Minutes to Midnight

[Wildkins]

CALLAGHAN

28th May, 826 AS
Virginia System

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Dr. Brian Callaghan practically flew down the hallway, boots clacking on hard steel with the speed and purpose of an infantryman on assault, despite the lab-coat and glasses saying otherwise. Passing about a half-dozen agents, a senior engineer from the IRG, and two heavily-armed Internal Affairs guardsmen, he finally arrived at the door of his boss's boss with about twenty seconds to spare. He jabbed his finger into the side-panel, releasing a keypad and ID scanner which allowed him to authenticate himself as one of the 'chief egg-heads' of the Security Force, as he had been so named by numerous of his non-Research colleagues, and notify the Director that he was here and ready to talk. What could've passed for an auditory needle within the walls of Chesapeake's haystack sounded on the opposite side of the door, before it slowly slid open to reveal the SCIF that was Director Murray's office.

The Director was always a bit more rugged than Callaghan expected, despite the fact that he'd spoken with him - between comms-links and in person meetings - about three dozen times since the start of the year alone. The man looked as if he could pass for a veteran Siege Cruiser commander going through a permanent mid-life crisis, not the Director of the Security Force. Callaghan managed to push the thought of his head as he entered the room, noting quite astutely that he was one of the last people to judge anyone on their appearance.

"Doctor Callaghan," Murray spoke out suddenly, with a voice coarse enough to put the Tanner Belt to shame. "I'm glad you could make it. Please, come in, have a seat." The Director gestured toward a pair of chairs flanking his desk. Callaghan had always wondered which one you were meant to sit in, if there was even an etiquette for that. He didn't imagine there was, but then again, people seemed to come up with the weirdest things to make rules out of and then shame you for not understanding intrinsically. Callaghan simply shrugged off the idea and returned the Director's pleasantries, taking a seat and laying out his tablet on the desk, ready to get down to business. "Well, sir, I understand you wanted to talk about ECHELON, is that right?"

Murray leaned back in his chair slightly, nodding. "Quite right. Now, I understand that R&A has been doing some great work in that regard. Your reports so far have been more than promising, which is good, since I finally have progress to report back to SECDEF." Well, that's good so far, Callaghan thought. "But." There it is. "We need to pick up the pace. The Peleliu's been in dock for about two weeks now, and between that and the other project, we're stuck twiddling our thumbs in terms of repair and re-fit capacity. I've had to stack our ships onto waiting queues for Juneau because their time-to-completion would be faster than waiting for this project to end right now. I understand it, but it's not acceptable." Callaghan gestured to start speaking, but the Director waved him off. "I know you're giving it your all, but we need to ensure we're going about this the right way. SENTRY's going to sit in our docks for the next year at this rate, and that's assuming we can get ECHELON off the ground in the next two months."

Callaghan sighed and stewed for a moment as the Director leaned forward again, evidently keen to hear the man's take on the situation. "Well, sir, I do very much agree. It frustrates me that SENTRY has been on the back-burner for so long, and it was my hope that in a speedy completion of ECHELON, we could get what we needed to finally put that to completion, and get Chesapeake back to full operational status." The Director didn't look suitably impressed with a simple agreement, so the young yet senior researcher rubbed his head back and forth, attempting to coax the words out of his brain that the Director needed to hear. "We've got good dialogues with the Ingenuus group - I mean, you've seen them walking around - and as far as I've been made aware, Ageira's working on our replacement sensor array. It's all coming about as quick as I could've hoped, but it's a shame it didn't start doing so six months ago."

The Director sighed and leaned down onto his desk, staring into Callaghan. The doctor leaned back, raising his brow slightly as he felt the man's piercing gaze introspect his very soul, or at least his honesty. "Doctor, I appreciate that. Unfortunately, it's not clear that the government does." He reached down to grab at his own tablet, squinting slightly as he read in the low-light. "In the budgetary session this week, the House Committee on Armed Services is going to hold a straight up-or-down vote on the project continuing. I hope to testify before-hand as to its necessity, but the Navy's always had better lobbying power than us, and my meeting with the second-from-the-top just now doesn't look like it's going to change things." Callaghan's head spun as he heard the man talk, thinking about the better part of a year's worth of research and development that would be thrown out the window by paper-pushers. "Well, th-they can't do that. We're maybe a month or two, tops, from completion. Killing the project now would just leave us with a half-busted hull and a bunch of expensive prototypes lying around."

Murray just sighed and leaned back again, craning his neck slightly as he rubbed the back of it. "And I hope to convince them otherwise. But we need to operate like the funding stream is going to be cut off any day now. Put out the request-for-materials while we still have a budget to work with. Get as much work as you can done on stripping the hull off, and hopefully the rest can be eaten by discretionary if and when Armed Services decides we're too big for our britches. Failing that, we might very well need to scrap the thing, bureaucrats be damned." Callaghan shook his head, gesturing forward to the Director. "Well, Director, it just wouldn't be sensible to do such a thing. I know we're not operating in the original text of ECHELON anymore, but at least the spirit is intact, and I believe we can deliver-"

The Director waved him off again. "Democracy isn't sensible. The people only see the Navy losing and winning fights - mostly the former - and they think that it's the government's fault for not giving them what they need. Armchair admirals argue that if they only had another Overlord here, or an Archer wolfpack there, it'd be a cinch. And so the Congress gets put in a bind, having to look for somewhere to cut from. You're not gonna pull from the Police when crime rates are as high as they are, that's political suicide. But we've always been unpopular. We're the watchers, agents in darkness, and if our popular opinion grows higher than single-digits, I suspect a foreign misinformation campaign. That's the reality we need to work with."

Callaghan raised a finger to start once more, but cut himself off before the Director could. "So, as I said, get the request-for-materials out. Do as much as you can on their dime before you spend a cent of ours. If you want to do your duty, Doctor, and I very much suspect that you do, pull off a miracle for us." He simply nodded to dismiss the man, a scientist now chartered with saving the war effort through sheer force of will. The doctor sheepishly nodded in return and picked up his things, slowly stepping toward the door in a half-defeated slouch. The Director didn't seem to pay him much mind. "MARVA. Page for Veritas, Senior Agent-in-Command, Internal Affairs." As Callaghan shuffled his way to the door, the room buzzed a robotic voice in response. "Identity found: VERITAS. Senior Agent-in-Command, Department of Internal Affairs. Paging to Murray SCIF."

The "conversation" barely registered in Callaghan's mind, a brain already at full spin attempting to calculate the improbable path out of this impossible problem. In so doing, he nearly collided with an agent outside Murray's door, clad in a full flight-suit. He bid his half-hearted apology to the man as he went to slump down at the nearest bench running along the wall, not even stopping to recognize the agent popping off his flight-suit helmet, reaching to speak to the Doctor, and then giving up upon recognition of the man's frustration and simply heading inside. The doctor realized the missed opportunity a second too late, simply sighing and returning to his thoughts.