Interlude 1-L
Location classified pursuant to codeword ASPENFARM
April 23rd, 3010
"It's confirmed, Trellshire Heavy Industries was in this up to their eyeballs," Marcus made the pronouncement like a judge speaking from the bench. God, I hate politics. At least Marcus Steiner-Nin was competent at his job, if dull. A couple of the bastards Allesandro had foisted off on them had been utterly incompetent.
Clarice had known that THI was guilty as sin ever since she'd stepped foot in the door of their corporate offices on Twycross. That sort of panic filtered down the chain of command in any organization. If you knew the boss was scrambling to figure out how to cover his or her ass, you started trying to figure out how to cover yours.
Besides, she'd read the briefing package. Marcus had a bad habit of repeating the damn things verbatim instead of summarizing to make sure everyone was on the same page and then moving on.
Hannah leaned in a touch and remarked quietly in her nasal Coventry accent, "I never thought I'd say this, but God bless the Fifteenth Rasalhague Regulars."
Clarice managed to hold back a snort, but not her grin. It was an ironic thought. The Combine attack on Icar couldn't have been better timed if it had been planned. A nasty suspicious part of her wondered if it might have been, but the response from above didn't seem to indicate that they'd expected it.
In any case, news of the attack had hit Tharkad just a few days after the Archon's latest speech about the perils of corruption and incompetence in the LCAF. Precisely long enough for the 'loyal opposition' to have hit their stride on denying any such thing existed.
The news had seriously embarrassed several very prominent members of the Estates General and their mouthpieces in the press. Add to that the fact that Lyran forces had managed to inflict a lopsided defeat on the 'Mech company that went after the critical Tungsten refinery, giving the Archon's press secretary something to spin as a victory … Well, you had a shitstorm hitting the Opposition while leaving the Archon untouched.
That would have been bad enough for the obstructionists in the EG. It probably would have been enough to force them to let the Archon give the Inspector General's office some serious teeth again.
Then bad had become worse as the Lyran Guard's CO was arrested for embezzling huge amounts of Kroner that should have gone to ensuring his command was at full strength.
Strength that would have meant that his men would have substantially outnumbered the attacking Combine soldiers. The optics on that were awful.
Archon Katrina and some of her handpicked journalists had pressed the advantage for everything it was worth. One particular headline had put a still taken during the extremely photogenic Archon's speech all over the front page with the headline "She Called It."
Public opinion had shifted overnight, and the opposition had been forced to throw their support behind their ruler or risk literal riots in the streets. On some planets, particularly vocal members of the Opposition had been burned in effigy by their subjects during week-long protests. She was 90% sure LIC hadn't even had to help them get started.
With incontrovertible evidence of serious malfeasance by senior officers of the LCAF, the Opposition hadn't been able to spin their way out. They had tried to be clever. They'd authorized an investigation, banking on the ineffectiveness of the IG to make Katrina look ineffective as well.
Instead, the Archon had sidelined the IG for rebuilding, and covertly sent in LIC. Three months later, they were preparing to disseminate their findings to the local civilian government agencies who would be making the arrests.
They were also very, very carefully watching a second set of suspects to see what they did and who they contacted when the Wave One arrests were made, and the same again when they thought they were clear after the arrests concluded.
With any luck at all, that was going to come as an extremely unpleasant surprise in a couple more months. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.
The sheer scale of corruption that had grown during Allesandro's reign was almost unbelievable. It was nice to see it being brought under control, and that was even without the consideration that it would make LIC's counterintelligence tasking easier since less corruption meant that outside intelligence assets had a harder time worming their way into important positions.
The rest of the meeting passed the way meetings tend to, slowly and with increasing frustration. Still, there was a limit to even Marcus Steiner-Nin's ability to jabber. It was still three hours of her life she wasn't going to get back, but-
"Clarice? A moment of your time, please," an unfamiliar voice requested, the barest hint of what might have been a Skye accent audible. It belonged to a handsome older gentleman, the sort that people tended to trust on sight. A good choice for a persona in a spy's line of work.
"Of course, Mister … ?"she trailed off leadingly.
"Ah, my apologies. I am Peter Denker," he replied and showed her his identification, "I'm the agent in charge for a little bit of obfuscation we're going to be running over at least the next few months," he explained without really explaining. Claire took that as a need to wait until they were inside a sealed room for details.
A short walk later, they ended up in just such a room, where Mr. Denker's affable air evaporated into a serious expression. "You have been selected for a counterintelligence operation targeted at an ISF cell on Twycross," he said bluntly. Claire usually had a pretty good poker face, but she couldn't help but react to that. "Yes, you've been selected because you've been inside THI. And not just been inside. You operated smoothly enough when you were there that you didn't set off any alarms. As such, we want you to watch a member of an ISF cell we've identified who tried to get hired on in sales there. He was passed over, but with the arrests over the next few days, THI will be looking to replace some personnel."
He paused, deliberately to let Clarice fill in the rest. It could be annoying, but it was also a good way to gauge how well someone was following your train of thought. "And calling someone who recently applied is a believable way to fill vacancies quickly," Clarice stated.
Denker smiled, "Hopefully it will pass muster on Luthien as well. We're going to do our best to encourage them to believe it, in any case. Tomorrow morning, at the same time local law enforcement are arresting Wave One targets, we're also going to be hitting several rings of ISF informants we've identified as part of the corruption investigation. Even a few that we've had an eye on for some time and have outlived their usefulness."
That made Clarice raise her eyebrows, physically as well as mentally. It was rather more information than she really needed to do her job, so why-
"Congratulations, Clarice, and enjoy working as Agent in Charge: Twycross," he said, dropping a verigraphed letter on the table in front of her.
Before she could really acknowledge her sudden promotion, Denker was gone.
As she double-checked what he'd said against her written orders, a thought occurred to her. Hell, was today really the last time I'll have to sit through one of Marcus's briefings? Even if she got nothing else out of it, that would make her new assignment worthwhile all on its own.