Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
US Embassy, Cairo, Egypt, Earth.
Ava Rìos
A Bible in an old hand wearing black. The other hand sketching up and down, right and left in the air. A last meal, tasteless and ritual. A last benediction. A last prayer – empty words.
Chains on her feet, pinching the prison jumpsuit painfully against her ankles, keeping her from doing more than shuffle. An infinitely long walk down an infinitely short corridor.
Her own reflection in glass reinforced with wire. Pretty. Framed by black curls. Empty of hope, remembering the future life she has thrown away.
A semicircular room with glass walls. Faces watching sternly from outside, spectating. A sturdy chair covered in straps.
Straps on her limbs, holding her down. Last words. Terrified tears.
Creeping ice in her arm. In her veins. In her heart. In her brain.
She woke up.
Ava stared at the ceiling for a second, trying to place herself and banish the highlight reel of her own nightmare that was still sadistically echoing around her mind.
She was on a cot. In the embassy, under a couple of blankets. It should have been cosy and restful. Instead, her personal schedule was badly awry – it was plainly well into the day outside, and yet she felt cold, and drained.
The window was engineered for security – thick and blast resistant, designed to be opened in case of a fire but also to set alarms wailing if it was. Still, the view was excellent – Minarets and palaces rubbing shoulders with modern groomed parks and high-rise hotels, and the clean blue of the bridge-tamed Nile itself.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in?” Ava asked, turning away from the window. Special Agent Darcy smiled for her as she entered, carrying a large mug of coffee. “Feeling better?”
“Kinda… I had some pretty crappy dreams though. Thanks.” Ava took the mug. “How’d you know I woke up?”
“I was going to wake you anyway.” Darcy said.
“Decision time, huh?”
“Gotta pressure you.” Darcy agreed taking a seat on the couch. The Non-Disclosure Agreement and its chillingly impersonal descriptions of exactly how transgressions would be answered was where Ava had left it on the table the night before.
“…Can I ask you a question?” Ava asked.
“Sure.”
“Is it… easy, to keep these secrets? Or do you struggle?”
Darcy touched her lip thoughtfully. “I’m lucky.” she said at last. “I work with people who have the same clearance I do, and it helps, but a big part of classified information is about compartmentalisation and need-to-know. And if the guy I work with most closely doesn’t need to know, well…”
“You’ve not answered my question.”
Darcy acknowledged that she hadn’t with an amused motion of her head. “I… find it much easier once I understand why they’re secret.” she said. “I may not always agree with the rationale, but knowing there is a rationale – and there’s always a rationale – well, it makes it easier.”
“Easi-er? Not actually easy.”
“…I have friends and family and there are times when I might be having a conversation with them and they’ll say something or voice an opinion that treads on territory I know about.” Darcy told her. “Biting your tongue when you know that their whole argument is completely wrong, but you can’t give them the puzzle piece they need to really make sense of things… that’s not easy.”
“So you struggle.”
“Sometimes, yes.” Darcy agreed.
Ava drank her coffee in thoughtful silence. “That makes me feel better.” she confessed, once the mug was empty and she’d put it down. “If you’d said it was effortless…”
She picked up a pen and signed the agreement.
Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
Mwrwrki Station, Uncharted System, Deep Space
Lewis Beverote
Vedreg was damn near impossible to interpret sometimes. Many of his most commonly-expressed emotions were quite easy to follow once you’d memorized the basics of Guvnurag color-emoting.
The problem was that while the human eye had three kinds of color-receptor cone cell, the Guvnuragnaguvendrugun had five, allowing them to perceive an approximate colour range several orders of magnitude larger than humans could.
It turned out that in galactic society, they carefully and politely emoted in a very limited way, using only those hues that they shared with the dichromatic galactic majority.
Among themselves, their whole system of emoting was greatly more complex, and two colours that were indistinguishable to the human eye could, to Guvnurag, convey wildly different emotional states.
Relative to the literal glowing lines that covered their huge bodies, the rest of Guvnurag body language was subtle to the point of barely existing. Which meant that when he was in a mood to keep his thoughts to himself, Vedreg was impenetrable.
“This Jonuvanunoumanu person seems to occupy a position of unlimited prestige in your species’ scientific annals.” he noted.
Kirk nodded his head slowly – by necessity rather than choice, given his long neck – but emphatically. “Mathematics, physics, computer science, quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics, economics… Not to mention his involvement in the development of your species’ first nuclear weaponry. If I did not know humans so well, I would suspect him of being an unsubtle Hierarchy spy sent to Earth in an attempt to engineer your destruction.”
“This doctrine of ’Mutually Assured Destruction’ would be compatible with their strategy for turning deathworld species against themselves.” Vedreg agreed. “Is that what this is?”
“No, man. Jesus, no.” Lewis waved a hand irritably. “Dude, read the bit on self-replicating machines.”
“I saw that. A machine that can make a copy of itself.” Kirk commented. “An interesting idea, though I fail to see the practical application.”
“You fail to-? Seriously?” Lewis rubbed at his face. Kirk was in some ways about the smartest life form Lewis had ever heard of, and in some others he was terminally stupid. There was nothing more frustrating than a deeply intelligent being who occasionally needed detailed instructions to figuratively find his backside with just one of his four arms.
“Seriously.” Kirk nodded again.
“Dude… a Von Neumann machine is any machine that can build copies of itself. Doesn’t matter what else it can do, just so long as one of the things it can do is duplicate itself.”
“Meaning…?”
“Dude, every nanofactory in the galaxy is a Von Neumann machine! Look, I’ll show you! Nanofactory!”
The room chimed, awaiting a command. “Assemble all of the component pieces of a station-sized industrial nanofactory plus a drone capable of putting those components together.” Lewis told it.
”Estimated build time for that project is – three hundred and fifty-five Ri’. Do you wish to continue?” The nanofactory’s control software asked.
“What is that, about three hours?” Lewis asked. “Cancel order.”
“Point made.” Kirk said.
“Right! If you have one functioning nanofactory, then getting a second nanofactory is as easy as asking for one. Now, what happens if we stick engines and a power supply to a big nanofactory?”
“You… have a… mobile nanofactory.” Vedreg observed, pulsing a familiar shade of confusion at such an obvious question.
“Yup. So, if you have one mobile nanofactory, then getting a second mobile nanofactory is as easy as asking for one.” Lewis explained, aware that he was pushing the point a little hard, but it usually paid to do so when dealing with nonhumans. “But of course… it’s a nanofactory! It can make all sorts of other stuff, too!”
“It seems to me that all you’re doing is moving the question of what we should build with this nanofactory that we currently have back a step.” Kirk observed.
“Colonies.” Lewis told him.
“…I see. Yes.”
Vedreg looked between them. “I don’t.” he said.
“All our eggs are in one big basket right now.” Lewis explained. “Plus a smaller one with Cimbrean. Now, this is an idea that’s been around for so fucking long in our sci fi that I’m fucking ashamed of myself for not thinking of it sooner, but it’s like… the basic rule of keeping a species from going extinct is to spread it outside of whatever little niche it’s in right now, so if something happens to that niche, it doesn’t take the species with it. And Earth is a very, very little niche.”
“A whole planet is a ‘niche’ to you?” Vedreg asked.
“Hell the fuck yes it is!” Lewis told him. “Next to a whole goddamn galaxy? You bet your big glowing technicolor ass it’s a niche.”
“New human colonies would be vulnerable.” Kirk pointed out. “Cimbrean and Earth are only still intact because of the system forcefields we-”
”Stolen system forcefields.” Vedreg interjected, pulsing a vivid shade of indignant.
“Stolen system forcefield.” Lewis corrected him. “Your people put up the one ‘round Sol yourselves. But Kirk’s right, without system forcefields any colony we try and set up is just gonna be Hunter chow the second they get wind of it.”
“There is no possible way that your species could afford to buy that many, Lewis.” Vedreg told him.
“I was thinking if we just buy the blueprint and shove it in my Von Neumann Colony Probe here…”
”Absolutely not.” Angry red flicked down Vedreg’s body. “You would just… steal the most valuable technology my species has invented? A project we sank more wealth into than your whole homeworld can produce in a year? And you expect me to just… give you it?”
“Vedreg, be reasonable-” Kirk began. Lewis interrupted him.
“Dude, can I…?”
Both aliens turned to face him.
“…How many of those forcefields have you actually sold?” he asked. “Gimme an integer.”
“Well… The technology is still experimental-”
“Hunter shit!” Lewis told him. “You know how many of these things have ever been deployed for real? Six. The Guvnurag homeworld, your two colonies, Sol, Cimbrean, and here. And they’re six for six on working fucking perfectly, man. Each one does exactly what it says on the box! Hell, one of them even had after-market modifications! Now, since when the fuck is that ’still experimental’?” he raised his fingers and air-quoted the last two words for emphasis.
“Your point?” Vedreg asked.
“My point is, why the fuck is nobody buying? Man, system shields make the whole war with the Celzi completely fucking pointless, and if they can protect Earth from Hunter aggression then they can protect anywhere else, too! These things work, and yet for some crazy-ass reason, nobody’s buying them off you. What’s the fucking deal there? ‘Cause I seriously fuckin’ doubt that people would rather be eaten alive than spend money on buying your magic star box.”
He paused for breath, and reminded himself to be chill. “Dude… The only reason every inhabited system in the galaxy doesn’t have one of those things is because somebody doesn’t want them used. Somebody with the power to keep the whole thing in Development Hell indefinitely. So that huge investment you’re defending ain’t doing diddly-shit. And now here I come, askin’ you – and dude, I’ll fuckin’ beg if I have to – You’re not using these things, and they could save my entire species.”
“For which,” Kirk added, “I’m sure the human race would be grateful.”
Vedreg fluoresced uncertainly for some time.
“Is there no alternative?” he asked, eventually. “This… ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ that your Jonuvanunoumanu described. Could you not… weaponize this creation of yours?”
“Dude.” Lewis said, and shifted on his Zafu. “Let me explain to you why MAD is complete fuckin’ bullshit, alright?”
He sat forward and composed his argument. “Let’s say I built these things so they could self-modify on the fly in response to the kinda tactics used against them.” he said. “Let’s say I sent billions of them to devour a planet, and each one used the raw material to create billions of copies of itself. I mean, we need to imagine that shit’s even possible first, and don’t even BEGIN on getting me started on the reasons why it’s fuckin’ not…but let’s pretend I’m a mighty wizard and thermodynamics is my bitch, sure.”
He sniffed. “Now let’s say I, uh, waggle this crazy thing I’ve made at whatever colossal douche is lookin’ at me funny and I’m like ’Cross me and I send out the world eaters!’ and he’s like ’Ha-ha! I have world-eaters too! Cross me and I shall send out mine!’ and we both decide it’s maybe not worth the fuckin’ hassle of bein’ dead and we go home for snacks. Right? That’s the theory behind MAD.”
“That seems…credible.” Vedreg offered.
“Okay… where’s my threshold for provocation?”
Kirk nodded and sat back on his hindmost four legs, clearly getting what Lewis was driving at.
“I beg your pardon?” Vedreg asked.
“Where’s, like… the line where once they’ve stepped over it, that’s the point I release the indiscriminate deathbots and kiss my wife and kids goodbye?” Lewis asked. “Is it when he launches his?”
“Yes.”
“What about if I think he’s planning to launch his?” Lewis asked.
“…Yes?” Vedreg hazarded.
“You think? What if he’s not and I’ve just got some shitty-ass incompetent spies and he was actually trying to steal cable or whatever? Congratulations numb-nuts, you just doomed everybody because you’re too trigger-happy. Well fuckin’ done you. And there we go: literally the only situation in which MAD applies is if the other fucker’s stupid enough to shoot first. Which he ain’t going to be, and neither am I.”
“In other words,” Kirk summarized “By introducing such a weapon, you would only raise the stakes while making no progress towards a lasting peace.”
“Exactly!” Lewis agreed. “So what happens instead is ham tactics. The enemy slices thin layers off us so he can make a delicious meaty victory sandwich. He doesn’t wanna provoke me into firing my world-eaters? Well, that’s easy – I don’t want to fire ‘em! And I’m only gonna do it if he provokes me bad enough. So all he has to do is not push me that far – and he can do a lot of shit without pushing me that far – and slice by slice he’ll win the war.”
Kirk was nodding like a pumpjack. “Meaning that your superweapons cancel one another out and you both remain on square one, fighting each other through more conventional means.”
“E-fucking-xactly.” Lewis nodded. “And bear in mind dude, all of the above only applies if the other guy is sane and competent. What happens if we’re dealing with a complete fuckin’ Mr. Potato Head who reckons he’ll be welcomed as a warrior into the halls of Valhalla, or if he’s too stupid and gung-ho to double-check what’s really going on and launches his nukes when a bird shits on the radar dish?”
He made an explosive gesture with his hands and punctuated it with an oral sound effect. “All I’ve done by creating that weapon in the first place is engineer the tool of my own demise. S’what humans call being ’hoist by thine own petard’ and, dude; if your survival plan hinges on all your enemies being sane, competent and cautious then that is a bad plan because eventually one of your enemies won’t be.”
“But surely-” Vedreg began.
“Dude.” Lewis scolded him. “We’re not talking about nukes here. When you get down to it, a nuke is just a big explosion. Lots of people die, it’s a horrible fucking tragedy, what-the-fuck-ever. At least you control when and where it goes off. But a weaponized Von Neumann swarm? You are ruining the galaxy for everyone forever, and probably not just the one galaxy, neither. No.”
Vedreg’s body pulsed every colour the human eye could perceive in rapid succession, and finally he levered himself to his feet.
“I think that I will need some time to think on this.” he said.
“I hear ya. Take all the time you need.” Lewis soothed him, calming down himself. “I’ll keep looking for an alternative. But seriously man – nobody’s buying your forcefields. You may as well do some good with them.”
“I will think on it.” Vedreg repeated, and rumbled out of the room.
Lewis watched him go. “…Pushed too hard, d’you think?” He asked.
“Possibly.” Kirk agreed. “But Lewis…”
“Yeah?”
“It may well be that you could never push hard enough.”
Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
US Embassy, Cairo, Egypt, Earth
Darcy
It was interesting watching Ava read the sanitized, short version of DEEP RELIC.
Darcy could clearly recall her own reaction on reading that same document – It had made her afraid. There had been plenty of bad nights’ sleep afterwards, dreaming of strange worlds and strange persons, maybe alien versions of herself, doing her job, trying to pull their species back from the brink of extinction… and failing.
Ava’s reaction was different: With every paragraph, she was getting increasingly angry.
It wasn’t the blazing, short-lived rage that she’d directed at Firth, either, nor the burning sass she summoned to cover when she was feeling insecure. Instead, Ava seemed to be filling up with the slow, relentless, baking kind of anger. The kind that glowed in a person’s heart, pointed them at the world, and woe betide whatever got in their way.
When she flipped the document closed at the end, her hand was shaking.
“…How many species?” She asked.
“We don’t know, exactly.” Darcy told her. “But this has been going on for millions of years, so it must be…hundreds of species at least. Maybe thousands.”
Ava sat back. Angry as she was, she also looked… lost. As if she had no idea what to do with the fire that had been lit inside her. “…God.” she whispered. “I can’t get my head around it. It’s too big.”
“Do you understand why this is a secret, Ava?” Darcy asked her. “Do you understand why you can’t tell anybody?”
Ava nodded. “Because if we’re going to survive this… we need every advantage we can get.” she said.
“That’s why we’re sending you to speak to Six.” Darcy told her. “Because if there’s any advantage to be gained by granting his request, we have to seize it.”
Ava nodded solemnly. “Thank you.” she said. “I just have one more question?”
“Sure.”
“…What exactly happened to San Diego?”
“San Diego was the Hierarchy’s base of operations on Earth.” Darcy explained. “It was home to their jump array, their communications apparatus… We tried to seize it, and their agent in charge of the facility detonated an antimatter bomb to ensure that we couldn’t salvage anything.”
“So… if the city hadn’t been destroyed, they’d still have jump beacons on Earth?”
“I suppose…” Darcy hadn’t considered that before.
“And if they still had jump beacons on Earth…” Ava continued, “…we’d all be screwed, right?”
“We would.” Darcy agreed.
There was nothing overtly positive about Ava’s response. She didn’t smile, or sigh or nod. Only a microscopic change in the way she held herself suggested that a weight she’d been carrying unheeded for a long time suddenly wasn’t burdening her quite so much. “That… Thank you, Darcy.”
She stood up. “Are they ready for us yet?”
“Everything’s in place.” Darcy said. “Major Powell is in charge of this operation, but you’ll be taking your orders directly from Master Sergeant Vinther. Do exactly what he tells you. Okay?”
Ava nodded, and Darcy shook her hand. “Good luck.” she said.
Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
US Embassy, Cairo, Egypt, Earth
Roy Vinther
“Well hey, she finally deigns to grace us with her fuckin’ presence.” Firth muttered.
“Gi’ it a rest, mate…” Murray replied. The two SOR men had taken the news that they’d have Rìos along for the ride with the minimum of grace, and Firth in particular had taken every opportunity he could to grumble about it since. He was getting his own back, though: He’d elected to wear an offensively loud shirt covered in palm trees, ocean sunsets and bikini’d latina beauties.
He snorted in response to Murray’s quiet request, and put on a pair of huge mirrored aviators. “Sure, bro. Okay.”
“Jesus shit.” Coombes commented, shaking his head. “If you were any more fuckin’ Air Force, you and Walsh’d be holding hands right about now.”
“Aren’t you ’Army stronk’ dumbfucks supposed to be the big ones?” Walsh retorted, affectionately. After Firth and Murray, he was the third-biggest man present, and comfortably larger than any of the Delta Force operators.
Vinther left them to roast each other and crossed to the doorway to take the young woman off the embassy guard’s hands. “Miss Rìos.”
“You’re master sergeant Vinther, right?” she asked. She extended a hand, and Roy gave it a cordial shake.
“That’s right. You understand what your role is here?”
“Talk to Six, do exactly what you tell me.” She said, nodding. There was an edge of trepidation in her face and voice, but also a note of determination.
“That’s about it.” Vinther agreed. “Come this way.”
She followed, promptly and quietly and proving that, for now at least, she could handle the second part of her job just fine. Vinther opened the back of one of the SUVs they’d spent the morning loading up.
“I understand you have Cimbrean colonial militia training.” he said.
“Yes.” she nodded.
“What’s rule one?”
Ava thought for a second. “Keep, uh… keep my head down.”
“Right.” He grabbed an armor vest from the SUV. “Let’s get this fitted now in case you need it later.” Unceremoniously he pushed it down over her head, did it up, and adjusted the straps until it sat snugly on her. Heavy as it was, she didn’t complain. “Is that loose anywhere?”
She jumped on her toes a bit and danced back and forth to test it. “…No, it’s fine.”
“Good. Helmet.”
They repeated the process of putting it on and adjusting it until it sat securely on her without moving. Between them, the bulky garments made her look small and scared.
“…Alright, you can take those off now. Not gonna need them for a while.” He said. Firth had suggested hazing her by making her wear them all day, but while Vinther had no reason to like Rìos, he had no reason to actively bully her either.
She wriggled out of them and stacked them neatly back in the SUV where from he’d collected them.
“Okay. I’m not planning on arming you.” He told her. ”If shit hits the fan then maybe, but only if I trust that you can stay the hell out of our way and leave the fighting to the professionals. It would be your weapon of last resort only. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sergeant.”
“Good. If I did elect to arm you, this would be your weapon.” he unholstered it from under his jacket. “What are the rules of firearm safety?”
“Uh… All guns are always loaded.” She recited. “Uh, never point a gun at anything you’re not willing to shoot. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target, and, uh…be sure of your target and whatever’s around and behind it.”
Vinther handed her the gun. She scored immediate points by checking the chamber was empty while pointing it away and toward the floor.
“I can’t find the safety.” She commented.
“That’s a Springfield XD-S, they put the safety in the grip. It’ll only fire if you’re holding it properly, so show me.”
She nodded, settled her feet and her grip, and took a look around. “…I don’t see anything here it’s safe to aim at.”
“Good, you pass the test. Your grip’s fine.” Vinther took the gun back off her. “Hope I don’t have to give you this. Just remember that if I do, you still keep your head down and you only use it if it’s that or die. That clear?”
“Yes, sergeant.”
“Good.” Vinther had to give the girl some grudging credit. He’d worked with young, trained riflemen who’d shown less sense and focus. “You’re riding in this truck right here with me, Walsh and Murray. That’s Coombes, that’s Pavlo; they’re riding with Firth.”
She gasped as she went to hop into the back seat. “My camera!” she turned back toward the embassy. “I forgot to get my camera back.”
“You’re not here to take pictures, Ava.” Murray told her, causing her to jump. Vinther had to suppress the urge to flinch as well – Murray really was almost superhumanly quiet.
“I know, I just… please, that camera means a lot to me.” She said.
“Aye, I know.” Murray handed it to her.
“You got it? Thank you!”
“Firth did.”
“…Firth did?” She checked. “But…?!”
Murray shrugged, eloquently suggesting with only his shoulders and a quirk of his eyebrow that Ava shouldn’t question it, and climbed into the truck.
Ava took the time to buckle the camera holster back onto her leg, then hopped in too.
Vinther made eye contact with Firth, who’d watched the handover with an intense, unreadable expression. The big man didn’t give anything away – instead he just beat a fist against the middle of his chest and then toward Vinther by way of a kind of salute, and climbed into the truck.
“Yo, we goin’, Barkeep?” Walsh asked. “Only it’s a long fuckin’ drive.”
“Thought you Chair Force types liked sittin’ down all day?” Vinther asked, hopping up into the driver’s seat.
“So do you. Difference is, we like to be goin’ somewhere while we sit.” Walsh grinned.
Vinther chuckled and turned the radio up. The quality of Cairo’s radio stations had come as a welcome surprise. “Alright, we’ll do things your way.” He said. “Last chance for a comfort break?”
Nobody took him up on it, so he pulled the Oakleys off his collar, slipped them on, cracked his knuckles and wriggled until he was comfortably burrowed into his seat. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
C-17 Globemaster, somewhere over Nunavut, Canada, Earth.
Owen Powell
It felt wrong to be flying in the same plane as Warhorse and not hear either laughter or snoring. Those were literally the only two sounds men of the SOR usually produced when travelling.
This time, the suit techs were too busy prepping the suits for a jump, and Arés wasn’t in a talkative mood at all.
The worst part was not being able to help him. There was oh so much advice that Powell would have loved to give the lad, but the unit’s command dynamic was built around his remaining… not aloof, but certainly showing his love sparingly. The occasional dash of avuncular affection was about as much as he could afford. The lads were all too hyper-masculine and high on life to be able to thrive on anything less than being slightly in awe of their CO.
But if he could have, he would have sat down and spoken to Arés all the way over the arctic circle. The poor man was in dire need of some perspective.
There was nothing for it but to snag Burgess when the younger man passed by on his way for a bathroom break.
“Is his mind in the game?” Powell asked, getting to the point.
“He’s nothing but mind in the game, sir.” Baseball glanced back at his best friend and then shrugged his enormous Protector’s shoulders. “I wouldn’t wanna be in his way when we land though.”
“…Right. Carry on, sergeant.”
“Sir…”
Powell nodded. “Go on lad, get if off your chest.”
“…If she gets hurt, it’s gonna wreck him.” Burgess observed, keeping his voice very low.
“Between you and me, I counselled against allowing her to do this for that exact reason, and others besides.” Powell confided. “But there’s nowt for it but to trust Murray an’ Firth, stay sharp and shoot straight when we get there. We’ll all be here for him if he needs us, aye?”
“Amen to that, sir.”
“Go on. It’s a long flight.”
“Yes sir.”
Powell didn’t know how the Beef Brothers were able to sit still on these voyages. Spacious as they were to accommodate men in para jump gear, the plane’s seats were anything but ergonomic and Powell found that he could at best only tolerate them. Maybe it was a size thing – Burgess and Arés were both rather larger than their commanding officer, and neither of them seemed the least bit bothered by the seating arrangements. It was a mystery.
Instead he strolled around the plane, keeping an eye on things without interfering.
The suit techs were busy reconfiguring the EARS fields on the suits. Exo-Atmospheric Re-entry System wasn’t going to be needed today, but the robust shields, designed to take a pounding from atmosphere as a man streaked in at supersonic speeds and to protect him from his own sonic boom, could do something impressive if the emitters were dismounted, moved and reprogrammed – they could negate the need for a parachute entirely by giving the suit a terminal velocity of eight meters per second, equivalent to jumping off a single-storey building. With the ankle protection, load bearing structures and reinforcement of EV-MASS, that was a speed they could comfortably hit the ground at, on their feet and firing.
C&M Systems had promised that future versions of EV-MASS would be able to do both, without the lengthy reconfiguration, but that was still, sadly, for the future.
“Major?” An intel analyst grabbed him on the way past.
“What’s up?”
“We just got the recon sat footage of the AO.”
“Nice.” Powell examined it, and promptly made a disappointed sound through his teeth. “Urban environment. Well, that scuppers the close air… Arright, thanks.” He took the tablet and scrutinised his new map as he ambled back to the workspace he’d set up for himself about halfway down the cargo area, near the suit workstations.
He grabbed his radio. “Put me through to Colonel Munroe, please… Colonel. Major Powell here, sir.”
Munroe was USAFRICOM’s Air Liaison Officer to Egypt. To him fell the unenviable task of persuading the Egyptian authorities to acquiesce to whatever it was that the Combined Air Operations Center had decided. Given that the force of General Tremblay’s authority was fully behind this particular operation, Powell knew that Munroe’s job was probably much more entertainingly challenging than normal, today.
The relationship was made slightly difficult by the fact that Munroe lacked need-to-know both on DEEP RELIC and on the documentation concerning the SOR’s exact abilities and responsibilities, coded ‘SACRED STRANGER’. The man had literally no idea that he’d just been dragged into a war with aliens.
”Major, what can I do for you?”
“Update on operation EMPTY BELL for you, colonel. The AO is an urban zone, so CAS won’t be appropriate.”
“That’s good news.” the colonel declared. ”The Egyptians aren’t happy about this at all, they’ve been threatening to revoke our permission… you still need the Raptor?”
“Yes, please.” Powell stressed
“Understood. I should be able to make them think they’ve talked me down to just that… heck, I’ll fly the dagburn thing myself if that’s what it takes to get the go-ahead.”
“Be my guest.” Powell told him. “It’ll be an interesting op if we need you.”
There was a chuckle on the line. ”Thanks for the update, major. God speed.”
“Best o’ luck.”
Powell took a second to run his hand over his scalp – between naturally thin hair and the recent rise in his base testosterone levels brought on by Crue-D use, he seemed destined for a lifetime of baldness – and scrutinised the map some more.
Modern warfare was all about information, both the control and controlled sharing of it, and his connection to the men on the ground through this device was exemplified in the map program they were now using. They had all received the spysat data at the same time, and now Walsh was busily scrutinising the AO, making comments and drawing boxes and lines on it, as was Firth. Their comments appeared in pink and green respectively – Powell’s, when he began to enter his own contributions, appeared in white.
The conversation was naturally limited by the fact that they didn’t even know whether any kind of a battle would erupt, let alone the number, disposition, equipment or nature of their enemy. They were assuming the worst-case scenario: that the whole town was armed, hostile, and had close air support from an invisible UFO.
If he was being frank with himself, Powell could see no way in which that fight wouldn’t inevitably result in men being killed. Even with the two Protectors and himself slamming into the ground to join the fight wearing about the heaviest and most effective personal armor system mankind had ever produced…
He would have given his right arm to have the Defenders and Blaczynski available, but even if those four showed up in orbit at that very second, operations in EV-MASS were so intensive on energy that it just wasn’t feasible to throw them into a fight so soon after their mission to Perfection. Recovery after NOVA HOUND had taken nearly a full month.
He pushed the thought aside, and focused on coming up with the best plan he could, identifying lines of supply, lines of retreat, defensible positions, choke points and possible ambush sites.
He spared a quick glance at Warhorse, who was only just beginning the lengthy process of donning his undersuit. The young man was achieving the interesting trick of being simultaneously both poker-faced and visibly furious, which was a sight that would set any commander’s mind to calculating. Powell knew that he was either looking at the most fearsome weapon in his arsenal… or the worst liability. Here and now, there was no real way to know for certain.
There was nothing for it but to plan. If they were going to drop into a melee, it was damn well going to be a melee that danced to his tune.
Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
Asyuit Desert Road, south of Cairo, Eastern Desert, Egypt, Earth.
Roy Vinther
Ava had spent most of the trip so far playing around with her beloved camera. Exactly what she was doing with it, Vinther neither knew nor cared to guess at. Every so often, she would raise it, take a picture out the window, and scrutinise the result. What it was that she was after was another mystery – as far as Vinther could tell, all there was to see out there was sand, dust and pebbles, a few sandy, dusty and pebbly little hills, and electrical pylons. The highway was straight, well-maintained, bordered on both sides by straight and well-maintained concrete barriers, and brain-achingly dull.
“Um… dumb question.” she asked, somewhere around about the hundred kilometer mark.
“Shoot.” Walsh asked.
“Nobody ever told me exactly where we’re going…?”
Walsh looked to Vinther, who waved a hand, inviting him to do the honours.
“The coordinates Six gave you are for a gold mine about fifty miles west of Marsa Alam.” he said.
“So that’s how they make their money.” Ava deduced.
“Yup. Back in San Diego their cash cow was an accounting firm called JJG Financial Services .”
“I know that company!” Ava exclaimed. “They were Mama and Papa’s financial advisors!”
“Them and loads’a other affluent families from San Diego and LA.They were good at their job.” Walsh said. “Hell, they had to be: They were running a global conspiracy off the profits.”
“Guess gold mining’s just as good.” Vinther commented. “Hell, easier too. Who gives a shit about the customer experience of a rock?”
“Probably a step down actually.” Walsh said. “Gold mining ain’t all that profitable no more.”
“Are you shi-? It’s a literal fuckin’ gold mine!”
Walsh sniffed. “D’you know what gold’s measured in?” he asked.
“Nope.” Vinther conceded.
“Ounces.” Walsh told him. “Every other thing you might wanna dig up out the Earth – salt, coal, iron ore, whatever – they measure it in tonnes, but gold they measure by the ounce. An ounce of gold is about, uh, this big….” he held up his fingers shockingly close together. “…and the geosurvey figures there’s… oh, about six and a half million of those in the whole of the eastern desert.”
Vinther looked around. The eastern desert was defined as being all the vast, wide, sun-baked landscape between the Nile and the Red Sea. It was literally all they could see in every direction, and despite that they’d been driving for an hour they weren’t even a quarter of the way to their destination yet.
“That… ain’t a lot.” he decided.
“‘Bout seventy-five ounces per square mile on average.” Walsh said. “‘Course it ain’t all evenly distributed and it ain’t all at the same depth, and it ain’t in neat ounce-sized nuggets… It’s all gold dust. They gotta bring up a big ol’ chunk’a bedrock, crush it, wash it, filter it and outta that they get gold dust they can melt together to make bullion. It’s time-consuming, labor-intensive, expensive work.”
“And with the Hephaestus LLC finding huge supplies of precious metals in the asteroid belt all the time nowadays…” Ava said “The price of gold’s declining hard.”
“Right.” Walsh agreed. “So yeah, this mine of theirs, if it’s really the big H who owns the place, probably turns a profit for ‘em but those Cali accountants woulda been worth a lot more.”
Murray stirred. Vinther thought he’d been asleep, but he must have just been listening quietly with his eyes closed. “Where’d you learn all that?” he asked.
“Discovery Channel.” Walsh shrugged.
Murray and Ava both made the exact same noise simultaneously – an amused expulsion of air through the nose, and Vinther chuckled.
Walsh laughed with them and went back to tapping on his tablet, working on the map and the details of their plans.
“Uh…” Ava began again.
“What’s up?” Vinther asked her.
“…Are you guys… scared?”
“What of?” Vinther asked her.
“I dunno. That this could be a trap, or… that it could all go wrong?”
It was Walsh’s turn to indicate to Vinther to take the lead on this one.
Vinther shrugged. “…Are you?” he asked.
“Yeah.” she admitted.
Vinther nodded sympathetically. “Good. Means you ain’t crazy.” He scratched the inside of his ear, thinking. “But being scared’s… I think of it like a coat of primer, right? I t happens before you start the painting, and it sure ain’t no fun, but it gets you ready. Ready to kick ass, ready to keep your head the fuck down, whatever. Once you’re in the thick of it, you ain’t got time to be scared.”
“The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Murray interjected. He shrugged when they all looked at him. “H. P. Lovecraft.”
“Dude got that right.” Walsh agreed.
“How do you cope with it?” Ava asked.
“You piss yourself yet?” Vinther asked her.
She blinked. “Uh… No…?”
Vinther glanced at the GPS, and sighed inwardly to himself: There were still far too many miles to go. “Then you’re doin’ just about as well as I am.”