An hour later, John sat in his command suit at the heart of the fort’s command deck. As officers at various duty stations went about their work passing orders, assisting in communications, or any of the thousand other tasks that such a large garrison force needed from command staff in order to keep going, he read the email Greaves had sent him.

“Major Cranton, I’m going to be disconnected from everything for about an hour.”

“Sir?”

“You’ve been briefed on the new deep dive VR conference system, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. General Greaves is going to conference with me here in a few minutes. He will update me on some important developments back home.”

“I have been hearing some things, sir. Hopefully, none of them are true.” John knew what the young intelligence officer was talking about. Scuttle butt, internet rumor, and office gossip was a terrible place to hear about good news. It was that much worse for bad. Mostly, John had ignored the supposed internet ‘news anchors’ who spouted conspiracy theories as often as they did the real stories, and as always he vehemently ignored and sometimes had even given extra duty to officers or soldiers, he caught spreading those same lies.

He had caught one man by the sheer expediency that he had copied everyone on the base on the email. The young lieutenant had used the fort’s satellite link to download the videos and spread them around. John was pretty sure the young man was still cleaning toilets, and would be until after the connection pillars activated.

John hit the computer link in the email, and his seat sat back. A small timer appeared. He was fifteen minutes early. “Major, if you’ve gone through some of those conspiracy theories and you’ve found some that have actual merit, talk with General Stevens. Brief him, and he’ll bring me up to speed.” General Stevens was John’s second in command. In charge of any combat operations afield, if one of the two army groups under their joint command had to go on the offensive. The man was young, and unlike most of his generation, he was a hard charging fighting general. Perhaps a bit too willing to blow stuff up in John’s estimation. But there wasn’t a better man John would have backing him up in a firefight, except maybe Greaves.

“Yes sir. I was actually going to brief him just now, sir. Since, technically, you’re off the clock.” Major Cranton smirked and John fought a smile as the headgear lowered and the timer ran down to only a few seconds.

“Talk to you in an hour, Cranton.”

“See you in an hour, sir.”