The Girl in the Tank: Galactic Consortium, Season 1

Episode Three: Spiders and Clackers, ch. 3

Lannister sat at his table and activated the slate. Moments later the connection was established and he was talking to his liaison officer.

"How was Officer Walker this morning?" the liaison asked. "Did she enjoy her visit with her mother?"

With her kids, at least. "She's in a good mood. Yes, she sends her thanks for making that call possible."

"And her healers? Did you talk to them?"

"Yes, they are cautiously optimistic about her being ready to be out of the tank for a short period, though they are firm that it has to be short."

"Of course, we can work around that. We just really need her, ready to face the public."

"What's going on?" Lannister demanded.

"You guys are heroes down here, you know that, right?" the liaison replied evasively.

"Yeah, we get one earth side news channel. My ship, my picture, flashes up at least once an hour. Officer Walker's picture, that's more like every ten minutes."

"Well, she's the real hero, isn't she? Not just anyone would have stood there and fired, knowing what it was going to cost them."

"I agree, she's a true hero. I would never take that from her. But what's going on down there, it smells of a media circus."

"Politics, you know..."

"Politics, fine, but this seems like a bit much. You want me to bring you a hero, someone to trot around and distract the country from whatever is going on down there, fine. I want the truth."

The liaison officer was looking somewhere off the screen. Lannister startled. The liaison's superior was there, on site. That was unusual to say the least. "Tell him," a voice off screen prompted.

The liaison officer nodded. "I can only say so much on an open channel. You've seen the news, the mainstream news. But have you heard what the conspiracy nuts and shock jocks are saying?"

Lannister froze. His blood ran cold. "MIAs?" he whispered. A few voices had been saying it since the war ended. The Syrian mission rosters didn't quite match. It wasn't a large number and no one could quite identify where the discrepancies were, but not all of the men sent to Syria had made it home.

The liaison officer nodded.

What did that mean for Lannister and his crew? Would they make it back to earth? Or would they be held here?

"Everyone is going to find out next week, anyway," the liaison officer said. "We could only get them to withhold that information for so long. You know how they are about secrets." The Consortium not only eavesdropped on nearly everything people said or did on the surface, they frequently took governments to task for trying to keep things secret.

"Wait! What? We asked them to keep it quiet?"

"Yeah, we did. When that gets out..."

"You will have every republican in Washington calling for impeachment."

"Possibly, but I doubt they can make it stick."

"There will be protests in the street. Every conservative in the country is going to be out for blood." Lannister just might be tempted to join them, if he were home and off duty.

"Not just the conservatives," the liaison said.

"Oh?"

"It's like this, they have a half dozen men, a couple CIA operatives and a seal team. The CIA was running a black ops. Wanted to take out Assad, well, the whole family actually. Men, women," the liaison paused, "children."