Atlantis Station

Station Commander-Briefing Room

"You did not have to do that Captain, we could have figured something out." Phillip Drande stated.

John continued to stare at the 9 new Thunder Class destroyers added to the fleet. "We could have just killed all of them like the Xaranx wanted Phil. It was either maroon them on an uncharted world with an emergency beacon, give them to the tender cares of the Xaranx, or kill them. Any who choose not to come had to be left behind. I am not even sure all the IntelDiv spies were swept up. If even one is still on board one of those ships everything we are trying to accomplish here will be compromised. If the Admirals Board gets ahold of this station, no one in this region of space will be able to stop them. Every single one of your crews received the same briefing as you, know what atrocities the Board has committed, 1/3 chose not to support our cause despite the proof we provided. That is their right, but I will not send them straight back to Imperial Space so they can alert our enemies that an organized resistance is forming against them. Our greatest strengths right now are that no one knows that we are here and the Admirals Board thinks that no one is willing to fight them."

"When can the crews get off the destroyers? We cannot just keep them on there forever." Drande continued.

John sighed before turning to look at the former commodore, "Every crew member will be interviewed and once they are cleared for duty they will be allowed off the ships. Believe me, Phillip I need those men more than you know. We need trained Fleet personnel so we can operate all the ships we have. Even with if we clear all you personnel we cannot operate even 1/4 of the ships we have taken out of mothballs so far."

"Enough Phillip Drande, when you agreed to join us, you agreed to follow Captain John Ports lead. He makes all major decisions. Those men will be treated fairly but they will be vetted before they can walk freely around the station or leave the system." Natalie stated. The former Commodore remained silent even though he did not like what was going on, he had no choice and if he pressed the issue he could make matters worse for his crews and himself.

"How is the Reaver looking?" John asked the two Carmichaels.

"Secure, and construction of the Island is underway. What are you going to do with the ship itself John?" Jimmy asked while Natalie continued to stare at Drande.

"Permanent garrison duty here for now. I might come up with another mission for her eventually but for now, she will be staying here. How is Miles doing at decoding her databases so we can unlock all the IntelDiv secrets she has?" John asked.

Kara responded "The ships AI did a partial scrub before the crew isolated and purged it. He has to recompile the database then decode it. So it will be a while. We do have the coordinates of Loki Base now and the static forces that are there."

John nodded while glancing at the holographic display, it would be a hard nut to crack when the time came, but eventually, IntelDIv would have a reckoning. Right now it was too far within Imperial space.

Atlantis Station

Fleet Docking Bay-A1/A2

Two Weeks Later...

John looked at the 6 Badger class destroyers being refitted. Dozens of engineers and MECH units worked on each vessel. Right now they were looking to man and refit 1 squadron of destroyers every month, personnel constraints were killing them. Even with running the Thunder class destroyers with skeleton crews they could only man 3 more squadrons of Badgers. Letts, Johnson, and Kara were trying to figure out how to modify the Thunder class destroyers so they could run them with MECH units like the rest of their growing Fleet. It would be another week before they had a rough idea though they said.

"How is the integration going...General?" Smitt started cursing as John smiled. The ex-Commander hated the fact he had received the promotion, "Stop whining Jacob, you needed to accept the promotion because we had to make a clear chain of command for you over all those other Marine Commanders that were chomping at the bit. You have Colonel Jones as your second and he is not complaining near as much as you are." John told the bitching Marine.

"You are not hearing his complaints because he did not get jumped all the way to General as I did. Dammit, John, I was happy as a Commander. That was my dream job to be a ships Marine contingent Commander, now...I have to deal with so much bullshit. Now I have this AI working with me also, that bitches in my ear every time I start cursing saying 'An officer of my station should not say such things.' I am a god damn Marine. I fuck, drink, and kill when I want and on command. I am not supposed to be dealing with all this bureaucratic bullshit." Smitt ranted as John smiled. "Keep smiling, just you wait. Eventually, they are going to cram a promotion down your throat. Then I will smile at your bitching." Which caused John to smile even more before wincing and nodding at his comment.

"You are probably right, but I am still a lowly Captain at this moment in time...Sir. Now how is the integration going with all the new Marines and MECH units?" John asked Smitt.

After growling and eyeballing John one last time Smitt responded "Good, we are integrating all the Marine components extremely well. Much better then the Fleet personnel have been doing. We are Marines though, as long as we receive an order to do something we will usually take it with a grain-of-salt. All of the Marine Commanders see the benefit of having automated units and cutting down on casualties. None of them want to lose people so none of them will complain. We are well on the way to making 2 full Divisions, now if only you sailor boys could keep up." Jacob joked.

"We are working on it, Jacob." John stated as he walked over to look at Bay-A2. It contained two Pegasus Light Carriers, 2 Athena Light Cruisers, and Basilisk Heavy Cruiser. All the ships were being refitted as well, and between them and the destroyer squadrons, they had a true Task Force to sortie.

'Captain, you have a council meeting in 15 minutes.' Jeeves communicated.

"Speaking of annoying AIs, mine is reminding me that we have a COuncil meeting in 15 minutes. I am sure you want to get going Jacob before your reminds you as well." John reminded the stoic Marine.

Atlantis Station

Council Chamber

As Jacob and John strode into the chamber, every other Council member was present...which was odd. John was either first or had to wait for someone, he was almost never last. That was why he had asked Jeeves to always remind him that he had 15 minutes before every meeting. That meant this was planned, "Jimmy...what are you guys planning?" John asked the weak link.

Jimmy tried to keep a complete look of innocence before he broke "It was Natalie's idea, I swear. I told them you would hate it, but I had no choice in the end. Sorry."

Natalie narrowed her eyes at Jimmy before turning to John, "Traitor, and it was not just my idea. All of us were thinking of it and when Drande showed up, it was inevitable but its time you got a promotion. Also since we are rolling out the new uniforms for all fleet personnel, it made sense. Congratulations Commodore John Port, I hope you enjoy the promotion I am sure you will be a Rear Admiral soon enough."

"Very well Director of Intelligence, that's right, if I am going I am taking as many of you with me as I can." John said as Jimmy roared with laughter. "What are you laughing at Colonel, I expect you to start working with General Smitt here on making a Marine Raiders training program. I expect it to be presented at the next Council meeting. Now if we are done with the theatrics, can we get on with the meeting?"

Everyone nodded as the HALO display lit up showing an Island on Planet 5. "Construction is complete and the crew has been transferred planetside. They have ways of growing food, have shelter, and have no tech that would allow them to communicate with anyone outside the system. We are maintaining satellites in geosynchronous orbit armed with kinetic missiles if they somehow build something we can take it out almost immediately. The crew of the Reaver is neutralized." Kara reported.

"Fleet personnel training has tripled within the last month, Marine, Pilot, and Officer training have all doubled. The upgrading of the training facilities has allowed us to keep up with the numbers but we are at the point we will need to expand and upgrade again if we want to keep up with the numbers coming in. I expect once what happened at the Battle of Thorin becomes more widespread among our possible allies we are going to see another recruiting push. We have to both expand our training facilities and our ability to transport the recruits." Lieutenant Daniel McPherson reported.

John looked at Chief Letts who responded before he could even ask "After this week, we can easily get two Lightning class assault types of transport in for refits, just make sure that O'Hansen runs trials on those Drives before we get them in." John nodded at the Chief comment.

'Jeeves can you send a message and make sure O'Hansen gets that done within the next couple days.' a double click of his comm line was the AIs response.

"Our mysterious Mr. Summers is the youngest of the late Senator Summers, only 4 years old when his family was killed. We have no idea how he found out about what happened to his family. We also discovered that he was not lying, thousands of orphans survived the Purge 20 years ago. Considering how many died during that time, it is not a surprise. Due to his position though, it will be...difficult to approach the Captain. He has earned himself a place where he is both trusted by the Senate and the Admirals Board, but it is well known that he dislikes IntelDiv and that he does not trust them. We are trying to find any other Orphan he is close to so we can approach him through them, but he is very careful with who he associates with. We can attempt to do a blind drop but if someone would intercept the Intel...it would compromise us and them." Natalie reported as the HALO display showed the young Captain.

"We need to find some way to communicate with him and confirm that another rebel group actually exists, even if they are unwilling to directly act they can still provide additional Intel." John stated.

Natalie nodded at Johns comment before continuing "From what we have been able to discover through interrogation and Intel from other sources, IntelDiv had 15 covert bases constructed to assist in destabilizing external powers. We have neutralized 6 of these bases. Bases that were built for Bio/Chem warfare are designated Alpha Bases 1-5, the Mercenary Bases are Zeta Bases 1-7, they have three Beta bases throughout Imperial Space currently we have no idea what purpose they were built for. The strike on the Thorin system and the Xaranx was their best shot to pull us into the open in the Shadow War. With their defeat and all ships lost in the endeavor, it is unlikely that the Admirals Board will support another large covert effort. We now know the remaining locations of the covert bases in and outside of Imperial space, once we have confirmed locations and gather Intel about security and layouts we can begin planning strikes on the remaining bases."

John picked up where the Intel Director left off "Once the covert efforts of the Imperial Remnant are destroyed, we can concentrate on building up our forces. We will continue to watch for covert efforts but with the destruction of all their Black-Op bases, it will take them some time to rebuild and continue their covert efforts. We estimate 1 to 2 years at least until they can continue covert efforts as they have been. This will allow us to concentrate on the recruitment and training of our forces, maybe even do some small strikes on remote outposts and mobile forces. In other words, the easy part of this War is complete. It is about to get much more difficult."