The following post feature's some of @Catbert 's characters, Norman O'Connor & Joseph Dawson. They were included with his permission.
5 Minutes Earlier...
Norman O’Connor had been leading the investigation on Mattis Hoegenakker for several weeks now. Apparently, the man had blackmailed Rhianne Wardwell (the new Chairwoman of Interspace Commerce IC|) and put her in a compromising situation. But that's why Interspace had acquired Ajax Combine. Led by a former LSF Director Joseph Dawson, Ajax specialized in cases like this, and Norman was one of their most prominent agents.
The time had finally come. After weeks of surveillance, following, and data mining on the target, Ajax operatives found out where Mattis would be, and exactly at what time. Norman's job became a lot easier now that he had all of Interspace’s resources at his disposal. Of course, his own training from his days in the =LSF= also helped.
He assembled a team of former army personnel, who now called themselves “consultants”. When the time came, they all went into the elevator of the condo where Mattis would be. They knew about the man's history with the Marine Special Operations Command. The target was armed and extremely dangerous.
As the elevator door opened, the people inside were greeted by the storm of bullets. Had it not been for one of the operatives who pushed Norman to the side, this would've been one short conclusion to the investigation. Meantime, the other ‘consultants’ took up cover positions and returned fire.
Lucky for them, they had Mattis flanked. Two other men were injured, and were firing back at Mattis. One of them was wrapping the other’s wounds. A quick glance was enough for Norman to recognize a former colleague: John Major.
Surprisingly, the other injured man was also familiar. A few seconds, and Norman could recall him. Erich Stoltenberg, a Rheinlander, agent of the Büro des Marinenachrichtendiensts. Back during the war, LSF had falsified evidence of Stoltenberg's treasonous acts and had it reach the Büro [REFERENCE 1], [REFERENCE 2]. Norman didn't lead the case, but heard that Stoltenberg escaped Rheinland with the help of the Bundschuh's VWA| [REFERENCE 3]and even sided with the Lane Hackers for unknown reasons [REFERENCE 4]
A yell filled the room, and the rain of bullets from Mattis’s direction came to an end. The pain was audible, to the point that it could be felt. Norman sent two men ahead to check on the mark, and had another 'consultant' attend to John Major’s wounds.
A bullet hit right through him at the bottom left of his stomach. The ancient Romans had a shortsword and their troops were trained to stab this part of the body so that their enemy would die within 4 minutes while being incapacitated. Thanks to modern medicine, Hoegenakker would survive if he got help in time. The datapad had finally finished decrypting. He slowly picked it up breathing painfully, coughing blood.
The project was possible, but the Bretonians just didn’t have the resources to finish it and they didn’t want to share it with Liberty. There were orders from a Victor Steiner, part of the family practically running Bretonia who were known for being staunchly anti-Libertonian. The data was to be secured at a vault so that the project could be continued by Bretonian agents outside of Bretonia, who would gather their own resources to finish it. Except, there was a leak. The data was supposed to be beamed to Sprague wherein it would be transported to a distant SIS base in the independent worlds. It was not, so the project had clearly been leaked.
Adrienne Perry, a supposedly dead woman. Hoegenakker was stunned because he was sure he confirmed her death himself. But she was staring right at him in the face, alive. She wasn’t a twin.
She caught up with Norman O’Connor and explained her situation to him. They were clearly old friends, knowing each other for years. There wasn’t much time, but with what little of it there was, they reminisced about the days in the =LSF= together, 8-10 years ago, during the Rheinland-Liberty War and when Gallia was just emerging as a major threat.
She pulled up a chair in front of Hoegenakker, who was slowly descending into traumatic physical shock over his wound. He needed medical attention soon. “Let’s book him into an Interspace transport out of here as soon as possible. The authorities can’t find out about this. He needs to be sent to Curacao, he'll be handled well at the black site there.”
The next thing he knew, he woke up at a small, sunny island with a few LSF and Interspace agents. His wounds were being treated at this beachfront house with medical staff on stand by.
“You’re not mentally stable, Mattis.” Perry said with some concern in her voice as she pulled up a chair next to his hospital bed. “You have post-traumatic stress disorder for several months now. It’s why you were easy to take advantage of and fool.”
Perry began to debrief him as he lay silently in bed, recovering from his wounds; listening in, but with his eyes closed. Mattis had a hard career that he wasn’t psychologically able to deal with as a Special Forces operator. Throughout his career he interdicted drug shipments and later led a revolutionary optical camouflage unit within MARSOC once Gallia arrived. He was an infiltrator and boarding team leader, stealing enemy ships, raiding enemy outposts for intel or getting support for the resistance on Leeds. But he had seen too much.
Perry handed a psychological profile over to him, it was his. “This is how I was able to utilize you. The entire Bretonian superweapons project was a calculated psychological risk I took, hoping that it would spring you into action against me. I needed someone to fake my death so I could leave Bretonia, because I’ve been with LSF the entire time I was with the SIS. It was time for my cover to end.”
“My plan worked, in fact it worked a little bit too well. You nearly planned a very dangerous terrorist attack on Bretonia by targeting those modular bases and destroying the hadron collider facility all by yourself.”
“How am I going to sleep now?” He asked. “By dealing with your problems, Mattis, not by blowing up buildings and betraying your House.”
“You need to explain to me where I fit into all this.”
“Alright. You were a troubled man and a psychological profile fit that. So I calculated that if you were to find out about this superweapons project, you would force yourself to spring into action. It worked, I was able to use a fake body for you to kill and make you believe you killed me. After that, I became "officially" dead. That's where you were supposed to stop, but you didn't. I wasn't expecting that."
"You kept chasing on. You realize how this is a problem don’t you? In your mind, killing the head of that superweapons project wasn’t enough, every aspect of the superweapons project had to be destroyed; otherwise; you refused to sleep. So you kept coming up with new targets. They were real targets, but your information on them was out of date. You got the money to utilise to build spy satellites. You would have done that anyway, hoping that the Hessians could keep the BAF busy enough so that you could deploy your spy satellites without them being detected. Lucky for you, you discovered some ancient tech to build stealth spy satellites, hidden to scanners but not the naked eye. So you caught a break when the Hessians couldn’t start a war for you in Cambridge despite your financial resources.”
Perry stood up and walked to the other side of the bed to pour herself and Mattis a glass of water. “From there, you took down the whole base by yourself, except it was abandoned because the project was scrapped. But you were still able to detected my hidden program which beamed that information to some intelligence assets of mine at that Condo in Manhattan where we found you. Just think about all that for a second Mattis."
"Even if you destroyed that datapad there and ended all information on this project, even if you killed every last scientist involved with it and destroyed every facility, every base linked to this project…would that have been enough? Or would you have just found a new target to destroy, and make up some excuse for how it was linked to the project? Do you really think you would have stopped killing in the name of ending this project?”
The point she was making began to dawn upon Mattis: People who can’t sleep, get help. He was ready to escalate a war in Cambridge, destroyed a friendship with Rhianne, and aimlessly looked for excuses to kill because he couldn’t handle what he did for work. This was not, normal behavior.
“I’ve brought your wife here along with a counselor. We’ll be moving you again soon, but you need to begin your counselling immediately.”
“Why, what is it to you?” Why the hell did this woman give a damn he thought.
“You’re a good asset Hoegenakker.” She said with some confidence as she poured a glass of water for the both of them and returned to her seat beside his bed. “You nearly built hell in Bretonia just to end this superweapons project. You knew how to utilizes minimal resources to create a biggest bang and I need somebody like that on my side. Initially, you were just supposed to be used to fake my death, but your usefulness has outgrown that. But I can’t do this without you being in a mentally sound state of mind.”
“So what happens to the superweapons project?”
“It’s over, for now. No one has the technical know-how or the resources to build it. Your mission was complete before it even began, you simply had to deal with your mental struggles and stop escalating it. That’s what I’m going to help you do now. When the counselor says you’re ready to get back in action, you’ll have the option to leave here with your wife and a new identity. Or, you can work for me, and I’ll help you realize the capabilities you have a resourceful man.”