The Innkeeper



Suera, Cosmic Cloud, Henali Command Center

The strategic coordination office was massive, and populated with hundreds of thousands of workers. Although they were not sitting in cubicles, each worker had a force field around them, preventing any sound from passing through, It would also restrict vision from the outside so no one could see what data the worker was handling.

All of this was done for the sake of protecting secret information from being leaked. Moreover, this was just one of the layers of protection in place. For example, the workers would be assigned tasks and complete them, but every name was replaced by codes, so they never really got to know who they were working with, or what locations were being mentioned.

"Troop carrier 117, my log shows you have maintained radio silence for one hour. What is your status?" asked one such worker. This was just one of thousands of such calls the same worker had made already just that day.

After a few moments of silence, he got a response.

"This is Troop carrier 117. Current status is on standby. Local conditions are not suitable for space engagements so there are no threats. Everything is normal for now," the ship responded.

The worker asked a few more routine questions, before marking the ship's status in his logs. He did not know which ship he was talking to, and what its mission was. His only job was to ascertain its status.

What he, and some other workers in that room, did not realize was that many of the ships reporting their status had actually been destroyed. It was unknown who was making the status report.

"Mary, in case I don't wake up on my own, wake me up in three days."

"Sure, I can do that," she answered.

He checked the Inn one last time, ensuring there was no problem, before going to sleep.

*****

An entire day had gone by, and during this entire time, the battalion was not attacked even once. Instead of feeling relieved, Luthor frowned harder the longer they went without being attacked.

In the first few hours that they sent out their beacon, quite a few of the other troops decided to join them. After all, the Midnight Battalion had quite the reputation at this point, so fighting alongside them could never be wrong.

But then, eventually, even the other troops stopped coming. What's more, during this entire time, they could not contact the alliance, nor was there any indication of reinforcements arriving.

Sandra's team had been patrolling for hours, but eventually Luthor called them back as well since they could find neither friend nor foe.

Something was extremely wrong with this situation, and for the first time, Luthor began to actually worry.

Inside their freshly built fortifications, in one of the areas assigned to the troops who had decided to join them, two soldiers were sleeping beside one another. This was nothing usual, as getting rest when the opportunity arose was a soldier's instinct.

But the next moment, both the soldiers woke up simultaneously and looked at each other. Their eyes began to turn black and their skin began to peel. 

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