Chapter 2 - Rewind?

The blaring sound of an alarm pierced his eardrums as Balthazar woke up in a daze. He found himself in a warm bed, wearing his jammies in a room with table and chair to his left, washroom to the right and screen in front of him. It reminded him of his old quarters during his service.

As he pulled himself off the bed, he noticed that his injuries had been healed. He washed his face and tried to remember what happened. He was with Sophia, when the ship was pumped with knock-out gas, Max was killed and then he fainted. Seeing that he is alive and well, the general received the package and sent for rescue.

But there is a lot that doesn't make sense. He should be a hospital ward, waiting to be a debriefed or in counselling. Not alone in this room.

Opening the wardrobe, he saw his old uniform, badges, firearms and his wrist band and standard military issue communication device, WK-81 which attaches to the band. "That is odd." he thought. "It is the year 89 now. These devices are updated every 5 years, at very worst. But WK-81 was released 8 years ago."

"Either I am in simulation or went back in time 7 years." he smiled stupidly as he donned his gears. He checked his guns, and his WK-81. "Well, they did put some effort if it was a simulation." he thought. But to what end? He failed to understand. The whole thing gave him a headache. He didn't know how to respond or what to do. Everything, he saw gave him a creeping sense of déjà vu.

"January 8th, 2682." the device showed. "It was 3 days before the incident, which had him discharged from the force." he thought.

His device buzzed as received a message from Major Jacob. Jacob was a fellow trainee along with him, when he enrolled at the military. It was regarding his return from an exploratory mission. He remembers this specially as Jacob was a bit agitated and repeatedly kept saying that there were some glitches with the long-range detection systems on the base on the moon. Sadly, Jacob didn't survive the invasion which happened on 11th.

He messaged Jacob to meet him as soon as possible at location in the CECME complex. "That would put an end to his dilemma." he thought hoping that he really did go back in time. Wistfully, he started to walk to the location as he took in every single detail around him.

Along the way, he was greeted by many personnel, his peers, many who used to be a part of his daily life. Their faces surfaced memories he thought were long lost to time. It was as if the world was a tape and by some miracle, he managed to rewind it. He was sure that he had been given a second chance by god or whatever power deigned him worthy of it. Just, it wasn't the way he expected. He now has a chance to undo his mistakes, save a lot of people and his family.

Being an atheist, he never was one to pray nor did he ever ask for help before. But, the sheer enormity of the unforeseen circ.u.mstance he was in, made him to consider the existence of god, a supreme existence for a moment.

"Damn! Almost had me considering of religion for a second." he laughed inwardly. "No matter, how or why, I cannot waver and only follow through."

A large cast-steel door with semi-circular arch atop it, loomed into view.

"CORPS OF ELECTRICAL, COMMUNICATION AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERS."

This place held most of his memories during his first 2 years of service. At the early age of 17, he graduated as an engineer and involved himself in his family business. He was the oddball in a family of medics. As soon as he crossed the eligible age of 18, he enrolled at the protective forces. The invasion of the apes created many opportunities, for the able and ambitious. These scaly humanoid creatures were in war with humanity, since their first contact in late 26th century. This war for resources and territory only escalated in 27th century with hardly any signs of peace.

Within 6 months, he got posted as a Lieutenant and on the planet PK-170. Young and ambitious, he seized every chance he got, travelled multiple planets, successful in repelling multiple intrusions, gained the recognition of his superiors and was considered one of the most strategic minds on the planet by the time he was 20. Be it fortune or fate, two years later when his commanding officer retired, he was recommended and thus, ended up being the youngest colonel on the planet.

He walked past the arch swiped his id across the sensor at the guard station and entered a five-storeyed complex, the size of a football field. He currently commands a regiment of about 3500 personnel divided into 5 battalions. Two of them permanently stationed on the moon base, provided engineering, support and security services across the moon PK-170-B and the remaining were exploratory in nature and would be the first to realize any other forces entering their space.

In the 27th century, the great age of planetary colonization and terraforming, not all terraformed planets can be made life supporting as it requires a minimum composition of certain elements and compounds on it. PK-170 was one of the rare planets, which was life supporting, habitable for humans and abundant in natural resources. It provided abundant food sources. As such, all celestial bodies revolving around it like PK-170-B are considered strategic military resources in defending against the invasion and he was responsible for most of the security of PK-170-B.

As he went to the posterior of the complex, he passed by Jane's cabin. He felt a surge of anger realizing that she would betray the alliance and frame him in two days. "I won't let it happen again. And this time I will catch you in the act with proof." he thought as he continued to the back of the complex. It was a deserted corridor on the ground floor.

He found Jacob waiting outside an equipment room, holding a thin blue report file. He greeted Jacob as he motioned him to get inside and quickly closed the door behind him. "Major Jacob, I was notified that you had some concerns regarding glitches in the detections systems on the moon base. Could you please elaborate?" said Bel, taking the report from Jacob.

"Col. Blyth, I was contacted by Capt. Jones on one of his routine checks around PK-170-B. His ship accidentally went a bit out of the designated path and found a cargo ship. He tried to hail them, but they quickly moved out and jetted away. He contacted the services at the base, but they informed him that the space was clear, and no vessel was observed." Jacob replied.

"If it really was detected by the system, it would be noted in the automatics logs of the navigation interface. You could just check the nav logs and forward a report. It would be immediately investigated, if you provide that bit of conclusive proof. So, why did you request to meet me?" asked Balthazar.

"The navigation data doesn't show it. So, it was considered as an instrumental error on the ship and there was no cargo ship in that area. Despite that Jones insists strongly that he had triple checked the instrument himself during travel and requested me to investigate it, suspecting data tampering on the navigation systems. I found that a similar vessel was observed by another captain a month ago, but a report wasn't filed for the same reason."

"It seems a bit suspicious. I know the circ.u.mstances in which you joined the force. If you were interested in transactions with merchants, you would have stayed in your family. I trust you will investigate it?"

"It is definitely suspicious. There should either be an issue with the installation on the moon base or the instruments on the sh.i.p.s. Let me check a few things and come up with a plan. Keep quiet about this and keep a few trustworthy personnel from you squadron ready. We might need to take a vessel to check the situation. Convene with me in my office after lunch." he replied.

They both left the cabin and Balthazar went to his work space on the third floor. He had been a colonel for four months and he learned that his job mainly consisted of paperwork and drills, making sure the resources from the moon. It felt like the same job, he refused to do in his family. In these four months, he never boarded a ship, went on mission, went for an inspection or anything which attracted him to a job in military.

Being promoted to colonel he thought that he was very lucky but taking on the post made him realize the responsibility and monotonous paperwork that came along it. These were the most boring months in his service. Fatigue crept over him daily as he went on with his work, signing agreements, planning drills, requesting more personnel and new security proposals.

The boredom eating at his brain, neglect slowly began to take root and maybe that was the reason, he was easily fooled. But, the second time around, he had the advantage of foresight and he also got used to the monotony of it when he was working at the club.

Once, inside his work cabin, he immediately started to shift around his schedule to accommodate a meeting with Jacob after lunch. He went on to compile a list of people, whom he should monitor. First on it would be Lt. Col. Jane, he was sure that she was involved in tampering of the navigation data of the Jones' ship. But he had no idea, who was working with her on the moon base.

He quickly set to work on his computer. A ship's nav data can only checked and changed by accessing the ship manually. He checked the security footage on the hangar for any personnel accessed Jones' ship after it was parked. He also did the same with the other case which was not reported. By lunch time, he managed to identify two personnel who made unscheduled visits exactly when the sh.i.p.s landed. One was from Jane's battalion, the other was from Sophia's. That put him in a dilemma.

Sophia was a special case. She was ten years elder to him and they shared a romantic past. In the 27th century, the medical advances helped increase the general life expectancy to 180 years and the a.d.u.l.t phase of a man lasted for about a hundred years, a young man of 20 and his grandfather could be mistaken for brothers. As such, the relationship between him and Sophia could be considered commonplace. She was a good friend to him even after his discharge. He trusted Sophia had nothing to do with this as she was the one who brought the proof against Jane in future.

After much deliberation of the pros and cons of including Sophia, he decided to pull her into the loop. He owes her a lot more than that. She gave him the chance to redeem himself. He sent a message requesting her to meet him after lunch.

He can keep watch on his personnel on the planet, some way or other, without letting them know, but he can hardly do much about the moon base. Though he was the commander, he was very young and there are many who consider him too young and inexperienced for his post and he wouldn't have the same level of control of the moon base. They wouldn't respect him and probably seize any chance they get to undermine his authority. Both lieutenant colonels on the base come under this category. There is a high chance of his plan leaking to unwanted parties if he directly contacted them.

There are two things which occupied Balthazar mind. First, in order to catch Jane in the act he needed to know, who are the other parties outside the military working with her and when would the next cargo ship make the trip near moon base. Second, he needs to set the detection systems back in working conditions regardless of whether it would lose him the chance of catching Jane. If he fails it would result in the same catastrophe, he was responsible for the first time.

He realized that he could only hash out the details of the operation after consulting with Jacob, Jones and Sophia. He walked himself down to the mess in the ground floor. He ordered a couple of sandwiches, gulped them down as fast as he could, returned and waited for them to arrive.

Sophia, the early bird that she was, arrived a couple of minutes before the scheduled time. She knocked at the door and opened it.

"Col. Blyth, may I come in?"

"Yeah! Sophia. Get in. Have a seat. Major Jacob and Capt. Jones would be here in a minute. So, let me get you up to speed. Jacob and Jones observed that someone is allowing unauthorized cargo sh.i.p.s near the PK-170-B moon base. The detection systems of the base failed to detect the ship, which could detect on their rounds. I have observed the security footage from the hangar and noticed two personnel making unauthorized, unscheduled visits to corrupt the navigation logs of the sh.i.p.s." said Balthazar showing her the security footage from the hangar.

As she was looking over the footage, Jacob and Jones arrived.

"Get in guys. Was just discussing your concerns with Sophia, here." said Balthazar as Sophia rolled her eyes. He was always a bit informal with the personnel, which Sophia being a stickler for rules and rites frowned upon.

"Col. Balthazar, do you have any idea who they are? Whom are they working with?" she asked.

"One of them is in Jane's battalion and the other in Sophia's." said Balthazar with a smile. The atmosphere in the room abruptly changed. Jacob and Jones looked at Sophia with shock. "Don't get so tensed. He recently transferred for a better position into you battalion." continued Balthazar. Sophia looked angrily at Balthazar as she asked, "I hope you got a plan about this."

"Still in work. The most important thing which we need to do is to first make sure that the detection systems on the moon base work. We need to have surveillance on them without knowledge of any other parties. Emphasis on keeping it secret. Regarding the personnel who is in contact with the cargo ship, the prime suspect is Jane."

"Just because you found one guy from her battalion doesn't make her guilty. How can you consider her a suspect without any investigation on the two personnel?" asked Sophia.

"I am not blindly considering Jane a suspect because of those two. To convince a cargo ship to fly in unauthorized entry requires the men to have a certain level of assurance against the risk involved, which someone like a Major or Captain can't provide. Thus, my first guess is Jane. Then, the Majors in her battalion. I have other sources too for considering Jane, but for reasons I can't explain we will leave it at that."

"Sophia can we count on you to keep the discreet surveillance on Jane and the rest. Any permissions, equipment you require, I will try my best to provide" said Balthazar.

"Sure, will be done."

"The second thing on the agenda is to fix the detection systems without letting others know it. If we let them know, we lose our advantage. The best scenario is one where they attempt to get another cargo ship near the base with the detection system working and we capture them in the act. But the most important thing is to get the detection system working as it is a high-level security issue."

"Irrespective of whether they realize it or not, we need to get it up by tomorrow. Else the consequences could be disastrous, if the apes attempt another intrusion. That is priority one" said Balthazar. The room went silent for a few awkward seconds as none of them expected the fix to be done in a day.

"Now, all suggestions are welcome. Don't hold back." smiled Balthazar.

"Any hardware changes to the system would be clearly noticed by many personnel, especially for systems like these which are used all day long. But a software patch, system updates would be done in a few minutes. Hence, the only issue is with the system would be because of an unauthorized software patch. We would just need to change it to default factory setting and update it to the latest authorized software version." explained Sophia.

After further discussion, they decided that Jacob could arrange someone to get onto the base to fix the detection systems. Jones could captain a ship stealthily to verify if the detection systems are working. But they got stumped at one issue. They needed someone on the moon base to let them dock in quietly to check and fix the detection systems.

"I will try to get someone to assist you at the moon base. We shall convene again in four hours. Just be ready for the mission by tomorrow. Dismissed." concluded Balthazar.

Both Jacob and Jones were confused. Balthazar was very young, and he just took the colonel post four months before. He hardly had any influence or rapport with the personnel in the moon base on PK-170-B. They were concerned about this and immediately consulted with Sophia.

"It is not that we doubt his intentions, but he was in the service for less than 5 years and he didn't earn much favors during his tenure. We are just worried that something untoward might happen if he is not careful." expressed Jacob.

"I understand why you guys would be worried. But it is unnecessary. He has the means for it." smiled Sophia as she left to her office.

Following their departure, Balthazar changed out of his uniform and left the building. He went out of the military campus and continued along the road to west in his hover car. The campus was situated on the north side of the outskirts of the city K4 like most of the military installations.

He crossed the border of the military grounds and continued along the desolate road for more than half hour, till he reached a recently constructed township. He drove through, to the north of the township till he reached a large gate between 9 feet stone walls. The words "BANDERAS GYM, SHOOTING RANGE AND WARFRAME TRAINING GROUNDS" were etched on the gate in a large and bold font. Confirming his id to the guard at the gate, he drove to the complex inside.