April 7th 1994
Lake Kivu Investment Zone
"So, you don't have a gas-to-liquids plant here."
Phineas shook his head. "The team for that project isn't scheduled to come in for another quarter. They're running behind schedule. We have around twenty thousand gallons of kerosene for tilt-turbofans and helicopters, and another few thousand gallons for company cars."
Isabella sighed with relief. "That'll extend chopper operations for a week."
Phineas frowned. "Major Garcia-Shapiro, CARBOX fuel cells are pretty finicky when it comes to…"
Isabella held up her hand. "Mr. Flynn, the Bureau of Defense gets overcharged for everything because it specs for situations like this. Where are the tanks?"
Shego snorted. "You should get a squad on them real quick, and hope they don't get hit by a mortar or holed by a bullet."
"Not secure, then." Isabella got on her radio.
Drew whispered to Shego. "I think we might be able to make biodiesel with all the stuff we have." Shego rolled her eyes as Drew began describing his latest scheme. "No, I'm serious. You see, all manner of oils and fats can be found in the outputs of the Butterfly Corporation's bacterial fermenters. Using the processing equipment they have on hand to adjust the composition of their finished product, it just might be possible to extract the fats from the bacterial gunk."
Shego groaned. "You can't burn bacterial gunk, Dr. D."
"Aha! But you can burn biodiesel! By reconfiguring the supercritical water oxidizers found in the micro-sewage plant of this very installation, it may be possible to convert the bacterial fats into biodiesel. The possibilities are endless! Imagine the cost savings! The logistical simplification! This scheme is off-the-heazy!"
Shego snapped. "Okay. Dr. D. First off, you're not an industrial chemist or process engineer. You're a military weapons engineer with a physics background. You're pulling this out of your butt. Second of all, IF the military ever gets here, they will get here with a plan for fuel. The military WILL NOT entrust the lives of thousands of servicemen and millions of dollars on your crazy scheme. Finally, and most importantly, we DO NOT HAVE THE TIME to design, build, and test a new industrial plant. Get this into that big head of yours: THIS IS NOT GOING TO WORK!"
Shego caught her breath, and met the stares of the rest of the room.
Drew blinked twice, and backed towards the door. "Oh. Well then, a lot of preliminary work is in order. I'll just go and find Sally Chan from Butterfly. She'll probably have a better idea about the feasibility of my… uhhh…"
Baljeet raised his finger. "I believe she is inspecting the synthetic protein plant."
Drew opened the door, and left the room.
Everyone turned back to Isabella. "Okay. I've moved around a detail to watch the fuel tanks, and informed my superiors about the fuel situation. A verbal tour will have to do for now. Let's move on to the broader security landscape."
Shego, eager to shift the conversation forward, walked to the front of the room. "From what we can tell, this investment zone was attacked by a paramilitary organization affiliated with, but not necessarily controlled by, the current governing party of Rwanda, the MRND. The paramilitaries appear to be operating with advice and assistance from French mercenaries. From our interactions with them earlier today, the French mercs appear to wield substantial authority, well, as much as you can expect from bunch of angry young men with guns. We don't know whether the mercs are actually exerting control."
Isabella pinched her chin. "You said you interacted with them earlier today?"
Buford Van Stomm spoke up. "Captain Frenchie and his goons came over this afternoon, and tried to barge into the complex. Said they wanted to search the place for fugitives. Shego here basically told 'em to keep the heck out."
Isabella nodded. "So you think they're after the refugees here?"
Buford shrugged. "Unless there's someone specific they're looking for, attacking a lightly-fortified compound just for a few racial enemies seems like a bad idea in a race war. Especially when the countryside is still crawling with unprotected targets."
Phineas ignored the tone-deaf remark. "According to the refugees we spoke to, that particular militia hasn't really been all that active in promoting the… unpleasantness. No random house searches, no speeches in villages. They've mostly been doing targeted sweeps. The locals mostly attribute this to the French mercs."
Shego nodded. "They tried to breach a fence while under fire. Not too smart – I'd have gone with a less direct approach – but it's definitely good discipline in my book."
Isabella raised an eyebrow. "Equipment?"
Buford whistled. "Top-of-the-line for this part of the world. Light mortars, pickup trucks, uniforms, and QBZ-84s – they even had the modular squad automatic! I seriously did not expect the French mercs to let their boys use Pacifican guns."
Given that Norinco was marketing the bullpup QBZ-84 as the Kalashnikov of the future, and dumping product onto the market to secure market share, this was not entirely unexpected.
Isabella nodded again. "Okay, so this militia has enough pull to siphon off guns we sold to the Rwandan Army. Do you think they'll have the guts to try again?"
Shego pulled a face. "Probably not, especially now that the marines are here. Like Van Stomm said, this is a ridiculous amount of effort just to kill a few racial enemies. And while the industrial equipment is valuable, do you seriously see them looting air-conditioners, solar panels or water purifiers?"
Isabella shook her head. "Have you considered that there might be someone specific they're hunting here?"
Phineas frowned. "Pretty much everyone we took in was an employee, one of their acquaintances, or one of their relatives."
Baljeet sighed. "It might have been our Rwandan business partners."
Shego tapped their chin. "You know, if I was working for the French government, and I wanted to kick us out of Rwanda, and had a militia under my thumb… this is exactly the kind of annoying crap I'd pull on an industrial park. Scare the crap out of the investors." Shego smiled a little as she went back to her years spent training anti-communist terrorists in Venezuela and Afghanistan.
Phineas scoffed. "That's conspiracy talk. The French are our allies! They're in CDO and everything! You're accusing them of… state-sponsored-terrorism!"
Isabella shrugged. "Whatever their objective, I think UNAMIR's presence here has probably pushed the cost of any operation way into the red."
April 7th 1994
UN Headquarters
New York City, New York Province, NAAA
Joint Government
The suited Frenchman departed the huddle of chattering bureaucrats, and discreetly walked into a side room. Grabbing his satphone, he punched in a number, sent a text message, and just as quickly deleted it.
He frowned as he admired the Eurocomm logo on his satphone. Europe was no longer reliant on the big Low Orbital communications platforms of Iridium, Cellsat, China Mobile, and all the other Joint Government satphone corporations. But they still dominated the market, thanks to their unassailable economies of scale, internal market of three-billion-people, and early market entry.
The Hans were already dominating space. Regardless of what his superiors said, or the political ideology of the day, they would not be allowed to dominate Africa as well.
He checked his watch, and mentally adjusted the time for Rwanda. The Security Council was shaping up to approve intervention… early tomorrow morning, Rwanda time, and it was... night in Rwanda. He winced. Night combat was a JOINTGOV specialty, and the demanding task generally required well-trained troops. Francois and his boys would just have to roll with it.
April 8th 1994
Camp Parabola, Parabola Station
Inclined Medium Earth Orbit
In a world where transport aircraft can cross the globe in less than a day to deliver over a hundred tonnes of supplies, orbital deployment of troops is expensive overkill.
Nonetheless, the Joint Government Marines were determined to expand their hold on the "space infantry operations" mission as far as possible, and as such had strongly backed the concept. Combined with enthusiastic support from the space commerce lobby, which saw in the concept endless contracts for legions of lunar farmers, fleets of ion tugs, and hordes of maintenance men, this had been sufficient to ensure the implementation of the cockamamie scheme.
The result, delivered one year behind schedule and many millions of dollars over budget, was Camp Parabola. Consisting of a spinning habitat wheel attached to a non-spun microgravity section, Camp Parabola resembled a large spoked tire with a metal bush sprouting from its axis. Protruding from the metal bush were a dozen or so shield-shaped fruits – the reentry vehicles, each fifty meters in diameter, for the station's embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit.
While lasers, Space Force spacecraft, and tens of thousands of tonnes of imported dirt from the Moon and captured asteroids provided the installation with some measure of protection, the thousands of men and women and billions of dollars in materiel on Camp Parabola were more-or-less soft, juicy targets – and targets in plain view of half the planet to boot.
Sergeant Jonathan Davis tried to avoid contemplating the fact as he floated into the central hub of Lander Five. Eight huge cargo modules, each with personnel pods at their termini, radiated from the empty hub. He floated past a diminutive light attack helicopter and a pair of military dune buggies, stopping in front of a light tank. He waved to the man in the turret.
"How's it going?"
"Blasted CARBOX's busted! According to the diagnostics, there's a fault in between the fuel cell itself and the external power cable! That, or the chip's dead! Either way, if we don't replace the CARBOX, this tank ain't going more than a kilometer on battery power."
Sergeant Davis sighed. And they said that all-electric tanks with no transmissions would be the end of maintenance nightmares…
"Have you filed a replacement request?"
"Yeah! But the robotic arm in Dock Three got busted by a tug, so we're going to have to wait for that to get fixed."
Davis swore. "To heck with that! We could be shipping out tomorrow! I'll put together an EVA team, and we'll drag that thing in the old-fashioned way!" Davis inspected the ammunition trolley next to the vehicle. "Have you finished switching out the ammo?"
"Yep! Sabots out, HE, flechette and canister in! Do we want the gun-launched missiles?"
Davis nodded. "We have orders to keep 'em! Army said they rocked in Somalia!"
There was no point packing armor-defeating munitions where they were going.
April 8th 1994
Lake Kivu Investment Zone
Isabella finished her preservative-laden sandwich, threw the foil packaging into a bin, and turned her attention back to the drawn-out meeting.
"Okay, so the dirt road to the village north of here is absolutely awful."
Buford nodded. "Got stuck there for half a day. If you're thinking of running trucks through it, don't."
"Okay. Will avoid that. What about the village itself?"
"Houses clustered around the main road. Lots of loopholes to get shot at from. Unless you're bringing in more men, I would not recommend running presence patrols through there."
"Okay. Now, can the bridge over the river take 30-tonne trucks?"
The fire alarm began ringing. A blue-helmeted corporal burst through the door, her green eyes wide with alarm.
"Ma'am! We've got boats on the lake! We're under attack!"
