She found him on one of the port side observation decks, rather ominously staring out into the nebula surrounding the Alaska star. The blueish-green light bathed the room, as well as him and her. Reyes wasn't anywhere to be seen, but report from somewhere else on the ship would say she was helping some of the other crew with menial tasks.
He looked over his shoulder, unusually calm. "This soon?" He sighed. "Better get this over with, then.."
He turned and followed her, proceeding through the maze of hallways towards the conference room. He remained quiet, a slight limp to his walk, but otherwise the same as when they started this whole investigation.
Upon arriving at the door to the conference room, he noted the two marines outside. "You two.. I don't recognize you from before.." He looked to Nova. "You brought more of them aboard?"
He clenched one of his hands only slightly, but let it go the next moment later. However he responded to Sader was not the same way he was responding with her. Perhaps it was the chain of command, or something else entirely. Regardless, he merely gave her a questionable glance, upset mixed with confusion.
The damage report would come back from the teams outside, albeit not as much as she might've expected. What patch jobs outside that were done were repaired with metals commonly found in the Omicrons, logically. However, there were some instances of Order ID numbers and hastily scraped away symbols that would easily give off that the ship was in some form of Order shipyard. There wasn't any indication as to how long, or for what reason other than repairs, but the news was still there.
Teams near the engineering area would also report something similar, however much less than the report from the outside. Most of the ship's engine room was fairly scraped up, most likely from the Legion incident Hemlock spoke of before. The reactor itself, while still functioning to provide power to the ship's computer, hummed with a scratchy rhythmic grind that only showed the experience she'd been through.
"We keep a rotation, standing around gets boring after a while, you know?" Nova was nervous about how he'd react to Sader being beyond the door. Nova looked over the damage report, before opening the door. "After you, Commander." The young agent braced herself for the inevitable reaction to the Admirals presence.
Nova walked into the room, on the outside, cool and composed, on the inside, uneasy about the aura of tension that had just entered the room. She continued to read the datapad. This only furthers the connection to the Order. The Admiral isn't going to like this..."Please, have a seat. Nova sat down, prepare for whatever exchange of words may occur next.
He walked in, stopping nearly the instant he entered. The conference room was about as much as one would expect; A long wooden table with about six or seven chairs lining it, the insignia of the house emblazoned onto the middle of the table and the back tops of each black business chair.
Hemlock glanced towards Sader, gripping his fist again. "Sader.." He took her words, however, noticeably trying to keep him temper down, and sat himself in one of the chairs near the door.
He pulled a pen from his sleeve, beginning to click it in and out at times, over and over again. Perhaps it was a way to relieve tension in his mood, or to try and annoy Sader with the clicking. Regardless, he merely stared at the Admiral, his thoughts racing. "At least it's not Jones that found us.. That much, I'll at least admit.."
"Hemlock. Please take a seat." Sader sat down and lighted a cigarette then looked on Nova. "Thank you operative. If there isn't anything else you may leave and continue the investigation. I'll handle this." He turned back to Hemlock and exhaled the smoke upwards. "So. You feel better? I ordered some food for us it should arrive at any moment."
Nova took her leave and coordinated the remainder of the investigation. She decided to not tell the Admiral of the development just yet, though now she was worried. She had no power to stop an outburst that could happen in the room. She went through the ships flight logs and maps to gather evidence on explored systems, hoping she'd find something aside from more evidence of Order cooperation.
He watched as Sader puffed away, which only seemed to make him twitch. "Could you kindly not smoke on my ship, Admiral? I've kept this place as clean as it can be without people puffing away and ruining the air."
He kept clicking the pen, his glare never leaving Sader. "I feel.. slightly calmer.. Medical didn't take nearly as long as I expected.. nor did they do nearly as much.."
As Nova searched, the logs from the Omicron trip would be piled back behind other data. It wasn't hidden more than it was just logged behind all of the newer, more recent logs, most of which centered around transmissions to an individual named 'Reaper', though the transmission to said was unusually missing.
Most data from the start of the mission centered around Freeport 11, as well as some of the Core forces that didn't pay much of a friendly glance towards the ship's presence. What followed immediately afterwards were battle logs, indication the ship had fallen under attack, as well as declarations by ships after the battle to prep the ship for retrieval. By who remained unknown, as the logs seemed damaged, but most evidence in the logs afterwards suggests the Order did have some part to play.
"Sorry." Completly disregarding Hemlock's request Sader simply kept enjoying his cigarette. As he exhaled once again the door opened and the guards standing outside brought in two plates both with some sandwiches and some bottles of water. "Perfect timing. Just place them somwhere on the table then close the door after you left." The guards gave a quick nod and placed the plates on the table then quickly turned arround and left. "So medical reports so far suggest you are not infected, but i'm a bit worried about your current mental state. You show signs of PTSD wich given the circumstances is understandable. Especially now that you don't really know who to trust." He stood up and walked to the ashtray then dropped his cigarette into it. "If i had to guess. I would say you are curently still thinking wheter i'm your enemy or not. No suprise in that since i would do the same. Now. Earlier you mentioned you are pretty much retired. This is intresting since if you were conducting a mission you were in active service since if you retired before the mission you would have never got aboard this ship in the first place since as soon as you retire you are just another civilian."
Sader's disregard for his request irked him a bit, noticeably so. He didn't move to retrieve the food, and simply just sat there staring at him.
"My 'mental state' is nothing for you to be concerned with. Who I'll trust is my own business, and I don't need you earning it. Not that my trust is anything you'll ever really care about, anyway."
He stopped clicking the pen, slipping it back into the sleeve of his fatigues and sitting back in the chair. "Right now, I barely know who you are, let alone if you're my 'enemy' or not. I knew O'Neill, not his protege. It's nothing personal, and again, you can thank Jones' little party bunch for screwing things up." He kicked his foot up, kinking his leg and propping it over his knee. "As for being 'retired', I was being sarcastic. I can't be 'Serious Sammy Dornehold' all the time, now can I?"
Nova collected all the evidence she had that connected the ship to the Order and prepared it for the Admirals review. This is too much, it must mean at some point or another they associated with the Order. Do I dare send this information to Sader before I know for sure how long they associated? She was torn, on one hand, this connection was deep enough that they received patchwork from Order materials, but could've been from derelict Order ships.
There's still this battle data... was it captured by the Order, and they tried a hasty repair on the ship for their own use, while keeping the crew prisoner? The agent sighed. There's still to many possibilities and I don't want people locked up for something we don't know yet. Nova went on to Hemlocks quarters, hoping he had kept something more conclusive of what happened out there than the incomplete ship logs and records.
To avoid earning Hemlocks ire, she also dismissed two of her own men to keep the Marine count aboard the ship at 10, as agreed. Two operatives were placed at the CO's quarters door to act as her security while he searched.
As she searched, the rather dim lighting of Hemlock's quarters restricted some of her vision. Everything in the room, however, was more or less visible, and the items presented to her in his room would at least give her more of an idea as to who she was dealing with.
His quarters were separated into three main areas; The living section, the bedroom and his study.
The main room wasn't anything too special, with a sofa and two reclining chairs sat around a table and a flatscreen on the wall. The window on the port end of the room was covered with dark curtains, blocking the bluish-green light of the Alaskan nebula from bleeding in. Inside his study, Nova would find far more of Hemlock's personal items, including the same beret and tattered book the operatives found before on his desk.
However, not far from them were two framed pictures. One was of a noticeably younger Hemlock with a woman and a small infant child held in her arm, smiling with his arm around her, with what seemed like an icy planetscape in the background. The second was of Hemlock again, noticeably older than in the other photo, side-by-side with his XO, Reyes, and two others which she wouldn't recognize. The individuals in the photo were all dressed in Navy fatigues, the background of the ship's bridge clearly evident, as well as what seemed like a fork in Hemlock's right hand and a plate of cake in his left.
This, combined with what looked like a framed marriage certificate on the wall near a display case filled with unidentifiable relics of some sort, could paint a very obvious message in her head. The rest of the study was dim, but in the far corners near a set of seating arrangements were two flags, one in either corner. One was the Republic's flag sat hanging on a golden pole, while the other was blue based with what looked like the ship's insignia on it.
Should she have checked the bedroom, it would've been like the living room. Mildly irrelevant, with exception to another framed photo on his nightstand. This one seemed to be a photo of him and what looked like a dark skinned man with no hair clad in a black jumpsuit, and had a signature on the paper under the glass, which read 'Good luck. -Casper'. Everything else was more or less unrelated or just standard for living arrangements.