16:30 John’s Room

“You want what?” LeCroix had skimmed the encrypted message, he just wanted confirmation.

“The unredacted after action report and the two commissioned inquiries on the Donnelly’s folly incident. Oh, this call is encrypted on my end. I turned it on for you as well.”

“John, that you can even turn that on for me at my workstation is troubling.”

“Hey, is the old man enjoying retirement? Oh, and congrats once again on the promotion.”

“Kissing my ass won’t work.”

“Can’t hurt to try.” John shrugged his shoulders as he sat down on his couch.

“Sent. I’m assuming you’re going to find some way to accidently leak them. You wouldn’t ask for this if you didn’t figure something out. Which by the way I took the time to read these two documents. How the hell did you figure that out?”

“Bored in class and queried the after-action report. Come on Director, no report like that is that redacted, especially against pirates. These no talent ass clowns did a piss poor job of burying this. I don’t see why they didn’t just give the executive officer a slap on the wrist. He was well connected.”

“Well, be… Good god your fast.” LeCroix had already received a notification regarding this topic.

“Yeah, have a VI setup on my terminal here in my room to take care of the leakage. The Daniels family already found out I discovered this conspiracy, friend of the family or some such nonsense was in my class. Now they can’t move on me since that doc is out in the open. I don’t want to have a chat with the patriarch but if he does anything stupid…” John let that sentence hang.

“You are to take no action against the family unless they start anything. I’m ending this call.”

“Understood. Thanks again Director.”

John hung up smiling as he laid back on his couch. The weekend was upon him. John just cleared the name of a man that had been ridiculed for the better part of a century. That called for a good drink before chow. He got up and headed out of the dorm building, he could see the local watering hole just at the end of the block. Hopefully they had some top shelf scotch. He earned it.

Saturday. 09:30 Downtown Ritz-Carlton

John got out of the cab and grabbed the two bags from the trunk. A doorman opened the door for him as he got nearby.

“Good morning and thank you.” John said cheerfully.

The doorman nodded and closed the door behind him. John walked toward the front desk and waited in line. There were only two people in front of him to be served. When it was his time he walked up to the desk.

“Good morning. My name is John Lief and I have a reservation for a one-night stay. Here’s my ID.” John handed his naval ID over to the employee.

“Good morning. Thank you very much. Let me pull your information up.” She began typing into the computer. “I have your reservation. I see that you prepaid as well. Will you be using the same card for any meals and or room service?”

“Yeah, that would be fine.”

“Great, give me a minute and I’ll get your room keys for you.” The employee walked to a machine on a counter behind her terminal. She keyed in a few things and a pair of keys fell out. “Here are your keys, and I did confirm your dinner reservation with us this evening.”

“Perfect, thank you so much.”

John put the keys in his pocket, picked up the bags and headed to the elevators. He went up to their room and dropped their bags off. He then headed back to the dorms to get ready for the game.

13:30 Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium

“It’s hot as fucking balls out.” John was in line to enter the stadium. “Useless meteorologists and their useless forecasts.”

“Yes, you are hot.” Alice elbowed John in the side.

“No, I said it’s hot as balls out.” John grinned at Alice. “Obviously I’m one hot motherfucker.”

Alice looked back and smirked as she saw Jessica and Andern roll their eyes at him. “Jessica, you gotta admit, boys do look hot in their dress uniforms.”

“They look quite handsome. But that one is taken and this one’s personality is garbage and is barely housetrained. And besides, the ladies look amazing in our dress unis too.” Jess tried to focus her attention on the female cadets, but her eyes kept getting drawn to the male cadets.

“Dude, it’s not that bad out.” Andern grew up near the Canadian border. His perception of temperature was fucked up.

Their definition of just a little chilly when it was hovering around freezing. It was only really cold when the windchill got to negative fifty or worse.

“It’s eighty-five out. I’m wearing a full-dress uniform and its getting humid as fuck. Oh, and we’re going into a stadium that sits one hundred sixty thousand people.”

“John, you’re totally shitting all over my excitement. Don’t be that guy.” Alice had her arms crossed and she was looking straight at John.

Alice was excited about this game. She wasn’t going to let anyone, even John, bring her off this high.

“She’s right you know. Besides, you keep up this bitching and you ain’t getting laid tonight.” Andern pushed John to make him move ahead in line.

Andern wasn’t aware of John and Alice’s plan for the night. Alice continues to blush when they are called out like that.

After they were scanned in at the gate the four got their assigned seats, all next to one another at the isle, Alice grabbed John’s hand and then intertwined their arms.

“Would you do me the honors milady.” Andern tried to be suave to Jessica.

Jessica just flicked his forehead. “Smooth you are not. You need to work on that otherwise you’ll always be single.”

She walked by him smirking. He looked so goofy doing that, but now she felt a little guilty turning him down so harshly.

“Hurry up Andern, and I suppose I’ll let you escort me to our seats this one time. But I swear to God if you try to cop a feel, I’m going to beat you up.”

“She could do that you know.” John cocked his head back and hollered at his goofy looking friend.

Much banter, bullshit, chants were had in the rowdy cadet section before the game started. It was the third game of the season and the last out of conference game. The Naval Academy decided to bring in a smaller school for a “freebie” win to get some momentum going into the conference schedule. The mistake they made was scheduling North Dakota State for this game. A perennial powerhouse in the second division of college football. They regularly beat or brought the top division teams to their limits.

True to form, the first half was an utter asskicking of epic proportions. NDSU made a single mistake, and it cost them a punt. Navy made damn near every single mistake you could make on the field. The life was sucked out of the stadium. No one had left yet but it was a fair bet that twenty to thirty percent of the crowd would not come back after halftime.

“Thirty-five to nothing. They scored two defensive touchdowns, nine sacks, a blocked punt and two fumble recoveries. I’m not sure about y’all but only being down five scores feels like we got off easy like that.” John said deadpanned.

The cadet section was shellshocked. Hell, all the Navy fans there were. The god damn Navy team looked more confused than the fans. The aggravating thing was the number of NDSU fans in the stadium. There had to be fifty thousand of them at the stadium and they were loud as hell.

“NDSU is in Fargo, right?” Alice asked.

“Yeah, I grew up fifty miles from there. Middle of fuckin’ nowhere. And those guys are bloody good at developing the players no one else wants.” Andern said dejectedly. “Every damn year they do this.”

“I haven’t seen asskickings like this since boot when those four squads got beat by us.” Jessica said.

None of the four had any excitement left in them. They were fans and as such they would be here till the end of the game. But there wasn’t much to cheer for.

“Woah, y’all were in the attacking squad?” Cadet Jenkins butted into their conversation.

“Yup, where were you?” John turned back and asked.

“West side of the bunker near the pillbox. My squad took fire from the bunker which made no fucking sense. No one was there.”

Andern and Jessica laughed.

“What, look after I was taken out, I was looking right at the bunker, and I saw precisely fuck all. Y’all had to cheat.”

“Jenkins you saw fuck all because the big guy over there was wearing a stealth suit. Don’t ask how or why he had a stealth suit; he might have to kill you.” Jessica was having entirely too much fun with this conversation.

“You had a fucking stealth suit? Jesus man. That explains everything. You took out my whole damn squad. Three round bursts to the chest for the lot of us. No one is that accurate.”

"Nah, one guy was left in your squad. I lived on military bases and most of my free time for the last six years was goofing off at the gun range.” John just shrugged. “Won no shortage of bets from marines that thought they were king shit at shooting. Funny thing is, win or lose they were more than happy to share trigger knowledge.”

“Damnit, your platoon annihilated us. Our squad’s officer and drill sergeants tore into us for losing that mission. We were deadass tired for graduation.”

“Sucked to be you. We cleaned up our dorm and slept.” Andern looked back to see who was talking.

“Well, some of us slept apparently.” Jessica said.

“You guys really gave us a shit sandwich to wrap boot camp up.” Jenkins was just shaking his head.

The butcher was sitting right below him. Jenkins started yelling at his friend a few rows down to come up. He needed to tell them how the ghost killed them.

A couple other cadets were wandering down to the group. “Hey Lief.”

“Hi. Who are you?”

“I’m Paul, in your tactics class, by the way thanks for getting us out early yesterday. You see what popped up on the net?”

“Nope, I went to get a drink at The Thirsty Cadet after class.”

“The unredacted docs came out, you were right.” Paul was walking down the steps. “Anyways, I need to go get some nachos.”

“Sweet, always feels good to be right.” John said smugly.

“John, when aren’t you right. That’s the scary thing.” Jessica said as she was looking at some of the cheerleaders.

“I tend to pick my battles pretty well.”

“Don’t be that arrogant, that’s not sexy.” Alice gave John an elbow.

Andern just laughed. “Bets on the final score?”

The general consensus of the group of the cadets within ear range was a proper ass kicking by the Thunder Herd from NDSU. And their predictions weren’t far off. NDSU played its second and third teams most of the second half. Final score was a mercifully only fifty-two to eleven.

“Well, the company in the stands was pretty fucking stellar. But oof, our team is in for a rough season.” John said. “I am so looking forward to a shower.”

“So am I.” Alice was disappointed in the game but excited for the evening.

Weekend rules on the sexes were relaxed. Sleepovers could happen. Though their sleepover wasn’t going to be in the dorms.

“Jessica, are you doing anything this evening?” Andern suspected the lovebirds were going to bail on them the first change they got.

“You are adorable you know. But no not really. Probably just clean up, get some chow and relax.”

“How about a movie? No pressure, just between friends.”

Jessica stopped. “Jacob, that was actually smooth. Good job. Sure, I’ll get the popcorn.”

The downtrodden group got to the gates and Alice and John started going in the opposite direction as the others.

“Going somewhere?” Andern called out to John.

“Yeah, Ritz Carlton, checked in there already. Looking forward to sleeping in a proper bed.”

“Pfft, sleeping. Have fun you two.” Jessica laughed. She grabbed Andern’s arm “I need twenty minutes to get ready for the movie.”

“Yeah, you do. You stink as bad as I do.” Andern snorted.

“Andern, you have honestly no idea how to talk to a lady. You just lost all that good mojo you literally just built.”

Alice and John laughed as the odd couple argued between themselves. John thought what Alice and he had was just a physical connection, but it was growing into something more. He knew Alice was feeling that way, she was broadcasting those feelings for anyone within mindshot to hear it. He wasn’t opposed to this; he truly enjoyed her company and always looked forward to being with her. There was no way to tell if this was going to last, but he liked the direction things were going.