Update CCXXVII: Spring Offensive
JB CCXXVII: Spring Offensive
Major Jane Clarent collates information from a dozen different sources as she modifies her combat plans. The enemy is a platoon of power-armored infantry and a pair of combat walkers, supported by an ARC I lazily circling through the air like a shark through water. A few infantry have been lost to weapons fire, while a damaged ARC flies despite a hole in the wing from a gamma lance and a combat walker limps on a fused knee assembly, missing an arm and several head-mounted sensors. But although even the incomplete Brass Cog was theoretically a match for the assaulting force, its pilot lacked the skill to make best use of it, especially given that the pilot is nowhere to be found-a sure sign of remote piloting. The ARCs and walkers had pinned it, then engaged it with enough concentrated fire to threaten even the Brass Cog's exotic-metal armor. More than enough firepower to penetrate the thinner internal firewalls and wreak havoc on the exposed systems of the incomplete war machine.
Her assets, on paper, are limited. The modified B-2 carrying her and her team like munitions-little more than a Masses-built shell over Q Division hypertech-is her primary source of vision, its smartskin letting her see through the warbird's structure and its cloaking field like it wasn't there. Her support includes satellite recon and recon drones-but the only munitions she has are a handful of short-range self-defense weapons on the heavier recon drones and six advanced cruise missiles. She hasn't finished building Task Force Camlann, but she knows that the Technocracy isn't squeamish enough to refuse to use a tool if it's incomplete, so long as it works. And her heavy tactical unit, a dozen high-spec cyborgs, ten of them full-conversions including herself and Kessler, is both operational and more than adequate for an operation like this.
"Wish our side had an ace pilot," Kessler jokes, "because I was hoping they'd have solved their problem already and we could just go on vacation."
"Bullshit, Sarge," one of the ex-Shock Corps commandos responds. "You love this shit, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Come on, what would you rather be doing? Lounging on a Brazilian beach, or launching yourself into a warzone at Mach 10?"
"You've got me there," Kessler responds, laughing. It's not Kessler's first time doing assault pod insertions. "But I want to know why it's been twenty years since I've last done one and the smartgel still tastes like strawberry-flavored snot." Kessler knows that this petty inconvenience has made more than one commando replace their human lungs with synthetic ones. Iteration X probably considered it a feature back then, not a bug.
"You don't have lungs anymore, you don't need to breathe it in," the same commando responds. "Think of the poor people here with regular lungs, like me. Why do they make us inhale this shit?"
"Because otherwise you'd have your lungs explode upon impact, which is generally to be avoided," another cyborg responds. "Unlike us superior full-conversions."
"Sorry that some of us didn't get upgrade priority."
"Enough," Major Clarent says. Even though her response comes through the network as nothing more than a mild statement, everyone there respects her, and the network goes silent instantly. "We're one-twenty seconds until deployment, so we're enabling low-observability comms and redundant tacnet. Do final readiness system checks, especially on life support. If your life support efficiency is anything under 98%, abort. We can handle the mission with a few aborts, and we don't benefit from landing corpses." She waits patiently as soldier after soldier checks in with armament, implant, and biomedical status, approves each of them for deployment. She's unsurprised that none of them have had to abort. Camlann has the resources to operate a tiny echelon of assault cyborgs at full efficiency just fine. The tip of the spear is still just as sharp. It's the rest of the spear which might have problems.
The rotary launcher starts to spin up, and Major Clarent feels a shudder as each projectile-assault pod or cruise missile-is launched. The cruise missiles dive towards their designated targets, acting as a vanguard to the commando assault. The sky above the forests erupts in a bouquet of orange-red explosions from spoofed proximity warheads as Oversight's forces respond. Two cruise missiles get close enough to deploy their payload through the curtain of jamming and point defense-and a heartbeat later, Oversight's aircraft are nothing more than metal vapor clouds and twisted Primium structural members spiraling down towards the forest floor. The damaged combat walker takes a half-dozen plasma-charge submunitions and burns as well, the heat from the plasmaburst warheads sufficient to ignite even metal.
A few of the tacnet indicators blink the orange of abort as ground fire intensifies from the remaining troopers-no deaths, but two troopers have taken enough damage that the pod's computer brains have shifted course for a soft abort. They'll have to be retrieved later. Major Clarent marks their locations, and watches the time until impact indicator tick downwards towards zero, sees the ground rushing towards her at an impossible speed. The screen blacks out the instant the impact indicator hits 0, and a moment later Major Clarent feels the crushing impact.
She feels the impact even through the inertial dampeners, even with a skeleton made of Primium alloy and fullerene compounds, even with artificial muscle woven from stronger-than-steel fibers and an armored, hardened cyberbrain with its own inertial dampers and shock absorbers, Major Clarent feels the impact rattle her bones. But she ignores it, and a moment later she's out of her pod, giving orders to her forces to hunt the enemy.
Despite the inertial dampeners of the pod and the reinforcing injections and the smartgel, assault pod deployments are anything but gentle. Every one of Task Force Camlann's commandos feel the bone-jarring impact of the assault pod deployment, except for one. The ZERUEL is amorphous, designed specifically to resist forces such as this. Kessler's body harmlessly absorbs and dissipates the impact through its distributed composition, keeping him fully conscious and active during the microseconds of deceleration.
Kessler orders the pod to eject him, and the pod dutifully obeys, uploading an unstable reactionware patch to his brain in accordance to protocol. The world slows further as his cognitive acceleration factor skyrockets, and physical acceleration is boosted to a slightly lesser extreme. The patch can only safely last a handful of seconds-but it gives the trooper a tool to fight their way out of a bad position or exploit a good position.
The pod shudders as area-suppression charges detonate, the passenger module disintegrating around him into a cloud of shrapnel and dissolving smartgel. At this level of cognitive acceleration, the battlefield is nearly frozen-and so is he. His movements are like swimming through concrete, a side effect of his cognitive acceleration far outstripping his physical acceleration.
There's a suit of power armor pinned underneath a fallen tree, an unfortunate Oversight trooper who ended up too close to the pod. His Haldeman is structurally intact, which means he's probably unconscious or crippled rather than dead. Two humanoid heat shimmers move fractionally towards him, a handful of millimeters at a time. Kessler can see through their camouflage, and concludes from their inhumanly fast, jerky movements that they're probably augmented or on combat drugs.
He targets both soldiers with a barrage of basic minimissiles, the launchers falling away from his armor suit after they empty their payloads. Point defense systems start to scythe the munitions out of the sky with ribbons of ultraviolet light or bursts of directional shrapnel, but they don't get all of them, and one power-armored enemy vanishes for a moment underneath the impacts of several high-explosive warheads before he or she dives through the explosions, returning fire with blue-white lances of plasma. Molten filaments of ablative armor shed from Kessler's powersuit where the enemy plasma rifle scores glancing blows, the white-hot rivulets starting small fires wherever they hit the forest floor.
Tacnet informs him his fireteam's sniper can get line of fire to the hostilesand simultaneously, the Oversight commando staggers as a blue-white beam cuts through forest. His partner moves to break line of sight from the sniper-giving Kessler enough time to start hammering away at the wounded Oversight operative with the heavy railgun. Blue-white lances and explosions surround him, but he keeps his weapon steady, chewing the target apart, even as orange armor breach warnings and yellow damage indicators fill the ZERUEL's HUD. Kessler's fought rogue cyborgs and the blessed warriors of the Traditions. He's seen men sprint faster than a car on two broken legs, stay fighting for an hour with their heart destroyed from a plasma lance that should have vaporized their body with it. He's fought through Chantries with major organs destroyed and running on tertiary power, with a leg fused into a solid mass from the heat of a Reality Deviant fireball. He knows what you need to kill a determined combatant.
The second trooper dodges deeper into the forest to avoid the fate of his comrade, still firing all the while. Blue-white spears of plasma impact Kessler's armor, generating scintillating auroras from its defensive fields and setting nearby foliage on fire. Kessler marks them in tacnet as he returns fire, and a quartet of heavy missiles arc up past the forest canopy, then make Mach 20 death-dives on the unfortunate Oversight commando, presaged by a wavefront of basilisk code to corrupt enemy point defense fire control. Two explosions fountain debris dozens of meters up, and Kessler puts another pair of missiles and tasks another soldier's gun drone on the target to confirm the kill.
Kessler's perceptions rush back to normal as the boost wears off. "Looks like they're taking Roth pretty seriously," he comments. "Those were what? MA-31s? 33s? I can't tell without looking at their internals." They're years more advanced than anything he's used, but the ZERUEL has extremely comprehensive databases, and he's kept up with modern military hardware since his unintended exile.
"Sounds about right." Major Clarent sends back. "We've encountered five of them so far, including the two you've hit. If they're using a full heavy element, there should be three more. They were prepared for heavy intervention."
Kessler nods. "They're also pretty well-versed in anti-cyborg tactics. They didn't bother with the light guns, just went at us with lasers, plasma, and high-yield guided ordinance."
"So what's your evaluation?" Major Clarent asks.
"I'm a bit out of date," Kessler admits, "but I think these folks aren't our evil twins. They've got the gear and they were definitely not baseline, but they fought more like NWO than Iterators." He's been thinking about this throughout the fight, and he's had more than enough time to do his research. "And I can see from tacnet that several of the Haldeman users were a lot stronger and faster than unaugmented humans would be. So NWO or Syndicate Enforcers, using genemods or drugs or minor cybernetics and high-end suits, backed up by either non-Enlightened cyborgs or even 'borged-up masses armed forces in lower-end kit. I noticed that the data package Major Dubois sent to us when calling for retrieval mentioned a lot of Oversight operations were conducted by NWO tactical or Syndicate Enforcers if they couldn't use patsies with a legitimate excuse. I had my theories as to why that might be when I saw it, but this fight makes it a lot more likely that they're relying on those because they couldn't trust the Shock Corps or Damage Control not to leak. Even in Izanagi, most of the rogue Progenitors weren't Damage Control. Just augmented and individually dangerous. And our experience in Ragnarok was that command structures for our cyborgs were largely intact, the problem was HITMarks and robots."
"I concur. So the bad news is that they're already busy breaching their way through the compound. But," Major Clarent says drily, "the good news is that the ones who are really dangerous are probably NWO." She doesn't have to tell them the tactical situation-tacnet does that for her. Twenty enemies killed or incapacitated, including five MA-32 users and both of the combat walkers, at the cost of four casualties, one recoverable fatality. There's brief laughter on comms. Without pausing for the laughter to subside, Major Clarent sends another set of tactical coordination plans over tacnet for a sweep and clear of the Etherite base. She doesn't need to do anything more, as the ex-Iteration X commandos of Camlann respond as one. "Just remember, these are going to be NWO tactical teams," Major Clarent sends, "and NWO tactical teams are very good at what they do. Don't underestimate them."
Kessler acknowledges her over the network. They won't underestimate the enemy, who are well-equipped, well-trained, and very skilled. But in a few minutes of brutal room-to-room fighting, Task Force Camlann's cyborgs demonstrate again why the Shock Corps was-and still is-the premier combat arm of the Technocratic Union, not the NWO's tactical operatives or the Syndicate's enforcers, and why all of them are a cut above the Masses no matter what equipment they use.
"You look like shit, Donald." Kessler observes idly, when he finds the Ragnarok team and their VIP hiding in what looks like a panic room. Oversight wouldn't have been stupid enough to let them have a clear evac route, and if they hadn't found any undocumented secret entrances or exits, it would have been pointless to try to flee through exits mined with monofilament slicers and claymores without more time to defuse the mines before Oversight could corner them.
"You say I look like shit but you don't look much better either, John." Donald jokes back weakly, taking a meaningful glance at the plasma burns on Kessler's armor and the railgun penetrations. "How's it been?"
"Pretty good," Kessler admits. "Been making some progress cleaning house. Good work holding out, all of you. We've got an ARC coming in for evac now that the area is clear, and if that doesn't work we have enough spare power and ammo to walk you out of the jungle if need be. You," he says to Roth, "are a pretty high priority VIP right now. So we're here to keep you safe. Major Dubois, the facility should be clear, but Major Clarent and the rest of the forces are doing a sweep for any surprises Oversight left us." The name Roth gave for the enemy group. "We'll escort you and the VIP out."
Adele nods curtly, lowering her weapon fractionally. "Sergeant Major Kessler. As you can see, we are largely uninjured, although we're somewhat low on ammunition and explosives." Kessler notices the streaks of dried, rust-red blood on her face and on the tears in her and Constable Bennett's body armor, but he knows that they're just evidence of their impossible, shapeshifter-like healing abilities.
"Hey, dragonslayer." Elsa says back, tiredly. She looks a little worse off than the Progenitors, with several tears in her synthskin revealing carbon-black dermal plates or synthmuscle and dried electroconductive gel. Kessler can see silvery Primium, dull from scratches, from where an explosion stripped her shin to the bone. But her wide grin and animated eyes show that she isn't even a little tired, despite the damage. "Glad you could take some time out of your busy schedule punching jumbo-jet size dragons in the face to help us with some small fry."
Kessler grins back. "I heard South America was a great vacation spot, and I just had to join in. Got a little lost on the way to the beach, though. You did great work holding out."
"We lost the Bobs and Vanessas that Roth used here and still had codes to," Elsa says, "and that helped a lot, because we could use them to delay them at chokepoints. Then it was just hide and seek ambushes, until they started moving in larger groups with heavier hardware. We lost the rest of the constructs that way."
"Did you lose anyone?" Roth finally replies, with what sounds like legitimate concern. If he noticed the lack of an honorific, it doesn't show on his face or in his voice. Kessler's surprised that Warren Roth could sound regretful. Proud men like that rarely are, and Kessler knows that very well. What, Kessler wonders, changed his worldview? What trauma or revelation was capable of breaking that pride and showing him how to change? The Syndicate executive puts his weapon down, finally, and holds his arms straight ahead, daring-or perhaps begging-to be led away in handcuffs. Still some pride left, then.
"No deaths. Several casualties." Kessler responds. He and his team don't bother handcuffing Roth, but they do take his weapons from him-and he allows them to without complaint.
But Kessler understands the number of dead commandos isn't what Roth really wants to know. He wants absolution of a sort. And that, Kessler can't give. All he can do is bring him back to Command, let him tell them about Oversight and about Control. And perhaps that might be enough to plant a seed, that one day might let Roth forgive himself for what he's wanted to do. Because if someone wants grace, they can't hope for either the forgiveness of heaven or the punishment of hell. The only thing they can do is to live with the consequences of their actions.
"Shouldn't the Void Engineers be dealing with alien invasions instead of outsourcing?" Corporal Goodman asks, adjusting the fit of his equipment. Like all of the combat cyborgs in the helicopter, he's wearing tactical gear with "FBI" scrawled on it in big block letters, over an artificial muscle suit. Although he's not heavily augmented by the standards of Camlann's heavy units or the Shock Corps's best, he's still an exojock with the massive myomer-augmented bulk and Primium skeletal reinforcement that entails, with reaction boosters and cybereyes and dermal reinforcement. Of the dozen men and women in the Shedu's passenger compartment, several are like Goodman-talented neophytes with just enough experience to understand how to make use of their skills and augmentations, but inexperienced enough that forming them into a cohesive team should be easier than with old veterans. All are augmented, but the augmentation is akin to the modern Shock Corps rather than the old throwbacks of Kessler's last mission in Brazil. Militarized prosthetic limbs and subtle Primium skeletal mesh and light dermal armor. Kessler and Major Clarent are the only full cyborgs, and only three of the twelve are exojocks.
Kessler notes that Goodman seems more comfortable with his equipment than the rest of the team-but a few years ago, he was still SWAT, before the 'mass shooter' and the hospital stay and the new job offer for a crippled hero with a bullet in his spine. "It's standard procedure to send cyborgs against Pleiadians," Kessler explains, "because psychic powers aren't so hot on cyborgs. VEs don't have many cyborgs stationed groundside anymore, so that's why we're loading up with phase disruptors and phasic rounds for this op." The operation itself is routine-rural America has been host to an abnormally high number of EDE incursions for as long as Kessler remembers. He's fought his way through small-town nightmares involving evil snow queens or bulbous-eyed psychic aliens or ghosts of slave plantation owners several times. It's why he thinks this is an excellent final examination for the new soldiers of Camlann. It's relatively low risk, but still unpredictable enough and dangerous enough that he can make sure that they don't just test well.
"What do you think about our new recruits?" Major Clarent sends over private tacnet channel, as she checks her carbine and its blue-tipped EDE disruptor rounds. "They scored well in both unit cohesion and individual prowess, but you thought we should run them through an actual mission first before I turned them over to subordinate officers."
"You don't know how things work in the field until you field-test them. It's a tautology," Kessler admits, "but that doesn't make it untrue. But I think they'll do fine. I'm more interested in the other missing pieces of our org chart."
"Soldiers are easy, but leadership material is hard." Clarent admits. "Almost everyone who I'd want in a leadership position is too experienced to be easy to bring over and too comfortable in their own position, or too ambitious to stay there for long."
"You asked me to consider every angle," Kessler responds, "so let's consider if we need another tactical operative to lead a tactical team right now. We've got plenty of good soldiers, and we can promote a few of them internally if we need to. Lieutenant Sylia did well last op, and I don't think anyone would object if you decided that she was ready for further responsibility."
"I agree that 2LT Sylia might be a decent choice for command, but if we do that, I assume you don't want to waste our resources. So you'd want to use the resources and favors earmarked for acquiring senior personnel for people who can provide us connections or intelligence instead of firepower?" Clarent asks. "We have plenty of logistics and support assets, so I'm curious why you want more unconventional warfare and espionage types."
"As much as I'm an ex-exojock, I appreciate the necessity of covert operations. I'm just not the sort of person who wants to be doing them." Kessler responds. Even as he is, his mind is considering a dozen other problems-running an inventory of his arsenal, analyzing the tactical maps and known UFO floorplans, analyzing documentation of Pleiadian weapons and equipment, making modifications to the anti-psionic programs running in the Camlann team's ADEIs. "I'm not exactly demanding or recommending more covert operatives or hackers, but I wanted to raise the possibility to make sure we were thinking of all the angles. Our drone pilots, cyberwarfare team, and Brakowski's NWO tac-team are fine for most quiet jobs. If push comes to shove, we're pretty well covered on that front. Our recon and intel section also has a handful of ex-NWO we've accumulated from Ragnarok who could be sent into the field if we needed it. But the question is what we're actually doing." Kessler sends back. "If we're mostly handling direct action, and our intel support exists mostly to find doors to kick, we're well-equipped for that. If we're planning on doing quieter ops, maybe not so much."
"Camlann's remit is so broad it could cover almost everything." Major Clarent replies distractedly, the bulk of her attention spent on mapping out the old, dying industry town and the nearby Pleiadian UFO they're here to seize. "It's an independent special forces operation intended to handle sensitive, high-risk operations, which covers almost anything that could involve combat or armed reconnaissance."
"Not much of a help," Kessler agrees. "So what do you think?"
"I'm thinking maybe we should structure our missing echelon this way," Clarent says, sending a file. "They should help fill in what I see as useful additional capabilities while avoiding overspecialization. Speaking of structure," Clarent sends, "are you going to actually take that promotion?"
"Wouldn't feel right," Kessler says. "But I don't think I have a choice." Ragnarok doesn't work like the Shock Corps. Enlightened personnel should be officers. The NWO and Void Engineers both did it that way, as did the pilots and vehicle jockeys in the Shock Corps. Only cyborg special ops teams doggedly stuck to Enlightened 'enlisted.' Not that there was much of a difference when chances were you were in for life either way. "When in Rome..." Kessler says. In the end, times change. People change. And clinging to the past and to nostalgia wouldn't serve any purpose.
"Then allow me to congratulate you, Lieutenant Kessler." Major Clarent sends.
John Kessler grins. He's still not sure he deserves the rank, but hell. He's been a general in the movies. He'll make it work.
The secondary unit should be online soon. It's currently undergoing preparations and should be operational within six months:
Kessler and Clarent are discussing senior staff members and team leads for Camlann operations. Note that this is, as said above, more of a statement of where they think the task force is going to go, and what they want to do, than some major way to acquire new goodies or whatever. So consider it in that context. Posts which explain your reasoning for why you think a certain personnel choice is pushing Camlann into a certain way of acting or thinking will be helpful for that. Omakes may also give votes more weight, if you want to do that.
Of the following, they settle on two final choices for senior personnel:
[ ] HITMark VII Test Unit 02 'Astrea'-The Ideal: The Astrea unit is a HITMark VII Posthuman Tactical Command Intelligence test model, a post-1999 HITMark design that is intended to act as a dedicated command and control unit, rather than leading assaults. Although still heavily armored and armed for self-defense, the HITMark VII's cost is largely due to their brain being a powerful quantum hypercomputer, providing them with massively superhuman cognitive ability in just about any way you care to name. Astrea herself is an early test model, and has about seven months of experience-just enough experience to sand away some of the rough edges of a combat construct. Although her flexibility would be limited compared to an Enlightened officer, her superhuman intellect, multitasking ability, and integrated command, control, and communications hardware make her nearly unmatched at planning and commanding operations. And moreover, the Iterators on her team would very much appreciate Ragnarok demonstrating the viability of their design in the field.
[ ]Captain Lixing Zhao-The Treadstone: Much like how more than a few Operatives think the Shock Corps is full of unsubtle thugs who have a phobia of dirt, the Shock Corps too often sees the Operatives as oversexed cowards who should complain less about being put into mild danger some of the time. But NWO tactical units are still respectable combatants who even the Shock Corps have to acknowledge are dangerous men and women, and an experienced NWO commander of said tactical units is quite valuable-it's not an occupation conducive to living a long life. Captain Zhao has spent decades in NWO tactical operations, primarily engaging in espionage support activities such as hot-zone extraction, long-range reconnaissance, and special forces assaults, all with no cybernetic or genetic augmentations-just a long-term drug regimen and biofeedback conditioning. The benefit of having lower profile soldiers who can act in plainclothes and hide from enemy senses is invaluable. But both Kessler and Clarent are aware that drugs and biofeedback training might make you tough and strong and impervious to pain, but they don't make you bulletproof.
[ ]Alex O'Shea-The Cyberspace Cowboy: Flamboyant and talented, Alex was a hot-shit VA cyberpunk until false accusations of Neffandery forced them to go corporate for protection. Even after they managed to prove their innocence and find the real culprit, enough bridges had been burnt that staying in Iteration X looked like a much safer choice. Although going corporate has done a number on their VA-rep, the occasional attempt to take them down in the Digital Web has kept them sharp, and their target choice and influence has kept them embedded in the VA rumor mill. Kessler and Clarent can offer them the chance to be a real hero, going up against the digital equivalent of dragons, as well as a chance to strike a blow against Threat Null and avenge lost friends. Although Alex provides raw talent to Camlann's cyberwarfare assets, the main reason Kessler thinks Alex might be useful is because they have Traditions contacts and therefore might be a useful intelligence resource if carefully managed. Major Clarent isn't sure how they'll adjust to the more organized and regimented ways of Shock Corps cybercommandos than being a Iteration X techie, though.
[ ]Lieutenant Anjali Sylia-The Champion: Sometimes you just need reliable personnel who know the culture and tactics of the group they're joining and can fit into the group without tension. As a Shock Corps veteran, Lieutenant Sylia fits that mold well, especially since she's operated with Camlann since its inception. Her combat record is sparse-she only entered service a decade ago, after the end of the Ascension war-but like many Shock Corps officers it's very distinguished. She specializes in close assault owing in part to her Vrishpara-class tactical body and talent in custom wetware coding. Unfortunately, her husband is Adrian Sylia, an Iterator who has, despite his best efforts, never become anything more than an Exceptional Citizen, and therefore her familial connections are somewhat limited.
[ ] Agent Alya al-Saud-The Dilettante: A look at Alya al-Saud's academic credentials would impress anyone in the Ivory Tower or Syndicate. Her family expected her to become a young influencer who could advance the Syndicate's causes and long-term plans. Instead, she took a completely different turn and decided to go play soldier, using her contacts to get tactical training and augmentation and use that to get a position in the Enforcers. Due to family influence, she's promptly gotten stuck in operations she's utterly overqualified for-it's hardly necessary to send an Enlightened, heavily augmented agent to deal with Pentex paying local gangs in bane-tainted drugs to harass rival companies out of the area. She clearly has some talent-her skills are perfectly adequate for the job and Kessler thinks that if she's forced to apply herself rather than coast on connections and augmentations she'll improve rapidly. But right now, she's a middling mage whose benefit would largely be in exploiting her connections-and if handled poorly, she could become a liability.
Major Jane Clarent collates information from a dozen different sources as she modifies her combat plans. The enemy is a platoon of power-armored infantry and a pair of combat walkers, supported by an ARC I lazily circling through the air like a shark through water. A few infantry have been lost to weapons fire, while a damaged ARC flies despite a hole in the wing from a gamma lance and a combat walker limps on a fused knee assembly, missing an arm and several head-mounted sensors. But although even the incomplete Brass Cog was theoretically a match for the assaulting force, its pilot lacked the skill to make best use of it, especially given that the pilot is nowhere to be found-a sure sign of remote piloting. The ARCs and walkers had pinned it, then engaged it with enough concentrated fire to threaten even the Brass Cog's exotic-metal armor. More than enough firepower to penetrate the thinner internal firewalls and wreak havoc on the exposed systems of the incomplete war machine.
Her assets, on paper, are limited. The modified B-2 carrying her and her team like munitions-little more than a Masses-built shell over Q Division hypertech-is her primary source of vision, its smartskin letting her see through the warbird's structure and its cloaking field like it wasn't there. Her support includes satellite recon and recon drones-but the only munitions she has are a handful of short-range self-defense weapons on the heavier recon drones and six advanced cruise missiles. She hasn't finished building Task Force Camlann, but she knows that the Technocracy isn't squeamish enough to refuse to use a tool if it's incomplete, so long as it works. And her heavy tactical unit, a dozen high-spec cyborgs, ten of them full-conversions including herself and Kessler, is both operational and more than adequate for an operation like this.
"Wish our side had an ace pilot," Kessler jokes, "because I was hoping they'd have solved their problem already and we could just go on vacation."
"Bullshit, Sarge," one of the ex-Shock Corps commandos responds. "You love this shit, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Come on, what would you rather be doing? Lounging on a Brazilian beach, or launching yourself into a warzone at Mach 10?"
"You've got me there," Kessler responds, laughing. It's not Kessler's first time doing assault pod insertions. "But I want to know why it's been twenty years since I've last done one and the smartgel still tastes like strawberry-flavored snot." Kessler knows that this petty inconvenience has made more than one commando replace their human lungs with synthetic ones. Iteration X probably considered it a feature back then, not a bug.
"You don't have lungs anymore, you don't need to breathe it in," the same commando responds. "Think of the poor people here with regular lungs, like me. Why do they make us inhale this shit?"
"Because otherwise you'd have your lungs explode upon impact, which is generally to be avoided," another cyborg responds. "Unlike us superior full-conversions."
"Sorry that some of us didn't get upgrade priority."
"Enough," Major Clarent says. Even though her response comes through the network as nothing more than a mild statement, everyone there respects her, and the network goes silent instantly. "We're one-twenty seconds until deployment, so we're enabling low-observability comms and redundant tacnet. Do final readiness system checks, especially on life support. If your life support efficiency is anything under 98%, abort. We can handle the mission with a few aborts, and we don't benefit from landing corpses." She waits patiently as soldier after soldier checks in with armament, implant, and biomedical status, approves each of them for deployment. She's unsurprised that none of them have had to abort. Camlann has the resources to operate a tiny echelon of assault cyborgs at full efficiency just fine. The tip of the spear is still just as sharp. It's the rest of the spear which might have problems.
The rotary launcher starts to spin up, and Major Clarent feels a shudder as each projectile-assault pod or cruise missile-is launched. The cruise missiles dive towards their designated targets, acting as a vanguard to the commando assault. The sky above the forests erupts in a bouquet of orange-red explosions from spoofed proximity warheads as Oversight's forces respond. Two cruise missiles get close enough to deploy their payload through the curtain of jamming and point defense-and a heartbeat later, Oversight's aircraft are nothing more than metal vapor clouds and twisted Primium structural members spiraling down towards the forest floor. The damaged combat walker takes a half-dozen plasma-charge submunitions and burns as well, the heat from the plasmaburst warheads sufficient to ignite even metal.
A few of the tacnet indicators blink the orange of abort as ground fire intensifies from the remaining troopers-no deaths, but two troopers have taken enough damage that the pod's computer brains have shifted course for a soft abort. They'll have to be retrieved later. Major Clarent marks their locations, and watches the time until impact indicator tick downwards towards zero, sees the ground rushing towards her at an impossible speed. The screen blacks out the instant the impact indicator hits 0, and a moment later Major Clarent feels the crushing impact.
She feels the impact even through the inertial dampeners, even with a skeleton made of Primium alloy and fullerene compounds, even with artificial muscle woven from stronger-than-steel fibers and an armored, hardened cyberbrain with its own inertial dampers and shock absorbers, Major Clarent feels the impact rattle her bones. But she ignores it, and a moment later she's out of her pod, giving orders to her forces to hunt the enemy.
***
Despite the inertial dampeners of the pod and the reinforcing injections and the smartgel, assault pod deployments are anything but gentle. Every one of Task Force Camlann's commandos feel the bone-jarring impact of the assault pod deployment, except for one. The ZERUEL is amorphous, designed specifically to resist forces such as this. Kessler's body harmlessly absorbs and dissipates the impact through its distributed composition, keeping him fully conscious and active during the microseconds of deceleration.
Kessler orders the pod to eject him, and the pod dutifully obeys, uploading an unstable reactionware patch to his brain in accordance to protocol. The world slows further as his cognitive acceleration factor skyrockets, and physical acceleration is boosted to a slightly lesser extreme. The patch can only safely last a handful of seconds-but it gives the trooper a tool to fight their way out of a bad position or exploit a good position.
The pod shudders as area-suppression charges detonate, the passenger module disintegrating around him into a cloud of shrapnel and dissolving smartgel. At this level of cognitive acceleration, the battlefield is nearly frozen-and so is he. His movements are like swimming through concrete, a side effect of his cognitive acceleration far outstripping his physical acceleration.
There's a suit of power armor pinned underneath a fallen tree, an unfortunate Oversight trooper who ended up too close to the pod. His Haldeman is structurally intact, which means he's probably unconscious or crippled rather than dead. Two humanoid heat shimmers move fractionally towards him, a handful of millimeters at a time. Kessler can see through their camouflage, and concludes from their inhumanly fast, jerky movements that they're probably augmented or on combat drugs.
He targets both soldiers with a barrage of basic minimissiles, the launchers falling away from his armor suit after they empty their payloads. Point defense systems start to scythe the munitions out of the sky with ribbons of ultraviolet light or bursts of directional shrapnel, but they don't get all of them, and one power-armored enemy vanishes for a moment underneath the impacts of several high-explosive warheads before he or she dives through the explosions, returning fire with blue-white lances of plasma. Molten filaments of ablative armor shed from Kessler's powersuit where the enemy plasma rifle scores glancing blows, the white-hot rivulets starting small fires wherever they hit the forest floor.
Tacnet informs him his fireteam's sniper can get line of fire to the hostilesand simultaneously, the Oversight commando staggers as a blue-white beam cuts through forest. His partner moves to break line of sight from the sniper-giving Kessler enough time to start hammering away at the wounded Oversight operative with the heavy railgun. Blue-white lances and explosions surround him, but he keeps his weapon steady, chewing the target apart, even as orange armor breach warnings and yellow damage indicators fill the ZERUEL's HUD. Kessler's fought rogue cyborgs and the blessed warriors of the Traditions. He's seen men sprint faster than a car on two broken legs, stay fighting for an hour with their heart destroyed from a plasma lance that should have vaporized their body with it. He's fought through Chantries with major organs destroyed and running on tertiary power, with a leg fused into a solid mass from the heat of a Reality Deviant fireball. He knows what you need to kill a determined combatant.
The second trooper dodges deeper into the forest to avoid the fate of his comrade, still firing all the while. Blue-white spears of plasma impact Kessler's armor, generating scintillating auroras from its defensive fields and setting nearby foliage on fire. Kessler marks them in tacnet as he returns fire, and a quartet of heavy missiles arc up past the forest canopy, then make Mach 20 death-dives on the unfortunate Oversight commando, presaged by a wavefront of basilisk code to corrupt enemy point defense fire control. Two explosions fountain debris dozens of meters up, and Kessler puts another pair of missiles and tasks another soldier's gun drone on the target to confirm the kill.
Kessler's perceptions rush back to normal as the boost wears off. "Looks like they're taking Roth pretty seriously," he comments. "Those were what? MA-31s? 33s? I can't tell without looking at their internals." They're years more advanced than anything he's used, but the ZERUEL has extremely comprehensive databases, and he's kept up with modern military hardware since his unintended exile.
"Sounds about right." Major Clarent sends back. "We've encountered five of them so far, including the two you've hit. If they're using a full heavy element, there should be three more. They were prepared for heavy intervention."
Kessler nods. "They're also pretty well-versed in anti-cyborg tactics. They didn't bother with the light guns, just went at us with lasers, plasma, and high-yield guided ordinance."
"So what's your evaluation?" Major Clarent asks.
"I'm a bit out of date," Kessler admits, "but I think these folks aren't our evil twins. They've got the gear and they were definitely not baseline, but they fought more like NWO than Iterators." He's been thinking about this throughout the fight, and he's had more than enough time to do his research. "And I can see from tacnet that several of the Haldeman users were a lot stronger and faster than unaugmented humans would be. So NWO or Syndicate Enforcers, using genemods or drugs or minor cybernetics and high-end suits, backed up by either non-Enlightened cyborgs or even 'borged-up masses armed forces in lower-end kit. I noticed that the data package Major Dubois sent to us when calling for retrieval mentioned a lot of Oversight operations were conducted by NWO tactical or Syndicate Enforcers if they couldn't use patsies with a legitimate excuse. I had my theories as to why that might be when I saw it, but this fight makes it a lot more likely that they're relying on those because they couldn't trust the Shock Corps or Damage Control not to leak. Even in Izanagi, most of the rogue Progenitors weren't Damage Control. Just augmented and individually dangerous. And our experience in Ragnarok was that command structures for our cyborgs were largely intact, the problem was HITMarks and robots."
"I concur. So the bad news is that they're already busy breaching their way through the compound. But," Major Clarent says drily, "the good news is that the ones who are really dangerous are probably NWO." She doesn't have to tell them the tactical situation-tacnet does that for her. Twenty enemies killed or incapacitated, including five MA-32 users and both of the combat walkers, at the cost of four casualties, one recoverable fatality. There's brief laughter on comms. Without pausing for the laughter to subside, Major Clarent sends another set of tactical coordination plans over tacnet for a sweep and clear of the Etherite base. She doesn't need to do anything more, as the ex-Iteration X commandos of Camlann respond as one. "Just remember, these are going to be NWO tactical teams," Major Clarent sends, "and NWO tactical teams are very good at what they do. Don't underestimate them."
Kessler acknowledges her over the network. They won't underestimate the enemy, who are well-equipped, well-trained, and very skilled. But in a few minutes of brutal room-to-room fighting, Task Force Camlann's cyborgs demonstrate again why the Shock Corps was-and still is-the premier combat arm of the Technocratic Union, not the NWO's tactical operatives or the Syndicate's enforcers, and why all of them are a cut above the Masses no matter what equipment they use.
"You look like shit, Donald." Kessler observes idly, when he finds the Ragnarok team and their VIP hiding in what looks like a panic room. Oversight wouldn't have been stupid enough to let them have a clear evac route, and if they hadn't found any undocumented secret entrances or exits, it would have been pointless to try to flee through exits mined with monofilament slicers and claymores without more time to defuse the mines before Oversight could corner them.
"You say I look like shit but you don't look much better either, John." Donald jokes back weakly, taking a meaningful glance at the plasma burns on Kessler's armor and the railgun penetrations. "How's it been?"
"Pretty good," Kessler admits. "Been making some progress cleaning house. Good work holding out, all of you. We've got an ARC coming in for evac now that the area is clear, and if that doesn't work we have enough spare power and ammo to walk you out of the jungle if need be. You," he says to Roth, "are a pretty high priority VIP right now. So we're here to keep you safe. Major Dubois, the facility should be clear, but Major Clarent and the rest of the forces are doing a sweep for any surprises Oversight left us." The name Roth gave for the enemy group. "We'll escort you and the VIP out."
Adele nods curtly, lowering her weapon fractionally. "Sergeant Major Kessler. As you can see, we are largely uninjured, although we're somewhat low on ammunition and explosives." Kessler notices the streaks of dried, rust-red blood on her face and on the tears in her and Constable Bennett's body armor, but he knows that they're just evidence of their impossible, shapeshifter-like healing abilities.
"Hey, dragonslayer." Elsa says back, tiredly. She looks a little worse off than the Progenitors, with several tears in her synthskin revealing carbon-black dermal plates or synthmuscle and dried electroconductive gel. Kessler can see silvery Primium, dull from scratches, from where an explosion stripped her shin to the bone. But her wide grin and animated eyes show that she isn't even a little tired, despite the damage. "Glad you could take some time out of your busy schedule punching jumbo-jet size dragons in the face to help us with some small fry."
Kessler grins back. "I heard South America was a great vacation spot, and I just had to join in. Got a little lost on the way to the beach, though. You did great work holding out."
"We lost the Bobs and Vanessas that Roth used here and still had codes to," Elsa says, "and that helped a lot, because we could use them to delay them at chokepoints. Then it was just hide and seek ambushes, until they started moving in larger groups with heavier hardware. We lost the rest of the constructs that way."
"Did you lose anyone?" Roth finally replies, with what sounds like legitimate concern. If he noticed the lack of an honorific, it doesn't show on his face or in his voice. Kessler's surprised that Warren Roth could sound regretful. Proud men like that rarely are, and Kessler knows that very well. What, Kessler wonders, changed his worldview? What trauma or revelation was capable of breaking that pride and showing him how to change? The Syndicate executive puts his weapon down, finally, and holds his arms straight ahead, daring-or perhaps begging-to be led away in handcuffs. Still some pride left, then.
"No deaths. Several casualties." Kessler responds. He and his team don't bother handcuffing Roth, but they do take his weapons from him-and he allows them to without complaint.
But Kessler understands the number of dead commandos isn't what Roth really wants to know. He wants absolution of a sort. And that, Kessler can't give. All he can do is bring him back to Command, let him tell them about Oversight and about Control. And perhaps that might be enough to plant a seed, that one day might let Roth forgive himself for what he's wanted to do. Because if someone wants grace, they can't hope for either the forgiveness of heaven or the punishment of hell. The only thing they can do is to live with the consequences of their actions.
***
"Shouldn't the Void Engineers be dealing with alien invasions instead of outsourcing?" Corporal Goodman asks, adjusting the fit of his equipment. Like all of the combat cyborgs in the helicopter, he's wearing tactical gear with "FBI" scrawled on it in big block letters, over an artificial muscle suit. Although he's not heavily augmented by the standards of Camlann's heavy units or the Shock Corps's best, he's still an exojock with the massive myomer-augmented bulk and Primium skeletal reinforcement that entails, with reaction boosters and cybereyes and dermal reinforcement. Of the dozen men and women in the Shedu's passenger compartment, several are like Goodman-talented neophytes with just enough experience to understand how to make use of their skills and augmentations, but inexperienced enough that forming them into a cohesive team should be easier than with old veterans. All are augmented, but the augmentation is akin to the modern Shock Corps rather than the old throwbacks of Kessler's last mission in Brazil. Militarized prosthetic limbs and subtle Primium skeletal mesh and light dermal armor. Kessler and Major Clarent are the only full cyborgs, and only three of the twelve are exojocks.
Kessler notes that Goodman seems more comfortable with his equipment than the rest of the team-but a few years ago, he was still SWAT, before the 'mass shooter' and the hospital stay and the new job offer for a crippled hero with a bullet in his spine. "It's standard procedure to send cyborgs against Pleiadians," Kessler explains, "because psychic powers aren't so hot on cyborgs. VEs don't have many cyborgs stationed groundside anymore, so that's why we're loading up with phase disruptors and phasic rounds for this op." The operation itself is routine-rural America has been host to an abnormally high number of EDE incursions for as long as Kessler remembers. He's fought his way through small-town nightmares involving evil snow queens or bulbous-eyed psychic aliens or ghosts of slave plantation owners several times. It's why he thinks this is an excellent final examination for the new soldiers of Camlann. It's relatively low risk, but still unpredictable enough and dangerous enough that he can make sure that they don't just test well.
"What do you think about our new recruits?" Major Clarent sends over private tacnet channel, as she checks her carbine and its blue-tipped EDE disruptor rounds. "They scored well in both unit cohesion and individual prowess, but you thought we should run them through an actual mission first before I turned them over to subordinate officers."
"You don't know how things work in the field until you field-test them. It's a tautology," Kessler admits, "but that doesn't make it untrue. But I think they'll do fine. I'm more interested in the other missing pieces of our org chart."
"Soldiers are easy, but leadership material is hard." Clarent admits. "Almost everyone who I'd want in a leadership position is too experienced to be easy to bring over and too comfortable in their own position, or too ambitious to stay there for long."
"You asked me to consider every angle," Kessler responds, "so let's consider if we need another tactical operative to lead a tactical team right now. We've got plenty of good soldiers, and we can promote a few of them internally if we need to. Lieutenant Sylia did well last op, and I don't think anyone would object if you decided that she was ready for further responsibility."
"I agree that 2LT Sylia might be a decent choice for command, but if we do that, I assume you don't want to waste our resources. So you'd want to use the resources and favors earmarked for acquiring senior personnel for people who can provide us connections or intelligence instead of firepower?" Clarent asks. "We have plenty of logistics and support assets, so I'm curious why you want more unconventional warfare and espionage types."
"As much as I'm an ex-exojock, I appreciate the necessity of covert operations. I'm just not the sort of person who wants to be doing them." Kessler responds. Even as he is, his mind is considering a dozen other problems-running an inventory of his arsenal, analyzing the tactical maps and known UFO floorplans, analyzing documentation of Pleiadian weapons and equipment, making modifications to the anti-psionic programs running in the Camlann team's ADEIs. "I'm not exactly demanding or recommending more covert operatives or hackers, but I wanted to raise the possibility to make sure we were thinking of all the angles. Our drone pilots, cyberwarfare team, and Brakowski's NWO tac-team are fine for most quiet jobs. If push comes to shove, we're pretty well covered on that front. Our recon and intel section also has a handful of ex-NWO we've accumulated from Ragnarok who could be sent into the field if we needed it. But the question is what we're actually doing." Kessler sends back. "If we're mostly handling direct action, and our intel support exists mostly to find doors to kick, we're well-equipped for that. If we're planning on doing quieter ops, maybe not so much."
"Camlann's remit is so broad it could cover almost everything." Major Clarent replies distractedly, the bulk of her attention spent on mapping out the old, dying industry town and the nearby Pleiadian UFO they're here to seize. "It's an independent special forces operation intended to handle sensitive, high-risk operations, which covers almost anything that could involve combat or armed reconnaissance."
"Not much of a help," Kessler agrees. "So what do you think?"
"I'm thinking maybe we should structure our missing echelon this way," Clarent says, sending a file. "They should help fill in what I see as useful additional capabilities while avoiding overspecialization. Speaking of structure," Clarent sends, "are you going to actually take that promotion?"
"Wouldn't feel right," Kessler says. "But I don't think I have a choice." Ragnarok doesn't work like the Shock Corps. Enlightened personnel should be officers. The NWO and Void Engineers both did it that way, as did the pilots and vehicle jockeys in the Shock Corps. Only cyborg special ops teams doggedly stuck to Enlightened 'enlisted.' Not that there was much of a difference when chances were you were in for life either way. "When in Rome..." Kessler says. In the end, times change. People change. And clinging to the past and to nostalgia wouldn't serve any purpose.
"Then allow me to congratulate you, Lieutenant Kessler." Major Clarent sends.
John Kessler grins. He's still not sure he deserves the rank, but hell. He's been a general in the movies. He'll make it work.
The secondary unit should be online soon. It's currently undergoing preparations and should be operational within six months:
Kessler and Clarent are discussing senior staff members and team leads for Camlann operations. Note that this is, as said above, more of a statement of where they think the task force is going to go, and what they want to do, than some major way to acquire new goodies or whatever. So consider it in that context. Posts which explain your reasoning for why you think a certain personnel choice is pushing Camlann into a certain way of acting or thinking will be helpful for that. Omakes may also give votes more weight, if you want to do that.
Of the following, they settle on two final choices for senior personnel:
[ ] HITMark VII Test Unit 02 'Astrea'-The Ideal: The Astrea unit is a HITMark VII Posthuman Tactical Command Intelligence test model, a post-1999 HITMark design that is intended to act as a dedicated command and control unit, rather than leading assaults. Although still heavily armored and armed for self-defense, the HITMark VII's cost is largely due to their brain being a powerful quantum hypercomputer, providing them with massively superhuman cognitive ability in just about any way you care to name. Astrea herself is an early test model, and has about seven months of experience-just enough experience to sand away some of the rough edges of a combat construct. Although her flexibility would be limited compared to an Enlightened officer, her superhuman intellect, multitasking ability, and integrated command, control, and communications hardware make her nearly unmatched at planning and commanding operations. And moreover, the Iterators on her team would very much appreciate Ragnarok demonstrating the viability of their design in the field.
- Hyperintelligent tactical intelligence designed for leadership duty
- not Enlightened
- Quantum hypercomputer provides acausal data analysis (Time 2/Mind 1), zero-time cognition (Time 4/Mind 1), fast-Bayesian tactical solution matching (Time 2/Entropy 2)
- Advanced C4ISR system for total battlespace coordination (Mind/Forces/Correspondence 2)
- Secondary tactical computer system provides various tactical subroutines for self-defense purposes
- Hardened hyperalloy combat chassis with integrated weapons systems and self-repair capability based on heavily upgraded HITMark V/SP3 chassis-superhuman strength, speed, durability, integrated plasma cannon and secondary energy weapons, Primium vibroblades, HURRICANE close-in blast projector
- Synthflesh shell designed by collaboration between Japanese and Chinese iterators for maximum demographic appeal
[ ]Captain Lixing Zhao-The Treadstone: Much like how more than a few Operatives think the Shock Corps is full of unsubtle thugs who have a phobia of dirt, the Shock Corps too often sees the Operatives as oversexed cowards who should complain less about being put into mild danger some of the time. But NWO tactical units are still respectable combatants who even the Shock Corps have to acknowledge are dangerous men and women, and an experienced NWO commander of said tactical units is quite valuable-it's not an occupation conducive to living a long life. Captain Zhao has spent decades in NWO tactical operations, primarily engaging in espionage support activities such as hot-zone extraction, long-range reconnaissance, and special forces assaults, all with no cybernetic or genetic augmentations-just a long-term drug regimen and biofeedback conditioning. The benefit of having lower profile soldiers who can act in plainclothes and hide from enemy senses is invaluable. But both Kessler and Clarent are aware that drugs and biofeedback training might make you tough and strong and impervious to pain, but they don't make you bulletproof.
- NWO Operative Tactical Team Commander
- One of the founders of China's earliest special forces units, inducted into NWO 03/1990 after late Enlightening
- Spheres: Correspondence 2, Entropy 1, Forces 2, Life 2, Matter 4 (Improvisation), Prime 4 (Personalization), Time 3
- Expert in armed and unarmed combat, small unit leadership, trained in wide variety of intrusion and espionage techniques
- Fluent in Chinese, English, Hindi, Japanese, Korean
- Physiopharmaceutical augmentation-IRON HAND pharmaceutical regimen (pain and fatigue suppression, improved strength and endurance, reaction speed and perception enhancements), MITHRADATES inoculation (toxin and bioweapon resistance)
- Interests-Chinese literature and poetry, international relations, national security policy, cooking TV shows, Bollywood action movies
[ ]Alex O'Shea-The Cyberspace Cowboy: Flamboyant and talented, Alex was a hot-shit VA cyberpunk until false accusations of Neffandery forced them to go corporate for protection. Even after they managed to prove their innocence and find the real culprit, enough bridges had been burnt that staying in Iteration X looked like a much safer choice. Although going corporate has done a number on their VA-rep, the occasional attempt to take them down in the Digital Web has kept them sharp, and their target choice and influence has kept them embedded in the VA rumor mill. Kessler and Clarent can offer them the chance to be a real hero, going up against the digital equivalent of dragons, as well as a chance to strike a blow against Threat Null and avenge lost friends. Although Alex provides raw talent to Camlann's cyberwarfare assets, the main reason Kessler thinks Alex might be useful is because they have Traditions contacts and therefore might be a useful intelligence resource if carefully managed. Major Clarent isn't sure how they'll adjust to the more organized and regimented ways of Shock Corps cybercommandos than being a Iteration X techie, though.
- Ex-Virtual Adept superhacker
- Self-taught coder and hacker, known authority problems
- Spheres: Correspondence 4 (Digital Web), Forces 4 (Electronics), Mind 4 (AI), Prime 4 (Programming)
- Extensive VA and masses hacker contacts after having cleared their name of false Neffandery accusations
- Targeted by Pentex for termination due to cyberattacks against Pentex electronic infrastructure
- Extensive neural augmentation-ADEI, superconducting neural shunts, integrated AI submind assistant, implanted electromagnetic effector system
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Kill/Death Ratio: 11.29 (reported 19,248 times for hacking)
[ ]Lieutenant Anjali Sylia-The Champion: Sometimes you just need reliable personnel who know the culture and tactics of the group they're joining and can fit into the group without tension. As a Shock Corps veteran, Lieutenant Sylia fits that mold well, especially since she's operated with Camlann since its inception. Her combat record is sparse-she only entered service a decade ago, after the end of the Ascension war-but like many Shock Corps officers it's very distinguished. She specializes in close assault owing in part to her Vrishpara-class tactical body and talent in custom wetware coding. Unfortunately, her husband is Adrian Sylia, an Iterator who has, despite his best efforts, never become anything more than an Exceptional Citizen, and therefore her familial connections are somewhat limited.
- Iteration X Shock Corps commando, now attached to TF Camlann
- Recruited into Iteration X 06/2004 from MIT after Awakening ~01/2004, was offered, and accepted, transfer to Shock Corps due to high test scores for tactical problem solving, bravery, and mental resilience
- Recruited into Task Force CAMLANN by Major Jane Clarent upon CAMLANN's inception
- Spheres: Correspondence 3, Mind 3, Matter 4 (Cybernetics), Prime 3
- Vrishpara-class militarized cybernetic body (post-1999 variant of the Uziel close quarters conversion). Augmentation optimized for close quarters combat-overclocked HELIOS reflex booster, electromagnetic muscle boosters, inertial dampening systems, fullerene mesh dermal weave.
- Competent engineer, computer programmer, and intrusion specialist. Expert special forces commander.
- Married Macrotechnician Adrian Sylia 11/2014. 2 children, Parvati Elene Sylia (decanted 09/2015), Richard Aditya Sylia (decanted 10/2015).
[ ] Agent Alya al-Saud-The Dilettante: A look at Alya al-Saud's academic credentials would impress anyone in the Ivory Tower or Syndicate. Her family expected her to become a young influencer who could advance the Syndicate's causes and long-term plans. Instead, she took a completely different turn and decided to go play soldier, using her contacts to get tactical training and augmentation and use that to get a position in the Enforcers. Due to family influence, she's promptly gotten stuck in operations she's utterly overqualified for-it's hardly necessary to send an Enlightened, heavily augmented agent to deal with Pentex paying local gangs in bane-tainted drugs to harass rival companies out of the area. She clearly has some talent-her skills are perfectly adequate for the job and Kessler thinks that if she's forced to apply herself rather than coast on connections and augmentations she'll improve rapidly. But right now, she's a middling mage whose benefit would largely be in exploiting her connections-and if handled poorly, she could become a liability.
- Augmented Enforcer (direct action concentration)
- Graduated Damian 06/2000 with the equivalent of a MBA, a Ph.D in economics, and a LLB. Admitted to Bentham Tactical Operations program 09/2001, after prior third-party private training in tactical operations. Graduated from Bentham with a General Tactical Operations Certification and an Intermediate Espionage Certification 11/2004.
- Spheres: Correspondence 1, Dimensional Science 2, Entropy 1, Forces 1, Life 2, Mind 2, Primal Utility 2
- Extensive genetic enhancement-muscle strength, speed and endurance improvements, skeletal fullerene deposits, improved cardiovascular effectiveness, improved memory and cognitive/reaction speed, improved sensory acuity, improved healing and toxin/bioweapon resistance
- Cybernetic augmentation-ADEI with tactical submodules, nanomedical implants, Primium bone lacing, fullerene skinweave, precision skeletal joint micromotors, implanted SAFEGUARD shield generator for vital organ protection
- Extensive but shallow expertise in many fields, polyglot
- Family contacts provide her with high-end equipment and extensive resources despite low-priority missions. Extensive wardrobe of fullerene-weave smart clothing with integrated offensive and defensive functions.
- Mostly untested in combat against near-peer or peer opponents. However, analysis of prior combat engagements shows adequate understanding of ranged and close-combat fundamentals and high-end tactical training.
- Known to the public as "that Saudi princess who seems to spend most of her time just accumulating random degrees and occasionally posts fashion photos on Instagram." Nobody really understands how she manages to still keep up with fashion trends while accumulating degrees for no reason. Nobody would expect her to be able to crush a man's skull in one hand like a grape either. However, the masses impression that she's basically just wasting her talent is probably accurate.
- Considered a bad influence on Aqidah al-Saud, which is probably why the two are in regular contact via instant messaging.
- Former Ragnarok Command LOKI Agent, originally recruited by the Order of Reason in 1658; former Knights Templar, Operative, and SPECTRE
- Very close association with the Inner Circle, Invisible College, and Control. Acted as troubleshooter for all three groups, primarily focusing on external enforcement of Invisible College edicts and Control orders. Most of the people he killed deserved it. Most.
- Spheres: Correspondence 4 (Surveillance), Entropy 5 (Anything Can Be Killed), Forces 3, Life 4 (Self-Improvement), Matter 3, Mind 4 (Interrogation), Prime 5 (
God's WrathParadox Mitigation), Time 3, Spirit 4 (Banishment) - Received Combat Bionano Augmentation in 1660; apparent age ~30. Side effects of CBA have required Agent Richter to avoid prolonged operations on Earth, leaving him with a limited view of the human condition and a slight misanthropic streak. Subsequent custom firmware patches to CBA have optimized almost all aspects of Agent biology.
- Combat Bionano Augmentation: Xenosourced nanotechnology originally used by Order of Reason after discovery from unknown sources. Rare and expensive, but potent full-body combat enhancement providing improved physical ability, rapid regeneration, injury tolerance, and physical adaptability.
- Reality Deviants would say that the Order of Reason just stole a bunch of Hermetic and Verbena rituals and repackaged them.
- Additional augmentation includes Primium prosthetics for several bones including gradual replacement of sternum and rib cage, xenotech derived neural nanoware, and an ADEI implant (replacing an older uDEI).
- Recruited by PANOPTICON/OVERSIGHT 09/14/2008, left PANOPTICON/OVERSIGHT 11/16/2008 after suspicions confirmed that PANOPTICON/OVERSIGHT was violating Precepts of Damian.
- Contacted Ragnarok Command/LOKI command during counterintelligence 03/2016 during LOKI sweep of constructs and personnel for Oversight operatives, offered resources and intelligence on PANOPTICON/OVERSIGHT. Cooperation with LOKI provided significant actionable intelligence on OVERSIGHT operations.
- Given prior loyalty to Union ideals and an idealized understanding of Union leadership, it is extremely unlikely that Agent Richter is an OVERSIGHT infiltrator-particularly given the assets and operations that he has disrupted via his cooperation.
- However, joining Camlann would be a significant change of focus from an operative who reported directly to Technocratic high command and suggests a significant shift in Agent Richter's thinking-or the possibility that he seeks to replace Major Clarent as Camlann's commander.
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