Ghost in the Machine, act 2
"The English were in no way fighting from a position of strength- except through the use of their navy- but on the land, the English exercised an unhealthy reliance on proxy armies having no real allegiance to the crown. King George couldn't muster any real strength to properly suppress the Americans, so, the King hired the historically untrustworthy Goth Mercenaries and Indian Axillaries.
Perhaps, if I were placed in the same situation as King George, I would have hired the Hessian soldiers, but in a radically different way. I would have granted the German Commanders carefully partitioned principalities in German-speaking Pennsylvania, and I would have helped them install pacifist Quakers into city government roles, and that would have been the end of their involvement. But instead, the English made the mistake more typical of Italians. I would have installed a Catholic Irish army to subjugate protestant Scots-Irish areas of Pennsylvania. I would have setup a wartime capitol around New York City and I would have worked to park the Indians south of Albany. King George never tied his mercenaries or axillaries to the land, so they had no reason to fight savagely. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I'm the English Royal, and I follow the blueprints for my little war game, I now have the Continental forces boxed in.
As it happened, the British already had loyalists around the port city I chose for my capitol. Loyalist could hold Albany, where rebel influences aren't very strong. Indians, Hessian/Germans and Catholic Irish would have cordoned off Pennsylvania, and my presence at my capitol would have won over New Jersey"
-From "Duo Maxwell's" class lecture on the American Revolution, AC 195, on L2.
Somalia
Some in the popular "alternative media" branded the horse-mounted posse as a rogue "John Wayne" group; the more mainstream news outlets welcomed the outpouring of positive Emails from throughout the Earth Sphere.
News analysts of the pro-Preventer persuasion extolled the merits of small crack cavalry bands in history, some offhandedly praised their fashionable entrance. On the other side, the group's choice of aesthetics seemed to have violated all rules of dignity.
WuFei Chang just didn't understand these people. What do attitude and/or look have to do with the merits of the job, anyway? To his mind, Duo and Trowa had accomplished a serious intelligence coup, bringing in a couple odd hundred prisoners, and all potential harvests for microscopic operational details. With competent interrogation techniques, and logical analysis from the muses in Luxemburg, they could quite possibly paint the entire mosaic, fit the puzzle together... insert your own analogy, we've got it, baby.
He found the next news item more amusing. An anchorwoman presented a "human interest" spin on the posse's instant influence on popular culture. A small grassroots organization is selling freshly pressed shirts with a cowboy clown logo reading: "I'm a Proud Member of the Kiss Army." Online auction demand is exceeding the group's current level of supply, giving the shirts an insane value. The online auction store had to offer reserve purchasing to calm demand and maximize profits.
"Sure, the concept is funny, but for how long do these people want to wear a joke?" He marveled out loud. He changed stations to Esta Bien, the station broadcasting out of the Panama Canal Zone, and saw a split screen presentation of bomb damage to high-end Columbian rancheros. The talking head commentating in accented English explained that all the homes allegedly belonged to Don Mordred Bartista, the Grandee widely rumored to be the shadowy ruler of the Country outside of Republic control.
A representative of Bartista's puppet government described the attacks as a widespread cruise missile raid launched from aircraft belonging to the Sanc Kingdom.
"Sanc, you poison-pusher? You must be on your own product to believe that woman-"despite his excessive injuries, someone cuffed him fiercely from behind.
WuFei swiveled in his chair, being unable to turn his head.
"No wonder that didn't hurt, it was you," his onyx eyes sealed shut, searing at Darlian.
"Weren't you present when I brought up Heero fighting in Columbia on Sanc's behalf?" She glared at L-5's pilot crossly.
"I have spinal problems, Heero's actions are the least of my worries," dejectedly, he explained his memory failure.
"You have my sympathy. I'll leave you alone." She left him to his own thoughts, surprisingly, to his own regret.
"Wait a second, Relena," he pleaded, causing her to turn with a start, "how come I'm being kept out of the think tank? Quatre and I may physically be out of the fight, are we not considered intelligent strategists?"
Actually, you aren't, Relena didn't want to say, after Siberia, all of you lost your way. You couldn't operate autonomously, and all of you lost your way until Quatre brought you together in Singapore...
"Was I thinking out loud?"
WuFei scowled.
"No, but I'm sure we were thinking alike. That was different, though, a philosophical battle to find our enemies. Never mind that, I just want to bring my unique perspective to the discussion, so we can work things out. Could you talk to Trowa for me?"
WuFei isn't one to ask favors.
"Sure, um, right away."
Later
Quatre and Hilde wheeled into the cafeteria, being unready for walking about, but the others walked in. They found a secluded table, and exchanged greetings.
Trowa, Dorothy, and Duo had been discussing things among each other, to the exclusion of the others, as if their physical disabilities somehow affected their judgment.
It took Relena's stern words to shake them from their unnoticed bias, and invite the others in.
"Thank you for cordially inviting us here," WuFei said sarcastically.
"Nous sommes toujours la pour vous," replied Trowa. ("We're glad to be here for you.") Only Relena and Hilde, more social creatures than WuFei and less oblivious than Quatre, noted Trowa's more subtle sarcasm.
WuFei, not really a fluent French speaker, managed to mouth something about making this meeting "pour hommes," (for men), that wasn't caught by anyone but the circus performer.
"Hey guys, Cathy said she might show up in a few minutes," he said, getting WuFei's goat.
"Uh, I don't think so, Trowa. She's been helping with the humanitarian situation, where I'm supposed to be soon," Relena replied, not catching Trowa's game.
Barton stole a smile at Chang, then focused on Relena.
"My mistake. I did not know that. Okay, we'll see you both later, then."
WuFei wasn't charmed.
"Baka."
"Vaca."
Their insults were in different tongues, meant different things, but were synonyms.
(Author's note: I've been in department stores, and have been called this name, and I don't know whether to reply in Japanese or Spanish, so I say nothing, sadly leaving the kid to believe I'm not multilingual. What am I to do? -
Does Anyone want to know why the site isn't taking off? I'll tell you. I sadly made my pages in Linux Open Office, and for some reason, I couldn't save in HTML. And to make matters worse, Viscount deleted the OS from my computer, something I haven't rectified yet. Las tragedias de la vida. (I never said I was adeptly multilingual;-)
Well, back to fiction.
Even Later
Trowa pretty much had the floor outlining the intelligence gathering. He reviewed what he'd found interviewing the two gunmen inside Maxwell House, what Detective Louis Noin turned up in Italy, and the circumstances of the hospital raid. Everyone had a hand in recounting what happened at the Noventa Cannon, and they invited Nichol in to describe what happened at the airport.
Gradually, more people, such as the before mentioned Nichol, Rashid, and others, sat in at the discussion. Every time, the summery had to be recounted again for the new ears.
They would have liked having Sally at the table, but she stayed with her patients throughout.
"I think we can all agree we just happened, unfortunately, to have bumped into a worldwide network of illicit businesses. I'd describe them as a cooperative venture, one pooled together to finish such projects as the refurbished Noventa Cannon, the keystone of a defensive apparatus meant to defend their maritime commerce from Preventer regulation," Trowa mused out loud.
Quatre rubbed his chin.
"That sounds awfully expensive, Trowa, putting together such a far-reaching defensive belt just to defend the drug trade."
Trowa defended his premise.
"Insurance is expensive, but most of us will pay it to avoid ruin. I'm thinking they'd pull the resources together, if they feared the new government coming out of the war would take a hard line against their business. Indeed, as Ms. Darlian told us earlier, some, including her and Heero, are going beyond regular methods, such as bulking up customs. The reasons behind militarizing the drug trade are as valid here, as they are in Columbia-"
"Or the Far East," interrupted WuFei.
"Exactly. The truth is, they caught us in a time when we don't have the excess of power needed to counter their buildup. Classically, when one side is vanquished in a long conflict, the winning side will temporarily have an excess of power, and will usually exploit this surplus to treat formerly secondary hindrances."
"Right," Quatre seconded, "I remember from history what happened after the Berlin Wall crumbled. A state in support of drug trafficking suddenly got a visit from American airborne troops."
The colonists chuckled.
"When the world turned, it rolled on them."
Even later than that
"I'm tired," Duo announced, yawning, "tired and hungry. Can we give this a rest, please?"
The others agreed, save WuFei, Trowa, and Dorothy.
"Sure thing, guys. Go ahead."
Catherine brought some sandwiches in, leftover turkey, of course.
"What we need is a small force to our south to maintain contact with that "auxiliary" army," bemoaned WuFei, "because overhead imagery isn't going to cut it."
Dorothy reasoned that Trowa had thought of that.
"That's why we went out there, right Trowa?"
Barton looked at his hands.
"Yeah, that was in the vein WuFei was talking about, except you'd keep them sustained, wouldn't you, Chang?"
"I sure would."
"Then I'm sure we can arrange for a force to fight under your command."
Columbia
"Bing-shway."
Heero sat at a bar one morning in Medillin.
"What did you say?" His informant asked, taking a seat beside him.
The barmaid filled a glass, and handed it over.
"I ordered a cold beer," he sipped some thoughtfully, "maybe one day, I'll bring my Chinese friends with me. I have one friend from the colony that exploded in the L-5 cluster. He lost his wife and home." Heero didn't mind misrepresenting the facts a little. He saw no reason to completely volunteer everything.
"I'm sorry for him." They sipped some more simultaneously.
"Me too. I think I straightened him out a lot the last time we met, but he's still a work in progress, believe me. Gahn-bay!"
"Please bring us some more beer and some egg rolls," he addressed the Chinese barmaid, and led "the Relena" to a private table. They sat while Heero broke a fortune cookie.
"This is one element of the restaurant we wouldn't approve of. The fortune cookie is now widely known to be an American invention, dating back to 1919 San Francisco, if I have my facts straight. The inventor was ethnically Chinese, I believe, so I wonder what his beef is with these cookies. I'd ask him, but he'd probably belt me."
She really laughed for the first time since he'd met her, and it was contagious.
"Hey! This isn't even original! It reads: 'People sleep peaceably in their own beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.' That's George Orwell!"
Heero brashly threw open the curtains closing off their table, and shouted.
"Hey, your fortune cookie writer ripped off Orwell!"
To his infinite embarrassment, the waitress's ear had been near to his mouth when he exclaimed his declaration. She rubbed her ear irritably, then put their tray on the table.
"Open another one, Sir."
Heero cracked open another cookie, un-scrolled the paper: "People sleep peaceably in their own beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
"Any friend of Chang WuFei is a friend of this restaurant, Sir."
I just wanted to prove I could out-write Ukchana and Crazy Elf Paladin's fortune cookie scene. If I fell a little short of surpassing them, fine, but I don't think they can talk down to me anymore. How you like them apples?
The Black Sea
The small obsolete diesel/electric submersible had no carbon dioxide scrubbers on board, and no way to vent CO2 out, making life miserable for the nauseous crew. They ran a few lights and the passive sonar array, but little else for the number of days they rested on the seabed. Men rested with rebreathing SCUBA gear rationed out for breaks from inhaling poisonous stench. Alkaline batteries failed, to be manually replaced by another. Still, they waited it out, until the surface vigil quieted down.
The Captain ordered some men to slice open the vapid batteries, and harvest manganese dioxide from the inside. What is this good for?
"Take us up, drain ballast, rev up hydrogen peroxide engine, all ahead full."
"Aye, Sir. Drain ballast tanks, hydrogen peroxide engine, all ahead full."
But how did this ancient boat suddenly get a hydrogen peroxide engine, and why is that important? In the engine room, a couple of oil-stained techs poured the manganese dioxide powder into the diesel engine's gas tank, and mixed it with bottles of the concentrated antiseptic. Together, at the ignition of a spark, these chemicals created an awesome fuel source, pure oxygen.
The boat jumped off the seabed, pulled by the forces of buoyancy in one direction, pushed by the force of a chemical energy converted into a mechanical energy, in another. The crew deftly kept the entire sub from broaching the surface, while making certain the snorkel pulled in fresh air, and cycled out bad air. They lost all stealth, but exploited the weakened vigil, rushing at speeds thought attainable only by nuclear craft, for the small gap between Turkeys.
Soon, they reached the riotous layer long exploited by the silent service. Through the Bosphorous, Dardanelles, and Marmara they must go before breaking into more open sea in the Aegean. Noise levels and warm upper currants mask them the entire way, and the divers clear the net for them at Troy. They've effectively escaped, free to land the divers onto the shores of Cyrus, for one last mission.
Nicaragua
The crew chief caught a commercial flight to Managua, ahead of the ordered flight carrying the explorer submersible he ordered flown in. Filth floated atop the Lake de Managua, amid a dark film caking the lake's not pristine water. Barefoot children in rags picked through whatever the tide dredged on shore, looking for bits of metal that someone might find of value. Some played games, but most scavenged, probably not in vain, but eventually, that source of income will dry up, like so much else.
Back in the days of fighting, citizens freely dumped trash here, killing chances of freshwater aquaculture. In the process, the dumping at least gave these lads an opportunity to reap some quick money, selling shell casings, to be recycled, to the militants.
Miser regarded the business for the hours it took the Preventers seaplane to reach the lake. Once it arrived, he rented a boat to take him out to meet the two prop aircraft.
The motor chopped through the water, churning some foul gray foam, as it reached the rendezvous.
Upon boarding the plane, he handed the sailor his fare, and sealed himself into the tiny sub. Zechs' instructions weren't precise, so Miser spent the greater part of a day combing through the murk, before he shone the spotlight on Epyon.
Overnight, they hauled the monster into the plane's cargo space, and transited from a lake in Nicaragua, to another one in Panama.
On board, Zero demonstrated the machine's vitality by passing the diagnostic check fully in the green. Epyon's eyes lent the cargo hold an eerie green glow as its long slumber finally ended. It awaited the time when it would be reunited with Zechs Merquise.
