Escaping My Shadows

Shadow Dissolution

"So, what did you find out?" a man only known as Apollo asks.

Several weeks after the successful defense of the Vanguard station and repair facility, he and three other men secretly made their way to a small room on the station. After checking the room several times for listening devices the four men, two of them members of Earth Gov and the others from Psy Corps, begin their meeting. They know what their fate will be if the purpose for their meeting is discovered – a quick, non-public trial and then immediate execution. However, they feel the reward waiting for them is more than enough to worth the risk.

Though they have worked with each other for several years, they only know each other by their code names. This and other elaborate measures guarantee that if they are found out the rest of their conspirators will be safe. The leader of this small group, an Earth Gov representative code-named Ceres, has been gathering information from his telepathic and other co-conspirators about Earth's plans to finally bring the fight to the Chitoxan. This is one of the last meetings that he and Apollo will have before they meet with their next level contacts.

"Enough", the Psy Corps representative, Bacchus, says. "We've probed several officers and enlisted personnel. To say that Admiral Schneider is pissed about the Chitoxan sneak attack on his station would be an understatement. The arrogant bastard wants to get back at them for what should have been a total, and embarrassing, defeat. We're still not sure how he found out about it. We and our contacts had done all we could to break down communication lines. Still, he found out. We understand that some renegade telepaths had been able to intercept Chitoxan communications, letting them find out about the planned sneak attack."

"Yah, that's fine, you can report that to Psy Corps," says Apollo. "We need to find out what Schneider is doing."

Bacchus nods. "We really struck paydirt with the last guy. Named Sadaf, an aid to Schneider. He was a little harder to probe, put up a good bit of resistance. Must have the telepath gene. A little work and he could probably–"

"I'm sure Psy Corps would love to recruit him. What did you find out?" Apollo says. He wishes the telepath would get to the point.

"Confirmation. The details vary between those Hermes and I have probed. Very few know the full plan. That's understandable, since Schneider and the other Admirals are wanting to keep this under wraps as much as possible. Not only to keep our Chitoxan friends from learning about it but to give them enough plausible deniability so no one can blame them when they get their asses handed to them. We've been trying to get close enough to Schneider and some of the other top officers but they've been keeping to themselves since the sneak attack."

The Earth Gov reps are obviously getting impatient. From what they've learned they don't have the luxury of time. They need to hear the details and get them to their contacts so the Chitoxan can be warned. Before they can demand that the telepath gets to the point the telepath gets to the point.

"It's a small system, called Brumbos. Three rocky planets, two medium-sized gas planets. Nothing there of interest. Earth Fleet put a new, low-power hyperspace beacon there just a few days ago, but it will only operate for a short time. This will allow their ships to quickly home in on the location.  Once their attack fleet has assembled it will be shut down so as not to arouse Chitoxan suspicions. Earth Fleet is sending a lot of ships from various stations. Not all at once, a few here, a few there to keep it quiet. Some left their stations a few weeks ago and hid out in hyperspace until it was time to assemble. From what we can tell it looks like they are going to have forty or fifty capital ships, maybe more, including some of the newly commissioned battleships and heavy destroyers. I hear even one of the new dreadnoughts is going to take part. There will be sixty or seventy more other fighting ships of various lesser classes joining them. A few dozen support vessels are included, as well as a couple of transports. Not sure who they have on board, but we assume they've pulled troops from a number of divisions and will use them to occupy the worlds after the fleet has removed the Chitoxan threat. As a bonus, we've learned that several of Earth Fleet's best strategists will be embedded with this fleet. This is the biggest fleet ever assembled. Schneider and the rest want to set up a knock-out blow and maybe even establish a foothold in Chitoxan space. We haven't been able to identify a target yet. They want something formidable enough to look good back home but not too formidable that they risk getting their asses handed to them. Given that it's Brumbos, there are only a couple Chitoxan bases that would be close enough to attack."