Chapter 29: "Bureaucracy."

Sitting at her desk outside Major General Arnold Bruckheimer's lavish ninetieth floor level office, Sergeant Nadine Cromwell absently typed at her computer with her notepad just inches from her arm. With every object and article in its defined location, her life screamed order. From her lucky vintage Dodgers bobble-head toy to her signed Don Sutton rookie card, nothing on her desk was there by chance. Glancing expectantly at her watch, she sighs impatiently and resumes work. The front door leading to the general's office swings open and the Major General rushes in. Glancing down at the greasy-haired unattractive soldier, he rolls his eyes as the bobble-head bounces steadily as he lets the door close.

"I need a memo taken Nadine."

Standing, she grabs her notepad and pen, following three steps behind the general. Stopping to fill his coffee cup, he sips at the freshly brewed joe and lets a warm smile creep over him. Freshly roasted and ground coffee was the true test of status on this world. The standard bean was grown a system over and was freeze-dried before arriving on Famori Prime.

Sitting at the chair next to his, she sits and begins dictating his words. Arnold had his choice of five secretaries, all of them were ten times more young and attractive than Nadine, but her performance reports were off the charts. As much as he enjoyed the eye-candy of a young lady at his beckoned call, in order to stay on top of things he needed the best first. Pondering how he could get command to authorize him two secretaries was an ongoing quest, one which he had yet conquered. The layers of red-tape were unsurmountable, and he did not want to lose the unwavering loyalty of his current secretary in the process. As he chatters endlessly about defense screen inadequacy and the source of recent enemy penetrations onto the planet, he sips at his third cup of coffee before lunch. Thickly built and a light brown receding hair line, he wasn't a discerning woman's first choice for an evening on the town. Ten minutes into the memo, he excuses himself and runs for the men's latrine down the corridor. Nadine sets down her pen casually and sits erect in the chair.

As the door to the office slams closed, she quickly goes back to her desk and extracts an identical set of stars worn on his coat's shoulders and replaces one. Going to his closet, she finds his backup jackets and shirts and replaces each article with one of the stars in her hand, while dumping the old star in her pants. Taking the general's favorite coffee cup and dumping the contents down the sink, she places the cup on his desk. Removing a diamond ring from a purple anti-static bag, she places it beside the cup and it suddenly melts and reforms to resemble the cup. In a blink of an eye, the cup melts and evaporates leaving no evidence it existed. Setting the doppelganger in the dish rack, she dumps the fresh pot of coffee down the drain and washes it. In minutes, she sets the pot back into the brewer and starts a fresh batch.

Gathering her belongings, she leaves the office and rushes down to the fifth floor restroom. Nadine waits at the mirror looking herself over making subtle uniform adjustments. After three minutes, the room's last occupant departs and she heads directly to the farthest stall. The large handicap access stall was just a legal formality of Earth, but it served everyone's interests when needing a changing room. Knocking on the door, Nadine hoarsely speaks.

"Are you two done yet?"

The door swings open and Heaven sticks her face out wearing a cold stare of annoyance.

"You said it wouldn't be long! I've been standing around for four hours while sleeping beauty had the choice seating arrangement."

Nadine rolls her eyes and motions for her to leave. Pushing past Nadine, Heaven rushes out and stands at the entrance waiting while Nadine enters. Sitting on the toilet, Sergeant Nadine Cromwell sits propped against the wall of the toilet unconscious. A hollow ring, resembling a large gold flat washer with writing, is attached to her forehead. Taking out a small coin from her pocket, she places it into the middle of the empty hollow of the coin on her forehead, and it suddenly releases as one coin. Catching it as it falls, Wendy breathes a sigh of relief having returned to her original shape and appearance. Leaving the Sergeant on the toilet, she closes the door and uses a screwdriver to relock the bathroom stall. As she leaves the bathroom, she hears Nadine groan and begin to stir, completely unaware of the switch.

Exiting the building, they remain quiet until they take a second public shuttle and arrive at the central shuttle station. Entering an unmarked shuttle, no different than the hundreds flying overhead, they wait until the shuttle door closes and Myka calls out from the front.

"So how did it go? Any problems?"

Heaven rubs her back and legs, willing the pain to subside.

"I just need a few hours in the hot tub to make the pain go away."

From the cockpit, a second voice rings out enthusiastically.

"How about I give you one of my famous rub downs beforehand?"

Sergeant Morgan Powers cannot resist the opportunity to help the Japanese agent.

"Satisfaction guaranteed!"

Dodging her endless attempts to hook-up with her, Heaven realizes that her legs will need more than just warmth to recover. Shaking her head, she resigns.

"Done! But just the legs, nothing more."

Myka shakes her head while flying back to the villas.

"You know I could use a foot massage. How about you give me a foot massage?"

Morgan leans over and seethes.

"I'd love to but your girlfriend would do far more to me than kick my ass. This artifact crap scares me, so no thank you."

Sitting down at the conference table, Myka squeezes Helena's hand and smiles having missed her lover all morning. Following Agent Caitlin Todd, Karla enters clutching her sweater around the waist. Myka shares Helena's pain seeing their once vibrant and whimsical leader weary and scarred from her ordeal. Though her wounds and internal damage was completely healed, the ghostly scars weighed down her every action. Though she fared better than Anna, Karla was angry and bitter and focused that energy towards taking the war to the enemy's bed. Caitlin clears her throat before beginning, sensing the tension emanating from the small girl.

"Okay…the bugs and tracking gear checks out. We have all eight of our suspects under surveillance, so we can start eliminating the list, and figuring out how the enemy is communicating with them."

Morgan plays with the purple-bagged coin inspecting it, yet wise enough not to touch it without the purple protection.

"Exactly how does this work? Do you plant it on them?"

Wendy shakes her head.

"You have to have the victim grasp the Doppelganger Coin, not just touch it. About five seconds later, they are rendered unconscious so you have to be there to catch them so that they don't hurt themselves when they fall. Now you can make it work with just them holding it in their hands, but, it works best when you place it on their foreheads. After that, you remove the center coin and take it with you while they are kept unconscious by the larger coin. You are transformed into the target, in every way, including bad breath and voice. When you return, you select which memories they retain from your travels, and place the coin back into the large one. It puts your memories into their head, and returns you to your original size, shape and appearance."

Myka laughs.

"Listen to her! Hasn't been here six months, and she's already talking like she's been doing this stuff for forever."

Wendy shakes her head grinning.

"My last job as a Middleman Agent was extremely detail oriented. It's just what I do."

Caitlin finds it difficult to hide her surprise of the capabilities of the Warehouse. Realistic life masks were one thing, but total impersonation and memory manipulation was beyond her. In wartime, many civil liberties were essentially discarded, but the enemy they fought was beyond fair play. The once joyful and energetic doctor, was rendered angry and cold, consumed with thwarting the Yamorians, while another agent was having her tortuous memories repressed just so she could function. In just a few short years, her dream job turned into a horror movie; a sick torture porn feature which anyone anywhere could become the next starring victim. Every fiber in her body screamed at her find the moles immediately, fearing how many new victims the enemy would take.

Claudia enters with Candice in tow and she sets down an analysis report.

"Well from the wreckage, we got nothing, except they had our villa's specific coordinates, and some of our profiles on file. If someone hadn't of destroyed the ship, we might have gotten more."

Karla raises an eyebrow at her and coolly seethes at the warehouse caretaker.

"They had way too much technical information on me, and that data had to be protected…from everyone. As I said in my report, I immediately realized they didn't know exactly who I was, so I told them I was Francesca Davila's daughter Heather. If they had done that to me knowing who I was is one thing, but they would have done that stuff to any child they found. That's why I'm so pissed off. How's that weapon coming along Claudia?"

Nervously Claudia fidgets in place.

"Well the device is ready for actual testing in the field. My little robots will deliver their packages as ordered, but I still think this crazy drug is a bad decision. Prisoners on their ships wouldn't be protected, and as far as I can tell, there will be no immediate cure."

Caitlin leans forward noticeably caught off guard.

"What weapon?"

Claudia freely surrenders all her information in hopes someone will talk Karla out of it.

"It's an artifact powered drug which will be deployed into their water supplies. It will cause insanity and panic within six hours of consumption. The filtration systems can't stop it, but neither can ours. This is something we developed, which I'm not proud to say, from our time on the forest river world."

Helena notices Karla roll her eyes and leans towards her.

"And the command has approved this?

Karla grimaces sarcastically.

"As if I'd tell them! Until our leak is sealed, they can't know jack! Do you realize that this can only work if it's a surprise? The amount scrutiny they could apply would practically make this impossible! No. No one but us can do this. The level of bureaucracy they have in command is mind numbing. Everyone gets their hands dirty and key military decisions are raked over 45 desks with everyone having to add their two cents before a committee debates the final order. No thank you."

Helena clears her throat grabbing everyone's attention.

"On the bright side, we have a new site to excavate. Command has recaptured Deminom III, one of the most war torn worlds in this and the previous war. It hasn't seen a break in combat since day one of the resumption of hostilities. Command told us to get there as soon as we have a green light from internal security, and that just came an hour ago. We have fifty security, an engineering team, and I'm sending eight of you to lead the excavation. There will be six Famori from the warehouse there to get experience. The security team will have some heavy weaponry incase trouble somehow shows up. I don't want a repeat of our recon mission. Oh, and I'm sending you Karla to be the chief on-site physician."

A tense moment passes between the old friends and Karla stands and leaves the room fuming. Helena feared this would happen, so she grudgingly continues.

"The team assignments are as follows: Myka will take charge of Team 1, consisting of Anna, Candice, and Alice. Team 2 will be led by myself and consist of Morgan, Wendy and Heaven."

The three new members look at each other in tense glares, caught by Helena's keen eyes.

"Don't worry, you three. These are fairly simple practices. We have automated drones which scan the areas for artifacts, and we go in and extract them. All of this is OJT, so you'll get the hang of it rather quickly. It used to be back breaking work, but the robots do the largest amount of the work now."

Myka leans over and interjects.

"How long are they giving us?"

Looking through the paperwork, she sighs.

"They want it wrapped up in 6 months, but I don't see how that's going to happen. This may take years; but after two months, they're going to reevaluate our progress and status."

Claudia exclaims far louder than she planned.

"Two freaking months! You've got to be kidding me!"

Helena shakes her head.

"The last time we were forward deployed like this, we discovered some revolutionary aspects of artifacts in just a couple of weeks. Imagine what we could find in two months? Second, we're sitting ducks here. Let's get out there and draw them out to find us, not sit around waiting for them to come get us. We will take some extraordinary security precautions, and EVERYONE will be armed! We will also have some personal protections on us, but, no one should be unarmed anywhere, I don't care if you're showering. If there are no pertinent questions, let us get packed and go."