The next day, the Excalibur team found themselves back in the conference room, sat around the ellipse table.
"So, what's new?" James asked, sitting in the black, leather swivel chair at the head of the desk.
"I still can't find John Smith, however, I have found the con organisation's computer system. With any luck, they'll have information on him there," Laura replied, looking almost annoyed at her lack of information.
"I found this," Alex said, putting the knife and the dart on the table, "outside the flat where Cavendish was murdered. The dart contains acid and poison."
Alex looked into the Captain's eyes and thought he saw a flash of fear. "Alex, can I see you in my office after the meeting?" Alex nodded in reply. "We need to find Smith. Laura, you're back on locating Smith, Juliet, continue to handle the police side of this investigation, but don't give them anything they can run to the media with. Robert, when Laura finds Smith, you'll be with me." James ordered.
"James, when I came back to the Hub yesterday, there was a coweled figure on my street. Has anybody else seen it?" Juliet asked quizzically. Nobody replied. "Does it mean anything to anyone?"
"Nope, but we'll have to factor it into the investigation. Thanks."
Alex sat in one of the chairs at James' wooden desk and James sat behind it, hunched over the knife and dart, thoroughly examining them.
"This thing is wrong. This was made back on my home planet and they were used to attack us in the Great War." James stated, not taking his eyes off the dart, a wistful tone coming into his voice.
"That's obviously not our Great War?" Alex asked.
"This Great War destroyed an entire race, a planet and a whole way of life. World War One killed a generation of young men." James paused thoughtfully. "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old Lie: 'Dulce et Decorum Est Pro patria mori.' It is right and proper to die for your country."
Silence echoed in the long office as Alex looked out the circular window at the other end of it to see Robert and Laura chatting, while Laura tapped away thoughtlessly on one of her three keyboards.
"I fell for that old lie, as Wilfred Owen called it. It was the same lie, just a different principle. Sign up for the army or be shot. Thousands died, but that was nothing compared to war. They all died because of me, but I had to do it. The planet wouldn't have been able to support life after that. I was in charge of a squad of men, the best we had left. I can remember all their faces and I can hear all of their voices. So young, such a waste. They knew we were losing the war and they knew the carnage was inescapable. We went down to the centre of the planet to blow up the core, but there was an ambush and I was the only one to survive. They died screaming for their mothers and I stood there, powerless." James' face became downcast. He looked at the knife and considered all the destruction that it had caused. "To see one of these again is not good. I am taking this down to the Vaults personally. If you or anybody else find any more, you tell me straight away!"
The cog door which separated the hidden staircase down from the church to the Hub rolled back to reveal Jane, who stepped into the expanse of the Hub, smiling at the occupants and climbing the stairs to her workstation, which was on a concrete island separate from the others. Alex shot her a wink and a smile as he exited James' office.
The tapping of keys ceased as Laura, the technical expert called out, "I've found him!"
James rushed out of his office like it was on fire. He reached Laura's workstation just as Robert reached the bottom of the staircase to the upper gantry and the two men stood looking at Laura's workstation.
"I managed to hack into their system and find their employee records. It was fairly easy really, but I'm worried that I might hit some form of firewall eventually," Laura said. James and Robert stared intently at her computer screen, looking at the picture of a bald, muscled man with a scowl on his face. There were personal details by the side of the photo. "His real name isn't on record obviously, they don't want people hacking in and investigating their past lives."
"What happens if you click the 'track' tab at the top?" Robert asked, while James stood cross armed at the side of the workstation.
"Well, it would allow you to see where the operative was. Presumably they're all chipped. I wanted to show you this as that is more likely to hit some form of security," Laura replied, turning to face her Captain.
"Track him. I'm sure you can get past their systems. You're brilliant, after all." James told her.
Laura blushed at the unexpected praise and a smile radiated across her normally passive features. She brushed her brown hair out of her eyes and pushed her glasses up her narrow nose. About thirty seconds later, she turned to face the two men and stated "He's at Brockenhurst Station, platform two."
Robert and James sprang into action, James running into his office to seize the keys to the SUV off a nail on the wall, while Robert picked up his suit jacket from the back of his workstation chair, sliding it over his broad shoulders. The two of them ran towards the door to the underground car park.
Once they were gone, Jane raised one of her brown eyebrows and asked, "Do you two fancy going out tonight?"
Robert and James sat in silence during the ride in the SUV to Brockenhurst, watching the blip on the screen in the middle of the dashboard. It showed a red dot which represented their only lead, John Smith.
Laura's voice came over the intercom. "They've found out about the hacking. I've masked our signal, but it might make your job harder."
"Do they know what we were accessing?" Robert asked, stroking his stubbly chin.
"Most probably. I've tried my best to mask it, but I think alarm bells may have already started ringing for them. I'll do the best I can." Laura replied, whose concern could be heard through her voice.
James's foot pressed harder on the accelerator, his brown boots almost touching the carpet underneath the pedals. Robert gripped the sides of his black leather seat as James violently turned the corner into the road that led to Brockenhurst station. The level crossing arms were lowering behind them as they drove alongside the railway track and in front of them, they could see the train pulling into the station. James hit the brakes hard and leapt out of the SUV. His coat flailed behind him as he ran up the footbridge, Robert chasing after him. James reached the platform just as the train pulled out of the station.
"Laura, we missed the train. How long until it makes a stop? Is Smith definitely still on it?" Robert asked, touching his earpiece.
"He's definitely on it. It's a fast train across country and it arrives at Bournemouth at 12, so quarter of an hour."
James began to sprint back to the SUV and he brushed past Robert in the process.
"Do you reckon we can get to Bournemouth in fifteen minutes?" Robert called after him.
"We're gonna have to." James called back over his shoulder. Robert sighed, rolled his eyes and followed James back to the car.
"I'm just going down to the Vaults to take a stock check. I won't be long." Alex announced with a wry smile on his thin face. He walked down the concrete steps to the main floor of the Hub, over the stream of water that divided the Hub in two and down into the Vaults.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Laura asked, "So where are we going to go tonight?"
"Well, there are plenty of pubs around. How about going to Beaulieu or Brockenhurst?" Jane replied. The other two nodded in reply and Jane brushed her medium length brown hair out of her face and returned to her high magnification microscope she had fetched from the laboratory earlier.
"Have you figured out what that thing is yet?" Juliet asked.
"It's probably a fragment of a destroyed planet, but it's a bit unusual because it reacts with salt water." Jane replied. "It forms a kind of weak acid which eventually eroded the support to the pier, causing it to break."
Laura turned back to one of her monitors which showed the CCTV image of the ticket office at Bournemouth train station. Two bald men clad in suits had just walked into the ticket office, one of whom turned to face the camera, meanwhile the other was in conversation with the man behind the ticket office window. Laura gasped and went to touch her earpiece, but then she saw James and Robert stroll into the ticket office.
James and Robert approached the ticket barrier at Bournemouth station. At the ticket barrier were two female officers standing guard and James simply whispered 'Excalibur' into one of their ears who opened the barrier. James winked at her and the two of them walked through the barrier. Robert was shaking his head in disbelief at the Captain, who shrugged and mouthed 'What?'
"Honestly, can't take you anywhere." Robert stated.
"What? I was only making new friends!"
Robert was immediately to business as he noticed the two hit men they had seen in the ticket office. "Very smartly dressed for hit men."
"Trust you to make judgements on somebody by the cut of their suit," James retorted to the suited man, who was running a hand through his spiky hair.
The air was filled with a slow whining sound as the train pulled into the covered station, coming out of the drizzling rain. The crimson blur slowed down, the noise changing to whirring as the train began to stop. James and the two hit men found themselves standing next to each other, Robert standing a way off behind them. One of them gave James a scowl, to which James responded with a small smile in the corner of his mouth. When the train stopped, the quartet got on at the same door and entered the same carriage. It was empty except for a well built man who jumped in fear when he saw the two suited men. They sat at the far end of the carriage, while James and Robert sat at the other end, sitting on the aisle seats on either side of the passageway. Robert put one hand towards his gun holster under his arm, however, James held up his more bulky hand in a halting gesture, cautiously watching the two men at the other end of the carriage. One of them was scratching his broad forehead and the other was pretending to doze.
An announcement came over the train's speaker: "Ladies and gentlemen, we apologise for the delay here at Bournemouth, we are currently waiting for the other half of the train to connect."
Robert took this as the cue to leap into action. James' hand grasped desperately at the hem of Robert's open jacket and sighed as he raised his tall frame off his seat. Robert reached the man first and pointed his Tokyo Marui Hi-Capa 4.3 at the thick, bald head of John Smith. John Smith stretched out a broad and muscled arm and grabbed Robert's right arm. A ripple of pain crumped its way through Robert's face as Smith began to twist it. Robert thudded to the floor, blood streaming from his nose and his gun landed on the floor next to him. James rushed across to tend to him and at this point, the two hit men moved to take Smith, dropping a smoke grenade and grabbing the burly man between the two of them. They frogmarched him off the train as Robert and James were still coughing and spluttering.