Dire Foes Mission Pack 11: Failsafe

Liberty Cargo is a freight company owned by the Hexahedron, the PanOceanian intelligence agency created to carry out covert and deniable operations: a fact that Yǎnjīng, its Yujingyu counterpart, is well aware of, even if they cannot prove it.

Therefore, this company’s operations always spark the interest of the glorious StateEmpire intelligence service,
especially when those activities concern secessionist Japan.

No wonder then that a Liberty Cargo freighter loaded to the brim with avionics and astronavigation equipment and bound
for Tsugumi Station, one of the trans-Jovian bases that the Greater Independent Japan keeps in the Solar System, would draw Yǎnjīng’s attention.

Analyzing the contents of that cargo would shed a light on what’s being researched at that station.

And the best way to accomplish this is to order your best operative to lead a boarding operation on that Liberty Cargo freighter.

There is no better candidate for this mission than
Invincible Captain Qiang Gāo, a man of proven loyalty who won’t let his past history with the leader of the Hexahedron’s support team, Captain Uma Sørensen, stand in the way of his
duty.

All for the greater glory of the StateEmpire and the ruin of all its enemies.

It’s a fail-safe operation—or is it?

“There’s no bond stronger than that of blood,” Uma Sørensen’s father always said. Family and blood were paramount to Peer Sørensen; he wasn’t the leader of a NKAH cell (Nordiske
Krigere ave Heimdall, or Nordic Warriors of Heimdall, a radical ultra-nationalist group from Svalarheima that defends PanOceania’s moral and racial superiority) for nothing.

Uma and her little sister Tara were raised hearing those ideas, repeated ad nauseam both in their home and in the paramilitary encampments the group has on the frozen plains of Trollhättan, where their members prepare to defend their ideology through force of arms if needs be.

They both spent more time in those camps than they would have liked, getting ready for a supposed confrontation against the whole Human Sphere that their father thought inevitable.

And, though they always hated it, both the ideas and the Spartan and combative regime they were subjected to ended up making the words “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” true.

Thus, as soon as they were old enough to leave their father’s home, they both enlisted in the army, for fighting was what their father had taught them, and fighting is what they did best.

Yet while Tara wanted to get as far away as possible from her past, enrolling in the Navy and leaving the planet, her sister preferred to take advantage of the knowledge gained in those encampments.

Uma enlisted in Svalarheima’s Winter Force, where the experience acquired on the frozen plains of Trollhättan catapulted her to the Svalarheiman Nisse regiment.

There she would serve with distinction for many years until she was recruited by the Indigo units of the PanOceanian Special Operations Command.

This assignment took her away from her planet and her past to perform missions all across the Sphere. 

Nonetheless, when it seemed
That Uma had finally found her place, fate would shake her entire world.

During a patrol mission during the Intermediate Blockade of Paradiso, the POS Obsidian Spear of Taema, a frigate on which her sister served, was attacked and boarded by the Combined Army.

Though the attack was repelled, the crew suffered many casualties and due to the extreme violence of the assault many crewmen were missing in action.

Among them was artillery non-commissioned officer Tara Sørensen, whose body was never found.

This terrible news made Uma re-evaluate her career. Vengeance became the new driving force in her life, and—together with discovering her sister’s fate—the destruction of the Combined Army her main goal.

To do so, Uma requested to be transferred to the Strategic Security Division, where she would serve together with the infamous Hexas as attached Indigo officer, in hopes of gaining more information on Tara’s whereabouts if she was alive, or at least of getting the chance to hit the Combined Army as hard as possible if she wasn’t.

Focused on this personal mission, Uma has become an officer as efficient as she is obsessive, always volunteering for any operation that can get her closer to her particular goals.

The thing is that, although she doesn’t want to admit it, her father was right: blood bonds are the strongest and ones that Captain Uma Sørensen cannot escape.

It is blood that binds her to her sister, and it is blood that this officer wants from the Combined Army.

> Qiang Gāo always wanted to be a good officer, but what is actually a good officer?

The textbook definition would be “one who accomplishes the mission.” Nevertheless, military discipline and the reality of combat don’t allow such simplistic definitions.

In the trenches,
the most valuable officer is the one who’s concerned both about the mission and the men and women under their command.

In the offices of the High Command, the most valuable ones are those who carry on with the mission and the orders, while respecting the chain of command.

Sometimes these visions are incompatible, and a time may come when an officer has to choose between them.

That choice will determine the course and success of their military career. During the Japanese Uprising, Qiang Gāo was the colonel in charge of the 5th Regiment of Zúyŏng Invincibles, the Terracotta Soldiers, of the Orange Banner Army’s VI Corps, deployed at Kuraimori.

During the assault on Tabigarasu Junction, an important communications node in the Furuitsue peninsula, his regiment took control of an energy substation important to regional operations.

Surrounded by Japanese troops from the Fukku Operative Group and isolated from the rest of his forces, Qiang Gāo devised a defensive strategy that would allow him to protect his position until reinforcements arrived.

Nevertheless, the High Command, in need of a victory to show to the media, ordered him to engage one of the Japanese forces’ positions that Intelligence thought held the Fukku Group headquarters.

Despite how attractive it was to behead the Japanese forces in the zone, this was an extremely risky move that would have weakened the 5th Regiment’s defenses and endangered them. Besides, the colonel was fully aware those orders were based in unconfirmed intelligence, which could be wrong or even a trap.

Not to mention that the numerical superiority of the Japanese forces assaulting the substation meant that any
unit tasked with such attack wouldn’t return alive, even if successful. It was then that Qiang Gāo had to decide what kind of officer he wanted to be.

Should he sacrifice troops and risk a
position, but carry on with the orders received, or protect the men and women under his command and risk the position he was supposed to defend and defy a direct order?

Should he be a trench officer or a career officer?

At that point, Qiang Gāo was resolute.

Against the venerable tradition of respect and adhesion to the chain of command so characteristic of the StateEmpire Army, the colonel stayed true to his original strategy, keeping his forces within the defensive perimeter. 

Thus, he repelled several Japanese attacks and managed to defend the position until the reinforcement’s arrival, confirming that the commanding officers of the Fukku Group weren’t where they had been told.

Nonetheless, it mattered little that the colonel’s suspicions about the validity of Intelligence’s data were correct or that
he managed to hold a position that ensured the logistical stability of the Orange Banner Army’s VI Corps in their advance towards Kofuku.

For the High Command, Qiang Gāo
had ignored a direct order and, in the eyes of his superiors, he was no longer a trustworthy officer.

A court martial would demote this officer to the rank of captain, removing him from
the Zúyŏng Invincibles 5th Regiment.

From that day on, Qiang Gāo has been assigned to a special purposes unit, going from one operation to the other, each one more dangerous than
the last, operations all across the Sphere in which he has had to put his command skills to good use, but also his combat skills as the veteran Invincible he is.
Yet it’s undoubtable that this officer still has a long road ahead of him to clean the stain that his actions at Tabigarasu Junction has left on his record and his family’s honor.

But after
all that’s happened, after the discredit and shame of being demoted, Qiang Gāo can still look at himself in the mirror.

He can do it because, even though his career lies in ruins and his name was vilified, the image that the mirror returns is that of a trench officer, a good officer. And that is what he always wanted to be.

The dream of flying. There has never been a greater adventure for humankind. Higher, faster, farther.

Every major quest invariably involves defying gravity. And when we went
beyond our atmosphere and escaped gravity’s pull, we found ourselves in another vast space that could only be explored and navigated via flight, facing greater distances, bigger ambitions, and more adventures to embark upon at the controls of a flying machine.

Therefore it comes as no surprise that the pilot community attracts an inordinate number of adventurers, in far greater numbers than any other profession.

Even among commercial pilots there’s a disproportionate quota of mentally unbalanced people.

But when you take a closer look you’ll see there’s always an underlying pattern: all these lunatics usually have in common a background as sport pilots, test pilots, stunt pilots, or, most commonly, criminals,
soldiers, or mercenaries. 

These careers fill the pool where all those adventurers come from, all those people who are crazy enough to willingly risk their lives in situations that any normal citizen would consider insane.

These are scenarios that usually entail getting aboard a machine fitted with a hyper-charged drive and speeding off into an unexplored sector, or into an area full of obstacles or trigger-happy hostiles, and sometimes they involve all these things at the same time.

Such pilots make up Liberty Cargo’s workforce, a bunch of adrenaline junkies who’ve been binging on danger and trouble for so long that nothing else can equal that high.

These are guys and gals who served in the military as fighter pilots or worked in show business always attempting a more difficult stunt, and then moved on to a more private sphere, either in search of a bigger paycheck or because they screwed up at their previous jobs and have nowhere else to go to keep flying on the edge. 

As they often say: “What would be considered reckless behavior anywhere else is company policy here at Liberty Cargo.”

One might expect that a freight company created by the Hexahedron as a front to carry out
off-the-books operations and deniable actions would demand a certain amount of discretion and restraint.

And this is the case with most of the contracts Liberty Cargo signs with the agency and with private clients, but the risks involved in many other jobs (infiltrating operatives, rescuing agents in dangerous areas, recovering equipment in war zones, etc.)
require such a degree of expertise and insanity that only these mad adventurers possessed by the dream of flying are up to the task.