All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) Read Free Page A

this question, but said, “I am not yet ready to reveal my full plan at this time.   Suffice it to say that when the time comes we will have the ships.”
          The five shadow unified force commanders were each given four names off the list and ordered to hold their tribunals as soon as the individuals were delivered to their custody, in person or virtually.
     
    * * * * *
     
          Captain Kelly Blake sat in the Antares Base engineer battalion commander’s office, waiting for his return and confirmation that the new embassy building was complete and ready to transport.   The State Department Security Officer, George Strange, sat across from Kelly in the somewhat stuffy office.   Kelly took an instant dislike to him before he’d even completed Strange’s “dead fish” handshake.   He was a pompous ass with petty bureaucrat stamped all over him, and it seemed security issues were stopping the building’s completion certification.   Kelly had heard reports from the contractor and engineer battalion personnel that security supervisors often overturned the findings from the security inspectors, with inconsistent rulings bordering on arbitrary and capricious.
    A dry dock/transport ship, the F. R. Reynolds, waited in a holding orbit.   The Reynolds was the largest class of ship capable of landing on the planet’s surface, and could be sent through the Antares ring to the Resurgent, a ring ship in orbit above G’Durin.   For now, it was earning an exorbitant amount of money doing nothing more challenging than orbiting the planet sixteen times a day, while its crew waited to do their real job.
          Kelly had been brought in by the ambassador to see if he could cut through the red tape and get the building delivered on time and on budget.   The State Department and the Republic Intelligence Agency had made the decision to build a prefabricated embassy and deliver it to G’Durin ready to be dropped onto a site-built foundation, rather than try and construct a secure, bug-proof facility built completely on-site.   K’Rang intelligence was as good as any and the Galactic Republic didn’t want to make their job any easier.
          The minimally-manned Galactic Republic Consulate on G’Durin was operating out of a leased K’Rang office building that was less than optimal.   The negotiation for which building to occupy took over a year.   The K’Rang wanted the embassy near the northern mountain range and away from the Imperial Palace.   The GR wanted to be adjacent or as close as the Imperial Palace as possible.   The final agreed temporary facility was close to the Palace, but was riddled with sensors, some known and some unknown.   It was too small for the entire embassy staff to work out of.   Simultaneous with these negotiations was choosing the site for the new embassy, which took another year.
          The new embassy was built at Antares Base by Antares PreFab, Inc., the same company that built Candy Blake’s mountain aerie.   They built the modular, multi-story building on a special framework that would allow it to be lifted off the transporter in two-floor sections and set down using the transport’s normal load handling equipment.
    Kelly stood up, stretched and looked out at the building that would become the human embassy on G’Durin.   It was six stories tall and more than 300 meters in length and 200 meters in width.   It was a big building and would sit in the middle of a four-hectare compound just north of the Imperial Palace, in what had previously been a park.   The building was designed as a monolith with a completely glass façade.   The specially strengthened windows, capable of withstanding a major explosion or all hand and crew served weapons rounds, shone gold in the Antarean Sun.   The gold-hued window coating was also designed to stop any attempts to intercept conversations or observe inside activities.   It also made for a very impressive