| The admiral, general and Eda make their way to the hangar bay on CSS Jupiter
They see a bright white dropship with gold accent lines fly in and land
"I see his excellence has arrived."
the front door drops, and along with a large contingent in suited guards, steps off with the Chancellor of the CSIS, Jan Sobieski.
"Good day mister Sobieskie."
"Hello."
They all load up onto one dropship, and take off and make way to the ground
As they come into range of the entered coordinates a small UI pops up on the flight controls.
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| Remote control request recieved.<br
Accept<br
Deny
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The Admiral presses accept.
"Better not run us into the ground."
The controls on the ship stop responding. Communications and GPS shut of. It alters its course and flies a bit away from the entered coordinates. Under them a vast forest stretches out. As they come over a clearing the dropship extremely gently slows down. It slowly descends and almost unnoticeably touches down in the middle of the clearing.
A message appears on the controls.
The front door opens
The four of them step off
Near them on the ground lies a small metal box.
Eda steps over towards it and takes out three sets of silver shirts, trousers and 3 sets of black boots as well as a radio.
The three men step over to her.
She hands them the clothes and the radio.
"Your clothes. I'll be waiting here for you."
"Alright." Says the admiral.
They bead back into the ship, and come out wearing their new clothes.
"Alright, lets go."
Eda leads them to the edge of the forest where she goes towards a tree.
She puts her left hand in a small hole in the tree and a few seconds later a small click is heard.
A large boulder in the forest a boulder turns with a grumbling noise and lifts itself up in the air, revealing an elevator-like chamber. The floor is made of a seal brown wood and the walls are painted in a relaxing pattern of trees and bushes.
They step inside the elevator and the doors close behind them.
"Just as a warning, the elevator will during the ride change speeds to mask the true depth of our facility. The facility has also been entirely refitted and specialised for the cooperation between our order and the CSIS so you will find not much use in raiding it."
The elevator starts descending, sometimes changing speed while in descend.
In total the trip takes an estimated 7 minutes.
As the doors open they see a corridor leading to a door. The corridor is regularly split by small wall extrusions. Mounted on the ceiling on both sides there are two small turrets about halfway though to the door.
They walk down the corridor as one of the turrets start tracking them while the other keeps pointing at the elevator door.
"Automatic defence system. And those extrusions house a variety of scanners."
"You should also be informed that these clothes contain small electronics which for the one part track your movement inside our facility but on the other hand give you automatic access to the areas you are allowed to visit."
As they approach the door it opens automatically.
"Like that."
They enter a small room which seems to work as a hub and junction of several other corridors. People are walking around, passing through from one corridor to another. They are dressed in similar outfits to what Eda is wearing just that they seem less like military gear and have red markings instead of dark green.
That is until they look both sides to the doorway from which they entered. Standing there are two men dressed in an outfit which you can't describe anything else than military gear. Yets it still seems unnaturally elegant. Their uniforms have no other colour to them other than the dark mesmerizing black and their entire face is covered by a helmet in similar style.
In the middle of the room is a desk with a person sitting behind it, wearing the apparently standard black suit with red markings. He briefly looks up as they enter. Nods to Eda. And looks back down on his desk, presumably continuing his work. Out of a sliding door in the right wall two more people in full black suits step out.
Eda leads them into the right corridor, The two black suits following them. Including the admiral and general, the order members have now built a diamond formation around the chancellor.
Here and there the walls of the corridor are broken by an interface, a door or tinted windows.
As they walk along they pass a person dressed in a full white suit with a white face mask. His suit seems to be even less militarized than the ones worn be the people with red markings. They also pass by a person with yellow markings whose face is covered by the black hood and mask of his suit.
No one seems to pay much attention to them.
They finally stop at a door.
Eda enters a code on a keypad to the right side of the door. It slides slightly back and to the side.
They go inside. The guards stay on the outside of the room. With a soft hum and click the door closes behind them.
The interior of the room is best described as dark but not depressing. The walls are divided into night-black flat panels making it difficult to tell which ones are stationary and which ones could also be doors. The floor is seems to be made of one singular charcoal-black flat smooth surface but it is not slippery.
In the middle of the room is an elegant dark wooden table with three free chairs.
Across from them sit three people. The one in the middle and left in ordinary, normal-live suits with Crimson-Red (the same colour as all the reed markings) shirts and golden ties, and on the right a person in the same normal suit but with a dark-green shirt and a silver tie.
They all look up, except the most left person, from a sort of small, presumably laptop before them.
"You are now free to speak." says Eda as she steps to the right side of the table facing the admiral, general and chancellor.
"Please, take a seat." says the man in the middle.
The Chancellor steps forward and sits down. The other two follow.
The person in green speaks up. "Please, you must have a lot of questions."
"What is the purpose of the OMM?" says the Admiral
The person in the middle answers. "We are an instrument to the metal mind. Our specific organisation monitors, strategically inspires and protects humanity. There are others like us out there, instituted by the mind, which do the same for their own species."
"So why the secrecy? And how did you slip up after so long?" asks the Chancellor.
"Like our benefactor, we follow a very non-interventionist agenda. The more we contribute, the more the results are diverged from their possible normal state."
The person in green follows up. "Our slip up was bound to happen. We take all precautions to delay its eventuality but the rule is that with proceeding technological progress, hiding an organisation like our own becomes harder to retain."
The person in the middle adds to that. "We can only work with what our own species can produce, be it elevated with outside knowledge. We do not posses the same capabilities as our benefactor."
"We will keep your existence out of the public eye was best as we can."
"and lastly. How do we defeat the Trigals?"
"We have already lost several fleets to them."
The person in the middle speaks. "I'm afraid regarding the Trigals we know barely any more than you do. I'd be relieved to say that its an enemy you can deal with. But the truth is, they even outclassed our own defences, hence why they are now at your doorstep. We can not guarantee that you will defeat them but will offer the feasibly best support we can give to you."
The person in green continues. "Their culture, their politics, their everything is geared and centred around war. We do not know why they have decided to go after us but we expect they will make their intentions known very soon."
The person in the middle speaks again. "We will also transfer command of our 3. Defence Group to you for use of surgical strikes as well as providing details from our own surveillance network regarding Trigal movement. All required information will be received by your communicator vessel."
"Alright. Then we will fight back."
"We have a large fleet assembled. We will engage them."
"Do you know where their homeworld is?"
The guy in green speaks. "We do not currently but we are looking into our contacts. Unsurprisingly their own species does not have an organisation instituted by our benefactor so we do not have that much access to their systems."
The one in the middle continues. "We also advise you to be careful. From what we have uncovered they have developed a sort of "smokescreen" which can mask their activities over long distances. That's how they were able to make that ambush on your reinforcements sent to the retribution."
"Luckily it requires a set up and only works in a certain direction, more like a shield than a bubble. So we should be able to tell you when a location is safe using our hidden sensor network, assuming they have not disabled key stations for the required region."
"So if we come at them from behind..."
"...We can ambush them"
"In theory yes, the more difficult part is getting behind them unnoticed, not to speak of their possible reinforcements."
"We have fleets out on patrol that we are still in contact with."
The person in green speaks up. "Question is, how long will you still have contact to those? If they are the size of the group you sent to retributions aid they are likely targeted already"
The person in red continues. "Additionally we suspect they are definitely using more than just one of their masking screens. In theory one could also build up a completely masked area using multiple of them, giving them a sort of bubble to work in in secrecy."
"Hmmm. We are still in contact. However they are singular ships plus escorts."
"Well, we won't mandate you how to conduct your operations. Our teams will focus on diverting or dealing with the major threats as best as we can but I suspect you will still face a high number of their ships."
"What was the trent incident about?"
The person in green continues. "The trent incident was not conducted by us, it was an operation coming directly from the metal mind itself."
"I see. We will continue to have an open communications with the OMM."
"In the meantime, we will begin to mobilize our forces. And we will bring the Trigals to their Knees."
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