A/N: Here we go with the next chapter, with major props to Anysia and Lakewood for their beta work. I hope everyone had an awesome New Year's! I went for Korean BBQ with friends and to NYC on New Year's Day. It was much awesomeness.
I got an iPod, too! The new 4th-generation 40 gigabyte model. This thing can carry enough music to choke a camel. I also picked up the HP printable iPod tattoos and threw on a School Rumble motif. FMP! may be next, depending on how long my mood lasts for School Rumble. I urge you all to get an iPod. If you've got MP3s, it's MAD worth it. So smooth, so sexy, so beautiful, and it's as functional as form can suggest, too. Teh lovely.
I do want to acknowledge a point that Wild Goose 01 brought up. This story is indeed within the canon of the novels, which can be found at boku-tachi dot net. As for the rest... it's plot, so you'll have to read on to find out.
On with the show!
3: Behaving as the Wind Behaves
MITHPAC Briefing Auditorium
5:00 PM
The briefing call-out assembled the several hundred active agents, soldiers, commanders, and staff members present in MITHPAC headquarters that evening. Videotape recorders connected to bulky cameras observed and recorded the briefing for couriering the next morning to the other commands of MITHRIL: MITHEUR headquarters in Rome, MITHLANT headquarters in London, MITHCENT in Tel Aviv, MITHSOUTH in Caracas, and MITHAF's distributed commands in Casablanca and Cape Town respectively.
"The item of interest is codenamed the 'Leapfrog Project,'" Mark led off after General Sachar had called them all to attention and Kenji had read off the security disclaimers. "In June of 1964, while NAPA VALLEY was still in MITHRIL's ranks, a report was filed detailing the first encounter of what was known to the Soviets as a 'Shepatavshiy,' a 'Whispered.' Later appearances of Whispered were confirmed from various locations: in the United States, eight-year old children were solving doctoral-level physics problems; in Africa, they were hailed by animist tribes as young shamans, seers, and healers, while in Asia, they were even elected to local government."
There was a chuckle amongst the audience. The story of the village of Xiaoqing, deep within the Chinese countryside, was legendary; a twelve-year old boy had proposed agricultural methodologies that greatly improved village food production and distribution; time soon had him as the de facto mayor. Were it not for MITHRIL's swift involvement, the Communist government would have caught word and gotten their hands on the boy. He was now heading up an export policy office in Taiwan at the ripe old age of seventeen.
"This Whispered was thought to be kept under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs laced with Versed, a widely-used higher brain impairing agent. This kept her as a virtual zombie, not having the ability to function in proper thoughts. She couldn't question them, couldn't make plans to rebel. All she could do was tap into a vast repository of knowledge and techniques. She was working with one Dr. Gregor Rachenkov, AKA Gregor Rachenberg, a concentration camp survivor who was taken in by the Soviets at the end of the war. He was a student of theoretical physics and computer engineering, and the Soviets quickly brought him into their weapons development hierarchy. Working with the designs of the Whispered—NAPA VALLEY even reported that the Whispered herself participated in later construction efforts—Rachenkov was able to bring about what is believed to be the prototype of a ring-laser gyroscope, amongst other things. Lights, please."
The lights in the room dimmed as a slide projector clicked on, displaying a da Vinci-like sketch of a large gyroscope. Instead of spinning rings, though, the gyroscope displayed a pair of twin laser projectors suspended within a cutaway of light sensors.
"The ring-laser gyro—which, I should note, American scientists eventually developed last year—is used to measure precise alignment deviations and maintain a centralized sense of balance. Mechanical gyros were able to maintain balances, but not nearly to the precision of a ring-laser. For example, an ICBM with a regular gyro has an accuracy within four hundred meters after a six-thousand mile flight. An ICBM with a ring-laser gyro has a theoretical accuracy of only one hundred meters. The Soviet ring-laser gyro, however, used some mechanical parts in its operation. This means that our most recent hard information from REFUSENIK, dating to 1965, most likely is outdated. We should assume that the design has been vastly improved over time."
Mark clicked the next slide, nodding to Kenji. "This photo was taken by an American KH-11 photo-reconnaissance satellite on August 15th. It was scanning the Negev Desert near the Egypt-Israel border to ensure that Egyptian military forces were acting within compliance of the cease-fire treaty that ended the '76 Yom Kippur War. What it found, amongst some fairly damning evidence of the Egyptian 12th Mechanized Infantry Division being way on the wrong side of the line, was this." Kenji extended a pointer and gestured at the now-familiar leg shape. It looked like it came from a recent sci-fi film, mimicking a straightened chicken's leg with a broad, multi-toed foot. It extended out of a long-dead crater, the victim of some untold weapon.
"This, people, is a leg. A mechanical leg. A mechanical leg, judging from interpretations by our photo analysts, that is at least five yards tall and two yards wide. Let's put two and two together. Lights on, please."
"Given the fact that the Soviets were working on a ring-laser gyro, albeit a fairly crude and imprecise one, almost twenty years ahead of a Western nation," Kenji continued, "as well as a mechanical leg system, we can assume that they are at least a full generation ahead of the United States and all NATO nations in terms of research and development for an armored vehicle that stably walks upright instead of using wheels, treads, or other ground-based movement. With the height and width of the leg that we see in this photo, assuming that it's made of pure steel and not a higher-tensile alloy, we're dealing with an honest-to-God walking tank. Not only do we believe it to be capable of walking over most terrain at fairly high speeds, we believe it to be capable of short leaps at four to five times its walk speed. There is no further hard information off of which to base an analysis. We can only hope that we've overestimated the capabilities of this new vehicle."
The entire auditorium erupted in whispers and chatter.
"Can it!" Kenji shouted in a rare moment, bringing the assembled staff back to order. "We approximated the unit's capabilities and ran it through an exercise against a new American M1 tank. It was easily outclassed. The long and short of the situation so far, people, is that the Soviet Union has fielded at least one of these new weapons that we know of at some point into the deserts of the Sinai. Since NAPA VALLEY's disappearance and the death of REFUSENIK—Dr. Rachenkov—we have had no contacts or agents that could provide us with further information on these weapons. We don't even have a code name or command structure, but we can assume that this is a government project judging from the strong presence of KGB guard staff that REFUSENIK reported. That, however, was twenty years ago."
"Upon reporting this back to command," Mark picked up, "Sergeant Moriyama and I encountered an unusual phenomenon." He related the incident in the UCLA computer lab to the assembled staff.
When he finished, there was absolutely no chatter or whispering from the audience. It seemed like a series of far-spaced heartbeats had permeated the auditorium as every agent who was religious started to implore their respective deity or deities for protection.
"We stand at this point assuming that NAPA VALLEY, or someone highly placed and trained enough to imitate him, is alive and is of a parallel, if not similar, goal than ours at this point. If not, we wouldn't be here talking to you right now. This concludes our briefing. Questions?"
"What happened to the Whispered that the Soviets had?" an analyst asked from a middle row.
"Good question." Kenji nodded at the inquirer. "NAPA VALLEY reported that she was killed when REFUSENIK tried to rescue her from captivity, but he was unable to confirm that. However, NAPA VALLEY pulled out of the weapons facility when REFUSENIK died, so we have no real confirmation on her whereabouts. For the most part, we are assuming that she is dead. Tracking her down was tasked to MITHEUR, but they couldn't establish a trail since NAPA VALLEY was no longer working REFUSENIK. Given the fact that it took twenty years for one of these to show up in the field, we can assume that she was not actively involved in development or production after REFUSENIK's death in 1966. Any other questions?"
The audience was silent.
"What's our next move?" another voice called out.
"I'll handle that, gentlemen," General Sachar said, nodding to Mark and Kenji. "Excellent briefing."
Sachar strode up the three steel steps to the presentation stage, nodding to the two sergeants. They took some free seats in the front row.
"We are now operating under operation 462-12, operation name SIGNET RING. All briefings, documents, and information pertaining to SIGNET RING are hereby classified Top Secret with all penalties carried out under my personal authority. The objective of operation SIGNET RING is to identify the sources of these new weapons systems and proceed to track them down. When we find any information or infrastructure that allows the continued development, production, or operation of the weapons, our primary task is to gather intelligence and establish the supply chain, then destroy it. We have no other option than eliminating these things and all who created them before they create a drastic imbalance of power. If we cannot stop them, the Soviet sphere of influence will expand to an unacceptable level, which may force the NATO bloc to respond in kind. MITHRIL is founded as the interceptor of international conflict. We must act in that role."
"Operations!" Sachar called out.
"Sir!" Major Saul Jacobs, the wiry, bespectacled head of MITHPAC's Operations, Oversight, and Procurement division, stood up.
"Saul, your section will immediately begin dispersal of MITHPAC assets to our bases on Merida, Saipan, and Newport Island. Co-locate our Tokyo operatives back to Sydney for the time being and divert in accounts from our Micronesian banks. I want our immediate purchasing power to be absolutely no concern or worry from here on out. Meanwhile, increase physical and computer security at our bases."
"Yes, sir!"
"Intelligence!"
"Sir!" This was colonel Chuxiong Wei, Sachar's deputy.
"We'll step up surveillance of the labs and bases on the Kamchatka peninsula and commit our analysts to triple shifts. I don't care about overtime, computers, or coffee consumption. Get what we need from Operations. Step up our gathering efforts at Woomera. We'll air-drop in all ten existing MARSUPIALs to every dish they have in Woomera immediately. This may be a long-haul operation, so commission more MARSUPIAL construction if we need."
"It'll be done, general."
"PRT, SRT!"
"Yes, sir!" twenty-four voices rang out in unison. The primary strike arms of MITHPAC, their Primary and Special Response Teams—each twelve specialists strong—all stood at attention as if ready to engage in a special operation to retake a vending machine around the corner.
"You'll deploy at once to Merida Base for training and tactical development. I want scenarios on how to defeat those things with the weapons we have. Rockets will be useless if they can dodge at those speeds, so work with our recoilless rifles, guided anti-tank missiles, and aircraft. We just acquired a bunch of new Apache helicopters from the US; it'd be a shame to waste them on the ground for the operation. In the mean time, prepare for immediate deployment in support of SIGNET RING. Fehu team, you're leading off primary alert. Berkana team is on standby. That means SRT heads off, so be prepared for some cross-training in case one team deploys to another's specialty."
"Yes, sir!" the soldiers saluted.
"All other sections are to consider themselves on level-1 preparatory alert. All leaves are canceled and all personnel are on standby. We have living quarters built here for a reason, ladies and gentlemen. You will make use of them now."
Sachar emphasized the last part for a reason. MITHRIL paid well for a mercenary organization and it usually attracted more moral-minded former soldiers, agents, and turncoats, but as such, soldiers of fortune sometimes felt inclined to take the money and run. At points of interest, MITHRIL had no intention to let their investments up and flee.
"Your department heads will be handing down orders within the hour. We have no indication of immediate alert, but Command could hand down orders at any moment. Be prepared for the worst. That is all. Dismissed!"
January 17th, 1965
Arzamas-16 residential facility, R.S.F.S.R.
11:47 PM
"They've begun operational testing?" the voice asked again from out of nowhere.
"Da. The recent success of the basic mechanics of the system proved that we were able to maintain a fast walk. However, the Shepatavshiy girl is churning out theory after theory on how to miniaturize even more systems. They are having me work more and more directly with her these days." Rachenkov took another drag on his cigarette; this time, he didn't even bother doubling over coughing. "Pardon the way I sound."
"It's all right," the low, reassuring voice spoke. Rachenkov didn't even bother looking around for the man; he heard only a voice coming from the high snowdrifts around the side entrance of his dormitory. "I've heard worse."
"Probably not," Rachenkov chuckled ominously. "We've begun work on improved hydraulic systems, shrinking them down from our normal sizes. We have experimental systems taken from the turrets of T-55 tanks; the turret rotation system is being allocated to move the legs. Natalya's newest designs get things smaller and smaller on an average of every two weeks. It used to take months of dedicated research to find a way around the engineering problems that came up, but despite some reliability issues, Natalya is replacing entire mechanical engineering research institutes with her work."
"So they're focusing on the basic infrastructure of the unit?"
"They don't want the damn thing to just walk around and kick soldiers, my friend," Rachenkov growled, a task made so much easier by his scratchy voice. "They want to mount a torso on it at some point, then weapons systems. Worse still, they want it to carry different loads. Anti-tank weapons, anti-air, artillery and unguided rockets, even some sort of molecular-thin blade. Of course, that's still in theory. Natalya only sketched out some basic formulas for production alloys of such a weapon not twelve hours ago."
"Dr. Rachenkov, is there any way to slow the progress of the development here?"
"I was never granted a formal degree, you know," Rachenkov corrected the man. "The Nazis came before my doctoral thesis went to the review board."
"I'm sorry."
"I thought myself lucky that the Soviets had read my earlier works before the war," he flicked the still-lit butt of the cigarette into the snow. The burning end spun several times, kicking sparks of ash in a tiny shower towards the ground. It landed filter-down, the end still glowing red-orange before a harsh winter wind snuffed it out.
"They said I'd have the chance to continue my research. Now, I feel like I'm still in the concentration camp. Except they want to keep me alive with all their torture rather than exterminate me."
"I wish there was something I could do to help short of smuggling in supplies." The disembodied voice almost sounded empathetic.
"There is nothing I can do to stop things here short of sacrificing my life," Rachenkov lit another cigarette. "Then again..."
"Doctor, I can't encourage anything that would put you in jeopardy. You can do so much by staying alive and relaying information like this."
"Staying alive?" Rachenkov laughed a gravely ironic laugh. "Staying alive! You think that living saved my wife and my beautiful daughters from the gas chamber? Did I gain anything by living in prisons, first German and then Soviet? Nichevo!" He swore, kicking violently at the snow all of a sudden. "Come out, you snake! Show yourself if you think that my pitiful life is worth saving, worth preserving!"
As a sudden gust of wind kicked up a snowdrift, blowing crystalline snowflakes everywhere, Rachenkov felt a hammer blow impact his stomach, just enough below his solar plexus to double him over in a fit of coughing.
"You chekista bastard..." Rachenkov eked out between harsh coughs and drawing in breaths. "Do you--"
The click of a hammer being cocked stopped him in mid-sentence. He turned his head to the source of the sound, looking up at a man clad entirely in pure white camouflage, looking almost like a giant from Rachenkov's bent-over viewpoint. Even the automatic pistol he held in his hand was white twinged with metallic blue, a perfect pressing of azure metal. A white scarf and full-face balaclava ski mask covered his head, and all that was starting back at him were two dark, dark eyes.
"Do you want to die that much?" he spoke, the only indications of a mouth being the movements of his chin beneath the balaclava. "Do you value your life so little as to have it ended right here and now for no purpose? Do you want to see your wife and daughters again so badly?"
"Such words from a man who came all the way from God knows where to this forsaken hell-hole," Rachenkov bravely replied. "Look at me, man. I am forced out of bed early every day with a dyspeptic ulcer in my stomach from the medical conditions that they never treated. I have recurring dysentery from the concentration camps, my bones are brittle, and I am barely sixty years old. These goddamn cigarettes you make me smoke as signals don't help, either. What else do I have to live for?"
Tears were running down his face, almost freezing in the cold night. "Aside from Natalya and the blasted VUR, what do I have to live for?"
"VUR..." the voice replied.
"'Vooruzhennoye Ustrojstvo Raba,'" Rachenkov translated. "'Armed Slaved Weapon.' It was originally aimed at autonomous operations, but Natalya has already sketched out a system to translate human movements into the control system. It is 'slaved' to the actions of the pilot, and it's going to be armed sooner or later."
"Is there no way to stop it?"
"No way to stop it?" Rachenkov quizically asked, bringing himself back to his feet, wiping tears from his face with the back of his sleeve. The man held his gun steady against Rachenkov's head. "Put that thing away; they'll find you if you fire off a shot here."
The man was silent for a moment, but with a deft movement, he holstered the weapon in a white nylon tactical holster.
"There is no way to stop it," Rachenkov shook his head. "Short of the death of Natalya or the complete destruction of this facility, there is no way to stop development of the VUR. As far as I know, this is the only facility in existence that is working on the weapon. As far as I know, Natalya is the only Shepatavshiy in all the Warsaw Pact nations. We'd have them all here if we could."
"Destruction is out for now," the agent replied, shaking his head and crouching down to his haunches, blending in with the snow again. "We don't have the ability to reach this far into the Soviet Union with enough forces to level a lab complex."
"Then let me do it."
"You're out of your mind," the agent immediately responded.
"I have more and more access to Natalya every week," Rachenkov picked up the cigarette he had been smoking, then tossed it aside again. "I am even alone with her outside of the clean areas, and I am never searched by the guards. Give me a pistol, a grenade, anything. I will kill her, destroy all her notes and data, then kill myself. After a blow like that, the VUR will come screeching to a halt and it'll go the same way as the Shagohod."
"I'm afraid we couldn't have that," the agent chuckled. "The Shagohod went a very different way."
"Bah. It was destined to fail. Let me do the work for you. I do not know who your backers are, but they will be absolved. Get me a Makarov; it'll look like I stole one from a guard. I-"
The door behind Rachenkov flung open, shocking him into another violent fit of coughing. "Are you all right, comrade?" Major Solov asked, pulling his greatcoat tightly around him. "It's freezing out here!"
"Just having a cigarette, comrade Solov," Rachenkov replied, recovering from his coughing. "It is indeed cold out tonight."
"Da, it is. Come inside before you catch your death, comrade, we have another day awaiting us tomorrow."
"Right away, comrade major," Rachenkov nodded. As he turned towards the door, he met a dark pair of almond eyes in the snow.
To be continued...
Afterword A/N and glossary:
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This was the "Western bloc" during the Cold War. Comprised of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Canada, the United States, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), Greece, Turkey, Italy, and several other nations, NATO was a security alliance. One of the main articles of the North Atlantic Treaty, signed and ratified in 1949, which formed NATO was that member states would treat an attack on any other member state by another nation as an attack on themselves. This was basic collective security: "Attack us and we'll all beat you up." The counterpart to NATO was the Warsaw Pact. NATO is still in effect today, but their role is largely unclear; the European Union has no ability to field a military force, yet NATO's primary purpose has become nebulous as a ground war in Europe has become a thing of the past.
Warsaw Pact: The Warsaw Pact was formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance. Signed into being two years after NATO was formed, the Warsaw Pact functioned as a security treaty to the Soviet Union's sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. It linked the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, the Democratic Republic of Germany (East Germany), Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. It functioned under the same basic merits of NATO.
The Warsaw Pact was formally dissolved after the Berlin Wall fell. In Full Metal Panic, it is safe to assume that the Warsaw Pact is still in effect and binding within its member nations.
ICBM: Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. The primary weapon fueling the arms races, nuclear scares, and xenophobia that marked the Cold War. The ICBM, first appearing in the 1950s, has the capability to attack at intercontinental ranges. Early ICBMs were simple, basically giant guided rockets with a single nuclear warhead, but modern ICBMs (Most of which are still in service and active use in the United States, Russia, Kazakhstan, France, the UK, China, and with shorter-range weapons existing for India, Pakistan, and speculated for Iran and North Korea) have greater range, accuracy, and payload capacity. The Russian SS-18, for example, can carry one twenty-five megaton (The explosive power of twenty-five million tons of TNT explosive) warhead or an unconfirmed set of ten individually-targeted five-hundred kiloton (five hundred thousand tons of TNT) warheads.
Ring-laser Gyroscope: Just as Mark explained it, the ring-laser gyroscope takes the angular sensitivity of a regular mechanical gyroscope and eliminates the friction. There are no moving parts involved, just a sensor system to detect the angular motion of a laser. In a guidance system, an RLG will send signals to thrusters, fins, engines, or other mechanisms in order to correct course, heading, speed, etc. It is a fairly sophisticated system and a by-product of laser science. Basic RLGs were not developed until the late 1970s. A Whispered would have to be present to develop one at such a stage in the mid-1960s. To build one small enough for an Arm Slave... well... we'll have to see about that.
MARSUPIAL (Fictional, as far as I know): Mechanized Automated Retrieval, Surveillance Utility, Protracted Intelligence Acquisition Liaison. The MARSUPIAL system was designed as an autonomous intelligence-gathering system to go where humans cannot and function longer unsupported. The MARSUPIAL system is configurable and programmable; it can be anything in sizes between a large lemur and a blue whale. All that is needed is enough space within the units to collect and transmit information. Here, we see it in a kangaroo form factor. The mama kangaroo functions as an eavesdropping device for radio signals, whereas the joey works for audiovisual surveillance as well as a communication device. Interfacing with most auditory, seismic, and radio transmission systems that MITHRIL operates, the MARSUPIAL system can be customized and built to any specification. It officially carries a different technical designation, but an enterprising technician coined the colloquial designation after seeing it in action during testing in the Australian desert.
MITHEUR: MITHRIL European Command. Headquarters: beneath the Palazzo Farnese restaurant in Rome, Italy. Responsible for all land and sea operations from Iceland in the west to the East German border in the east, MITHEUR is frequently more concerned with the tracking, interception, and interdiction of Soviet and Warsaw Pact espionage operations transiting to the NATO and unaligned countries. However, MITHEUR maintains massive stockpiles of weapons and hardened infrastructure throughout Western Europe to deploy in the case of a more serious attack.
Despite the potential clash between East and West, MITHEUR still maintains first-class infiltration and espionage operations. Most major human intelligence that flows in from NATO and the Warsaw Pact comes in by virtue of the fact that MITHRIL agents are prevalent in all the major intelligence services and militaries on both sides of the Iron Curtain. From the American CIA through the ruthless Bulgarian Special Intelligence Service all the way up the ranks of the KGB, MITHRIL has all sides covered. MITHEUR postings are among the more dangerous in this respect.
MITHEUR uses the phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.) in assigning call signs.