Jack listened to Maria and nodded at her when she spoke, she had received the same message he did and gotten just about as much information as he had. Jack sighed heavily as he was realizing that the UAC was most definitely covering their asses like all big time company's do.

[b]"I am afraid its not going to be as simple as you might thing Maria, Yes I did receive that message myself its why they dragged me half way across the world, or so they wanted me to believe that was all. But to be honest me and the UAC don't exactly have even footing with each other so within the couple hours or so before departure I had a friend of mine in the cyber division do a little digging into the UAC's database, specifically into the datanodes on the the Mars Complex. I had him look into, specifically, disturbances and he sent me multiple files if you would please."[/b]

Jack raised his arm as he typed into the VDA (Virtual Data Assistant) on his wrist, with a couple clicks on his VDA the center console inside the transport came to life displaying a virtual two way screen. Several files splashed across the screen, Jack went to one in particular named [b][i]Space Sickness / Reports[/i][/b]. Clicking it the files revealed hundreds of different reports ranging from from a couple years ago up until recently, pinpointing the most current reports he extracted about twenty files made within the last two weeks.

[b]"I have already went through most of them, they are all within a two week span, and if you notice there is never one that has a same sender, these are from twenty different people on the complex. Every single report is about a disappearance and then a reappearance, almost every single one details the person in question just... changing for no reason. There is from what I have gathered no direct link between these reports, these were all received from personnel consoles and most were sent with nothing more then an initial or a last name. This one is among the most disturbing, it was sent not two days ago before the current message."[/b]

Jack clicked on the virtual screen of his VDA as one of the various files opened, a voice recording box appeared the name above it simply read Smith. Clicking the play button a female voice came on, it seemed hushed and frightened:

[b]"Please you have got to send help... terrible things are happening here, they are are watching, everyone is being watched, they suspect everyone. They have been intercepting reports as they are sent out, every time a report is sent to the UAC Mainframe down on Earth they find out who sent it and then.. that person is the next to disappear. I don't know what to do, its like no one is listening or no one cares what is going on. I risk being next by sending this but.. they have my best friend, she tried to send a mayday but they caught her.. I don't know to do... *audible sniffles* please just send help, anyone.. I don't want to die or become what these people are becoming.. Please..."[/b]

The transmission ended as Jack closed out the screen, clicking on his VDA all twenty files opened one by one, looking at Maria he spoke:

[b]"I can not be sure they are aware or not but these messages were never sent to Earth, they were intercepted before they could be fully transmitted from the central hub on Mars. My friend in the Cyber Division told me specifically that an encryption was set up to catch all outgoing messages private or not. The terminal it was sent from was then tracked by the same console, so in laymen terms it was a virtual trap to catch anyone who might send out distress messages. Not one got out except for the last one, the message that was actually received was sent from and old communications building outside of the main complex, it has its own relay so it was not connected to the main console like the others. Whoever sent it must have known about the encryption and resorted to it as a last ditch effort."[/b]

Jack clicked more on his VDA and pulled up a list of names and alias's from the distress messages and put them on the screen.

[b]"These are so far all the names of people who have sent distress messages, most of them are just letters I am sure they thought they might be identified by their name if not something else. The only names recorded that I believe are genuine or Smith, Henderson, and Young. They are common names first and last on Mars so the risk of being identified would be minimal."[/b]

Jack clicked on his VDA once more as the screen disappeared as did the center console screen, he looked at Maria with a pretty mystified look on his face.

"Maria I don't know whats happening on Mars and I am not sure who is in on what is happening, but I can assure you that your not merely going to Mars to fix things. If this were so simple then calling me in would have been a useless gesture. Any man in the military could pull off faking a UAC Commander or accomplish this operation within the set parameters and that person would probably have more love for the UAC then I do, but instead they called me in, an infiltration specialist who hates the UAC. Which leads me to believe that they know more then they are saying, they were quite eager to accommodate my weapon requests which is also to me a red flag."

Jack got up and took a seat beside Maria.

[b]"So I have to ask, did they tell you anything that I am not supposed to know? Maybe a secret assignment of sorts, information that is privileged. If they did I need to know because I don't have any idea what we are walking into, but I know this it does not seem as if its anything good."[/b]