Preventer
Central Office Building,
Luxemburg
City, Luxemburg
For
yet another period of her seemingly ancient life, a simple phenomenon
shattered all of Director Une's illusions of destiny. Like a team
of petty wallet-stealers, her group of information specialists robbed
the raw feed of a global news provider only minutes before broadcast.
They were too impotent to suppress the airwaves, and that was just
the latest reminder of her current status in comparison to complete
nobodies called the "free press."
She
examined dead or dying Africans, flailed about much like the cement
rubble. Some camera feeds were intimate ground-level video, and a few
others were aerial shots capturing the wider devastation.
Her
knees stiffened, so she sat, and dragged herself from her
fit.
'That overhead strongly resembles the aftermath of a massive earthquake in an underdeveloped city, so I have to set the ballpark casualty estimate as high. That means as many as thirty thousand people will die from this in the next five days. That's not much less than the estimated casualty count for the other terrorist scenarios. Those we could've handled, but how could our agency have prevented this?'
"Dispatcher,"
she pointed, "patch me a line to the relief agency, and put them on
right away!"
The
dispatcher hand signaled "ok," and performed her magic. A Nordic
man came online.
"Deputy
Director Erickson, my department lost an important struggle in the
capitol of Somalia tonight, and the innocents of Mogadishu are now
suffering the cruelty of terrorism. They need a massive humanitarian
airlift to sustain life to an estimated seventy-five thousand
residents in the next six hours, and they need the precious alert
teams by the next hour. Can you rally the troops?"
Erickson's
Valhalla-bound spirit sank.
"I issued the automatic alert. So what happened?" She blandly summed up the events.
"A
group of unknown terrorists restored the integral functions of the
Noventa Cannon, and spent a cluster shell into the populated
districts of the city. My strike team is defusing the installation,
so your assist teams should be safe from another incident. The runway
is damaged, and I've received reports of local militias taking
advantage of the situation. You are of course welcome to any of our
electronic intelligence satellites and overhead photos. Our low orbit
photo lab is passing over in fifty-one minutes, so you'll have
great high-resolution shots- or better yet- just turn on the Earth
Sphere news."
Erickson
concealed himself to share a few words to an aid.
"Yes, Ma'am, we're rolling out. Erickson out." Une reclined and exhaled.
(To herself) "What I would do just for the Purgatory of BS-ing junior department heads like him, but I can't put off the man himself," (more audibly) "oh Dispatcher, you get to press the big red button now." She complied.
"Mister
President, your worst-case from the morning briefing came true; we
have mass casualties in Somalia."
Oh
boy.
"It,
you were actually tackling it this time, so how on God's green
Earth did you allow that #ing D cannon to blow it's freaking lid
this time?"
Hmm,
he mixed his two F words, must be trying to quit.
"I'll try to explain, sir. We operated an attack plane over the cannon, so the terrorists would have to switch out their most dangerous ordinance in order to shoot down the plane-"
"I think I get it, go on."
"Well
it worked, and the cannon fired an anti aircraft shell into the
Indian Ocean, then Rashid fired his rockets for the kill. For
whatever reason, he failed, and the cannon fired two more shells of
the same variety. One at the fighter plane as it ran for the airport,
and one at the beach, where Rashid's artillery piece was located.
He, by the way, can't be contacted."
They
both paused, then the President addressed his Director.
"You
did good, Kid, especially the brave pilot and gunner. I understand
those shells could have been binary nerve gas into Brussels and
Bremen, had they neglected their jobs," he laughed, "but the
people will decide someone in charge deserves more than one anus for
a mess of this proportion, and my rival faction will be
more-than-willing to tear me a few. Can I count on you to entertain
the rabble on a tireless PA circuit?"
Nuts!
She swallowed the same words he'd used, but said:
"You can count on me to smooth this out, Sir."
"Good Girl." He cut the connection, only dangling the dreaded hook.
"(Sigh I need sedated. I could use a cocktail of drugs right now."
