General Tennant was doing his best to come up with a way to keep the capabilities of the new Mecha secret, but there simply didn't seem to be a way, short of pulling them all back to the ship so the unexpected arrivals couldn't see them.
"We could just lie through our teeth. Make up some absolute nonsense and see how long it takes them to catch on. It might even help flush out the traitors." His adjutant suggested.
"Abraham Kepler is a distinct pattern of Transport vessel, a one-off that would be hard to mistake for anything else. The mecha we could play off as someone else's though, and really get the incoming troops worked up." General Tennant answered, a plan slowly forming in his mind.
He started scribbling down notes on his pad, then handed them to the adjutant. "This does not get entered into the system, and only the ship's crew involved will be notified. Use Mecha Bay 1, I know First Battalion's support staff will be willing to play along."
In Mecha Bay 1, Sergeant Fritz was looking at the orders in his hand in shock. With everything that they had deployed, Command wanted forty Sentinel pattern scout Mecha, equipped for a planetary research mission. They already had hundreds of Drone Fighters that had sensors every bit as capable while being a hundred times more mobile, making a bunch of Sentinel Pattern Mecha made no sense at all.
But he had learned years ago that asking questions only brought headaches and answers he didn't really want to know, so he hurried to get the bay prepared.
While Sergeant Fritz was working to refurbish the bay, Nico's serious tone, an actual separate voice setting she used for official announcements caught Max's attention. "New orders from Central Command. All units are to scramble frequencies. You are in charge of picking the new ranges. No contact outside the experimental Battalions is permitted until further notice. Contact with Regimental Command will go through Central Command."
"Sounds like something has gone wrong up above. Watch for further mission orders while I inform everyone." Max agreed, picking a random communications range outside the standard military frequencies and generating a new sixty-three-digit encryption code.
In Max's memories from his past life, little things like making an encryption code one digit shorter or longer than usual made it nearly impossible for unsuspecting enemies to Crack.
"Everyone's frequencies are updated using your Command codes. Nobody else should know anything changed." Nico informed him, then opened the new message from General Tennant for Max to read.
[Three suspicious friendly vessels are approaching Rae 5. Operational Security has been breached. New cover identity generated: You will be Death Wind Mercenaries hired to defend the region for the Talos Mining Conglomerate. No signals on Kepler frequencies are permitted, take all measures to ensure your cover story remains viable.]
General Tennant's message covered everything they needed to know, so Max put it into action immediately. He could hear over the radio that the other Battalion Commanders had also received the message, but none of them realized that Max had already scrambled their frequencies away from the standard Kepler range.
[All personnel, make a uniform change to Death Wind Civilian garb, effective immediately. Anyone found portraying themselves as Kepler Military without permission will be prosecuted under the War Secrets act.] Max called over the radio, getting everyone organized.
The change was a small one, and the black Pilot's suits could be kept, but without the usual military emblems. The ground crew would have to change their distinctive pattern of coveralls to new ones created with the materials printers, but the rest of their issued gear would be fine.
All the Landers had been stripped of emblems when they were refurbished, and the Mecha themselves had no Kepler markings on them, as they were still experimental. That made the switch to their cover story as mercenaries an easy one, with the help of the fact that the unit didn't have full and official military documentation and regalia assigned to them yet.
The Death Wind territory was a largely lawless space at the very Southwestern edge of the galaxy, and often had to improvise to maintain their combat capabilities, so the rest of the Kepler forces would likely assume that these were modified from an ancient foreign pattern that the mercenaries had pilfered. The sizes of the units did put them in line with many Cygnus Mecha patterns of the past.
Nico had put a tracer on all the communications equipment in the Regiment, so she would immediately see if anyone attempted to send a signal on an unauthorized frequency, but her suspicion was that the problem that had the staff on Abraham Kepler so worked up didn't originate among the Mecha but among those left aboard the ship.
Above them, aboard Abraham Kepler, the ship was on lockdown preparing to receive visitors. The three incoming vessels had all identified themselves as Mixed Mecha Regiments, while Abraham Kepler was claiming to be on a research mission to Rae 3, but had diverted here when they detected a foreign vessel and a Klem infestation.
To further this image, General Tennant was holding the video conference in Mecha Bay 1, which was conveniently now full of research pattern Sentinel Class mecha. Sister Lilith was with him, representing the research division from Comor Prime, where she was officially still stationed.
"Greetings. We didn't expect any Kepler forces to be sent here. As you can see, our planetary drops have been delayed due to the Klem presence, but under Imperial Orders, we are observing the Death Wind Mercenaries currently engaging the Infestation." General Tennant greeted them.
"We had been sent intelligence that your forces had taken severe losses, so we were dispatched to relieve you and take over the clearance efforts planetside. It seems that our information was incorrect." General Muriel, the assigned leader of the expedition and senior officer among the Central Command contingent aboard the arriving vessels replied with a sour look on his surprisingly youthful face.
"Now that you're here we can't well send you away with a Klem threat active on the planet, but it is unknown how the Mercenaries would react to a Military Presence." General Tennant told his counterpart with a shrug.
"We will contact Sector Governance and get back to you." General Muriel replied curtly, then cut the transmission.
"So, they were sent by Sector Governance, not Central Command, or Imperial Command. They should be planetary defense forces then. Find out where they were recruited from, both the Regiments and the senior staff in control of them.
Somewhere in there, we should find answers about who our mysterious data leak was in contact with." General Tennant told his adjutant with a smile. General Muriel had given away quite a bit of useful information today, and it could very well be the key points they needed to see the truth of the situation.
