Starship Engineer

As we waited for the Brotherhood's fleet to move, I was not sleeping much and was constantly checking reports, expecting the Brotherhood fleet to have moved into subspace toward the Bradbury system. We had three Leopard spy ships tracking them, but the Brotherhood kept up their subspace disruption field to prevent us from attacking them again by exiting subspace in their midst. Other than knowing they had not left, we did not know what they were up to, as the Leopard sensors couldn't penetrate the distortion field.

It was not a good sign that ships were still arriving to reinforce the massive Brotherhood fleet. Every day that passed was another day that Kenji got closer. It would only be the Cloud Jumper arriving as the other Fateweavers were deployed on overwatch on the capital shipyards of the Human Federation much further away. Kenji's ship had been acting as a message relay and was ready to support whichever shipyard came under attack in the Human Federation. That happened to be the Bradbury shipyards and not the Human Federation shipyards. We were fortunate to get to them before they entered our system.

In a meeting with Edmund, he stressed we needed allies that could fight the Brotherhood on their own battlefield, the core human worlds. Otherwise, they would just build up strength and come after us over and over again. The only organization that came to mind was the Godfather organization. They had splintered from the Brotherhood and were not xenophobic. We had one man from the Godfathers, Jackson Jones. He had married Zoe and was confined to the planet since he was technically a spy.

Jackson Jones was somewhat of a character. He was extremely confident to the point of being arrogant. His skill in any power armor was unmatched. We actually used him as a trainer on the planet for the Marines. He was not 100% human, though. Like Desdemona, his genes were spliced with an alien's DNA. The race he was spliced with was called the Polyformus. A race of shapeshifters that the Brotherhood had driven to near extinction. They survived and apparently allied eventually with the Godfathers.

I asked Jackson Jones to meet with me on the Fateweaver. Jackson could not alter his appearance, but the polyformus DNA made him very adaptable to change, hence his ability to utilize any power armor like his second skin.

Jackson Jones was flown up from the planet on a shuttle, and Edmund let me know his biosensor monitors showed him with a high level of anxiety. Edmund, my Intelligence officer, thought perhaps he had been doing some espionage and assumed we had caught him. I asked Edmund how he could have possibly committed espionage under his watchful eyes. Edmund acknowledged he was not perfect, but he had two agents in training monitoring Jackson Jones at all time. Since the agents rotated frequently as part of their training, they could have missed something. While we waited for him to arrive, Edmund was combing through months of those reports. Now, with the help of Julie, he worried he might have missed something.

He didn't find anything by the time Jackson arrived in my captain's office on the Fateweaver. Although Jackson's bio readings said he was nervous, he didn't show it on the outside. He appeared cool, collected, and ready for whatever this meeting was about. Edmund led the session by trying to trick him into revealing any effort he may have had in sabotaging or passing on intelligence about the Arcadian government on the planet. I let Edmund try to get to make a mistake and just watched. Edmund enjoyed these spy games—as long as he won in the end.

Edmunds questions were not going anywhere, and I was not as patient as I normally would be. I ended the interrogation and asked Jackson what the Godfather organization could do to help us with the Brotherhood. He seemed a little shocked as I had turned down his offers numerous times in the past.

I showed him the combat data from our fight with the Brotherhood fleet outside the Bradbury system. The size and power of the Brotherhood fleet caused him to show some shock. The Brotherhood did not operate so openly and with such overwhelming force. He gathered himself and expounded on the Godfather's capabilities. This was his chance to convince me to work with the Godfather organization.

Jackson explained again how the two organizations had split. The genocide of alien species in order to allow humanity to rule the galaxy did not sit well with a faction of the Brotherhood. At first, they voiced opposition, and it quickly devolved into a civil war in the organization.

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The Brotherhood won the war but had been set back a century from the internal strife. A few hundred Godfather members escaped the purge and reestablished itself. The current manifestation of the Godfather organization operated on the other side of human space—far from the Bradbury system. At least, that was the center of their operations. They had thousands of individual agents throughout the human Empire like Jackson Jones and also in dozens of alien Empires. They differed from the Brotherhood since they had no industrial base to draw on.

I asked him, beyond intelligence and knowledge, what did they have to offer us? Jackson seemed reluctant to answer, but eventually, he did. He eyed Edmund first and then me. He told us what he was about to disclose was the biggest secret of the Godfather organization. They had agents in place to take down the entire Brotherhood leadership. Well, he admitted that was the plan but it had been fifteen years since his last contact with the organization. And they had still been in the process of identifying all the secret memebers and their locations.

His job out here in the Rim worlds was to identify agents and be prepared to assassinate them when ordered. He had located two in the escaping fleet from the Union and was shadowing them before we arrived to rescue them. Edmund asked if there were any Brotherhood agents in the Bradbury system. Jackson smirked and said it was just him that he knew about.

Since they had not activated the plan to wipe out the Brotherhood, he assumed they had not yet put everything and everyone in place. So what he was offering was a chance to cripple the Brotherhood and maybe a chance to eliminate them for good.

He admitted that he would have to leave and contact them to see if they would move now against them. If they failed to eradicate all the Brotherhood leadership, the head of the snake would grow back. Edmund was dubious that they could do what Jackson was advertising. The Brotherhood was too entrenched, and there were layers of the onion so deep that others had no idea about them.

Jackson reminded us that the Godfather organization used to be part of the Brotherhood. They knew how they operated and had spent centuries in the shadows watching. I asked Jackson what his leadership would want in return. They wanted the technology, of course—access to the higher bands of subspace and the gravimetric sensors at the minimum. Unsurprisingly, he was aware of our tech as he was married to Zoe, who set up our flight school for heavy fighter pilots.

I sent Edmund and Jackson away to think. I had already promised the Human Federation Fateweaver cruisers in the future, and that was just three years away. Of course, these would be crewed by a mixture of Federation and Arcadian crews. The Sylvan would get access to the subspace technology if they eliminated the quadruped threat as part of our pact to fight the Mavelonlants.

We also had dozens of ships out in the galaxy with the technology. Eventually, one would get captured before destroying the tech, and the Brotherhood would get their hands on it and quickly reverse-engineer it. For whatever information Jackson gave us about the Godfather organization, I still had reservations since it was a splinter of the Brotherhood.

The chance to attack the Brotherhood was too great an opportunity to pass on. I called them back in a half day later. I told Jackson Jones if they initiated their plan and the Brotherhood started to crumble, they would have the subspace technology. If the Brotherhood collapsed completely, then the gravimetric sensors were theirs as well.

I turned to Edmund; his job was sending out agents to verify they had succeeded. Jackson interrupted me and said he could only present my offer to the Leaders. He was not sure they would follow through. They had been planning the Extermination Project for over two centuries. So far they had not enacted it. Edmund chided him by saying maybe their Leaders were just giving their agents busy work.

Jackson shrugged and agreed it was a possibility. I told Edmund to preparer the next Leopard ship and send Jackson on it to meet with his Leaders. He was to make sure the Marines on board were ready to destroy the ship if they were betrayed. I was rolling the dice, but risks needed to be taken.

I checked the most recent report for the Brotherhood fleet. It was still stationary. Two days later I went to bed that night, planning to use the SLUMBER unit to force some restful sleep. I was inside the slumber VR for just thirty minutes when Julian, my ship AI, pulled me out of the VR. The Brotherhood fleet was moving.

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