Through Time, Darkly

[Vogel]

Small, spartan... So what? It was a nice room.

It also had a data terminal.

He clicked his jaw; this was an opportunity he'd thus far lacked. Of all the places he'd stopped by, none of them had any open, public computers tapped into any networks. It was as if these people didn't need these computers, like they were there for backup or antiquity's sake.

Well he was antiquated.

Doyle sat down at the table and examined the terminal's controls. A typing interface, nothing like what he was accustomed to, and a single, tiny card slot were all to be seen. Frowning, he did his level best at tapping through menus and found his way to a generalized search engine.

Now what to look up.

... were these inquiries being recorded? Most likely. Would they possibly leave access to anything so important that it would warrant their concern? Not likely.

First thing's first, he thought, punching in the letters.

"Liberty Armed Forces"

The screen responded with a question. "Did you mean: Liberty National Guard? Liberty Navy? Liberty Marine Corps? Liberty Security Force? Liberty Police Inc.?"

Navy, quaint.

He re-typed the command and was presented with a simplified encyclopedic description of the "Liberty Navy", its history, its chain of command, its bases, its equipment...

"BDR-804"

The description his jaw drop; despite lacking a formal knowledge in the intricacies of fusion engines and high powered lasers, the tremendous discrepancy in numbers was telling enough.

These things can eat my fighter for breakfast, lunch, and dinner... A squadron of these could've won the goddamn war...

It was time to catch up on a thousand year's worth of military history and technology. It was his life, and his death, after all.