9: Breech Of Dawn
by Chaoseternus

Trust is broken and the rules rewritten when traitors are revealed and secrets released.

Chapter 5: Ground Zero

It was bad, Thompson thought, that he didn't get into work nowadays and wonder if he had a press incident to deal with, he instead walked into the office and asked what had been broken overnight to the press.

It had been sending Intel, Security and Internal Affairs into collective fits. Now it was sending them into fits of rage, they had some evidence that suggested a high ranker from one of their branches was responsible for the breeches and was indeed subtly inhibiting the investigation.

Needless to say, the investigators were not amused.

Also needless to say, morale in those branches was approaching a new all time low. They were under investigation; one of their own was a traitor. They were not happy.

A grim faced Williams, this early in the morning he hadn't had enough caffeine to be able to tell which, greeted him outside the heavy iron airlock to his temporary office on Thundersdawn station.

"Sir, we have a real problem"

Thompson groaned, "How bad?"

"According to the Sun, we are at a defacto state of war with America"

Thompson blinked, inserted his fingers in his ears to clear them, and asked in an overly amused, you cannot be serious voice, "Could you repeat that, only it sounded like you said…"

"We are at a Defacto state of war with America"

"That's what it sounded like you said" Thompson paused, and let rip, using words that would make the most hardened mustang blush.

Joan Williams was a hardened officer and she had come up from the 'ranks', making her a mustang but she still blushed, she had tried that, though she really didn't want the Admiral to know about that incident. But the rest was way in the realm of physically impossible, and in a few cases, highly illegal.

"Right" Thompson asked, highly annoyed ten minutes later, "How in the hell did they construe that?"

"Well, I'll give you three guesses but you are only going to need one"

"NID and St Athan" Thompson flatly replied.

"Yes, and here's a thought for you, we know the NID have been manipulated by the Goa'uld before"

Thompson nodded slowly, the thought sounding right to his experienced mind "Your thinking the information that suggested Maktenos was involved was accurate, but intended to mislead"

"If we are looking for snake agents, we might not notice the signs of NID activity, and it diverts resources from the effort to round up the few surviving NID cells" Joan continued, pulling up her PDA and the contact details buried within.

"There were minor indications that several NID cells were receiving manipulated orders in the database Intel grabbed out of their asteroid base…" Thompson mused, "pass it on to Ryan, and see if he can look into it"

"Already on it sir" Joan said, smiling at her boss fondly as she looked up from her PDA.

"What's the PM say about this war business?"

"The official statement is that the NID were taken down because of the attack, and that reparations and apologies were made, POTUS is backing this up all the way, they are both frantically trying to defuse the situation but their has been riots in London and Glasgow already, as well as six American cities.

Its bad boss, it really is.

Though there is one saving grace, public opinion is very antiwar in both countries; the general opinion seems to be War with our friends? No way. It's anti-NID all the way"

Thompson relaxed slightly, "Good, then there will be no push towards a war that would be very awkward for us and very damaging to our war effort against the Goa'uld"

Joan snorted, "The troops would refuse to fight anyway, on both sides. Too much cross training, exchange programs and the like, they see each other as friends and military types have a real problem with killing friends"

"Right" Thompson nodded, "any report from Taskforce 3?"

"We received partial pre-combat log dumps but they cut off abruptly"

Thompson nodded, his mind swiftly racing through the little data he had before coming to a simple answer, insufficient information to come to a conclusion.

"Any other business?"

"Yes, the latest construction report just arrived…"