Saturday. 14:00 Library

“Look, I’m telling you that topic won’t sit well with the professor.” Kristin directed her statement at John.

“But it will work.” John was being more stubborn than normal.

“No, it won’t. You have no evidence besides your theory. It’s sound but you have precisely dick to prove it. It won’t work because there’s no actual evidence supporting your claim.”

“I’m not taking your side this time dude. And I’m not saying this because she’s my girlfriend. Your just being stubborn.” Andern broke into the conversation.

“But everything lines up. It fits.” John did not want to give this up.

“I really don’t care what you get on the paper. But those two are right.” Alice was tired of this argument; it had been going on for thirty minutes.

John reviewed the syllabus and had to concede his theory. John and Kristin were working on their Tactics in Command paper. He was absolutely convinced about this theory on the attack he wanted to write about, but there was no evidence to support it. Sure, the ship movement implies that it could have happened that way, but the official logs suggest something entirely.

“Well shit, looks like I’m starting over from scratch.” John scratched his head. He began keying in new search criteria. This wasn’t going to be a paper that he would try anything outside of the box on.

An hour later, and much typing and general annoyance had by John he was taking a break. He had pushed his chair back and was spinning around on it.

“You’re going to make me sick watching you spin like that.” Jessica was rubbing her temples.

“I am officially tired of typing.”

“I do believe we have our first sighting of John getting properly frustrated by an assignment.” Alice laughed.

“It’s just so damned boring. I’m sure everyone’s written about this bloody topic.”

The group began to laugh at John. Everyone was feeling pretty good about the mid-terms this year. Except John, the tests he was fine with, but the papers he was downright unhappy with. It felt like the professors were trying to get everyone to write the same paper. That went against what John wanted to do.

The group kept at things for another hour before they had to take a break and head to the gym for PE. The plan for the day was relatively simple: 5k run and some weightlifting. If they did everything right the group should be at chow a little after 17:00.

19:00 Library

Dinner that night came and went. There was no rest for this weary group of cadets. They were back in the library working on their papers. John was still frustrated but was nearly finished with his paper. He had got up and walked into a room where he could play back certain battles. He was watching the battle unfold, rewind it, change the view to another ship and repeat. He had been doing that for 45 minutes.

“What are you trying to find?” Kristin asked.

“I can’t put a finger on it, but something doesn’t feel right.”

John continued to flip between the ships and replaying a certain segment eight minutes into the engagement. He pulled back and focused on an area and put it into a replay loop.

“You see it too, right?” John looked confused as he turned to face Kristin.

“Yeah, what the hell is going on. Why are the cruisers moving out of formation like that?”

“If I was wearing a tinfoil hat, I’d say they knew what was going to happen to the Olympus Mons.” John continued the playback beyond that point where the large battleship seemingly succumbed to enemy fire.

Kristin sat down at a terminal and pulled up ship rosters and a list of any communications that were sent or received by any of the ships.

“What’s the official record on how the Olympus Mon blew up?”

“Starboard kinetic shielding failed, ablative armor was destroyed, and a stray battlecruiser rail round pierced the primary drive core.” Kristin read from the official report.

“Bullshit, it’s shielding never went down. Look, the readings from the surviving corvettes clearly show its shielding and armor were fully intact.”

John added tracer lines to all forms of enemy fire that was directed in the Olympus Mons direction. Thousands of rounds were fired towards the massive ship, but her shielding was holding, and the ablative armor was definitely not damaged.

“What the hell?” John was looking at Kristin. “This makes no sense.”

John walked over to the terminal and focused on the Olympus Mons. He fast forwarded it to the explosion and slowed it down. The image slowly moved frame by frame. John paused it when the explosion first pierced the hull.

“How does an exploded drive core cause an explosion by the forward torpedo bays?” Kristin was stunned.

“I think we walked ass backwards into something heavy.” John lacked any of the bravado he normally had, this find worried him. “This is going to involve thousands of people behaving poorly.”

“I don’t know what to say.” Kristin looked worried.

John was at the terminal; he started a VI program to rewrite cadet location data. He made it appear that she hadn’t left the terminal next to Andern except to use the bathroom once.

“You saw nothing. You say nothing. I’ll handle this.”

“John, I was…”

“Let me be the target, I don’t want you getting mixed up in whatever bullshit is going to happen when this gets exposed. When it’s clear I swear on my honor that you will receive equal credit for discovering this.”

John sent the evidence to intelligence and made copies of all the data they had pulled up. After the information was offloaded onto his personal server he walked back to the group. He logged back into the terminal he was using before and began writing a new paper.

They continued to work until midnight. At that point the group decided to call it a night and headed back to their dorms. They agreed on meeting for breakfast at 08:00 and then getting back to the grindstone.

John told Alice he had to make a secure call on the way back and would meet up with her in the room shortly. She was worried and he said it wasn’t about anything that had happened this year. Something weird came up in something he was researching.

Sunday. 00:15 Communication Room

“Interesting data. Your message made it abundantly clear that you were the only one to see this. I presume this to not be the case.” Director LeCroix was multitasking.

“I won’t say the individual’s name, not until I know they won’t be targeted.” John sighed. “If my theory is correct there are going to be thousands of families that will want answers. And another group will be out for me.”

“Understood, when is your paper being published?”

“Tomorrow. So, the shit storm is going to properly hit us when we’re on fall break.”

“I’ll have a team be there just in case.”

“Thank you.”

John left the communications room and headed back to his dorm room. When he got there Alice was already sound asleep. John changed into some gym shorts and crawled into bed. His mind was running a mile a minute, but he had to get some rest. He needed to be on his game the next few days just in case anything happened.

13:00 Cafeteria

“I have only two mid-term tests, the rest are all papers.” John said as he was finishing some apple crisp.

“Medical has a ton of tests. Should be done by Wednesday.” Theresa said.

“No sense in rushing anything. Flights aren’t until Friday. So obviously be done by Thursday.” Andern was finishing some toast. “Wednesday should be the day I wrap things up. Should…”

“I gotta run an errand after chow but I’ll head to the library after I drop the gear off.” John looked haggard.

“You submit your paper yet?” Kristin was curious.

“Yup, have two more to write though.”

The group continued to eat their lunch slowly. They were ready for the tests, but no one was in a rush to write their papers. After a few minutes of delaying action John got up and headed out. He headed outside and got a cab to the warehouse district.

John got to the warehouse where his stash of military gear that was illicitly acquired and squirreled away. He unlocked one of the trailers and walked in. He picked up one of the larger cases, which conveniently looked like a golf club travel case, and opened it. There were spots for three rifles, four sub machine guns and six pistols. There were also spots for numerous extra magazines.

John turned to the other side of the trailer and picked up six of the same pistols. He also took three spare magazines for each. He repeated this process until there was a lone rifle slot left. He thought about what might be necessary, he opted to take a DMR. He took a forty-power scope and put in the case as well.

When he closed the case John winced at its weight. Luckily there were wheels to help move the case around. He propped the case up against the wall. He ordered some ammo to be delivered to the house the day the cadets get to their vacation house.

“Better to have this shit than need it and not have it.” John shook his head as he walked out of the warehouse. He flagged down a cab and took a ride back to campus. When he got back to campus, he brought the case up to his room. No one bothered to ask what was in the case, so John continued on like normal.

18:45 Library

“Sup, how’s it going?” John got his friends attention.

“Hey. I’ve got a couple questions for you.” Alice got John’s attention and fired off her questions to him.

John answered the questions then sat down at his terminal and got working on his paper. He figured he had about thirty minutes left to work on it, and it’d be finished. Then he had about two hours to finish his last paper. While he was writing he was listening to transcriptions of the various communications sent between the ships. He still hadn’t found any record of any communication from the cruisers that pulled away at the right moment.

Kristin was working on her paper. She got up and tossed John a scrap piece of paper. It read ‘1345-B.’ John looked at the ship designations and looked for audio from that ship. He began playback of them. He was about to finish his paper when he heard a communication that was sent to the Olympus Mons.

‘Run Crosspoint, dive out. Operative is to detonate it.’

John’s eyes went wide. That was the smoking gun that he was looking for. He played the video and displayed the timestamps, immediately after this message was received by the cruisers, they broke formation. Now he just needed to track down who could’ve received that message. John had tunnel vision; he was entirely focused on his search.

He was able to track down the terminal the message was sent from and the terminals the friendly ships had received it. Unfortunately, location data for where everyone was on the ship weren’t available. Normally this information would be available, but it was classified. John’s first instinct was to ignore protocol and find the information, but he held back in a rare moment of introspection.

He wrote a note on a piece of paper. “Gotta run and make a call. Be back shortly.” John dropped the piece of paper off on Kristin’s desk.

‘Don’t do anything else re: this. Shitstorm is going to happen.’

John ran out of the library and sprinted toward the dorm hall and the communications center.

19:55 Communications Room

“Director. We have confirmation that a message was sent from the CNS Nevada to the Olympus Mons. Immediately after sending the message all cruisers flew away from her, then ten seconds later an explosion in the torpedo bay occurred which led to her destruction.”

“You’ve found another mess in our history John.”

“The troop location data on the involved ships is classified. I’d love to get my hands on that information but given what happened I figured there’d be a trace on those files that I couldn’t prevent from happening.”

“Your correct. We’ll take care of the analysis from here. Be careful.”

John got up and headed back to the library. He worked on his last paper. He managed to finish it a little after midnight. Prior to leaving the library he submitted both reports and walked back to his room with Alice.

“So, what was happening with Kristin today?”

“Between you me and the wall, we found something weird on the paper I was writing. Something that would upset a lot of people.”

“So, a normal Sunday for you then?” Alice smirked.

Alice wasn’t prepared for the look John gave her. “Look, I’m confident as hell about what I can do. I know the ship was lost due to an inside job, but I don’t know who or why. That information was above our paygrade. We’re talking about a battleship that was destroyed from within.”

“Wonderful.”

“We’ll make it through. Don’t worry.” John held her hand.

Wednesday. 13:30 Lounge

“So, Theresa and Alice are taking their last test now. Then is everyone done?” Kristin was asking John.

“Engineering crew has finals today too, but presumable when they are done then everyone should be wrapped up.”

“We doing anything tomorrow then?”

“PE between 09:00 to 11:30.”

“Ugh, one last kick in the privates.” Kristin was shaking her head.

“Yeah, but then we’re free in the afternoon. So at least there’s that.”

Someone entered the lounge. Neither John nor Andern were paying much attention.

“Cadet Leif, please come with me. Admiral Kotaro would like to speak to you regarding your paper.”

“Figured that. Lead on.” John got up and waived by to Andern.

Kristin tried to sink into the background and not be noticed. It didn’t appear that the officer that was sent to find John paid her any notice. Andern did notice her odd reaction and instantly pestered her about why she did that. He also put two and two together and asked her why John was heading out, he had quite astutely put two and two together.

14:00 Nimitz Lecture Hall, Room 100

John was asked to provide the proof behind his paper.

“As I said, who sent the message and who received it are not determined. The text logs are just a transcription, and no names or their original voices were available for replace in the communique between ships.”

“Are we sure it’s accurate?” Captain O’Mallory asked.

“There’s no reason to believe it’s been faked. There aren’t any obvious gaps in the records. But you can clearly see those cruisers and some frigates broke from their formation. This was necessary to get clear of the explosion. They didn’t have to move by much, but the ships changed directions in a way that was not within regs.”

“So, they didn’t adhere to the regs in battle. That wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened.” Admiral Kotaro said.

“I disagree sir. Leading up to this there were at least fifteen battles where these cruisers and the Olympus Mons engaged the enemy, and not once did they break formation. If only one moved, I would agree with that assessment, but all of them at the same time? I don’t buy that at all. That kind of coordinated movement is not coincidental.”

“Ok, so putting past the movement of the ships, which I will concede could be part of a conspiracy. Are we sure the ship was sabotaged?”

“The after-action report is complete garbage and useless to us. If you look at the screen you can see where the explosion first breached the outer hull. That’s the port torpedo bay. There is no possibility a reactor explosion would breach the hull there.”

On a separate screen John pulled up mechanical readouts with the emphasis on the kinetic shielding.

“The kinetic barriers were holding as well. They weren’t blown out. Images of the hull on the port side prove that. The ablative armor was also not damaged to a point that a single rail round would overwhelm it.” John directed the others to the pictures and readouts that proved this.

“So, what really did happen?” Admiral Kotaro asked.

“We don’t know if this was an enemy op or something more sinister. Should we be given access to the actual voice logs and locations of the crews on the ships we should be able to more accurately determine what happened. But it’s fairly obvious a torpedo exploded which caused a chain reaction ending in the complete destruction and loss of the Olympus Mons.”

“Who have you told about this?” O’Mallory asked.

“No one yet.”

“Not even intelligence?” Kotaro inquired.

“I sent a request for logs and crew locations but was denied due to lack of clearance.” John shrugged.

“Thank you very much cadet. We will accept your paper and grade it accordingly. Your dismissed.” O’Mallory nodded at the cadet as he saluted and exited the room.

“If they find out…”

Admiral Kotaro put a hand up. “Don’t finish that. I’ll take care of things from here. Grade his paper like the others, run with his evidence as appropriate sources.”

“Yes sir.” O’Mallory saluted and left the room.

The admiral pressed a few buttons on the terminal to record a message.

‘We’re unable to change the sensor and video feedback. The information was backed up and shared. Damage control will be needed. Cadet claims he did not share this information with anyone. We may need to move against him. If this gets out…’

The admiral sent to the message to its recipient. He reactivated the recording devices in the room and exited the room. Admiral Kotaro was wearing a concerned expression. He was keenly aware of how intelligent John was. Thankfully for Kotaro and his allies the secret hasn’t been exposed yet, but if he were able to get access to the classified data their group could be exposed.

Kotaro shook his head as he left the lecture hall and headed back to his room. He was worried about the actions their group would take against the cadet. Bloodshed and blackmail would have the opposite effect on the cadet, but if they get him to join them. His expression changed to a smile, he was going to see what they could do to convince John to join them, that would certainly be a coup for them.