JB CCVII: Myrmidons
A knock comes at Alexander Cross' door as he scrutinizes his upcoming operation. A razor-sharp insertion, yes, behind their lines and into the heart of their facility. In one move, he can contain and isolate this rogue faction - and remove Leon Gregor. Perhaps he might have preferred other options, but from what Professor Li said he rejected Void Engineer assistance. The Void Engineers are better off preparing for the inevitable counter-strike, Li said. In Moscow, this 'Threat Null' lost because they couldn't bring in enough reinforcements to crush the resistance. In Mexico City, Threat Null lost because they couldn't bring in enough reinforcements to crush the resistance. Never expect an enemy to make the same mistake three times, Li stated, and so he told the Void Engineers to remain a potential force, one that isn't committed yet but which can react in full to whatever their enemy pulls out of their hat that one of them can see coming.
Alexander Cross desperately hopes it isn't his boss's pride speaking. Because his words make sense - but Li is a proud man. He wants this to remain a Progenitor-only operation. He doesn't want to bow and scrape to the Void Engineers.
Oh well. That's a decision for people more important than him. As it stands, it just means that he has to plan this operation with what he has available to him right now. It's an outside constraint. And in some ways it's even useful. He doesn't have to worry about integrating an outside force of Void Engineers into his teams; people they don't necessarily trust, people who haven't trained with them and don't know all their protocols and drills.
Of course, he thinks wryly, that might just be his mind trying to self-justify how he's
really better off not getting a force of 500 power armored Void Engineer marines.
He builds up another page of contingencies and answers three phone calls before a knock comes at his door. He sighs at that, checking the multispectral video feeds.
It is Rose - and behind her, the wound-tight form of Piero, each motion giving the distinct impression that he is - barely - restraining himself from smashing the door down.
"What is it?" he asks, answering the door.
Rose looks Cross levelly in the eye. "Piero wants to talk to you. We've spoken, and I think he's right. Let us in and seal the door."
Rose has changed, he notes. There's a black note of confidence in her. But-
"Does it relate to the mission?"
"Yes."
He lets them in after carrying the necessary checks. The room is suddenly much more cramped, but then again Piero makes wide open conference halls feel cramped. It's something to do with how his personal space extends about five hundred meters from his body.
"You think you have a backdoor in," Piero says, without preamble. "You are planning a high-precision and finesse strike - one designed to in one move cut the heart out of the infestation of traitors. It is efficient, clean, precise." He leans forwards. "Am I right?"
Cross glances at Rose.
"I said nothing," Rose says. "He approached me with this analysis."
"Then yes."
"It will fail." Piero squares himself up against Cross. "Do not do it. No."
"No?" Cross is surprised at that.
"You have a type, Cross. You're obsessed with your own cleverness. You like the neat solution, the unexpected blow, the arrow from afar. These are all on file. I did not say this because I know what you are planning; I say this because I know you. Someone like Leon Gregor," the name comes out as a hateful rumble, "will know that. You're predictable."
"I'm not predictable!"
"You are predictable in the forms your unpredictability takes." Piero's nostrils flare. "This is not a time for neat solutions."
"I would listen to him," Rose contributes, eyes looking old. "I've seen too much of our enemy and what they do to neat solutions."
Cross resists the urge to square his shoulders and glare at Piero. That will just escalate things further. "Say it, then," he says. "Go on. You want something."
Piero snorts. "Give me command of the operational planning for the true operation. He will not see that coming. He will think me a mad dog, someone to be pointed at a foe. He thinks anger is the same as insanity. And I am as good a commander as you. The most unpredictable thing you could do would be to do... nothing."
"It's not that sim..."
"It is."
"But," Rose intervenes, "Alex, yes, you do have a type. And we can use that here. I know what Damage Control says about you. Everyone knows that you're who Professor Li would send on something like this. They'll be prepared to face you." She smiles, baring fangs. "So we can play with them."
Piero's teeth are less pointy when he smiles, but just as intimidating. "Ha! Yes, a funny game!" A finger that could break a man's spine jabs down on the table, splintering wood and scattering papers. "Plan your predictable op. Let any spies he has report that you're doing what you always do. Let him think he knows what's going on. I will have our real plan ready and we will let him gloat that the Trojan War is playing out again."
Cross blinks. "Excuse me?"
Thick brows furrow, and Piero's face momentarily softens. "Maria talks to me. She studies cyclic history theory, because she is a slave to it; everywhere she goes, she starts wars. History repeats itself around her. We are chained by it too, though more loosely. But if we set ourselves into those patterns, you will kill me and then you will die."
"Cyclic history theory is New World Order rubbish," Alexander says dismissively.
"Maria doesn't think so. So I don't think so. You are not Odysseus. Cowardice will not work out for you." His aura of rage redoubles. "They set me against us in Moscow. Do not play into his hands - or believe that he cannot find ways to do the same to you."
Cross takes time to think through the statement, his adaptive physiology adjusting his hormone mix-emphasizing calm and clarity of thought, removing unfortunate emotional attachments. Seeing the world through an Iteration X emoneut's eyes for a moment. Piero is thinking more clearly, true, and they went through all the same training. He remembers that Piero has long considered him his main rival and trained to beat him in every field of human endeavor. And though it stings his pride a little bit, he has to accept that he
does like clean, precise solutions - and that massively narrows down the phase space of options he would prefer, since most plans are neither clean nor elegant. Even if he is blathering on about old obsolete NWO psychohistory quackery. So it can be true. He might be predicted. But Gregor Leon-he's not a strategist. He might make tactical mistakes. Of course, if Leon values his life over his pride-and his psych profile suggests exactly that-he might be willing to give up command to someone nearly as intelligent and far more qualified. There's more than a few Damage Control operatives who might have thrown in with Leon-seduced by fellow radical transhumanists. Or he might install pDNA and know modern special forces strategy immediately.
"Rose?" he asks. She's kept out of things - whether through wanting to be a neutral party, or a refusal to declare for either side, he's not sure. "Do you think Piero can do this?"
She is silent for a long moment, head tilted mechanically. "On his own? Not to the same standard as you," she says, words calm and measured. "But if you agree to his proposition, I volunteer to provide neurological assistance. And with that, I believe it will work." She smiles a quiet, measured smile. "And Piero is certainly right. The tactics he uses will be very much unlike yours. Now isn't the time for clean precision. Now is time for blood all over the walls."
"Permission granted." Alexander sighs. "I want results, not empty boasting. So don't make me regret this."
"You'll see." Piero says, ominously. "I don't boast."
Cross reluctantly admits that it's true. When Piero says that he's going to rip you out of your cockpit and beat your giant robot to death with the corpse, he means it.
***
Rose sits in the common room with Piero, rests her chin on her hands, and thinks. The room is empty. Largely because anyone with any sense-and most people who don't-know to avoid her brother. It's the sense of menace he gives off-even people who don't know him or understand what he's capable of can realize just how powerful, just how dangerous, he is.
Rose thinks she knows Leon Gregor. Not personally. She's never met him before in her life. But she knows men like him. Men who've augmented and tweaked and progressively improved parts of their brain, until their neurology is less similar to an average human than an average human is to a chimp. Men who believe that makes them
better than everyone else. Towering arrogance and superiority coming from the conviction that they're the smartest person in the room. And they all think alike. There's something about high end Progenitor institutes which normalizes certain modes of thought. Can't have too much empathy for a test subject, after all. People like that treat the normal Progenitor research assistants like they're dumb constructs - and treat constructs like they're utterly predictable machines.
Her toes scrunch up, but none of her thoughts show on her face.
"Relatively speaking, I think you're angrier about this than yonder ball of rage and steroids," Thorn observes from the surface of Rose's cup of coffee. It's hard to tell, but she appears to be wearing a plastic-y Wonder Woman outfit and holding a wooden sword. "You can tell because you're angry, while Piero hasn't even broken a pen in a good five minutes or so."
He just holds them too hard, Rose thinks at her. And you look like a stripper.
Thorn shrugs. "Look, this was my most Greek thing in my props cupboard."
Rose is tempted for a moment to ask how her hallucinations can have a prop cupboard, but decides not to. Thorn likes her tacky insincere costumes. It's probably some attempt at profundity or commentary about the cynicism of the modern world. Or she thinks it's funny. Probably all three.
Shaking her head, she downs her coffee and deprives her subconscious of a reflective surface.
Yes. She knows men like Leon Gregor. And they made sure that Major Clarent flipped sides, so he won't have his Head of Security around. Her intel will be a starting point, but Gregor will have modified it - and based that on the way Progenitors think.
So she sits down, familiarizes herself with his personality profile, adjusts her internal hormone balance and subjective perception of time, and pretends to be him. Her pencil starts scratching immediately.
Four minutes and thirty nine seconds pass in the external world by the time Rose has had enough. It felt much longer. She sheds those thought patterns with a relieved shudder, and synthesises herself some Empathin to take the edge off the sharpness of that mind. She has a headache, but that doesn't matter. Her body is already repairing the heat stress she inflicted on her brain from that level of radical self-change. The memories are fading, as the temporary brain structures are torn apart, leaving only blurred recollections and feelings and none of those toxic thoughts.
It is a mercy.
She feels a little sorry for Leon Gregor now. To live like this must be a dreadful thing. He doesn't realize what he's lost, of course - but she does.
Looking down, she looks at what she wrote in that altered state of consciousness. And swallows. How fast must her hand have been moving? The graphite in her pencil is smoking. And Piero is looking at her, eyes narrowed and teeth bared.
Most people would take that as a sign of hostility, but Rose just knows her big brother has resting homicidal aggression face.
"Here," she says, putting the sheets of paper before him. "Psych profile on Gregor Leon."
"Hmmph," Piero says. "Rose, that was dangerous. You are sweating."
"I'm fine, really. What's a little heat?" She smiles at him, coaxing him not to worry. It's bad for him. "The two of us don't worry too much about being set on fire. A little waste heat is nothing compared to that. And you need the help more. I just ran his implants in emulation for a bit so you know some of his likely reactions." Getting up, she heads out the door. "And before you ask, yes, I'm just going to get some water. I'm not ill."
Outside, she manages to get far enough away that her slumping down shouldn't be heard.
"That was stupid," Thorn points out. "Also, that personality? Total bitch. And I should know, given that's my vocation."
"Shut it," Rose whispers, trying to ignore the pounding in her head.
"If you'd not tried to cram it into five minutes and had instead done it in half an hour, you'd be feeling much better. You're about to black out from burning through all your blood sugar."
"I don't need your sympathy. I can take it." Wincing, Rose makes her way to the nearest vending machine. "He must eat cyborg food to get enough energy to run his brain like that."
"Rose?" Donald says, as she steps out. "You're going to need to look at this."
He points at his phone, which is currently displaying Serafina-her mother-...denouncing Professor Li and supporting Gregor Leon?
"That's not her." Rose hisses. "This would be absurd if it was her."
"Well obviously."
"She has a plan." For a moment, it's Rose from the Digital Web again, Rose playing at being Reina, but perhaps a little more than playing. "Otherwise this wouldn't have happened." It's not the plaintive hoping of a child, but the confident statement of someone who understands the situation well. "This is exactly what Gregor Leon would have done-and both of us will know it."
***
In the Izanagi feeder lab, Serafina Rosario looks at her false doppleganger declaring in support of Dr. Gregor. Professor Li hasn't called her angrily yet, which means he has actually trusted her that she's predicted what he's going to do, and is giving her some trust. At least, Serafina thinks, if she fucks this up, she's going to be dead, and therefore won't have to deal with Professor Li's blame.
"Are you sure about this?" Pia asks. "You've never liked Professor Li and now-" she sounds perfectly calm and convincing and loving, but Serafina is well aware that she's not happy with the decision.
"Mama, trust me. I thought this through. He's not... wrong, in a lot of ways. Just extreme. And if this works out, all these favors and this positioning..."
"I know what you said. He'll need someone to help him mend the Progenitors after this, and he'll spend enough political capital on this action that he won't be able to do everything he wants. But- I'm worried you're underestimating him."
"I am too." Serafina says honestly. "But you saw what happened in Mexico City. If Porthos Fitz-Empress himself told me he would help me with Leon Gregor, I'd be willing to hear him out."
"Don't say that." Pia replies, but there's no heat to it. "If you're so sure... then I trust you too. Good luck. Bye, Sera."
"Bye, mama." Serafina says. At least she's resolved that problem. Funnily, facing the imminent end of the world, she feels best about that one bit of this whole affair. She gets up, out of her room where the small-scale QEC is set up, and goes to meet the rest of her co-conspirators.
"Ma'am... shouldn't we do something?"
"At least he's reliable." Serafina says. "Give it time. I just need him to put enough rope around the neck so when I pull the lever, he gets a good long drop."
And in a way, that's going to be by far the most satisfying part of this journey, Serafina thinks. She's normally not a vengeful person. But she can make an exception for Dr. Leon. She understands him, and pities him. Pities all he's lost in the single-minded pursuit of perfection. Men like him-there's too many of them in the Progenitors. If they survive this affair, she's going to have to think about a way of helping people realize that ethics isn't just an inconvenient checkbox, and empathy isn't just a limiting trait when it comes to research and development. She has plenty of time to think about that, after all. Right now, her plan is already set up. Her part in this has already completed, and it's too late to change it. She's just waiting for the results.
***
The Gatling was technically a 'minigun,' in that it was not vehicle-mounted. It was, however, not something a normal person would be using as a man-portable artillery piece, as it weighed an even 100 kilograms unloaded. Master Sergeant Steven Armstrong was using it as a barbell, idly pumping out curls as he ran over the team readiness for their next mission. He'd always been a gym rat when he was idle. Or as idle as he ever got. He'd enlisted in the US Army at 18 after a violent childhood. Gone straight into Airborne, then Green Berets, then Delta Force. Always deploying, always in the thick of the fight. It was like a drug. When a too-close encounter with an RPG in some beyond-black-deniable operation in some mosquito-haunted Central American hellhole had left him paralyzed and dying, the offer by some MiB-looking G-Man of healing and getting back into an even greater fight had been easy to accept.
Now he was nearly 3 meters and 400kg of muscle, cyber-enhancement, and hypertech drug systems that made him strong enough to bare-knuckle fight a shapeshifting killing machine, or, as he was doing now, casually manhandle weapons that would have been crew-served vehicle-mounts in Sleeper units. That he was also a constantly simmering ball of berserker fury kept calm and sane by regular doses of heavy drugs was a small price to pay for being a walking combat monster that could literally rip apart an APC with just his hands. Now his life was nothing but one intense combat action after another, with occasional interludes like this of preparing for another one. They'd been ordered to assemble in Tokyo, the largest deployment of ORIONs they'd had in years. In less than 24 hours, they would be fighting through hell.
Sure, it was
possible that they'd surrender, but all the hyperbrains who did mission planning and all the Ethical Compliance agents who were advising had given the chance of that as "I'd bet on a snowball's chance in hell before betting on a surrender." Whatever they had done, everyone on both sides was well aware. This wasn't going to end in a clean political compromise.
"All right. We've got 24 hours before go time. It's going to be a night raid." To Armstrong, it still felt safer to do this at night. But he wasn't in the US Army anymore, and his enemies weren't leftist partisans in South America or terrorists in the Middle East or Russians in Europe. His enemies would have laughed at them. He's knife-fought shapeshifters fast enough to dodge bullets, he's fought Reality Deviants who SWAT or Rangers or Delta emptied entire magazines at and hit nothing but air. Night and day don't matter much to their enemy. The night raid is entirely to keep the US Navy or JSDF from seeing them and launching a few missiles that way. That would be inconvenient. Not dangerous, or even concerning. Just inconvenient. Which is part of why he's glad that the JSDF detachment isn't there. Fighting enemies? Even if they weren't bad people, he didn't feel bad. But just a bunch of guys in kevlar and cammies with rifles against a Damage Control hard assault team? That was just a one-sided slaughter.
"It would be hilarious if it did end in peace, though, wouldn't it?" Dietrich, another ORION squad leader said. But everyone knows how laughable that statement is. If peace was possible, they'd be somewhere else. You didn't call in ORION when you expected that there might be
peace. Armstrong had learned that. You didn't ship planeload and planeload or Mat-Trans shipment after Mat-Trans shipment of Damage Control military equipment and tell constables to familiarize themselves with symbiont armor and hyper-toxic biochemical warloads if you expected peace.
"It would not." A new voice booms in the makeshift gym. Armstrong whirled in place, trying to bring the Gatling up into a firing position in a hurry... an act of futility, as the new voice was Piero Dominici. With one hand, the EXEMPLAR grabs the barrels of the Gatling, smiling like a shark. "So big, but so slow. I could have slain you a dozen times already. But your instincts are decent."
The other ORIONs in the gym-slash-ready room they were hanging out in slowly lowered the varied weapons they'd snatched up when Piero just strolled in. In a room filled with barely-leashed berserkers with more cumulative combat time than most regiments, Piero just stood there without fear-something the posthuman did not feel, did not even comprehend. This was where he was home at, a literal exemplar of what they were. A lot of them only knew him by reputation. In person, he was at least physically less impressive. Tall and well-muscled, sure, but his physique wasn't blatantly inhuman. But even despite his build being more lithe than bulky, his face being sculpted to an almost androgynous beauty, everyone knew that he was the most dangerous thing in the room.
They knew him by reputation. They knew that he had taken on a Rogue Council warmachine five times taller than him, ripped its limbs off, and wielded the machine's own sword-a several-ton hunk of sharpened metal-against it. They knew that he had been used for single-man assaults on shapeshifter caerns as field tests. And more importantly, he had been used in taking down several SPD Constructs, carefully monitored and with selective dampening of external stimuli, but still. He had been used as a sledgehammer. And if they didn't know him by reputation, they would know him by how he carried himself. His posture and poise made it clear that he was a killing machine, was proud of it, and was very, very good at it.
"My name is Piero Dominici. Painter, Damage Control Officer, EXEMPLAR II, and supreme warrior. I am here to lead you into battle." He smiled, a flash of teeth that had the clash of swords and the snarl of a wolf in it. "I have not had opportunity to display my power in bloody combat in too long. This fight will provide the chance to kill mighty beasts and stubborn foes. Perhaps a dragon, I have been promised. And above all, immortality."
"Immortality?" Armstrong numbly echos.
"Immortality. This will be our hour of glory. The deeds we do here-these deeds may never be revealed to the public, but they will be remembered. By us. By onlookers. And most importantly, they will not be remembered by our enemies." Piero grins. "Because they will be far too dead to do any of that. And we will become immortal through these deeds. Can you sense it?"
Armstrong knows what he means, at a level which is almost gut instinct.
"This is one of those critical points in history. What we do, whether we succeed or fail, will shape the fate of the world. So we will not fail. We will succeed, and we will etch our stories forever on the fabric of history. When the future takes the course it does, it will be because of our actions. Because of our choices. Because of us. So do you choose to fight?!"
***
FLASH TRANSMISSION
QEC ENCRYPTED EYES ONLY
FROM: [ERROR INVALID SENDER ADDRESS]
TO: YL7902.OP.NWO.TU
CONTROL LEVEL PRIORITY
XQT SPEC OP
DR GREGOR LEON IS HVT
CAPTURE/KILL HVT BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
ALLIES OF DR GREGOR LEON ARE HOSTILE
AVOID IF POSSIBLE ELIMINATE IF NECESSARY
PROGENITOR ETHICAL COMPLIANCE TASK FORCE IS NEUTRAL
AVOID CONTACT
FLASH TRANSMISSION
QEC ENCRYPTED EYES ONLY
FROM: [ERROR INVALID SENDER ADDRESS]
TO: YL7902.OP.NWO.TU
CONTROL LEVEL PRIORITY
TECHNOCRATIC UNION RENEGADES HAVE STARTED A COUP
CONTROL IS UNDER THREAT
RAGNAROK PROTOCOLS ACTIVE
UNLIMITED REQUISITIONS ON NEED-TO-USE BASIS
-ACCEPTABLE PERSONNEL LOSSES: 100%
-ACCEPTABLE MATERIEL LOSSES: 100%
-ACCEPTABLE CIVILIAN COLLATERAL DAMAGE: 100%
OBJECTIVES:
1. ELIMINATE ENEMY COMMANDER
2. REPEL ASSAULT
3. CONTROL MUST SURVIVE
Bring The Pain
Piero is leading:
[ ] an armored assault with air support.
[ ] a fast air attack.
[ ] a light infantry infiltration.
Checkmate:
Dr. Leon has fucked up here. How has he fucked up?
[ ] His fake Serafina clone is actually possessed by Alicia, and is going to say some incredibly damning things on air.
[ ] You have Major Clarent ready to point out that they have clear evidence of Leon's... unauthorized cloning experiments and dereliction of duty, and the Shock Corps has always had a lot of parties in the posthumanist fence-sitters who respect them.
[ ] Serafina is selectively sending her message to the possible fence-sitters and has already discussed this problem with Cross, who has talked to EC-Japan. The transmission is bait to localize them, thanks to her subversion of the IT people. It helps that their official commander has been telling them to help sabotage this whole thing.
[ ] Write-in. She has a different sort of plan.
Yinzheng's Dilemma
Yinzheng has to choose one set of orders to follow. That will be:
[ ] the first set.
[ ] the second set.
[ ] Write-in (either): How does she plan to perform her orders?
