04:00 Thursday, Co-ed Dorm

John woke up unexpectedly. He shook his head and swore at himself quietly, this time it was on him and his overactive mind. He couldn’t blame Alice for waking him up today. She had been getting better with her sleep kicking and not occupying his side of the bed. For better or for worse, he was wide awake. Instead of staying irritated about this he got up and walked into the living room and turned on the terminal.

John opened up the virtual intelligence program he was working on and reviewed all its actions. He noticed a couple minor issues and corrected them. He was testing the VI on a project server of his but restricted the number of test wire transfers just to make sure things would work with the updated settings. Under normal operations the estimated time to complete a single transaction would take about eight hours.

The VI’s primary purpose was to transfer money from one account and deposit it into another account. The money would then be transferred to another account and so on. It would repeat this process for each initial withdrawal around forty-five thousand times. It would then randomly select fifteen hundred records and purge them from the bank’s records.

This resulted in flooding each institution with so many wire transfer requests that their normal review process would take days to complete under normal circumstances. The VI removing some of these records just throws a hand grenade into the manual tracking process. John smiled when he began looking at the log. He saw it would work as intended.

He made a final modification to send to intelligence a record of all accounts they touched along with a proper accounting of how much money was actually touched. This could be used as leverage against the shadow group since they knew about these accounts and the IRS wasn’t aware of them. Should they not play ball anymore the IRS would be quiet interested in how most of these accounts had not had taxes assessed on them.

John reviewed his operation doc and made some modification here and there. He sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. He was sure this updated operation would be taken up by intelligence. John was a bit vague on how the VI would handle all the transactions. He needed to leave that part out.

The fascinating part of his plan, that he left out, is how the VI manages all of the transactions. A single VI doesn’t do it, but it spawns a new VI that is transmitted to another server before it begins pulling money from its assigned account. Once the VI is in its temporary new home it makes another copy of itself and sends it off to another server. Then it runs its program with the account it targets. When the money is done moving around it sends its information to a central VI program, then it deletes itself from the server.

John sent the updated operation request to Director LeCroix. He got up and stretched a little. It was about fifteen minutes before his alarm would normally go off. He walked into their bedroom and got a clean pair of underwear and walked into the bathroom. He took off his shorts and underwear and hopped into the shower.

John was cleaned up and changing into his cadet’s uniform when the alarm went off. Alice slowly got out of bed and looked at John. She was a little confused.

“Did you already shower?”

“Good morning sleepyhead. I woke up a bit ago. Decided to do a couple things.” John shrugged.

Alice looked at him. “What kind of things?”

“Revenge things, but not the killing kind.” John sighed as he said that.

She shook her head. “Ok, get out, I’m going to take a shower.”

“Wait, I don’t get to watch you undress?” John looked confused.

Alice laughed and walked next to him. “John, you are as perverted as you are adorable.” She stood up on her toes and kissed him. “We need some intimate time this weekend.”

John winked at her. “Well then, let’s make that happen.”

John walked into the living room and sat down at the terminal. He noticed an encrypted message from an unknown source. He opened it up. It was only two words. ‘Green Light.’ He smiled at that. He loaded the account listing into the VI. He opened up the parameter control panel for the VI and updated the settings. He set the personal skim to a tenth of a percent, underworld skim to nine tenths of a percent, nineteen percent to general loss, and five percent to other fleet deposit. The rest of the money would be sent to Intelligence held accounts.

This was going to make all of his other con jobs where he kept some money look like a simple smash and grab job. He’d convert the overwhelming amount that was skimmed into untraceable credit chits. This let Intelligence control what to do with the money.

The skim rate was going to be sent to his personal accounts and a specialized VI he made that would clean the money. Doing this allowed him to pocket some of the money without paying the IRS, but this was always a balancing act. This was typically between five and ten percent of the total amount. That amount would be aggressively invested into the stock market. The rest of the money typically sat in unmarked credit chits that he could cash out over time.

He was also sending a large amount of money to the various crime families located on the core worlds. This was done because the vast majority of that money would get intercepted by the various local and planetary governments where the different mafia groups reside. The families themselves would only be able to receive and use one to two percent of it at most. The rest the government will seize and use for their own purposes. That item was a difficult sell for the Intelligence leaders to accept.

The last part was basically taking a large amount of money from someone in one fleet and depositing it into someone’s account in another fleet. This was just to sow confusion and animosity amongst the fleets. These would be slightly easier to track down and would be the first records they successfully finish tracking. That was to get the finger pointing and blame game started. It would be short lived, but their egos were all oversized so they would remember what slights were directed at them.

Alice was now cleaned up and she looked at him when she walked into the living room. “You look way to excited. What are you doing?”

John looked down at the terminal. The VI had replicated itself thirty thousand times already. It had already begun replication on the other core worlds and on space liners as well. He logged out of his Intelligence ID on the terminal and stood up.

“It’s a project about recompense.”

She walked up to him and smiled. “Say no more. Let’s get breakfast.”

07:00 Cafeteria

The group was desperately wishing it was Friday, not Thursday. Tuesdays and Thursdays were not especially pleasant days. They would leave their dorms before 07:00 and not get back until nearly 22:00 both days.

“Do they hate us? They have to hate us to make us do this much PE.” Andern asked. He was poking at a pancake.

“You know why they make us do this right?” John was pouring some blueberry syrup onto his pancakes.

“Andern, they make us do this to make sure we can handle everything. You know when we’re on a warship when we’re not sleeping or eating, we’re studying and drilling. And when we’re on duty we’re usually doing more drilling quite a bit.” Theresa took a sip of her coffee.

“Ugh. Why must we always study?” Andern just shook his head.

“The military prefers to have crews that don’t wreck their ships. That’s usually bad for the ship and the crews themselves.” Jessica said.

“Having said that, even I’m getting tired of how long these two days get. I doubt we’re done bitching and moaning about it though.” John had finished his food. “Whelp, time to head to the first command course. I need to finish the homework for it that I didn’t do last night.”

John kissed Alice on the cheek then got up. He waived to the group and dropped off his tray at the return table. Then headed out of the cafeteria and headed to the lecture hall.

“He has been super cagey the last couple of days.” Kristin said. “Like he’s been totally distracted in classes.”

“I think there was some bounce back from the tribunal this past spring. I haven’t asked for details for obvious reasons.” Alice sighed. “I want to help him, but I think this is one of those cases where he had a plan already and I suspect it’s in motion.”

“I wouldn’t push it. He knows how to handle this stuff way better than we can.” Thomas had also just finished his plate. “It was kind of his thing for what, three or four years?”

“Well, he was in there for six years in total.” Andern was eating his last piece of bacon.

“Woah, hold on. John was in Naval Intelligence? That rumor was true?” Kristin asked incredulously.

The whole group looked at her awkwardly.

“Uhm, well this is weird. We figured you knew about that already.” Nathan said as he was getting up.

“Yeah, you should ask him about New Orleans tonight in the lounge.” Kevin was also getting up and ready to go to class.

Kristin wasn’t going to wait that long to get an answer. She shared all four lectures with John in the morning. She headed right to the lecture hall and saw John in his normal seat. He was looking at something on his terminal when she walked in. She didn’t get a good look at the terminal, but it didn’t look like homework though, but she couldn’t really figure out what was there.

“Morning. Hey, the others said you were an intelligence agent. Is that really true?”

“Yup. Quit in December though. Asked them for an out because of the workload as a cadet. Though I’ll likely never be properly divorced from them.”

“Holy shit.” Kristin just sat down in stunned silence. “So why did Jerry think he should have led the combined platoon?”

“Well, that’s not exactly common knowledge and the standard reaction to hearing a nineteen-year-old was an intelligence agent is to not believe it.”

“Ok fair point, but the officers obviously knew which is why they kept you in charge.”

“Well, I’m sure that played a part, but I like to think they took the time to take a look at our track record. Which was impressive as hell.”

Patrice and Richard sat down in the row behind them. They leaned down to look speak to the two cadets.

“John, I’m going to email you my section on the report later this morning.” Patrice said as he was digging in his book bag.

“Same, I stayed up late last night to get mine done too.” Richard added.

“Awesome, I’ll get the file combined then send off the final draft to y’all. When you guys give me the green light, I’ll submit it.” John said.

The rest of the morning and afternoon pretty much went to plan. Their classes weren’t that difficult, but it was a lot of reading and homework to take in. But this was par for the course. Leaders, especially those in command of ships, had numerous things they need to manage all at once and one needed to be cool, calm, and collected while sitting in the big chair.

The afternoon classes were less about leadership and more about rounding out one’s education. John was taking statistics, differential equations, and business management. The last class of the day was the one John found the most interesting. Command Mistakes, which as the title would suggest was about mistakes that were made, why they were made, and ultimately what was learned and how commanders changed their behaviors to prevent the same mistakes from happening again.

19:45 Lounge

“Jesus Christ, even my muscles are hurting.” John sat down on the couch.

Alice sat down next to John. “You ran three time as much as everyone else. Also, that whole ‘On your left’ thing wasn’t funny or even original.”

“What, I thought it was funny.” John put his hands up questioning Alice’s statement.

“She’s right, that was just downright irritating.” Nathan said as he sat down on the single chair.

“Straight dick move dude.” Kevin was sitting with Theresa. They were getting their homework out.

“Thank god they know he’s a fucking Martian. Otherwise, that stunt would’ve destroyed us.” Andern said.

“In my defense, I needed to push myself a bit.”

Alice laughed. “Don’t you dare say you thought you were getting soft. You know damn well that isn’t the case.”

“What, I do need to push the limits too.” John attempted to defend himself.

“Right, but you being a douche to us doesn’t really help us.” Andern said.

“Ok, I’ll try to dial it back next time.”

“Good, because I will kick your ass if you do that again.” Alice smirked.

The group just laughed and got to business. They had a lot of homework to get through and none of them wanted any homework to do this weekend. The amount of homework everyone was getting was impressive, or horrifying depending on how one would look at it.

The homework party continued for two hours. Everyone got most of their work done. Barring any unexpected surprises, they should have the long weekend freed up to have fun. The lights dimmed and then the curfew announcement came over the speakers lightly.

“I hate that fucking thing.” Kirstin said tersely.

The group laugh and started packing their gear up.

“Cya guys in the morning. Cannot wait to get some cornhole in tomorrow.” John took Alice’s hand and the couple walked back to their room.

22:05 Co-Ed Dorm

John and Alice talked about where to go eat on Sunday. John was insistent on Alice getting to choose wherever she wanted too. They hadn’t settled on anyplace but there was no rush. When they got to the doors John held it open for Alice.

“John, have I told you how much I love living here with you?”

John smiled as the elevator doors closed behind him. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this happy either.”

Alice squealed a little and hugged him. “But my god, I wish we had more free time.”

“Right? I am so counting the days down until fall break.” John smiled. “It’s weird, you’re in the same bed, we could have fun, but we into it and then fall asleep.”

Alice hugged him tightly and laughed. The doors to the elevator opened and the couple walked down to their room. They walked in and set their bags down.

“So, I wasn’t going to let you get frisky with me this morning. But right now, it seems like a good time.” Alice said.

John stepped over and hugged her from behind then kissed her. He then picked her up and brought he to bed. The couple’s clothes got thrown all over the room. They made love a couple times. When they separated Alice fell asleep almost instantly.

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?” John laughed as he got off the bed.

John walked into the bathroom and cleaned himself. He then walked into the living room and sat down at the terminal. He logged into his encrypted account and checked the status of their operation. All of the accounts had been targeted and seen outgoing transfers. Thirty eight percent of the transfers were still running. By the time they woke up in the morning the op would be finished. The VI had replicated itself over sixty-two thousand times. The vast majority of the funds were pulled from two slush funds from each fleet.

John checked how much money was initially transferred. He did this for selfish reasons, he wanted to see what his cut of the take was. A combined amount of dollars and credits totaling eighty-eight trillion was transferred. John smiled at that number. The conversion rate between dollars and credits was basically at a one-to-one ratio. That meant he just swindled over eight billion from those assholes.

John leaned back in his chair and exhaled. This haul was several orders of magnitude more than he had ever taken at one time. John rarely felt regret, but this was one of those times that he was questioning his actions. He set the skim to be a tenth of a percent and it resulted in this much money. He began to formula some plans with the money.

Most of that money would be invested, and ultimately pay taxes on. A small portion of it was loaded onto unmarked and cleaned credit chits. That would allow him to avoid paying taxes on that part until he integrated that money into some investments. It would also give him an excuse to go buy some nice watches, though he was fairly certain Alice would absolutely lose her mind at him if he went hog wild with that. She wasn’t technically wrong with that.

John signed out of the terminal and put it to sleep. He decided he’d get some of those credits transferred here so he could buy several gold and palladium kilo bars to store. John made a mental note to head to a precious metals store to burn a sizable chunk of the unmarked credit chits he had. He shrugged as he walked into the bedroom and crawled into bed. It didn’t take long for John to fall asleep. In the morning he’d need to have a conversation with Director LeCroix then work on the next steps on how to put the screws to the shadow group.