The Meaning Of Command

Author: Chaoseternus

Chapter 6: Taskforce Lucifer

USAF Passenger jet, en-route to RSS/RAF St Athan

Sir John Patrick Ryan was not a happy man, he along with Ding Chavez and John Clark had been assigned to command Taskforce Lucifer in the bringing down of the Rogue agency, NID National Intelligence Directorate, and their lackeys, men such as the former Senator Kinsley and Colonel Makepeace who had been one of the few survivors of the St Athan assault. He had thought they were making headway, especially with the willing help Maybourne and several loyalist agents were providing but obviously they were wrong. The level to which the RSS had been infiltrated indicated the NID had far more agents still available to it than they have believed possible even in the worst case estimates, and far too much power. Even worse, for the taskforce to be caught this far of base suggested Taskforce Lucifer had been infiltrated; some of his people were traitors. And that didn't sit well with Ryan at all, he disliked traitors with a passion, a traitor in the British Home Office had almost cost him his family and his life on several occasions, and that didn't sit well with him at all.

At least the RSS had successfully captured a whole host of active agents and their equipment. That little haul should give them enough intelligence to grab several more agents, or at least tell him who to have watched, though it was unlucky that at least one agent had escaped with knowledge of the RSS and its equipment, especially an agent who was immoral enough to rig a residential area with hidden claymores and his house with more explosives just in case he was discovered. A full breech team had been lost and several houses in the area had had to be condemned according to the reports he had received. He hoped he caught that thing before the brits did, they would quite cheerfully tear him limb from limb for that, 'at least his people would interrogate him before they tore him limb from limb' Ryan thought with uncharacteristic cynicism. "Ryan, we've completed the background checks RSS Minehead specifically requested" Ding broke into the CIA agents thoughts "Most look clean and the FBI profiler, Clarice Sterling agrees, but 2 of the officers and one of the enlisted are coming up short on their profile, Clarice insists there background has to be false even though there is no other sign of it"
"Clarice says the backgrounds iffy?" Chavez nodded in confirmation, "Pass the word to RSS security, and have them monitored"
"Aye, sir" Ding nodded, and left for the comm. suite at the front of the jet.
Another three possibly in the bag, well it was a start. Now they just had to find out who the moles in Lucifer were.

GC, St Athan

Joan walked into the Admirals office carrying her ubiquitous PDA to find the Admiral not sat at his desk, but looking out the window over the hanger below, still in use as the primary small craft development and experimentation area. Joan approached and quickly saw what he was looking it, Striker. Currently just a hollow shell, this craft was intended to be the A-10 Warthog to the Lancers Dogfighter. A craft with a punch equal to a Dauntless, if not the survivability but at significantly reduced cost in personnel, materials and time, Striker was the brainchild of a team of experts from both the RSS and SGC and would cover the lack of heavy hitting capabilities present in both the Lancers and the F-302's. But right now that was in the distant future.

"Sir" Joan said softly, breaking the tired Admiral out of his revere, "Lucifer Actual just put a watch order on 3 Minehead personnel, he says his profiler twitched"
"Pass it on to security" he replied tiredly.
"Also a report from Thundersdawn, a security patrol caught a comm. ensign trying to trigger an illegal data dump to an earthbound IP address, we're tracing the address but it looks like a mobile, possibly an aircraft at this point"
Thompson sighed, "It's never easy, is it? Pass it on to Lucifer"
"Aye, sir" Joan looked worriedly at the Admiral before quietly leaving.