATA DATED 18-01-04; KEYWORDS “CANCRI” “MAZZOLA”
INPUT DATA DATED 21-02-07; KEYWORDS “SCOPES” “CANCRI”
INPUT DATA DATED 09-06-03; KEYWORDS “BLAKE” “MAZZOLA”
INPUT DATA DATED 04-06-91; KEYWORDS “SCOPES” “BLAKE”
FILE SELECTED
LOADING...
LOADING...

SPECIALIST HAYNES: Morning, El-Tee. Seen any good movies lately?

LIEUTENANT KILAR: Very funny, Specialist. I’ve been up for about thirty hours now, so jokes are definitely what I’m in the mood for.

HAYNES: Whoa. No Maureen?

KILAR: Maureen had to feed her cat or some bullshit, so I took a back-to-back.

HAYNES: She’s been feeding her cat for fifteen hours?

KILAR: He is a pudgy fucker.

HAYNES: What are we looking at?

KILAR: Uh, we had one of our undercovs go dark a couple days ago, and IntSec has us reviewing his last five days of footage, see if we might pick up any hints that he got snatched.

HAYNES: Jeez. Anyone we know?

KILAR: Lemme see... a Gianluca Mazzola of Four-Section Field Ops, out of Two-Thirteen.

HAYNES: Mazzola... don’t think I ever met him. What’s the need-to-know on him?

KILAR: Independent asset tracking with irregular reports. Visible deep-cover, with reccing wetware out the yin-yang.

HAYNES: And what ‘independent assets’ do we have him tracking?

KILAR: Ostensibly, that’s we brought you in here to verify, but seriously? Any yahoo with a subscription to Imperial Broadband could pick out most of these punks. Take a look.

HAYNES: Holy Mother of Moses. Is that who I think it is?

KILAR: In the flesh. And look who he’s talking to.

HAYNES: Wow... no wonder Brennan’s popping a gasket over this guy; he was in deep. Is it all high-level guys?

KILAR: Most of it, yeah. There’s a council meeting and a war room thing, with about eight or nine hours of security intel briefings, in case we ever have to drop an Infil team into Truncatis. The war room thing is a briefing for the Three-Seventy-Nine hit, actually; then it looks like he went invisible for the next couple of days, sitting on a council building on Fifty-Seven-Mono and watching the door. Lot of people there that I don’t recognize, actually.

HAYNES: Lemme see.

KILAR: Sure, grab a seat.

HAYNES: Hmmm... wait, go back, go back... yeah. That’s Leuchtner from Exec. And there’s... uh... what’s-his-name Doberman out of Logistics, probably bitching about all the assets they wasted trying to hit Three-Seven-Nine... whose office is this, anyway?

KILAR: Leslie Scopes, out of-

HAYNES: Scopes? Yeah, she’s the Luyten's Star section commander now, after bin Hassan bought it at Three-Seventy-Nine. Brennan wanted to watch her, that’s interesting...

KILAR: Who is this chick?

HAYNES: That’s need-to-know, El-Tee, you know that.

KILAR: Come on. Either I can wait two days for clearance, or you can just tell me now.

HAYNES: ...alright. She was with Astrographic Asset Evaluation before the cannon, and had a lot of ties to Blake. Defected during the Moon War, and ended up on Armand’s side of the split.

KILAR: Did she, now.

HAYNES: Yup. Brennan must think she’s still in bed with Blake, so to speak- WHOA.

KILAR: What? What?

HAYNES: That’s... it can’t be.

KILAR: What is it? Who is that?

HAYNES: That’s... Ashbrook de Blainville. He’s a talk show host.

KILAR: What, like political breakfast show?

HAYNES: No... vacuous celebrity dumbfucks for housewives and preteens. Runs every friday at four out of Mono-Bee. What in Hell’s Holy Bells is he doing walking into a military adjunct’s office?

KILAR: Are you sure that’s the guy?

HAYNES: Positive.

KILAR: Weird.

HAYNES: I’ll say.

KILAR: You want me to call upstairs?

HAYNES: Hmm? No, I’ll just slap it in my report.

KILAR: Come on. We don’t know he’s doing there, this is a time-sensitive thing, Brennan’s sweating his balls off worrying about this guy... let me call Four-Section, let them know we’ve found something weird, maybe they’ll clear us up a grade if this... du Blanville-

HAYNES: de Blainville.

KILAR: Whatever, if his name rings any bells.

HAYNES: Rings any bells? Come on, El-Tee, this dude’s a nobody, a civvy! He’s got nothing more to do with Mazzola blacking out than you or I do! For all we know, he’s trying to get an interview with someone out of the military for propaganda purposes.

KILAR: Yeah, but we don’t know that. What if he’s... some kind of intell operative? Some spy telling Scopes she’s being watched? What if Mazzola did get snatched, and this is the guy who fingered him?

HAYNES: Well... you’re the boss, boss.

KILAR: You’re damn right, I am, and I’m calling Four-Section.

HAYNES: Okay, okay... but don’t bitch me out when they start laughing at you for thinking their star undercov was kidnapped by a teevee presenter.


RECORD LOG 8661947638 – M107 ATLAS TRANSPORT “KUIPER”
MAIN HOLDING CELL LOG – AUDIO ONLY

(door opens)

MAZZOLA: Who’s there?

BLAKE: Oh, I think you know.

MAZZOLA: Blake!

BLAKE: Mmm.

MAZZOLA: Well, you can save your psych-techniques, you know I’m not talking. I’m a top-executive-tier Imperial Guardsman.

BLAKE: I’d appreciate it if that was the last time you insulted my intelligence, Mister Mazzola. I know exactly what you are and where you were trained, and it certainly wasn’t in an Imperial facility.

MAZZOLA: Oh yeah? And where was that?

BLAKE: Well, that would the Gliese-Two-Thirteen Allied Rimworld Military Intelligence Academy, of course. I have to hand it to Brennan, he’s got balls, placing an operative in the Imperial Guard. It’s the ideal place; you see a lot, you hear a lot, you’re rotated frequently, and have the authority to select your own assignments. Unfortunately, he overlooked one crucial detail: the Guard’s emm-oh was designed specifically to help the Viziers keeps tabs on the Emperor, and one another. It’s the obvious place to put a mole. When I saw how efficiently the En-En-Three-Seven-Nine-Nine assault was foiled, I knew the mole was working for Allied Rimworld Intelligence.

MAZZOLA: I admit it, Blake, your delsusions are magnificently detailed. You should be one of the Emperor’s speechwriters. I’m flattered by the implication that I’m smart enough to be some sort of undercover operative, but the truth is, I’m as dumb as you’re insane.

BLAKE: You certainly were dumb enough to fall for my red herring on the council. All I had to do was wait until I was absolutely certain Scopes was being watched, and have her jump on the next shuttle to Luyten's Star. Whoever had himself assigned to the shuttle was my man, and that man, Mister Mazzola, was you.

MAZZOLA: You just tripped yourself up, Blake. If Scopes isn’t on your payroll, how’d you get her on the flight?

BLAKE: It’s not quite time to reveal all of my schemes, but you’re obviously not as stupid as you’d have me believe.

MAZZOLA: Well, whatever side you think I’m on, I’m not talking to you.

BLAKE: I’ll leave that to my experts. In the meantime, I’m far more interested on what Scopes has to tell me, I’m sure she’ll be willing to cut some sort of deal to save her own sorry hide.

A.R.M.I. INTEL-AN COMM LOG
TRANSMISSION 18-12-10-71-4

KILAR: Mffh... what time is it?

HAYNES: You don’t want to know.

KILAR: God damn it, Haynes, what’ve you done now?

HAYNES: It’s not me, it’s you. You called Four-Section, and now our info on Mazzola is IntSec’s only lead on his disappearance.

KILAR: And this is urgent how, exactly?

HAYNES: ‘Cause we just got word from ComIntel: someone else has disappeared.

KILAR: Who?

HAYNES: Leslie Scopes.

KILAR: ...I’m putting on my pants, I’ll be there in thirty.


PERSONAL FEED ACCESS: ANTHONY STANISLAV BRENNAN, ID#94357998193056
RECORDING OF UNSCHEDULED MEETING AT INTSEC HEADQUARTERS
PLAYBACK CORRUPTED – DOWNLOADING TRANSCRIPT

BRENNAN: ...if we can’t even move assets in there!

LONGDEN: I’ll see what I can do-

BRENNAN: Dan! Come in, sit down. You look like shit. Coffee?

KILAR: Yeah, sure.

HAYNES: Hi, El-Tee.

KILAR: At ease, Specialist.

BRENNAN: Alright, I’ll get straight to the point. Dan, this is General Longden from SpaceCom, and this is Colonel Takatsukasa from ComIntel. Guys, this is Danny Kilar, the analyst who confirmed Mazzola as missing.

KILAR: I’m sorry, but... I did, sir?

BRENNAN: In a roundabout way, it appears you did. The, uh, de Blainville guy your people eye-deed going into Scopes’s office had been contacted by a blind drop on Fifty-Seven-Mono-Ay that we’ve been bugging for a while. We had no idea whose drop it was, and in fact, we suspected it might be CoRe or U-Ess-Emm until tonight. Colonel?

TAKATSUKASA: At oh-three-forty-one-local, an Imperial Em-One-Oh-Seven out of Gliese-Two-Eighty-Bee was officially declared overdue at Luyten's Star. Seems it was transporting one Section Commander Leslie Scopes on unknown business to her section garrison on Trigon. Playback of Agent Mazzola’s recordings show that she departed immediately following de Blainville’s visit, and we have constructed a likely scenario: de Blainville somehow gets Scopes to go immediately to Luyten's Star on some errand, and since Mazzola had been ordered to watch her, he jumps on the shuttle himself without waiting for clearance from IntSec. Then, whoever ordered de Blainville to Scopes’ office has ships lying in wait for her at Luyten. They grab her and Mazzola and disappear.

BRENNAN: We basically played connect-the-dots, but we’d never have found the first dot without you guys.

KILAR: Thanks, I guess... I reckon y’all have a pretty solid theory as to who might have snatched Mazzola and Scopes?

BRENNAN: We figure, the only ones who could possibly have ships in-system for the capture would be Blake’s people.

KILAR: What? Blake? How would they get there?

TAKATSUKASA: It seems that either Blake’s raid on Luyten's Star three months ago may have been a feint to place assets in-system, or the raid had the secondary purpose of leaving them there. Shortly before you were called, this was apparently confirmed when the Luyten jump cannon crew failed to check in, and a sortie was dispatched from the garrison to investigate.

KILAR: You’re saying Blake’s people took over the cannon, and used it to jump Scopes and Mazzola into Protectorate space?

TAKATSUKASA: Exactly, or to En-En-Three-Five-Two-Two, to be precise.

KILAR: She-sus... but one thing I don’t get: how do we know de Blainville is involved? Can’t Scopes just be working for Blake? Grabbing one of our undercovs seems like it would be worth blowing her cover over.

BRENNAN: Then why place assets in Luyten when he could just have Scopes bring Mazzola straight to him? She could make up any excuse she wanted for an attack, or invite another raid to Luyten's Star and ‘lose’ Mazzola in the casualties. No, de Blainville is involved, somehow. Granted, I don’t know how, but he is.

LONGDEN: The more important issue is this: does Blake know Mazzola is one of ours, and if he does, how can we retrieve him?

KILAR: He’s out of range?

LONGDEN: Completely, unless IntSec operatives in Ay-Dee-Leonis executed an extraction.

BRENNAN: Right, and blow their cover? My people have been working six years trying to infiltrate CoRe ops-

LONGDEN: When the only other option is launching a SpaceCom raid four-and-a-half parsecs through three jump points, all of which are heavily guarded, you bet your ass we blow their cover. A six-year op with no concrete results is a complete WOMBAT anyway, when the alternative is Blake’s people squeezing Mazzola! Do you have any idea how much he knows? Codenames? Troop ops? Chain-of-command intel?

BRENNAN: You’re goddamn right I know, because I’m the one who put him there in the first place! He’s my friend, and believe me, if I saw any feasible way to extract him using my people, I would-

TAKATSUKASA: Gentlemen, please. Let’s discuss the alternatives. First of all: are we sure Blake knows? What if he’s just after Scopes? Mazzola’s smart enough to keep up his cover; maybe he’ll pretend to defect, and we’ll have a mole in Blake’s militia, something we’ve wanted for decades.

HAYNES: No. Blake wouldn’t throw all that into grabbing an Imperial Council Member he could probably buy off anyway. He knows.

BRENNAN: Danny?

KILAR: Brian’s right. Blake’s no idiot. He knows. And besides, he’d never let a defector into his army, never mind his confidence.

LONGDEN: Can we rely on the Empire to send someone to retrieve Scopes, and grabbing Mazzola along the way?

BRENNAN: No, Armand hates Scopes and all the ex-CoRe people. He probably won’t even tell the council what happened to her, and use the oppurtunity to install some toady moron in her place.

HAYNES: So wait... we’re cerain that the dead drop on Vee-Fifty-Seven is Blake’s?

LONGDEN: Whose else could it be? This thing with de Blainville can’t be a coincidence?

HAYNES: Well, it could be, but it doesn’t really matter who it belongs to; we can still use it.

BRENNAN: What’s on your mind, Bri?

HAYNES: Well, what if we get the Empire to do our work for us, like you suggested, General? We could plant info in the dead drop giving Scopes’s location, and have one of our moles in ImpIntel rat out de Blainville. Then, once they’ve scanned the dead drop, they’ll know what happened to Scopes, and Armand will have no way of keeping it in the bottle. The council will demand they rescue her, and bam, they’ll send a strikeforce from Dee-Ex or Luyten’s Star within the week.

TAKATSUKASA: Forgive me, Specialist, and I know this is your area of expertise, not mine, but this all seems rather farfetched. How can you be so certain the Viziers will be so anxious to resuce Scopes? In fact, how can you even be sure the info will reach the Viziers?

KILAR: A lot of these Viziers sit on oversight commitees, basically whoring themselves out for mid-level and junior staff in the Imperial bureaucracy. If a low-level ImpIntel analyst finds our message-

HAYNES: And we can assure that happens, through use of our mole-

KILAR: He’ll run straight to one of the Viziers, and offer to exchange the information for a promotion.

LONGDEN: And what’s in it for the whores?

KILAR: Pardon?

TAKATSUKASA: What’s in it for the Vizier?

KILAR: Oh, right. Well, he or she gets to look decisive and well-informed in front of the Emperor, and if there’s a fight to be won, he or she can put somebody already in their pocket in charge of the strike force.

HAYNES: Plus, you realize this will out de Blainville, and we find out what the deal is with that guy. I’m betting he’ll break under Imp torture, and tell them who he’s working for, and then our mole can tell us.

KILAR: ...right. It’s the perfect plan, really.

BRENNAN: Aw, would you look at that. It’s true love, boys.

LONGDEN: I’m... uneasy about this, handing off legit info to ImpIntel. Are you sure they’ll even buy it? And what if de Blainville visits the dead drop and wipes it before they scan it?

HAYNES: They’ll buy it, because it’s real: when they start to back-check it, they’ll find everything adds up, and there’ll be no way we could have done stuff like a smash-and-grab parsecs out of Allied space.

KILAR: And as for de Blainville beating us to the drop, we’ve been anticipating a scenario like this for some time; our mole has had the dead drop under indirect ImpIntel surveillance for some time, and has the documents to prove it. It’ll look like he just happened to come across it-

LONGDEN: Which is exactly what happened.

BRENNAN: A lie, General Longden, is most convincingly hidden between two truths.

LONGDEN: Right. Well, this is your ball from now on, gentlemen. I’ll leave you to it; I have a report to write.

BRENNAN: Cool. You might want to leave out the part where we called the Viz council whores, in case they ever come knocking.

LONGDEN: Are you kidding? It’ll be italicized, underlined and bold, if I have anything to say about it.

(laughs)



RECORD LOG 9452779210 – M107 ATLAS TRANSPORT “CHROME”
BRIDGE LOG – AUDIO ONLY

CAPTAIN GOLIA: What’s our ee-tee-ay, Lieutenant?

FLIGHT LIEUTENANT PÖTSCHKE: About two minutes, sir.

GOLIA: Good. I trust em-see-see drop won’t be a problem?

PÖTSCHKE: No, sir: plenty of cover and plenty of potential ell-zees. Two-Two-bee is a toxic hothouse, about an ay-you or so away from being tidally locked with the primrary. Biochem records indicate silicon-based plant analogues sprung from microbial seeding, and acid precipitation regular enough to form seas.

GOLIA: Nothing metal-scorching, I hope?

PÖTSCHKE: No, sir. Well within acceptable pee-aitch levels for a standard hull. Resist the urge to go swimming, and you’ll do fine, sir.

GOLIA: Understood. And Lieutenant?

PÖTSCHKE: Sir?

GOLIA: In future, resist the urge to crack jokes while we’re on a combat jump, and you’ll do fine. If not, I’ll gladly accept your offer to volunteer for testing the acid’s effect on human flesh.

PÖTSCHKE: Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.

ENSIGN ZAMALLOA: Sir, calculations indicate we should be through the heliopause now! Should I fire the breakers?

GOLIA: At once.

ZAMALLOA: Breakers fired! Navs?

ENSIGN LUCAS: Collating... tracking... got it! Primrary confirmed at one-forty by sixty-two by eight.

ZAMALLOA: Adjusting yaw... there she blows.

GOLIA: How very underwhelming. Just for once, I’d like to conquer a star you could at least put on a postcard.

ENSIGN IDRISS: Picking up a comm blanket.

GOLIA: Good. Open up a channel.

IDRISS: Channel open.

GOLIA: Attention, forces of the Blake Protectorate. I am Marshall-Captain Thomas Golia of the Eighth Imperial Armored Division, and I am here to ensure the safe return of the prisoners you have illegally captured. Surrender them peacably, and a compromise can assuredly be reached. Withold them, and I will descend upon you like the flail of an angry god. The choice is yours; you have one minute to respond.

PÖTSCHKE: You do know, sir, that your transmission will take longer than that just to reach them, never mind the reply time-

GOLIA: One more peep out of you, Pötschke...

PÖTSCHKE: Right, sir.

GOLIA: I’m going downstairs. Helm, begin the insertion. Drop the em-see-see at maximum range.

PÖTSCHKE: Yes, sir... will that give us enough time to abandon ship and join you in the em-see-see?

GOLIA: No, but you have escape pods, don’t you?

PÖTSCHKE: Yes, but not enough for-

GOLIA: Well, the captain always goes down with the ship. Pick the crew you like the most, and get them to the pods. With any luck, I’ll have them picked up before Blake’s fighters find them.

PÖTSCHKE: Uh... right, sir. Thank you, sir.

GOLIA: ...whatever.