Amah walked on the bridge of the UNF London, his normal Capital ship the UNF Rome was undergoing a refit being the first of the capital ships commissioned over fifteen years ago. He was situated half way between the moon and the Earth with his standing fleet of two thousand ships, a mere 2% of the ships on call the defend Earth. Almost 50% of them were in storage around Mars, unmanned and in care and maintenance. A further 25% carried only skeleton crews, maintaining such a large fleet was simply far too expensive in peacetime. Only Cube retained full status these days.

  “Jing.” Amah raised his hand.

  “Sir.” Commodore Xu Jing stepped forward.

  “Take the fleet forward, simulation Lunar Eclipse, full simulation.” He empathised. “Flood the area with EMP’s I don’t want a single byte of information escaping the moon and target the ii ships also.”

  “Sir?” Jing gave puzzled look.

  “Executive orders, immediate war games as result of yesterdays wormhole incident.” Amah answered.

  “Aye aye sir.” Jing smiled. War games, that would break up the tension that was building. “Enact simulation Lunar Eclipse and sound the general alarm, lets get this tub underway, I want full EMP dispersals ready in ten minutes!”

  “By God I hope you are right Amanda.” Amah touched his lips and forehead.

  Colonel Jackson had a team of five hundred men in Phoenix unit 7, in full battle armour. They sat in the old relatively disused spaceport on Moon Base hub four. He could see the black ii building off in the distance in contrast to the grey moon landscape, they should have painted it grey. This part of the Moon Base was one of the older sections and was due for a refit, ii had moved in just a couple of years ago. The UNF department of Space and Science had a new fit out occurring a mere five hundred meters away in the old super mall.

  He had just heard over the com that simulation operation Lunar Eclipse had just been initiated, a simulation based on Moon Base being compromised. He gathered his team was here to undertake a simulated attack on ii, no one was going to attack the department of Science and Space. Looking across he saw a viper coming into land at speed. It hit the airlock at tremendous speed before slamming on the thruster breaks.

  “That’s an awesome piece of hardware.” Major Hugh Hanson smiled a wide grin with his slow Texan drawl.

  “Belongs to the Auditor Generals office.” Jackson noted. “We might be audited on this one.” Jackson did not seem over concerned.

  “That shits me.” Hanson shook his head, “If it not those bastards it’s the ii.”

  “My last unit had been seconded to the AG, they aren’t bad people.” Jackson shrugged. The figure making it way over to them gave Jackson pause. She was in the ARM battle suit lite, with the up grades by the looks. No match for their full ARM battle armour but certainly some pretty decent protection.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Just one auditor?” Hanson scoffed.

  “That’s Tela Montague, she heads up AG.” Jackson frowned and walked towards her. Hanson quickly stood up to follow suit.

  “Colonel Jackson.” Tela held out her hand, her helmet hung off her belt.

  “It is good to see you again Tela, you here to watch us take down the ii? I assume that is our simulated mission.” Jackson asked. It made sense that it would be Tela.

  “No, that’s not your mission.” Tela answered, she looked at Hanson, “Can he be trusted?”

  “Hanson? I have known him for ten plus years, he is highly sceptical of everything but he is sound.”

  “Hey!” Hanson spoke up and Tela and Jackson ignored him.

  “We are going to take down the ii, the simulation is our cover, your cover is the simulated attack on the ii.” Tela explained.

  “Our objective?” Jackson was not one the question the why, he had undertaken some pretty off the board mission in his time.

  “It is believed they have gen7 AI communicating with another ii gen7 AI at the Cube.” Tela started to inspect her helmet.

  “So this is a AG takedown then?” Jackson knew the weight of this, Nigel Kahn was not some you fucked with on a whim. If there was a gen7 there then?

  “No, executive order.” Tela threw down a small black disk and a hologram leapt of the base. “Within one hour Admiral Mouille will attempt to take down ii at the Cube, we must be as close to this point.” She tapped the hologram showing the central computer room. “As we can. At that point you’ll need to use lethal force if require to secure the objective.”

  “You could get a warrant.” Hanson smirked. Tela gave him a penetrating stare that wiped the smile of his large face.

  “I do have a warrant co-signed by President Alfredo Papillion and Secretary General Amanda Nguyen. I don’t expect it to work.” Snapped Tela.

  “Back up?” Jackson overlaid their objectives and tactics. He was one of five officers trained to attack this ii base.

  “There are around 3000 personal in that base, most are merely high security analysts, about three hundred odd will have similar battle armour and training to yourselves backed by another couple hundred of base security. When we are sure they are aware of the Cube attack then we have 5000 marines on call. I wanted you Jackson because I want the gen7 intact and to avoid a blood bath.” Tela explained.

  “And you’ll be coming with us?” It wasn’t really a question.

  “Yes.” Tela slipped on her helmet.

  Ajeet Gupta looked across at the various screens in his command centre. Their communications off moon had been effectively shutdown with this surprise simulation. What was worse is that he now expected a simulated attack by special forces on his ii compound.

  He glanced across at the Guardians, the elite tactical force of the ii. Already they were suiting up to protect the central core of the compound. They would let them play their war games in the outer core but step one line over that and they would use deadly force. Not that anyone expected it to get to that.

  The ii structure was un conventional. There was no one set overall commander. The Guardians reported directly to Earth ii, he had tactical command of the information stream and his counterpart Selma Juan, controlled fields assets.

  “Base is locked down sir.” His head of security saluted. Ex marine. Ajeet simply nodded and waved his hand, he wasn’t sure he had ever saluted anyone.

  “Let them ‘take’ sector seven only and make sure they know that.” Ajeet waved him off. Timing was not perfect, there was a security council meeting in less then two hours, Nigel was not going to happy if he couldn’t get any updates through. He had tried bouncing signals of their vessels in orbit but they too were being locked down. That normally useless Admiral was trying to earn his pay check today. He was even blind on Moon Base, his core connections had been cut. He knew there was a group in one of the old hangers, probably a phoenix team. It was going to be a long day.