Ch. 14 C10 Information

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   After the board members had been removed, Cyrus walked to the head of the conference room table. He pulled out Giovanni's former seat, pausing before sitting. "You have no idea how long I've waited for this. Please allow me the pleasure of savoring this moment." Cyrus took a deep breath, then slowly sat in the chair. A dark smile crossed his face his face. "It's about time."

   Seven began clapping, and she was quickly joined by the others still in the room.

  "Thank you," Cyrus said. "You may sit. Brendan and Alain, let me have you up here next to me. Brendan at my right, Alain at my left."

   Everyone sat, the former board members in their assigned seats, the teens taking the empty seats closest to Cyrus.

   Cyrus stood and walked up to the cabinet against the port wall and opened it, exposing a whiteboard. "The information I am about to share is C10."

   The teens' expressions tuned more somber.

  "Is that understood?"

  "Yes, Admiral," the teens replied.

  "Call me sentimental, but you, my electric eagles, may still call me 'sir' ".

  "Yes, sir."

   The board members looked at one another. Eleven raised his hand.

  "Yes?" Cyrus said.

  "I'm sorry to interrupt, Admiral. But what is C10?"

  "Explain C10, Brendan."

  "Yes, sir. C10 is the highest level of Galactic confidentiality. It means that what we are about to be told may not be repeated outside of Admiral Cyrus's presence, even with one another. The penalty for divulging C10 information is death by torture."

  "Is that clear enough?" Cyrus asked.

  "Yes," Eleven said. "Thank you."

  "Let me see the Galactic salute," Cyrus said.

   The youth raised their left hands to their temples. The other board members watched, then imitated.

  "Very well. What I'm about to share with you is called Operation Luau." Cyrus wrote the words on the whiteboard: OPERATION LUAU.

   He turned back around and tossed the pen on the table. "We need a land base. We need a place to carry out our experiments and build larger EMP weapons--a base far away from prying eyes, and invisible to the CIA, KGB, MI5, Mossad, or even any local government. A place with political autonomy. I have found just the place in the South Pacific, midway between Hawaii and Australia, near the islands of Samoa and Fiji--the Polynesian island nation of Tuvalu."

  "Tuvalu?" Bryan said.

  "If you've never heard of Tuvalu, don't worry, neither has anyone else--which is precisely why it is of interest to us. It is the world's fourth smallest country, behind Vatican City, Nauru, and Monaco, and consists of three reef islands and six atolls.

  "Unfortunately for them, the islanders declared independence from Britain in the 1970s. This was highly unwise, as they are little more than an island of hula dancers and fish spearers. They have no military, spend no money on defense, and have no means of defending themselves outside of a puny, impotent police force. Their navy consists of a single Pacific-class patrol boat provided by the Australian government for maritime surveillance and fishery patrol. Even the Tesla could blow it out of the water.

  "Tuvalu is facing an energy crisis. Rising ocean levels have damaged two of their diesel-motor power plants. Unfortunately for them, their third stopped working two months ago."

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