CROSSFIRE - Atlantis DSV - New Cape Quest

“Do you know something we don‟t, Captain?” Banick asked, a measure of curiosity
becoming apparent.
“No more than anyone else in the sea wing, sir, but you might want to know... I had a
report come across my desk a couple of weeks ago from Fleet Intelligence that suggested
the Alliance had been suffering attacks in their own lines.”
“We know this. The New Australian resistance has been increasingly active since
Adamson took over.”
“That‟s not what I mean, Admiral. This was something else – specifically around the
Macaw Bank. Intelligence said that Alliance fighter patrols were being ambushed by
something... they hadn‟t seen before. Whatever hit them was fast and usually disappeared
before anyone had a chance to get an ID. It‟s happened twice more in the last week in nearly
a four hundred mile radius of the Macaw Bank, but they haven‟t found a thing.”
“Ghost stories now, Captain? Aren‟t we a little old for that?”
“They‟re not ghost stories,” she retorted snidely. “But whatever is going on down
there, it was enough to scare intelligence – because despite the attacks, they‟ve stopped
reporting them, and when I made inquiries, they denied that it had ever taken place.”
Ainsley stepped forward again, looking once more at the chart. “Then what makes
you think this attack wasn‟t isolated, and continued?”
“Because I have other sources besides Fleet Intelligence, sir. Rumour mills in the
Subfighter Corps are fed by this sort of news. If there is a group of mercenaries, pirates or
anything that can pull off repeated attacks against elite Macronesian fighter groups and
evade their navy on their own soil for an entire month and get away with it... it gets people‟s
attention. I dealt with about four requests for information about this from other fighter group
commanders on the Enterprise, Royal Oak, Constellation and St. Patrick personally. I still
have the reports from them if you want to read them yourself.”
“That doesn‟t explain why ONI would have pulled the report from the battlnet,” Banick
pointed out.
“No, it doesn‟t. Where did you get this information about Macaw?”
The look that was exchanged between Banick and Ainsley on that note spoke a
thousand words, and Banick held up his hands in defeat as the Admiral shook his head. “I‟d
ask that you keep whatever you know about this to yourself for the time being, Captain
Roderick. I‟m not entirely sure what to make of it myself at this point, but I would appreciate it
if you could forward me those reports. Anything you know would be helpful.”
Roderick just stared at Ainsley for several moments, trying to work out what the man
was hiding, but eventually gave up, and shook it away. “Yeah, of course.”
“Thank you. That will be all, Captain. If you would excuse us?”
Unhappily, Roderick assented and left with the wardroom without further word,
closing the door behind her on the way out. Banick walked around the desk again and
returned to his seat, sipping the mug of tea that he‟d left there as Ainsley stared at the chart
for a few seconds longer.
“So... Shall I assume we will be setting a course for Macaw Bank?”
~
T H E G I R L A T T H E E N D O F T H E W O R L D : II
Two hundred miles south of the Cape of Good Hope, May 31 st , 2029...
Callaghan stood on the bridge of the DSV Proteus with a watchful eye, the science
staff and other Nycarus personnel who were overrunning the submarine having found it
necessary to convert half of the ship‟s central command centre in to an extension of their
inhuman laboratories elsewhere on the ship. Why, he never thought to ask – the fact that
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