# [Dawning Star] Desert Flower



## opfor06 (Aug 15, 2007)

*Warehouse 148, Commerce Zone South, Delhi, New India   1300hrs 12 December 2251*


“Read ‘em and weep suckers.”  Chuckled a square jawed dark haired man dressed in cargo pocket shorts and a tight black T-Shirt as he tossed his poker hand, a full house kings over jacks, onto the battered table top.  He began to sweep a pile of plastic chips toward him.

The other three people around the table sitting on packing crates, let out a collective groan.  “Not only are we stuck in this stinking cabbage warehouse for weeks at a time..”  Started a petite young woman with her red wavy hair pulled into a pony tail to help keep her cool.

“Lettuce.” Corrected an older man as he wiped his shaved head.

“What?”   Sputtered the woman.

“It is a lettuce warehouse, not cabbage.  Completely different vegetable.”

The last player made a rude noise.  “Spoken like the old earthborn you are.  Either way the stinking stuff is black market ‘former mutated produce.”

The older man’s reply was cut off by a fifth voice urgently calling out from the warehouse’s small office space.  “I think we got something.  Everybody get in here and give me a hand.”

The group quickly moved into the office.  The space was crammed with electronic gear, radio scanners, fiber optical cables and several notebook comps.  The four poker players took seats in office chairs in front of various displays.  They were all business now.  “What do you have Kurt?”  Asked the older man as he sat down and pulled a head set on.

The office’s original occupant calmly read off his log sheet.  “12:55hrs Local, a secure SATCOM call came in from a relic hunter group in the northern desert to their headquarters downtown.  It lasted for 4 minutes 23 seconds.  At 12:59 hrs several outbound landline, radio and cell phone calls started.  I have downloaded the SATCOM call to Sadie and she is working on it.”

“How many is several?”  Asked the woman as she began noting locations of cell phone activations being fed to her display.

“Fifty two and still going up.”  Replied Kurt after looking at his screen.

Rude boy sat at three displays with several input devices arrayed in front of him.  “Sadie is almost done with the decryption.  They are using a pretty lightweight cipher device.”  Sadie was the App-3 Expert program resident in one of the three powerful Notebook comps her programmer/Admin Joshua sat in front of.

The black T-shirted man placed his finger over the security device on his notebook comp and it obediently flared to life.  “The man leading the group in the desert is named Offerman, Doctor Joseph Offerman.”  He hit a few keys and reviewed the info a second before continuing.  “Looks like the good doctor has been cited several times by the Republic for illegal expeditions and was indicted for the murders of a rival Relic Hunter party last year.  Even the ELF doesn’t like him much; he is on their watch list.”

The older man nodded.  “Thanks Tony.  So he is a real humanitarian.  Any idea on what he was looking for out there?” 

Tony shrugged.  “From what we have on him I would say weapons.  Most of the ELF power brokers would sell their own mothers for operational Relic weapons.  Watch list or not they would do business with him if he had weapons for sale.”

“Dawn who are they calling?”  The older one asked as he turned to the red head.

“From what I can tell and I hope Kurt can confirm, is they are calling in a merc unit and a construction crew.”  Dawn glanced over to Kurt to see his reaction.

Kurt nodded. “The numbers are coming up as individual local homes or cell phones, various local heavy equipment rental firms and an air transport company out of Rogers Point.”  

Terrence Murphy, commander of the small EDF covert surveillance team posted in Delhi rubbed the stubble on his chin as he considered the situation.  They were primarily tasked with keeping track of the renegade Terraformer Guild activities.  Relic hunters were more of a Republic Ranger issue.  They were tapped into nearly every form of electronic communication in the area.  The databases they had put together on the Guild members and their customers were huge.  They risked exposing themselves if they reported on this new development outside of their normal channels.  Their next report was not due for two days.

“Sadie is done with the message.”  Announced Joshua.

“Put it on speaker Josh.”  Replied Terrence.

A metallic mechanical voice came over the speaker.  “This better be good Offerman you are interrupting my lunch.”

“I assure you it is well worth your time sir.  We have made the find of a lifetime!”  Was the rushed response, even with the electronic encoding and decoding the voice sounded excited.

“What, more broken robots?” The boss seemed completely bored already.

“No..No nothing that trivial!  It is a bunker full of crates of every weapon you can think of!  There are..” The doctor burst out again.

“Shut up you fool these are cheap sat phones!  Just tell me what you need to salvage the equipment.”  The boss sounded very alert now.

“Oh..sorry I am just so excited.  The lights still worked inside...amazing.  I need..need heavy equipment to unearth the larger doors and more men to guard and move the crates.”

“Okay I’ll get you what you need. Wh…”

Terrence interrupted the playback.  “That’s enough Josh.  I think we have the basics now.”

He frowned and sat quietly for a moment.  “Tony make the call.”

“Okay Terry.”  Tony said as he reached into his pocket and retrieved a sat com phone.  He punched in a number and waited while it connected.  “Hi honey..”  A female voice replied back sounding a bit angry.  “I’m sorry babe I forgot about the time difference.  You go back to bed. I will call back in 5 hours once you are up and around.”  He disconnected looked at Terrence who smiled back at him thinly.

Halfway around the world in a small listening post outside of Red Hill a female EDF duty officer picked up a secure phone to her headquarters and alerted them that the Delhi team had something hot to report out of the ordinary channels in five hours.  She had never spoken to the Delhi team before but she had answered the satcom enough times to know it was never happy news when it rang.

To be continued…


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## Teneb (Aug 16, 2007)

That darn Roger's Point.  Those people are never up to any good...


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