[Scene 1 - Something shady is discovered]
“I don’t believe a single word that foe doctor is telling us,” Ashley muttered sourly. “All that stuff he said about Reach: it’s fucking bogus lies intended to rile us all up and get us to turn on each other. He’s probably used that manipulative trick many times.”
“Or maybe not,” Cassy then replied slowly, and the wariness in her tone plus the wide eyes was scary enough to Richard and Ashley. “Looks like Judd was right about one thing.”
Peering over the Lead Wingman’s shoulder, Richard saw a photo of a much younger Douglas Reach. But aside from the photo, there was nothing on the file: name, military id, address, service record, everything that should have been there was replaced with a bracketed “no data” tag.
“I pulled this from the Pentagon’s disciplinary files after running a facial analysis,” Cassy replied. “And I’m using the A.T.X.D. Secure Server, so this would show stuff that even ordinary Military Intelligence probes wouldn’t have access to without some high-end form of clearance.”
“So then why is…,” Ashley began, but then lowered her voice in case Reach or somebody else from Command was nearby. “Why then is he on the Pentagon’s disciplinary roster? What did he do? And why would Judd care about that?”
“Hey, look at that.” Richard then pointed to the top left corner of the on-screen report, which displayed the logo of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency instead of the Military Police Corps. “If the D.I.A. is involved, I’ll bet our Commander-General was being disciplined for more than just Dereliction of Duty at the time.”
“Yeah, he would need to have really screwed something up or pissed off someone of particular rank and valor to end up under D.I.A.’s microscope,” Ashley seconded.
“But get this, the investigation is still open,” Cassy finished. Ashley’s eyes widened with shock and Richard’s jaw dropped almost a foot. “Which means it’s either not resolved, or they’re still looking for him.”
“Wow, no wonder Judd thought he could use our leader as leverage,” Ashley drawled with her initial shock. “He must think he can blackmail Reach into doing something hideously in the Luminara’s favor or he’ll find a way to get our leader turned over for a court martial.”
“There’s something else,” Cassy then added. “A month after I was transferred to Groom Lake, there was this rumor I heard: something about a data breach in the Pentagon’s internal servers.”
“A data breach? I didn’t hear anything about that,” Richard protested with surprise.
“That’s because, from what I know, it was never made public. The Department of Defense didn’t want anyone on the homefront to suspect that our military’s networks were vulnerable to a digital attack, or give our terrestrial adversaries at the time any ideas.”
“When was it?” Ashley inquired.
“Sometime in the late 1990s, maybe the early 2000s. The strange thing is, according to the rumors at least, nothing vital was taken or even tampered with. But a few lesser-priority files went missing or became reportedly corrupted, and somebody in the Army lost their job. The cover story was that the soldier in question had mishandled Military intel and was relieved of duty, but the guy claimed otherwise.”
“And this is relevant to the present matter how?” Richard begged inquisitively.
“This file on….on the Commander-General,” Cassy replied with a brief whisper, “It’s from 1991 - the twilight year of The Gulf War. But I thoroughly checked the Pentagon, C.I.A., D.I.A., every military database within reach of A.T.X.D.’s fingertips and there’s no record of a Douglas Reach anywhere else in their files. It’s like he was never enlisted in the first place. As far as I can see, he’s just a face with no name.”
“Are you suggesting that someone hacked the Pentagon’s database back in the 90s and deleted every scrap of information about Reach as part of some larger cover up?” Ashley inquired.
“Well, if he did do something really egregious overseas, or otherwise in uniform, that somebody didn’t want the public or even the innermost circles of the military and intelligence communities to know,” Richard concluded, “then maybe that’s what Judd is holding over Reach’s head. I guess we’ll need to have a chat with our boss about this.”
“Richard, are you sure?” Ashley then asked with a passionately concerned face as well as a hand on her husband and teammate’s shoulder. “Reach is the Commander-General of the entire global A.T.X.D. force. He has the power to have you and everyone else here discharged or penalized in much worse ways on charges of treason just for poking around in his personal life. At least…hold off on confronting him until we find out how to get our teammates back and resolve the current crisis at hand.”
With a reluctant exhale, Richard agreed. “Alright, that makes sense. But as soon as this is over, we…not just I, we are gonna have a nice long chat with Douglas Reach about this and what dirty little secret Judd thinks he has the upper hand on.”
“In the meantime, let’s keep this amongst ourselves,” Ashley concluded. “Tiger, Harpy, you two and I are the only ones who know about this. Don’t speak even a syllable about what we’ve surmised so far to anyone else here at HQ, especially Judd and Reach.”
--
[Scene 2 - Douglas reveals it all]
Richard was just coming out of the locker rooms when he heard General Reach call out behind him, “Tiger. You have a minute?” Reversing his direction, Richard approached the Commander-General and saluted unwaveringly.
“I just want to say, Johnson, that I’m proud of you for doing what you could to keep Central Division as close-knit as possible during all of this,” Reach complimented. “And I’m…I’m so sorry about McNeice. She was stubborn and feisty, but God almighty, she was an incredible mix of dauntless and girly.”
“And a fine operative indeed, sir,” Richard finished respectfully. “Since she helped us return all our comrades back to the living, we’re all going to make sure she didn’t die in vain. We’re going to end this, sir…for good.”
But Reach wasn’t done. And when Ashley came down the corridor to check in on her husband, they were both pleasantly relieved but also a bit surprised by what came next.
“Well, about that Sergeant Major Johnson, Commander Miller: I haven’t been totally honest with you, or anyone else for that matter. Yes, it’s my job to know things that I can’t always share with my operatives except on a need-to-know basis. But Johnson, when we spoke in the corridor near the Secure Holding Block last week, I could tell you were disturbed about something: maybe something I’d said or done. Truth is, when I heard you’d taken Francis Judd into custody, I was conflicted between relief and absolute terror, like the past was coming back to bite me in the ass.”
“Well, we have time before departure, sir,” Ashley then piped up. “If there is something you want to tell us, such as what it is that Judd knows about you, then with all due respect, I’d say now’s as good a time as any to get it off your chest, sir.”
Although Richard now looked at his wife with some wary concern like Ashley had towards him several days earlier, Reach kept a plain face. He knew this day would come, but luckily, it seemed like it wasn’t going to end in as horrible a way as he’d long thought it would.
“Well shit,” he replied, gently putting a light fist to his forehead, “I guess there’s no point hiding this from a married couple, especially if that couple happens to be two of my best operatives.” So Reach directed them back to the locker rooms, where the Sergeant Major and the Commander stood ready to learn the truth.
“What did Judd tell you in the cellblock?” Reach began.
“Not much,” Richard commenced. “Just that he knew some really shady things about you and that we had no idea who it was that had been leading us this whole time. But then, afterwards, Cassy found an empty file containing a younger photo of you but no other identifying information in the Pentagon’s disciplinary files. And it seems as though the D.I.A. still has an open case against you that’s just been put on the shelf, but there’s no information about that investigation.”
“Sir….what did you do back in the Gulf War?” Ashley then posed with a worried face.
Reach bowed his head down and took some time to assemble his response. Then he looked up and explained it all.
--
[Switch to perspective of General Reach]
I first joined the Army in 1988, right as the Tanker War was coming to a close in Iran, although my first deployment was Panama: 1989. There I got some recognition for saving the lives of both teammates and civilians. By the time I was sent on another tour to Kuwait when the Gulf War began, I had made it to Corporal. I was attached to a Special Tactics unit and our job was to lase targets for our planes to strike. One day, we had just finished assisting in an air strike against an Iraqi military encampment a week or so before the controversial Highway of Death attack. Our team then got the order to move in and check the rubble for survivors: I assumed we were going to detain them. Of course, the strike itself had been conducted using A-10s and a Tomahawk Missile, so almost nobody had survived….except one.
He was a young man, maybe in his early twenties, and he was in gruesome shape. My commanding officer saw him too and told me to put him out of his misery: I’d later find out that there was no intention of detaining any prisoners. But even with my rifle lifted, I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger: despite my training and the previous firefights I’d been in, it just didn’t sit right with me that I would be killing a defenseless, wounded warrior even if he was the enemy. I apparently hesitated for too long and my commander got pissed at the delay, so he pushed me aside, took out his sidearm, and double-tapped the soldier to the head. Then he briefly criticized me for not having the guts to make the hard calls a good soldier had to make. The next thing I knew, I just snapped, and I struck my commanding officer in the face…with the butt of my rifle. He wasn’t dead, but his face was well bent out of shape and that crappy evil mustache I remembered he had was now crooked. He needed several stitches to fix the facial damage, but apparently that wasn’t enough to get him medically discharged.
I, on the other hand, was stripped of my rank and sent back home: to the previous U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Kansas before Leavenworth was a thing. I was awaiting court martial for a number of charges, one of which was rumored to be treason only because my commanding officer reportedly had some tight connections to the higher ups in the Pentagon. But just a year later, 1992, one of those guys in the big black suits who I’d later learn was a DESA agent arrived at my cell and told me there’d been “a complication” and that I was being given the opportunity to redeem myself through what he at least called corrective reenlistment: that of course turned out to be poppycock, because instead of going back into the Army where I knew people would hate my guts, I ended up here in A.T.X.D. I’d also find out that part of my release from the USDB had been arranged by my father Eduardo, so I guess my former adversary of a CO wasn’t the only one who had strong ties to the higher ups. Strangely, nobody in A.T.X.D. seemed to resent me for what had happened in Iraq, but Judd knew about it and, to say the least, brought it up at some point during or before our ultimate confrontation in Siberia during Operation Blizzard.
But it gets worse, and I assume Judd knows this about me too. About ten or so years later, when I was making my way up the chain of command here in the force more rapidly than I was in the Army, I was reviewing intelligence for an after-action report in the Pentagon’s database when I saw that file Cassandra Wayne found. And while DESA had told me the issue had been dismissed unconditionally, it seemed as though that was either a lie or someone of an overzealous nature back in the DoD had reopened the case. Worse yet, my commanding officer back in Iraq was also starting to climb the rank ladder, rising to the rank of Sergeant First Class. Seeing both of these, and also thinking back to how coldly my CO had terminated that wounded combatant, made me feel like justice as I believed it hadn’t been properly done. So, unbeknownst to my predecessor in the chair of Commander-General, I initiated in the Data Center a well-encrypted, small-scale hack into the Pentagon’s internal network: I erased all my service record information, scrubbed the DIA’s investigative files on me, and then hacked my CO’s service record and made some….additions, you might say: retelling my eyewitness statement of the unarmed combatant’s death in the form of a professional-looking gloat from the bastard’s perspective. Since the service record info was publicly available, it quickly drew scrutiny on the homefront and the Military decided to discharge my CO instead of going through a lengthier investigation. The relief that I felt from such an illegal endeavor, however, was short-lived, especially when I think about what came next.
My now ex-CO was absolutely livid about being discharged and, alongside his wife who was also ex-Military, started some ragtag investigation group he called Project Hades. Their apparent “mission” was to expose and root out a fibbed up conspiracy that the U.S. Government was colluding with foreign parties to conduct witch hunts and purify the Military. Eventually, it led to an attempted low-level assault on the Pentagon itself, but their threat to the military personnel inside was quickly put down and all but a few of their members were arrested. Knowing that I was remotely responsible for unintentionally setting the stage for Project Hades’ creation, I have carried the humiliating weight of my own impulsive justice-seeking actions, and the potential cost it could have come to our country, on my shoulders ever since; among many other emotional hardships of course.
--
[Return to Narration]
“So…let me get this straight, sir,” Ashley attempted to clarify. “It was you who launched that low-level cyberattack against our country’s military to erase your existence from the DoD database and force your former CO into dischargeable circumstances? And you used A.T.X.D. resources to do it…..Holy shit.”
“Wow, no wonder Judd thinks you’re such a dirty person, sir,” Richard replied. “And what happened to your former commanding officer?”
“He’s currently rotting in the ground, where he should be,” Reach coldly replied. “He was shot on site by the MPs when he pulled a gun and announced his refusal to surrender.” The Commander-General then looked up at his operatives and calmed down a bit before continuing more remorsefully, “You know they say that when you tell the truth, it hurts less than when you lie? Well, I don’t really feel much relief now that you know.”
“And what good does it do for us to know now?” Richard returned. Both Reach and Ashley looked at him with shock at the question. “With all due respect, sir, that was indeed a stupid thing to do back then. Of all the things I’ve had to reckon with since coming back from the Middle East myself is that….some evils, you just can’t fully destroy. But you do have to take action when they rise to a level that is beyond safely tolerable for any rational society. That being said, sir, if you think we’re going to turn you over to the Pentagon, D.I.A., or I.R.C., forget it. You spoke earlier of my wife and I keeping Central Division together after the attack on HQ? Well you’ve done that longer than I have, sir, and we can’t afford to lose your leadership right now, even if you’re not the perfect commanding officer.”
“And since when has there ever been a ‘perfect commanding officer’, sir,” Ashley added in reply. “Nobody, not even the highest in our country’s military and law enforcement elite, can legitimately claim that they haven’t made a stupid, irresponsible, or even costly decision at some point in their careers. People just tend to pay more attention to us: the grunts actually doing the work and who are at the greatest risk of fucking up in front of witnesses and cameras. And war often brings out our most horrible and ugliest sides as sentient beings: just ask any of your operatives here, sir, and we’ll tell you there hasn’t been a moment where we weren’t at least tempted by circumstances or ambitions to cross the line. We’ve just been lucky: lucky to have each other, have allied support, and good leadership. As Commander-General, Douglas Reach, I have seen you frequently take responsibility for your actions, and we all know that your decisions have helped the force save many lives - both human and non-human - without egregiously violating the international standards. So if some haunch of a general back in Virginia or a political fucker wants your head for refusing to kill an unarmed and wounded combatant, then he or she is going to go through all of us before they get to you.”
“And off the record, sir,” Richard finished up, “if it’s any consolation, the mere notion of a ‘perfect soldier’ makes me sick. Your late CO…I’m not sorry he’s dead either. Nobody should ever have to serve under such corrupt and cold-hearted savagery like that…at least not if what we’re fighting for is to defeat such evils on the other side. And Kaurus, even before he was called that, crossed that line one too many times himself. Now he and his psychotic allies,” Richard took up his currently unloaded rifle against his chest, “they’re going to get what’s coming to them for putting us and countless others through this rotten hell. But no matter what we feel towards them, we’re going to finish the mission and see it through the right way.”
“Count us in on that too,” a voice suddenly added behind them. Richard turned and saw, to his reassured surprise, that William, Sophia, Dave and Rister had come in to join him and Ashley.
“That’s what truly keeps us on the side of right, sir,” William reaffirmed. “We have a rulebook that we don’t deviate from. Kaurus and the Luminara: they don’t.”
“And when you don’t have rules to follow,” Sophia continued, “you can’t control the outcome.”
“So when everything goes to hell around people like that,” Dave added, “it’s always going to be they in the end who fail. Sure we can be tough and ferocious like the enemy …”
“But what ultimately destroys an evil is its own unwillingness to adapt and be tamed,” Rister concluded. “Taming our emotions and desires when others will not is the true resolve of a righteous warrior; a role model for others to look upon.”
Richard looked behind him, and now that stony combative look of his began to lighten up with a reassured smile before he turned back to Douglas.
“So you see, sir, we’re still in this fight. But we need a leader: someone who has first hand knowledge of what we’re up against, someone who has experience leading the entire force through times of hardship, and most importantly, someone who understands and sees eye-to-eye with us as sentient beings and not just operatives.”