Part 18 - The Breaking Storm
The buzz of conversation grows louder, as more people enter the room. Mostly speculation about what might be going on...
And then the noise dwindles to total silence as two of men enter the room and move to the front. Neither is Kourene. They aren't even senior aides or advisors. One is about eighth or ninth in the chain of command on the base, the other is Lieutenant Arisis, the current head of base security.
Arisis is first to speak. "Sorry to drag you in in the middle of the night, I know some of you were still catching up on your sleep after the recent problems, but it's a real emergency."
"Two hours ago one of our comm arrays picked up a signal, very weak and heavily encoded, which got our attention immediately. We spent some time decoding it, then verifying that we had done it correctly, and that the message was genuine. I took the resulting message the senior officer currently on Defiance Base." He nods towards the other man, "Major Trinoko immediately decided to call this meeting."
He activates a hidden holoprojector, and a man's face appears, about three times larger than life, in the air above him. The face is bloody, and when he speaks, the man's voice is weak and laced with pain. The recording itself is prone to fading in and out at random intervals.
"... Gorto Finn... The ship has been... " There is loud report in the background, and for a moment the hologram dissolves in static before stabilising again. "Imperials have cap... passengers, trying to ... flight logs. Computer is booby tra... only a few seconds left. We are in Orakanin syst... " and the recording ends in a flare of white light...
For a few seconds Arisis and Trinoko are silent, then the Major speaks, "We have to assume, from that, that Colonel Kourene and his senior staff are now in Imperial hands. This, of course, means that we need to evacuate the base. While I don't believe any of them would deliberately betray the location of Defiance Base, we all know that the Imperials are a little too fond of using interrogation droids."
"While the evacuation is under way, the people in this room will have other important tasks to perform."