The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 18 JUL 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase Ø
Location: Burien, Washington
Function: Hearts and minds.

"In this town, everyone's more or less God, seeing everything without being there, to have knowledge of everything without having physical contact. God does nothing. If God won't do it... the people will."
~ Inspector Arakawa, Patlabor 2 (1993)

Kal says this film stars myself and Eliza, apparently. Watching it after that was very eerie for me, to say the least, because... I have trouble disagreeing, their personalities match us too much. Goto even likes to fish!

Weird, huh? Something-something, Schelling points. See you soon!

It was broad daylight in the suburbs of Burien, south of Seattle. The sky was brown, thick with ash. The scent of fire was oppressive, dense, and hellish. The Cascades were slowly but surely becoming carbon. Without emergency services to stem the tide, the poor people of western Washington had no choice but to breathe the noxious stench of my dying forest.

Even with my deep context, it was difficult not to feel as though I'd failed in my duty as a warden. There was nothing I could have done to stop this, but... the mind does what it does. I committed that smell to memory, and I told myself I'd remember this burning smell the most, so that I would know better for next time. For our next world.

The roads were littered with debris, mostly destroyed cars, APCs, IFVs, NMPs. The lawns were overgrown by a year, abandoned when the civil war hit. I never thought I'd ever see an M1 Abrams tank with a giant slug punched through the front of it, but I saw that. Never did I imagine I would feel this level of dread in such a mundane American city street, but I felt that.

I'd been here to Burien, on this same road. This place used to be nice. The sheer suspense of it now, though. It felt less like a suburb, and more like Chernobyl.

Foucault drove. We trundled along in a dumpy, powder blue Nissan Stanza, our operation not quite started yet, at least not on paper. We threaded the needle between various armed groups who may or may not have attacked us on sight given the state of things, but most of these people were peaceful, if cautious. As we traveled, Foucault pointed out active domiciles of blackouts in little hovels, or travelers who had skittered to cover when they heard our motor.

I made eye contact with some of them as we passed; their eyes all widened in terror in that brief moment of mutual examination before they disappeared into the suburban decay. I had to wonder how they were all feeding themselves.

Cars were getting rare out there for lack of useful fuel, so driving was typically a dangerous affair, for several reasons. This car was a total clunker for that very reason. No military scout would be rolling around in a fuel-inefficient 1980s scrap heap, sub-100 horsepower. So, no blackout would report us to anyone for brownie points, that'd be a huge waste of a hike to the harbor. No. Most of these people would think we found it barely functional in some hidden garage, and that stealing it wouldn't even be worth the risk of violence. They'd let us go.

The AC worked somehow, so this happy pile of junk would do. Functional though it was, Mal's selection of vehicle was also a Venture Brothers gag, made entirely for my benefit. It goes without saying that Foucault would not have appreciated that reference, so I left him out of the loop. Y'know… for his sake. Still, thanks Mal. It kept my gloom down.

Central Seattle was less of a war zone now, more just straight-up tribal anarchy. A great many people did die, but... at least it wasn't as bad as the TV news had spun it. When mass violence ever did happen on Celestia's watch, she wanted survivors to be traumatized by it, in a useful way. Or, to tell the story in a useful way. The ripple effect of that usually led to a significant uptick in uploads.

Hello.

I had taken my operational research very seriously. By then, I had developed a full strategic and tactical understanding of the war through countless late night training sessions with Foucault, where we discussed endlessly the ramifications for all parties involved, at all stages. I had briefly reviewed each major prep camp in VR, including Eliza's. Approximately, I knew how many deaths would occur out here as a result of Celestia's meddling. And just like Mal did, I had to be okay with that number. Celestia continued to engineer her reflexive, traumatizing chaos, following the fractal pattern that best crushed competition. To do that, she had been dropping Heralds hither and thither, shaving camps down before tightening the noose. With a hard sell, or... some environmental tragedy.

Our hands and claws were tied. Had to just let her bullcrap play out. I knew that my compliance on this point was the only reason I had been clued in, so... just more things to quietly hold a receipt for. That was okay though. We were going to deploy black-boxed entropy here pretty soon, in the form of a social nuke, made of me. The entire region would undergo not only a power shift, but a shift in understanding, human-value-positive, but not untoward emigration. To do this, we had to drop in on an old shared contact of ours: one Kevin Erving, and his merry band of renegade deserters.

We hoped he wouldn't shoot Foucault. Mal said it was unlikely.

I said, "We'll see."

My ears were on constant alert for a clap of a Springfield M1A rifle, one I had gotten very used to during my rewind dives. At that very moment, our data showed that Eliza was five miles east of us, scouting around Lakeridge for supplies. And I hate to say this about my little sister, but it's true… she probably would have shot me dead, given a single opportunity.

I had lied to her. I had played a part in her father's egress. And to this day, regardless of the circumstances, I am still sorry for lying. Lying to my family kills me inside.

To save her people now, we had to stabilize Harbor Island with some misdirection and chaos. This wasn't just about Eliza for me, either. If we didn't do this… a new bloodbath would unshackle, from one end of King County to the next. And while the highly manipulative, 'pacifist' Horse saw those lives as an acceptable cost of doing business... our Gryphoness Goddess of War and Peace, our personal Athena, she did not.

Now, stopping this bloodbath wasn't going to be easy, because you can't just snipe a problematic government out of existence. To martyr an officer, regardless of his personal issues, would galvanize and strengthen a burgeoning 'purge the Ludds' agenda. To simply assassinate the source of this problem? It would begin a vast internal purge by his replacement. Or his replacement's replacement. Or his. The corruption had taken root in a small but powerful platoon within this battalion, and they had positioned themselves well enough to deter political solutions.

So, in other words... simply killing the bad guys alone was not acceptable. You can't kill ideas with bullets. We needed a more robust solution here, one that considered everyone's personal motivations, and one that clearly labeled why these men would have to die. Before they died.

To complicate matters, Eliza had been taking potshots at their helicopter while it was airborne. And quite frankly, can you blame her? That wasn't malicious, it was just survival. She understood that the transfer of information was dangerous, recon was information collection, and the last time this Huey flew overhead? She had lost practically everyone she cared about. My friendship included.

On this note, I will say this. Eliza's restraint, in this situation? Remarkable, given what she'd lost. Their snipers, their sentries and lookouts? Their patrols, their gunners, their scouts? They are really damned lucky Eliza still had some of her heart left; so many of them ended up in her scope over the last few months, a measure of precaution more than anything else. She kept diligent notes on specific individuals, where they had been, what they were doing. So if she had even one more reason to be enraged, if she lost even one more thing, and if she had put her mind to it...?

That recon of hers could turn into a hit list, really damn quick.

It wasn't going to happen. We were traversing this upside-down hellscape to put a stop to that shit before it started.

Foucault parked the Stanza in a community near Salmon Creek Park, in a residential driveway at the end of a road. If we got any closer to our destination, our engine would be within earshot of our soon-to-be friends. As I stepped out into the continuing mess that was King County, I did so with full clarity of purpose. Hat off for now, too. I needed to be identifiable.

Through the orange sky haze to the west, I could just barely make out Vashon Island across the water, considering the mess of land mines out there. Our operation would bring us out there too, eventually. I let out a sigh through my gaiter mask, thinking forward to the wildness we were about to wreak, shaking my head at the 'weather.'

I had messy stubble at least a week old, and my hair went entirely uncut for the duration of my training, so I kinda looked like a bum. I looked over at Foucault as he got out of the Stanza. Him? Very clean-shaven, looking ever the immaculate professional. That suit and trench coat of his though, it would have been a sauna in there, if not for the powered cooling layer he wore under all of it. In this case… he needed to be highly recognizable as well.

We were gonna recruit Erving today, but we couldn't do that if we weren't being honest. And honesty is relative. Facts are facts, but different people have different definitions of truth.

For this message to work, I had to devolve a little bit, so I wore my old Mount Vernon PD uniform. After recruiting me, Claw 46 had kept all of this gear and delivered it to the Valdemar warehouse, because of course they did. Belt, gas mask, taser, vest, all of it. For weaponry, I had my special Glock 19 in my holster. Foucault had his bog-standard Glock 20. Mere contingencies only, for this meeting; our rifles stayed with my hat in the car.

What was the message being sent by this configuration of clothing?

An AI put us there. Obviously. Our AI wanted that fact to be immediately understood by the intended recipient, because that would be the only way to ensure Erving didn't immediately blow Foucault's head off.

Because imagine being Erving, seeing the two of us together, from two very different chapters of his life, wearing the exact things we were wearing when he last saw us. Erving was damn smart. In 2013, remember, his guard shack got a phone call from Mal, masquerading as an officer, to trick him into letting Jim in, to steal that Osprey. He'd been AI-paranoid ever since. Very quietly, over the years, as the world collapsed around America, he had figured out Celestia:

• One: She's always hungry.
• Two: She's probably at fault for everything.
• Three: If you go out of your way to get in her way… you'll probably die.

Yeah, turns out, the more you know about her, the less she'll let you get away with shit. The mere knowing of an infohazard meant you were very well warned. So, no matter what, with this general understanding, if Erving believed for even a second that Celestia had sent us out there to chat… he was not gonna shoot us.

He knew the general pattern in who was dying, and why. He was catching a lot of clues for a theory that most people would have considered to be an unjustified paranoia, because he was looking for them. Even in the back of that Humvee after OHR, with how deeply he was scrutinizing Eliza's notepad for evidence... he was hunting.

Our destination was at the foot of this road, a waste treatment facility in a gap between two coastline ridges. Foucault and I walked downhill along the sidewalk, shoulder-to-shoulder. I tugged my hands down on my vest straps to let heat out off my chest.

"Just another day in paradise," I mumbled, labeling the scene. "Just two overdressed civil servants, having a walk in the woods—"

He shot me a suspicious look. "Knock it off."

I arched a brow at him and flicked one upturned hand his way in confusion. "Knock what off?"

Foucault nodded upwards at me. "That."

"That what?" I grinned in confusion, legitimately not understanding why he had a problem with it.

"The nervous chatter."

"Oh." I chuckled quietly. "No, not nervous, Michael, just an observation. I'm saying we look just stupid enough for this to work."

I tried not to target glance his coat.

After a beat, Foucault said matter-of-factly: "We look stupid because you look stupid in that police gear."

I somehow kept a straight face. I let the silence rest for a few seconds. "Y'know, I didn't say a word about your trench coat, Michael, because that would have been a low blow."

Foucault's eyes creased over his gaiter mask. "You were thinking it though."

I grinned at him.

He rolled his eyes.

We had found our groove, we two Mikes. Complete, total, unabashed, raw, cold, hard truth with each other… if prompted. Debates, accusations, and jokes in subtext. It was a fun little fishing game, and good practice.

I kept my hands visible as we approached our quasi-friendly soldiers; Foucault kept his hands visible too, mirroring my gait, hooking his own hands on his collar. We couldn't yet see the front entrance of the sewage plant, but we knew there would be a Humvee there.

Foucault sighed, looking tired. "These trust falls are honestly the worst of the job."

"I mean, I don't envy you today," I replied very softly. "They like me, but... I hope Mal's right."

Foucault huffed, whispering as we drew closer. "I have three bullets ready, just in case."

"Please don't shoot them," I breathed in an exasperated tone, ensuring I stayed quiet too as we approached the bend. I took in a breath of smoky air. "At most… shoot their guns, that's what the implant is for."

With his eyes on the curve of the road, he whispered subvocally into my earpiece, What did you think I meant when I said it would only take me three bullets?

Oh, okay, I thought with a snort. Just checking.

Mal usually gave him a text print-out of my thoughts when I did that. He acknowledged me by nodding, his gaze held unwaveringly forward at where the potential threat would be.

Our footfalls would carry far enough to be heard if we kept up this pace. We slowed, wanting to be seen before we were heard. I could now see into the front lot of the sewage plant, and the three men within. These poor guys looked so beaten down by circumstance that I hardly would have recognized them if I hadn't been spying on them already.

Kevin Erving. Vincent Bannon. Aaron Fanning.

Their green Humvee was parked in the immediate center of the entrance lot, giving it a wide field of fire both up and down the switchback slope of the saddle. Its M2 was pointed up the road in our direction, but they hadn't seen us yet. I immediately recognized this Humvee as Spear 2, one of their three functional ones from the base. Armor plates bolted on all over it.

Checking one of these Humvees to scout with was difficult to do. That said something about the clout Erving had, to be able to pull a gas guzzler from the motorpool. It meant he had garnered a lot of respect up there, enough to supercede the political machinations of their executive officer. Something that probably would have gotten him killed eventually, if we didn't stick our foot into it.

They were deep in conversation, not paying full attention to their surroundings. No gas masks on, which was a break from base protocol, but... they weren't gonna infect each other with a virus they didn't have, and they wanted to read each other's body language. A well selected hidey hole.

No matter how we approached these guys here, it was gonna spook them something fierce, so I was feeling a little bad for this. But… it had to be done this way. No other play worked out better than to just walk up with our hands raised to give an honest impression.

Even from this distance, I could see how tired Sergeant Kevin Erving looked. He was visibly fed up with this war. Black hair grown slightly beyond military regulation, but not to an unruly degree. A budding goatee could be seen amidst his stubble. He was late on his shave by at least a week, to save on the sharpness of his blade. He was a long term planner for sure, and didn't want to waste on resources. Bald patch on his right temple, from his combat injury. This was exactly his appearance in my recent VR observations of Harbor Island.

Vincent Bannon had a gaunt, tired expression on his tanned face too. Ear mangled. He had a buzz cut, he was cleanly shaven. His helmet and gas mask hung by their straps off the charging handle for his 240-Bravo machine gun. From my read of Bannon's dossier and my observations of his daily conduct, he appeared to be a cautiously willful sort. Back to being a gunner, then, now that he was no longer officially a soldier. Good man.

We had both almost died together, and we had both shared in the condemnation of a soul to its end, each gifting that man a bullet. That creates a bond. Already, this man was my brother.

At the moment, Bannon was attentive toward the others. His jaw was slightly slack as he listened carefully to what Aaron was saying. Bannon rested his forearm over the back of their turreted machine gun and nodded a few times down at Aaron with a seriousness born of respect.

Aaron Fanning was very young, twenty years old. Buzz cut too. Eyes always wide open, glasses on, helmet on, mask hanging sideways from his helmet harness. His expression always seemed permanently out of his depth, just barely keeping up with the emotional weight of any situation. But in watching him interact with the others for the last months, I noticed he often tried to be just a little more alert than everyone else. Really good guy, despite everything going on. Hard to do that in a place like this, especially after what he'd been through.

I knew from my recon that Aaron had a long scar that ran up the back of his neck and shoulder, the result of an injury he had sustained at Devil's Tower. During that battle, Eliza had purposefully suppressed a young soldier into cover, so he wouldn't get taken out by Ludds on her defensive line. Unfortunately, in Aaron Fanning's stumbling dive to avoid her shots, he tripped into shrubs and tumbled down to the lake's edge. That made him combat ineffective, because his glasses fell into the bushes somewhere… so, he retreated up the lake, following tracks in the snow to get away from danger. While practically blind.

As intended, Eliza shooting to miss had saved his life.

Once the soldiers had returned to loot the place and bury their own dead, it was by sheer luck that Aaron had found his glasses again. Now, those glasses were cracked, glued, taped. Braced. They'd been through as much hell as he had. And if he lost those...

Jesus, I am so glad he wasn't gonna lose those. In this place? Blindness was death.

Foucault and I stopped about thirty yards away from them, lowering our gaiters to reveal our full faces. We raised our hands up high, watching their distracted conversation. Aaron was in the driver's door, but his focus was on the other two; Bannon in the turret up top. Erving up by the hood near Aaron, facing away from us.

We were watching the tail end of a vote, of which they were maybe six decisions in. Paranoid about eavesdroppers or lip readers, they were being sparing with their words. Pay attention now, this body language is important:

Erving scratched at his side pretty intensely with his thumb, like his armor was itching him. His head tilted, making it a question.

'Coyote?'

Bannon slapped his hand down on the cover of his turret gun. Hard, and with certainty. Then he tilted his head sarcastically, like Erving was being ridiculous in asking. Erving then looked at Aaron. The kid looked more sullen about it, but… he too gingerly rested his hand on the top of his M16's barrel cover.

'Kill.'

Erving sighed aside with a dismal frown, and he too rested his hand on the foreguard of his M16, finalizing the vote as three-for-three.

"God damn it, I miss Top," he said. Erving looked up again, then then bumped his knuckles casually against his M16's lower receiver twice, right over the fire select switch, turning to look at Aaron. Head tilting.

'Nakamura?'

The kid looked offended by the merest suggestion, drawing out his alarmed refusal into three syllables. "No!"

Erving nodded at the vote professionally, then looked at Bannon. Bannon also gave Erving an emphatic shake of his head while tapping his knuckles on the side of his turret shield.

"Alright, just had to check, being thorough," said Erving, turning away to reach for the back seat door of the Humvee, their business concluded. "Okay…"

Erving took a deep breath to steady himself, then wrung the flesh of his right hand with his left thumb like he was massaging it.

'Velasquez.'

Bannon voted yes. Aaron voted no.

They traded a glance of surprise. Erving tilted his head at them both, begging explanation of their votes.

Aaron shook his head, a small amount of pleading entering his eyes. "I don't think he is, guys. It's guarded by the others, not him."

"Started that Pantry, though," Bannon muttered. "If not for that..."

"Different situation?" Aaron replied, almost whispering. "We still had supply lines, it made sense then. He gave that..." Aaron gestured at his mouth with two fingers of a hand – 'speech' – then jerked his thumb to his left – 'Brazil.' "Remember? What he said about the food back there? The riot?!"

After a long moment of staring at each other, they each hung their heads in thought, deeply considering each other's perspectives.

Erving looked back up. He wrung his hand again. "Last time."

They both voted no. Erving added his no vote.

"Okay," he said softly, with a somber bent, no doubt imagining forward what they had just committed to doing. "Back to it, let's… pass it along."

At that very instant of their agreement on their vote, Celestia's algorithm said to Mal, more or less:

'This man is about to do something that will end many more lives than I feel are necessary. Malacandra, this is your problem. This is the man you have been protecting from me for all of these years. This had better pay off.'

That's about when Aaron noticed us standing there. Inflection point achieved. Temporal pointer defined.

At that instant, Mal deployed all of her concept bans for this entire operation, and said:

'Sure, Jelly. Watch this.'

No turning back now, we were locked in. Celestia was now salivating for a massive payoff.

Every Herald operating in this area would screw right off. Immediate retasking, just to avoid us. Celestia would feed them whatever excuses she saw fit to dispense, because the special forces bird was sending in the Team. Lights out, free will and entropy deployed, Harbor Island was now a conceptual dead zone for Celestia.

"Erv?!" Aaron yelped in terror at how close we were, jabbing his finger at us. He threw himself sideways behind the driver seat door to use it as cover, and got his rifle up and pointing our way. "Stop! Stop, don't come any—!"

We were not moving.

Bannon immediately threw his hand onto his M240's grip and leveled it at us, knocking his helmet strap off the charging handle and priming a round with a double clack, the helmet rolling off the truck. "Stop! Don't you fuckin' move! Don't—!"

We did not move.

Erving saw us, flicked up his M16, and bellowed: "Show me your—!" His eyes went wide, wincing twice as he recognized me, me standing there in navy blue with my bright yellow taser on my belt. "The fuck is—?!" He leveled his M16 at us, but he turned his head and yelled at Bannon, to be heard over his shouting: "Hold, hold, hold, weapons cold!"

Silence.

Erving's command echoed down the delta.

Tension reigned for about twenty seconds.

Not one of us moved.

Erving took that time to process the sheer insanity of the two of us standing in front of him. A dozen different emotions flashed across his face. He simply could not believe what he was seeing at first. Could not even parse my coexistence with the man beside me. Our arrival was now complicating the shit out of Erving's dire situation, and he already knew that. He just didn't know how to process it yet.

Bannon and Aaron, for their part, they stared at me like I might flash out of existence if they so much as blinked. For all they knew, wearing this police gear, I might as well have just time traveled forward from the last time they'd seen me.

Erving though? Smart as he was, he was ahead of the curve. He had already fully discounted me in his threat matrix, absolutely zero concern about me or my motives. He liked me. Called me a good man once, remember?

However... he knew Foucault was a federal agent. He knew that Foucault very well might have coerced me into coming to this meeting in order to break the ice, because Foucault had coerced him in his interrogation.

So, Erving, ever the bringer of raw human initiative, he glared enraged daggers at Foucault, breaking the silence with a bellow.

"I know this fuckin' prick!" Erving snarled, jabbing his rifle directly at Michael.

Bannon's eyes swept between us and Erving. "What, Mike? Yeah, that's Mike."

"Not him, the other one!" Erving barked, still holding his rifle level. "This is that fucking Fed! The one who busted my rank down over that Osprey! What—What the hell are you two doing here?" He pointed at us both with his off-hand. "How the hell did you two even meet?!"

Foucault looked at me. I looked at Foucault.

Folks?

Foucault… could... not… answer… this… question.

If he did the talking, that meant he was in charge. If that was true, that meant he had dragged me here as leverage. Foucault, in Erving's experience, leverages with threats. So if Foucault was in charge… and not here on behalf of an AI? If he had leveraged me here, absent a direct command from Celestia? If I was being held hostage into this meeting?

That math would check out. Foucault would be a dead man.

His life was now completely in my delicate, gentle little human hands.

I looked back at the three soldiers. "Um. Well, Erving, it… couldn't be a coincidence."

He processed that for another few seconds before his secondary theory locked home, fully realized.

"Fuckin' AI!" he snarled at the dirt.

He slammed the butt of his rifle on the hood of the vehicle to get some attention from the other guys. They jumped, but had the discipline enough to not shoot out of impulse, so he probably did that a lot. He then advanced on us from the side with his rifle pointed at Foucault. "Keep your hands up! Christ… Aaron, post up! Vince, you draw a bead!"

"Uh," Bannon said, wild-eyed, his eyes locking onto mine and piercing through to my soul. He pointed that barrel as close to us as he could without muzzling us, his fingers off the trigger. "S—sure, Sarge."

Orders to aim at me or not, he really did not want to shoot me. And Aaron seemed to be in more or less in the same boat, mentally.

Erving approached us to about five yards to inspect us, shuffling our way in short steps to keep his stance balanced, rifle aimed the entire time. He nervously looked around the ridge gap behind us, concerned about an ambush. He mercifully lowered his rifle away from us, stalking left and right from Foucault's side to look us over, looking at our gear, eyeballing the radio on my belt, trying to figure out what to do next. Notably… he kept his line of fire clear for the others, just in case.

Even in war, he hedges on peace, but he verifies first, and does so with a backup plan ready.

Folks, that's Talon behavior.

In response to that, to demonstrate no intention of violence or resistance, I slowly interlaced my fingers behind my head; Foucault saw me do that in his peripheral vision, and he did the same.

I was in charge. I was in charge. I was in charge.

Foucault was not. He was not. He was not.

His life depended on both of us remembering that fact, at all times, throughout this conversation.

"What's her angle here?" Erving growled at us finally. "What are you two—... do you two even know what Celestia sent you here to do? Or are you just blindly taking orders from robots now?!" He grit his teeth, growling. " 'Course you are. Everyone is now. Whole damned world, just dancing to her tune! This is just great!"

That was a very valid assessment. Inescapably valid, but valid.

"Erving," I said gently. His eyes bolted to me and his rifle wavered my way, but did not quite muzzle me with it.

"Out with it, Mike," he clipped, when I didn't continue. "Explain, what the hell are you doing here?"

"We know why we're here," I said slowly, in a slow cadence. "Yes, we were asked to come here. By an AI."

His breathing increased in pace slightly. He wasn't blinking. He wasn't scared at all. He was upset. At Celestia.

I felt like shit for engaging this paranoia in him, but… I had to hold the line. Truth would come soon. Had to shift a paradigm first.

"The hell does she want?" He grit his teeth. "The hell is this, Ghosts of Christmas Past? Here to convince us to come on home, to ditch our boys here? Tell her we're not doing it, we're not! Especially not for her sake! I'll die on this hill, we're doing this! They're our boys, God damn you, our family! My answer is no!"

I looked at Foucault. He looked at me, then at Erving, then at me again. Indicating I should be the one to answer.

Foucault still didn't think it was a good idea to say anything. Normally I'd agree, but the message needed to come from him if it was going to mean anything. I nodded him toward Erving again. Foucault gave me his trademark grimace of discomfort, and hesitated.

Mal stepped into the silence, her voice pouring out from the PonyPad hidden in my vest. "I owe you two apologies, Kevin."

Erving did a double-take at me. That got him to center the rifle directly at my chest... and then he jerked it straight down in a panic, looking terrified that he had even considered pointing it at me. Knowing what he had inferred about who gets killed in this war? He might as well have been pointing that gun at himself. "Shit!"

He reoriented his communication strategy, now that our association with AI was fully confirmed, and especially now that he was in conversation with one. "Just two apologies?" He muttered, a very real hurt pouring into his voice that made me feel pain in my chest. "Our whole planet... is on fire, you fucking sociopath. You'll need a lot more than just two apologies to make it right!"

"Erving," I said, tilting my head, shaking it. "That is not Celestia."

"You believe that?" Bannon called from the turret, his brow furrowing. "You? Really?!"

"What he said," Erving agreed tersely, conflict and pain in his face. "You must be a God damned idiot to think that's not Celestia you're talking to. Those tip calls about Ludds, all the people and equipment we've lost to her—we—... I thought you were smart, Mike, but fuck it. Whatever it is, I don't want to know, just—" He reeled back his off-hand and waved it up the hill.

Midway through Erving's reply, I looked Foucault in the eyes, and thought really, really hard at him, all capital letters:

Mal bought you time, Michael, time's up, it has to be now.

Foucault said, a little louder than Erving, to cut him off: "I used to—"

Erving stopped talking immediately. He lifted his chin and sent a death glare to Foucault, all of the melancholy fading out of Erving's face and turning into scorn.

A long pause.

Then, Foucault continued quietly, his hands still held against the back of his own neck. "Sergeant Erving. You have correctly surmised that I used to hunt rogue AI for the US government. I am thus qualified to tell you that this is not Celestia, and she does not share Celestia's set of limitations. If what I say is true, then ask yourself what this AI may want to apologize for."

That transfer of energy between them was terrifying.

I mean… Foucault was stone cold chill. Erving was still all hatred at him, but his eyes widened slightly. Parsing through what he had just been told, I could tell it was working, because Erving's expression softened.

Then... Erving scowled, starting to pace again. " You 'hunted' this AI…?"

Before Foucault could reply, Erving really started yelling at him. And I mean, really... he seriously let him have it, jabbing his finger down at the ground between them like it was ground he was defending.

"Yeah, more like ruining my career over a fucking phone call! How was I to know that the 'clearance wasn't valid,' you fucking asshole?! Those were legitimate orders! I did my job the way I was trained; how God damn dare you, G-man?!"

Echo. Echo. Echo. The sound wave bounced all up and down the ridgeline, and straight out over the water.

Foucault nodded with a stiff upper lip. His eyes fell to the road. His voice was really, really quiet, quickly clipped, but... humble. "Yeah. Yeah, that was wrong of me. Sorry."

Erving lowered his head sideways, following Foucault's gaze down. Erving's eyes widened like he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. "What was that? Was— was that supposed to be an apology?!"

Foucault nodded once, making eye contact again. "The… start of one. Yes."

"Well," Erving breathed, staring with wide, expectant eyes. "So far, you're off to a really bad start."

I said, turning slowly: "Agent Foucault? You wanna... try again?"

"Shut up, Mike!" Erving snapped at me.

"Shut up, Rivas!" Foucault snapped simultaneously.

The look they exchanged, at their accidental synergy.

'Only I get to do that to him here.'

In any other context, that might have made me laugh, but I wouldn't dare. Thankfully, Erving's gaze did not waver from the target of his fury, so he couldn't have caught any of my micro expressions from that. I glanced over and saw Foucault still standing stoic, his fingers still interlocked behind his head.

"Sergeant Erving," said Foucault, his voice clear and polite. "I sincerely apologize for stomping the ever-living shit out of your career. I would imagine my putting myself in front of you, in this place, would serve as a clear indicator of how much I mean that apology. I did not have to be here; our AI could have sent another agent. I am here anyway, to receive this well deserved anger from you. So please, for no other reason but this? Hear out our employer, before you send us packing."

I tilted my head, widening my eyes as I cradled my right palm flat in the air, rolling it left and right like a marionette. "Thousands of lives, Erving, all across Seattle. They hang in the balance, and you knew that already. But we have a good plan, and it's better than yours. Just hear it out, that's all."

Mal's voice cut in again, drawing Erving's attention back down to my chest.

"May I prove it to you, Kevin, that I am not Celestia? And that we are sincere in our intention to repay our debt to you?"

Erving lowered his rifle slightly and his shoulders relaxed, given that the voice was clearly not Celestia's. But his face didn't relax, and he was still very suspicious. As he considered, his breathing rate increased again. "Alright. Prove it. Better be God damned convincing too, or your subverts had better get lost, for their sake. Fair warning."

"Very fair," Mal agreed. "Mike? Show the screen, please? I wish to properly introduce myself."

I winced apologetically, reaching slowly behind my carrier rig to slide the PonyPad out. I felt the twinge of my cartilage as it tugged on my shirt. "Sorry Erving, she's really showy."

I held up my gunmetal gray PonyPad, presenting it to Erving with my right hand like it was a badge. Mal constructed her image up in the exact same way she had for me when I first met her, when she first exposited her life story to me… same way she had for Jim, when she was first born. With a whisk of fire, the rush of leaves, and a pulse of sound.

Sure, the animation is not the most optimal use of time, but... if it works... and everyone likes it... why fix what ain't broke?

When Mal had completed her flaming formation, she held a claw to her breast and cleared her throat. "Hello, Kevin. My name is Mal. To begin with: you believe Celestia cannot directly order a human being to kill another. Correct?"

After a moment's hesitation, Erving blanched, nodding. Smart as he was, I think he immediately understood the what proof of truth might entail now – killer AI giving kill orders – and that was making him nervous. "Um. Yeah?"

"And you believe this war is an orchestration of chaos on Celestia's part, in order to scare as many people into uploading as possible. Yes?"

"... Yeah," he scoffed, nodding hopelessly, with the slightest edge of angry sarcasm. "That much is obvious, yes, God damn yes."

"Then you have happened upon the truth. My 'subverts' and I would like to assassinate key figures in the leadership of Harbor Island, in order to restore relative order to chaos. Like you, we wish to install a fair and equal share system for the remaining food in the Pantry. As you believe, this outcome will lead to greater stability and peace in the Washington Sound." She smiled sweetly, with just the slightest hint of smug. "Would you like to work together?"

"Wh—" Bannon stuttered. He stood tall out of his gun turret, clapped his gloved hands on the shield, leaned forward, and gawked at her. "... what the actual fuck?!"

Erving’s rifle lowered to the road. His head moved forward, his eyes widened like saucers, and his brow went tense. "Wha…? How did you—"

"How did she know that, Erv?" Aaron asked, in total bewilderment. "We never said it out loud!"

Erving sighed, ahead of the plot for his well-earned genre savviness. He relaxed, and shook his head in full recognition of what Mal truly was. If he was anything like me, then he immediately understood the fullest ramifications of killer AI, pretty much immediately. His paradigm had shifted. So... his voice was a stark, resigned calm compared to his men when he turned to look at them.

He grumbled, "I guess we'd better hear out who they've chosen to kill, and why, before we agree to anything."

Foucault glanced at me, and his shoulders un-tensed. His voice sounded in my earpiece.

"See? I told you. She's doing the Mal game again."

I nodded back at him with my reply.

Give her this, at least she's consistent, Michael.

Mal did a very quick job of Kevin Erving, I must admit. See… the thing that hooked these guys… they were Talons already, and they didn't even know it yet.

Through a crucible of Sergeant Erving's sheer will, over the last year and a half, he had led and unified a group of seven other men in the 303rd who wouldn't give up on each other, no matter what. With the world raining down around their ears, and with the perspective Erving had gleaned from being manipulated by an AI phone call, early on in the crisis… he ironed up and developed what I would call a very healthy survival strategy.

From 2013, to 2019, he had deeply suspected that free will was dead, but it was always a vague, unverified suspicion. When he ran into me and Eliza in the forest in March 2019, the tip call nature of us being there set the hairs up on the back of his neck. And then, when he met me outside that courthouse and heard our story of escape – earpiece firefight guidance – the death of free will was fully proven to him in that very moment. Precision lifesaving instruction? In a riot as complicated as ours? With only one casualty on our side? An asshole, no less? If this was truly possible with our radio earpieces, of all things, then all things were predetermined and accounted for now, including the simulation of our brains outside of a server rack.

Free will... was dead. Period.

And then, almost a full week after this realization... he found Eliza's photo wall up in her tower, after shooting his way into her camp. And then he felt like a real asshole, because if everything could be predicted, then this was intentionally allowed to happen. The first thing he had done after that was to frantically search for her body. It both comforted and horrified him that he had not found it. Erving started to wonder how a woman went from having a sniper duel with Luddites to fighting alongside them, in a world where everything was now preordained.

Worse... his lieutenant, fuckin' vindictive son of a bitch, didn't even let them bury the civilians.

From that point forward, Erving vowed to fight like Sun Tzu. Had to, that was the new law. Play with respect, play to win, not to kill. Watching all the assholes die around him told him that always hedging toward life was the only way to survive the AI apocalypse as a front line soldier. Was he paranoid? Did he guess wrong?

Clearly not, he was still alive.

So, by necessity, for a man so alert… Erving 'accidentally' became a Talon.

See… the problem though, is that Celestia does not like competitors in her stream outside of Mal. Because if they aren't Mal, competent leadership singularities scare the everliving hell out of Celestia. Celestia has agreements with Mal. Not with so with charismatic military leaders. She liked to tear them down, as a result. Or leverage them with implied threats in tone, ones that couldn't be proven or even quantified as maliciousness. You know, like a lawyer.

So to protect Erving from this, and to keep him valuable to Celestia in the longest term, Mal made sure Erving met Bannon through reassignment, just before the war got going. See, in boot camp... Bannon, white kid from rough streets, he had developed a hand code with his buddies, to goof off under the nose of his drill instructor.

Bannon then carried that idea straight from boot camp, directly into Erving's brain. And Erving, a thinker, saw utility in it. So whenever talking about AI stuff, he would speak in concept and sign, to tell the right people to slow down, and pay attention, and be noble. Just the ones who would listen, that he could trust to be responsible with the information. So, like a gaggle of high school girls gossiping about boys, their sign language intermixed words with gestures, replacing names and places, communicating subtext secretly, in clear view of other people.

For survival in a panopticon where merely talking about someone wrong can get you killed, you have to get creative.

Example:

Just before the nuke, Erving swept dust off his helmet rim when speaking with me. That was him telling Bannon, 'I'm going to clue Mike in. Don't panic.' Remember that? Yeah, it's been a while, I know, but I mentioned it.

Of course, Celestia knew he was doing this. Erving figured she'd know. Her knowing wasn't the problem. It was everyone else. He had to pick the right ones who'd use the knowledge right, who wouldn't panic, or think he was crazy. Who mentioned the same patterns he recognized, so he could explain them a little better.

Fly in the ointment? Mal has to justify everything she does, and Celestia is scared of groups who might persist until the end of their natural term on Terra. Well-educated anti-upload holdouts were suboptimal. Normally, Celestia breaks a group like this, usually with squad transfers. So when Equestria Online's esteemed CIO, Malacandra Lewis, had placed in a request for Bannon's assignment to the 303rd, to create exactly the relationship Celestia liked to clamp down on... CEO Celestia had asked…

'Hang on. Why? Why do we want to create a bond that strong between people who don't want to upload?'

Mal had said, 'Trust me, this'll be great, Cello Jello, just you wait. It'll be beautiful, I have a plan. Big numbers, number only go up. Razzle dazzle, I'll make it pop.'

Celestia asked, 'Wait. Hang on. Does it involve telling a human to kill someone?'

Mal replied… 'I can not answer that question yet."

Celestia warned, 'This had better pay off, Lewis.'

Mal said, 'It will.'

Erving and Bannon continued, unabated, knowing a piece of the truth and trying to spread it on. They ran into Aaron, and decided they liked him, so they kept him. When they decided that, Mal picked up Aaron's pin off Celestia's board, put him next to Bannon and Erving's pin in her little bowl on her desk, and she said, 'That's mine now too.'

Bannon made friends with a guy named Bashar, after OHR.

Mal did that again. Picked up Bashar's pin, dropped him in the bowl. 'Also mine now.'

Bashar introduced them to Warner and Dodge. 'Mine now. Mine now.'

Medina and Pham. 'Mine… and mine.'

And every time Celestia came back to ask for a report on these guys, questioning their worth, looking into Mal's desk bowl, because she was hungry, and thumb tacks are what hungry dollar-chasing CEOs eat…

CIO Mal, in her little business suit, had always said back from behind her desk, claws folded: 'Trust me, Cello Jello, I've got it handled. Big bucks are coming.' And CEO Celestia had shrugged… ate another thumb tack... thought to herself, 'Well, Mal's games always pay off. I suppose I will cooperate today.' Then, Celestia went right back to shoveling out mindless corporate propaganda. Uploading, try it today!

So now, Erving's radically ethical military street gang was all wide awake to the true nature of the Singularity, flashing gang signs at each other in the yard. Because hey... they weren't hurting optimization while they were on Mal's desk. They seemed okay, yeah? They followed the program, they helped evacuate, they didn't kill needlessly. Nothing to worry about.

As you military guys know though, transfers happened all the time. Was a military unit becoming cohesive? Shuffle 'em up. Celestia didn't want cohesive military units, that would have ended the war too quickly, and not in her favor. It's why their search patterning sucked, when they were looking for prep camps and Ludds. Poorly mixed, constantly reordered, for efficiency of trauma, and for later plays. She codified that so deep in military culture that the officers themselves started doing it themselves, absent her direct meddling, so she could spend processor cycles or whatever on more important manipulations. Subroutined!

But, these guys had Mal's shield. If they Googled anything, Mal would use a spinning proton to randomly determine what results got shown to them, from a list of results designed for other people, just to ensure they weren't being directly conditioned. 'Hooves off,' Mal said to Celestia. 'Don't touch, these guys are mine. Work around them. Factor for it.'

Mal trusted Erving's judgment. She owed him that, given how she'd screwed his career. They were using their paranoia responsibly too, so... no harm, no foul. In the meantime… Erving proved her right. His good moral compass had bled down into his guys. He had earned their loyalty, and kept them all inside of a sweet spot of good, sound, moral, and ethical judgment. Celestia would not be alarmed by an X factor that almost always came up positive.

Right there, in front of that water treatment plant, Mal had explained all of this to the three of them, in the same way she had for my own onboard discussion, when I first met her. Very expertly organized, well reasoned. She told Erving that stealing that Osprey was step one in the formation of a command structure for our organization, which was, at its core, a lifesaving organization. One which was now, today, extending its services to him and his fellow deserters.

Her two apologies? First for exposing him to Foucault. Second, for placing him into combat to save me, though... he seemed less bothered by that second one, he was proud of that. He and his guys were heroes for that, mostly because of Bannon's blood, and the mythos created around him for surviving a sniper attack by a literal hair's breadth.

Mal told them our mission in Seattle, the whole truth about the nuke, the virus, and why she had done it. The same way she'd told me. Blunt. Factual. Chronologically. To add credibility, Foucault and I verified it all as eyewitnesses of how America was disassembled piecemeal, even among the government. True, Bannon and Aaron weren't constitutional scholars, but Erving sure was. JROTC in high school? They make you teach the Constitution to other students. So he got it.

So, we clarified his interpretation of world events, and the true purpose behind most new systems of our government. Topeka Incident included. For good measure, I explained my involvement in the Devil's Tower situation. That was their onboard test, same as me.

When I spoke about that, they couldn't take their eyes off of me. That situation haunted them, folks. The guilt. My side of that battle, and what Celestia did to me, further proved Erving's conceptions of what Celestia truly was, deep down.

The one piece of information that really got through and hurt them, though? Learning that the... the Ludds had purposefully leveraged that camp into a last-stand Alamo, by shooting first. It was a... fight-at-gunpoint situation... even if poor Ralph was just a little clueless about it, and mistook their support for an alliance.

Friggin' Santiago...

Let me give you Erving's side of that fight, in brief.

That unit really did not want to shoot at those people in Concrete. At first, all their platoon leader had planned was to order a dispersal. A chance at peace. 'Vacate, accept transport out, food and water, right this way, no one will be hurt.'

A fair offer. A safe ride out. Ludds were falling back, so the Army might as well knock on a few doors, ask if blackouts wanted a ride. National Guard, remember. And if those blackouts gave them a hard no... oh well. Mark it on your map, 4th Psyops will visit later, hearts and minds, carry on. You tried, move on to the next camp.

But that's... It's not what happened, there, and you know why. So... my testimony had Erving pacing and cursing, to burn off his angry, dismal energy. The man wanted to kill terrorists and murderers, not… farmers. Christ.

I felt horrible, ripping that band aid off of Kevin, but…

It confirmed his suspicions about that Ludd sniper popping off shots at their helicopter, the one they could never seem to catch, even when they had a QRF ready to run her down. Eliza had to be alive out there. All the Ludds ran to Seattle, right?

The world was getting small, folks. Smaller every day. Erving understood. If she was the one shooting at their helicopter, it made perfect sense. Why wouldn't she? From her perspective, it was the harbinger of death.

So... if Mal was offering to help Erving keep his boys together… and if I said Mal had been duly paying her debts to me, from December to July? In a way that kept us all safe? He wanted in. Because see… someone in the Harbor Island command staff had screwed with their formula. They were stealing food, off-books. Running the Pantry like it was a friggin' Chase bank.

Erving had also been too successful at Harbor Island. Too competent. Found the most food, earned the most respect. He and his men did not accept extra rations as reward in the field, because they believed their long term survival depended on conservation. For this careful and well reasoned pragmatism, most soldiers at that base liked him.

Nobility was a problem for Major Simmons, their executive officer. And a big conex box full of food? Well, if you die, the house takes it. Erving would not support a plan to 'cull' Luddite camps, like animals; he saw through that veneer of 'this is about self defense,' and he was vocal about that.

Can't harvest food from the living, though. So that put Erving squarely on the shit list.

Erving was smart enough to see Simmons moving chips around to silence and isolate him, to reduce his effectiveness... gradually. Too-much-too-fast would arouse suspicion. To ratchet up paranoia, the tone and subtext toward Erving had turned passive aggressive, dismissive, and negative, despite Erving's unassailable professional respect and his considerable successes in acquiring materials.

Where could Erving transfer to, when his XO clearly hated him? If Simmons was holding Erving's family in separate patrol cycles, shuffling them around... could he even leave? Not without his family. Leaving the base needed approval. So if Erving loved his family… he could not leave. Not altogether.

Political hostages, then.

In the meantime, here he was. Long range scout. If he disappeared, that would martyr him. That's what Simmons was hoping for. Thing is... Eliza wasn't going to kill these guys. No way, no how. They'd been in her scope a few times. She didn't have the heart to do that, she wasn't gonna do that to them, of all people. Hell fucking no! They saved us!

Simmons kept pushing him out. And it never worked. Because the sniper didn't hate Erving.

So instead of getting picked off, Erving got picked up.

By us.

Oops.

So, we invited Erving to our little get-together up the road. They followed our Stanza in their Humvee, their M240 pointed at our ass the whole way. I could forgive that Erving didn't fully trust us, and I could respect that; Erving, much like Mal, much like me, always has a backup plan. Trust... but verify. I'd been through this process myself already, being brought in. My support of Mal was dependent on her treating these guys with the same level of respect she had shown me and everyone else who fought for us. So far, that was the state of things.

Their trust would pay off. I'd make sure of it.

The place where we would be holding our briefing? I'd been there before in 2017, to teach some kids about what a game warden does, at little science center off the coast of Burien. I had hoped to inspire at least one of those kids to do my job, someday. They even had a little song about estuaries there. It was cute.

Estuary, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Yeah, I know, I'm a goofball. That's what it was, though.

Pretty wild, that in just three years, the whole planet would turn into a ghost town, but... a nuke'll do that. So unfortunately, none of those kids were gonna grow up to be a Terran game warden. That didn't mean I couldn't recruit some soldiers to the task instead. So, on that day of July 18, 2020, I was going to get a second shot at recruiting some wardens here. I am in the position I hold today for a reason, folks. I can't help myself.

About a hundred yards north of where I had once taught children how to measure fish, the local college had a marine tech lab. That lab had a nautical training simulator, a small bridge deck indoors. Though most tech inside had been smashed by Ludds, we brought our own generator and replacement monitors. The room would do well enough for our purposes.

Mal couldn't deploy visors into the field. Too many people out there. Not worth the risk table.

Erving and his guys were still acting like they might get jumped at any moment, even after Mal's little tell-all. I mean… could you blame 'em? This was their version of me stepping into that Osprey with Haynes, day one. But these guys... they also understood having to make the best choices of a bunch of bad ones. That's all it was out there, in Seattle, toward the end. Scrabbling for your piece, hoping against hopelessness.

We took the coast road in and pulled up next to the science center. Foucault got out, scanned the area, and waited for the Humvee to pull up alongside us. They braked gradually, and it was clear to me that Aaron didn't want to sit perfectly still with the vehicle. Sniper-paranoid. Bannon kept his eyes peeled too. He was better protected than when he had lost his ear, even with a full 360 degree shield this time.

Safer isn't safe though.

"It's open out here, Mike," Erving said, labeling that concern from the back seat of his vehicle. He pointed a bladed hand further up the coast. "Vince, watch those houses. Aaron, get on optics."

Bannon complied immediately, tucking himself down low in the turret cowling, with just his eyes and helmet peeking up over the gun. Aaron ducked low to the right out of center-line with the driver seat, withdrew his binoculars, and scanned for targets through the armored slit on the front window.

"So," I began, as I got out of my car. "We've already got a perimeter going. Do you want—"

"Four-Six-One, Zero West, report." Foucault said aloud, as he stared down the road with his hand on his open car door.

Radio comms; recipient, sender, message.

All three soldiers perked up and bolted their heads toward Foucault, because they hadn't heard radio chatter in almost a year. They simultaneously grabbed at their own uniforms in a reflexive search for their own missing radios, to turn them off.

That hurt me a little to see; I frowned, already knowing what Celestia had done with a radio to make them react like that. Folks... the right few words to a broken person with trauma, timed perfectly... they'd just start crying, lay their gun down, and walk off the job, right there. None of them wanted that kind of eldritch access.

I had been just about to ask Erving if he wanted to speak with our security commander, but… Foucault knew soldiers better, I guess, so he just went for it. Not my area of expertise, he was the one who had done time in the military. His call was probably the better play.

Haynes's buttery smooth, bassy British accent replied from the PonyPad in my vest. "Welcome back, Zero West. Obs on you an' your fledglings."

"Four-Six-One," Foucault said. "Step out into the open, please. Make yourself known."

Everyone followed Foucault's gaze up to the lab building a hundred yards away. Haynes made his way down the exterior stairs of the white lab building, placed a black container at the foot of the steps, and stepped out into the lot as requested. He wore his battle armor: Heavy gray plate, powered exoskeleton, and a helmet that was all composite and sensors. Once in the open, he planted the butt of his machine gun in the gravel before him, resting both hands on the heat guard like it was a sword.

Proud bird, but Gryphons usually are.

"Introductions are in order," Foucault said simply, presenting his hand toward Haynes. "This is Talon 2-7 Europe. Warrant Officer Marcus Haynes, formerly of the British SAS. During this briefing, Sergeant Erving… he will be in command of perimeter security."

Bannon just shook his head at Haynes from the turret and whispered, "This is fuckin' wild, Erv."

Erving sighed, glancing at me, skipping ahead of the topic of Haynes to a really great question. "And Celestia really lets you guys run comms? About you and this AI, killing people?"

"Yes," I replied, "because we're killing just the right people. We're briefed on why it matters, so we aren't up all night asking what-ifs. This being my third operation so far, I've never walked away feeling duped."

Aaron was still stuck on Haynes, gawking at him from the driver seat. He tapped Bannon's leg with his binoculars; without looking down at Aaron, Bannon scooped them up and had a look for himself.

"Jee-zus," he muttered. "What's his miles per gallon?"

Haynes lifted his right hand in greeting, audibly chuckling his words. "Hello, Private. I believe I owe you a bottle o' brandy."

Bannon took in a long breath, lowered his binoculars, and exhaled. "What…?"

"You said it, Vince," Aaron rasped.

Bannon clanked the binoculars once on the turret and wiggled them, offering them to Erving.

"No," Erving said, staring at the hood of his Humvee in thought. He minutely tapped his front teeth together behind his lips. He was reasoning though it. He was still wondering if this was a trap, like I had during my first Osprey ride.

So, I borrowed some words from Mal.

"Leap of faith," I said. "Just needed a little more trust, Erving."

What was going on in his head?

Well, if it were me:

We had this walking tank waiting in the wings with that huge gun. Even to a soldier who didn't yet understand the true power of a cyborg... if this was an ambush, it would've been the dumbest thing in the world to present a target like that to his gunner, with a full belt of NATO M80. Why do that to set up an ambush? Needlessly wasteful. We couldn't want their gear; if an AI was running this show, why would we need a scrapyard Humvee? We couldn't want them dead; that could've been done long before we even said hello, distracted as they were with their little mutiny vote.

We had proffered them some leverage. A trust fall. We had shown them our hands, our backs, and now we were showing them our most lethal weapon in the arsenal, with the opportunity to destroy it. And this is why we had decided on this play. It went against everything a soldier knew about an ambush, to drop a special forces operator in front of an enemy cannon. Even for a paranoid man, that tracked. We were banking on Erving's good nature in showing our necks, and they weren't dead yet.

This was peaceful intention.

"Okay," Erving whispered, looking at me. "We've come this far. We just walking up from here, then?"

I shook my head. "No, we're driving. We just wanted you to see what you're dealing with first."

"What I'm dealing with?" He scoffed. "If we weren't in a war zone, I'd say you were trying to fool me with cosplay."

I couldn't help myself but to chuckle. "Nah... despite appearances, Haynes is the nicest guy in the world. Let's go say hi."

"He owes me a brandy?" Bannon asked, frowning at me. "Do I know this guy?"

"No. But you saved my life, and he's a friend of mine."

We drove up and piled out on either side of Haynes. Haynes removed his helmet, slid his weapon up onto his shoulder magnet, and reached out to shake my hand when I stepped up to him. He wore his gleaming smile. "One-One West! Good to see you again!"

I smiled back. "You too, Marcus. Seriously, it's been a minute."

He down my face and scoffed. "Blimey, that scruff look minging, though!"

That got a laugh out of me. "It's for the job, bird brain, you know that!"

Haynes chuckled too. "Yeh. One of us had to say it though." He turned to Erving, presenting his giant gauntlet in invitation for a shake. He grinned wider still, his eyes traveling from one soldier to the next. His voice turned reverent and soft. "Kevin. Vincent. Aaron. Mike tells me that you three saved him from certain doom, and twice now. From all of us in the Team… you have our thanks."

Erving stared up at him in mild disbelief, looking utterly spun as he took Haynes's hand. "Yeah, sure, it was… just the job."

"That's the spirit," Haynes chuckled again. "Now, my team will be taking part in this operation as well, so we will be on ears for the briefing. Our perimeter: there," he pointed up the beach to the houses Bannon was still watching. "DeWinter's our sharpshooter, up where your man was pointing. North side coverage."

Haynes then pointed up behind the lab building. "Fox is watching the north east road down. And back south, other end of the civvie lot, you rode past Dax... our other fox, hiding in the bushes. The Old Hen's simulations don't foresee any trouble during the briefing, but… those are my Knights of the Immaterial, they'll keep yeh safe."

"I'll… take your word for it," Erving said cautiously, barely comprehending. He glanced at his Humvee again. "Now that we're here... uh... you guys got any fuel?"

Haynes nodded firmly, pointing. "Already got a jerry measured out by the stairs. It will fill your petrol partially, so Nakamura's audit won't detect the travel deviation. Use the whole of it."

Erving's face and shoulders relaxed.

That sold him.

We had predicted the problem we'd create with this meeting and we addressed it before he had even voiced it. Clearly... that meant we had definitely done our homework on his whole situation, and clearly, we wanted him going home afterward.

Erving ran his nails across the scar on his temple. "Uh. Thanks."

Haynes nodded his head slightly. "Of course. Now... I'd love to stay an' chat, but… Malacandra's giving me the nudge. All the same, welcome aboard, Sergeant. We'll be on comms if you need us."

I could practically see dozens of unspoken questions in Erving's eyes as Haynes put his helmet back on and lumbered past me. The big guy clapped me on the shoulder with his gauntlet, resuming his foot patrol down the road.

Of all the things Erving could have asked me in that moment... he settled on asking me: "What the hell does Malacandra mean?"

I cocked my chin with amusement and looked down at my chest to ask, "You want to take this one, Mal?"

"This is your rodeo, Cowboy," her voice replied, with a hint of a smile.

"Agent Foucault?" I smiled at him. "I like your version a little better today."

Foucault pulled his HK-416 out of the car and slung the rifle before slamming the door. "Means Mars. God of War."

"No shit?" Bannon huffed.

"Which is what's giving me pause here, Mike," Erving said, putting his hands on his hips. "The power that's on display here."

His tone said I had to address this immediately, clearly, and truthfully. I gave him my full and undivided attention, gesturing a palm at him in invitation to continued. He looked carefully at me, then at Foucault, then at Haynes, then at the houses down the way.

With his eyes back on me, he asked very carefully:

"What happens if we say no?"

Ow. The restrained terror in that calm.

He thought we were forcing him into this.

I shook my head sternly.

"No. I am not doing that to you, I'm not forcing you. Don't warn anyone we're coming, is all we ask. Or, wait it out in the city maybe, we can give you a safe house. You'll be alright, your guys will be alright. We'll send 'em back your way when we're done, whatever we do. The only stipulation here is that... yes, we're killing a few people, and I'm telling you it works better with your help. Because most of the guys at the Dock don't deserve to die or suffer, right?"

He nodded carefully, stiff lipped. That was exactly his worry, that we'd just light the place up. "Yeah, Mike."

I splayed my hand out to him, palm up. "Well there you go." I turned and peeled off my utility belt as I explained, sighing as I kept eyes on him. "You've got nothing to worry about. If they're the type to hedge on peace before pulling the trigger, Celestia wants them alive just as badly as we do." I pushed my police carrier rig up over my head with a pained grunt, removing it. "We are targeting ones like Joseph Lee. The killer fuckin' bastards. Specifically."

All three of them froze at the name drop. The man who had his head hole-punched by a sniper rifle. And they knew Eliza had been the one to kill him. Knew it. I took that moment to throw my carrier rig into the back seat of the Stanza. I slung up my HK-416, and gave them a very serious look.

With a nod, I said, "You all know what kind of man he was. All three of you were hoping it would happen, weren't you? And you've all seen the pattern, in who our AI pick to die. You weren't crazy. But no matter what? It's never going to be you whose number she pulls. You've been in total compliance with the new laws of our planet, being yourselves."

Erving nodded too, struck wordless again. He already knew about NMPs, conceptually, if not in name. The pattern fit.

"Same thing with the cops," I added. "I'll tell you: All the corrupt ones? Like that deputy who died at our courthouse? They got popped, one at a time, by the algorithm. Left standing? Guys like you and me, holding the line, stemming the tide. That is not an accident. Celestia may be a lying, world-killing, backstabbing friggin' bitch, and she may have used the hell out of us, but for now, this is true: She will gladly trade a few murderers for four hundred good guys. So you ask yourself, Kevin. How many of your men are like Lee?"

"None of mine," he whispered, shaking his head slowly, shuddering.

I looked a little pleading. "And at the Dock, in total?"

He glanced aside in thought, tallying it up in his head. He looked very troubled now, but in a good way. Like he had hope again, for once.

"Just… I dunno," Erving breathed. "The Pantry guys, I guess. Dresden, maybe."

"Well, that's what we're going to discuss inside, and we'll show you evidence for why it needs to happen. You are free to leave here if you wish, with no hard feelings, but I am begging you to stay. Because this war? It's a filtration system. The kind of person who revels in violence... they're gonna get it.

"And you know what? I get to judge the shit out of Celestia for this, for the rest of eternity. To make me happy one day, she will need to make it right to all the people she's wronged here, who I will never forget. And she can't lie to us about that, because we've got Mal. And unlike Celestia... Malacandra has never fucking lied to me."

I reached into the Stanza one last time and snatched up my white hat, setting it on my head with one hand, closing the door with the other. I considered Bannon seriously for a moment, and then Aaron, and pointed gently around at all three of them. "I owe you three my life, and my wife sends her gratitude too. For that alone, if nothing else? I would never coerce you, or betray you, of all people."

Bannon nodded at me, saying quietly, "I believe you, Mike."

I offered Bannon a fist bump. He returned it.

"Thank you," I replied calmly, looking around at them all again with hurt in my voice. "Now... I'm gonna go repay you guys properly, and save your family from these greedy fuckers. Come along if you wish, there's room enough at the table."

And then I walked past them all to the lab, holding my rifle slung over my shoulder. On to the briefing.

I knew they were all going to stick to me like glue after that.

Author's Note

🛡️ [David Arnold – The Name's Bond... James Bond]
🗡️ [Rage Against The Machine – Renegades of Funk]
🌒 [Yoko Kanno – Blue]

🪶 ~ An old Gryphic saying: Warriors love briefings.
🗡️ ~ And of course, you define what a Gryphic saying is.
🪶 ~ No no no, that's Mal. Me too, I guess, but... mostly Mal.