I haven't posted a Gordian chapter in a while, but my handy work has extended to other corners of the net. I have Dud Zone and The Life O' Leroy Jackson at Fiction Press, and the Specials Creed in Gundam AC. I'm also putting more time on building the Robotech game and constructing my site.

What, you thought it was post-election depression?

The Power Plays series was created by Tom Clancy and Martin Greenberg, and Berkley Publishing holds the rights to the material. Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik have the rights to Netforce. Hmm, Pieczenik. I've never read The Mind Palace, so that might make a good gift.

Disclaimer: FF has needlessly changed the editing tools again, so go easy on the chapter's look. They never got this site right in the first place (sight) but it only seems to get worse.


"When President Reagan asked me to be a Middle East envoy, right after the 241 Marines were killed in Beirut, Lebanon, I went over there, and George Shultz was the secretary of State, and he sent me over there. The truck went into that Marine barracks and killed 241 Americans. The next week, month, and year these barricades were put all around buildings -- these little concrete things. You've seen them; there are some out here. So then they started lobbing rocket- propelled grenades over them. So the next thing, you go down to the Corniche in Beirut, and here was the building, the British Embassy, with a metal mesh all the way around it so it drove off these rocket- propelled grenades; when they'd hit the mesh, it would bounce off. So what did the terrorists do? They go to school on you. They started hitting people going to and from work. So, you can't -- I do not believe -- I'm convinced President Bush is right. I am convinced that the way to deal with this terrorist problem is to go after them where they are and not think that we can simply hunker down here and defend against every one of those attacks."

-Donald Rumsfeld, United States Secretary of Defense

"Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent."

-Marilyn vos Savant

Iraq

From above they looked like a Tonka set in a sandbox, but the earthmoving tools did real macro-level work on the salt-encrusted dead sand of one giant secluded dried marshland in Southeast Iraq. Armored bulldozers, shipped around the Arabian Peninsula from Israel, shoved the useless brittle sand into a neat berm, where a neat sandbagger allocated the salty dregs into discarded shopping bags from Kuwait.

Poor Palestinian Christians from Nablus and Bethlehem, cleared by the Israeli government, worked side-by-side with Jordanian Palestinians in hefting these low-grade sandbags atop pallets, so a forklift could saddle them inside a truck driven by a driver from Alabama.

These diverse groups all worked as subcontractors for UpLink's security arm, Sword, in constructing a paramilitary facility dubbed Camp William Eaton. Together, they scooped away the salty sand deemed useless by the security-consulting firm hired by Roger Gordian.
The engineering consultant had been forthright:

"Salt is hygroscopic, meaning it attracts water, meaning it pulls in water that can expand and contract, driving a large morphing wedge within the matrix. Also, if you're using rebar in the mix, and you probably will, the saline solution will corrode the steel. So, unless you want to soften this up for your enemy sappers, you best get yourself some better sand. You can import it, and you can cultivate some better sand, by going under the post-Gulf War strata."

So Roger's team put their claws in the sand, and swept under the carpet. The layer that had collected since Saddam's irrigation ploy suddenly gave way to American ingenuity.

"Hold, halt it! We've got another mass grave over here!"

Richard Thibodeau, better known as Rollie, supervised the construction effort at Camp William Eaton. His jerking movements cocked his hardhat over his eyes, quickly rectified, after stopping the dozer's rampage.

He stubbed one finger at a crowd of loitering Palestinians, reciting from a phrasebook that he needed a stretcher team in the ground.

"Merde! What kind of garden did he expect to grow?" Thibodeau moseyed to a silver air-conditioned trailer, swearing over another long day of monotony mixed with the macabre. He loafed on a tacky lawn-chair behind the screen door, and considered taking a lemonade from the cooler. Why not?

Tiredly, he pivoted his creaky frame, scratched an area chaffed by a long shift of inspection tours, and slid the cold lid.

"Awe!"

Serpents! Jumping from within! Fear slackened his knees, and the floor interrupted the falling process.

"Ricci! You good-for-nothing New England Wop! I'll beat on your Wise-end Italian butt!"

In the bedroom of the neighboring trailer, Tom Ricci's chiseled Italian face cut a prankster's grin.


The trucks dumped the low-end sandbags on different sides of the perimeter at dusk, so Marsh Arabs could stack them against trenches, pits, unearthed pipes and the like, in preparation for better defenses in the future. The work took place inside a wide place cordoned off by dozed sand berms, which in turn were cordoned off by razor-wire, ergo barbed wire beyond that, and wide tank ditches beyond that, and buried sharpened spikes beyond that.

US Navy Seabees burrowed out the inner courts of firebases, sections dedicated to servicing howitzer batteries, but Sword had most of the work performed by otherwise the permanently unemployed of the Arab World. UpLink, in fact, didn't have a high percentage of skilled personnel on site in the month of February, just a few at work erecting the fifty-foot observation towers for the classified automated sentry guns.


Peter Nimec supervised from a distance, leaving his two surrogates, Thibodeau and Ricci, to overlook things in his place. Nimec considered the joint patrols with the Ma'dan more pressing to his time, although his subordinates seemed better adjusted to handling the exercises.

He felt the team had connected well with the browbeaten Shiite community when he sat down to write his quarterly progress report at the end of February.

To: Megan Breen, Acting Chief Executive Officer

I know the month isn't quite over yet, but I feel the need to summarize the last few months at this time. First off, the Ma'dan are some of the best friends we could have found out here. They know Saddam screwed their lives more than we ever did, and several Sheikdoms have accepted first contact. We've taught them how to better collect water and food from the wastes, and everyone's performed really well on our joint patrols.

The construction site William Eaton has yet to be sabotaged by any of the laborers at this time, but we've successfully turned some intelligence sources caught planting surveillance devices. Surprise, they were Palestinians. Anyway, it's been a real coup, because the known list of surveillance suppliers are easier to follow than Soviet Bloc weapons dealers. I think we're starting to figure out the nature of the Tangos out here.

Thanks for shipping out the detonator drone for battlefield testing. We're about to put it on a flight pattern, to see what it can dig up.

About morale: pretty good. The guys especially liked the "faith-based" mission of supplying that movie to the Assyrians in the North. The guys also enjoy building a well-located base for our hub-and-spoke logistics dispersal. They're amazed by some of the clever engineering schemes we've got running, and some of our allies are visiting to take pointers.

On a personal note: I feel Gord's going to have this region connected to investors pretty soon. Violent attacks have seriously dropped this month, especially in our sector. Where attacks are occurring, the Fortiori APC outguns them all the way. We haven't yet had occasion to fire the XM8 carbine in anger, and some of the guys have complained to Ricci about that. Still, we can't seem to keep pipe and power lines up around here, and we've been attacked regularly when repairing them. Thankfully, the open ground serves us well, allowing us to subdue them before really taking fire.

Give the stockholders a high outlook in the next quarter, will you? Things are looking up.

Sincerely,

Peter Nimec, Sword Officer


In the dawn hours before the department expected him for work, Hakim Abad indulged in his secret passion of painting nudes. He'd mimicked pictures from western magazines in the past, but on this February morning, he'd asked his wife to pose for him in his garage workshop.

He mixed the different pigments together, working closer to the ideal shade. This was their first session, so her bashful expression was refreshingly genuine. He'd assured her incessantly that no one could peek in, not even the American helicopters with the starlight scopes fixed at them.

At last, he had what he wanted, and resumed brushing the canvass. She's coming alive in paint. He compared the work of his wife, and the 2-D avatar, smiled at both.

He should have asked her to do this years ago. Who's going to storm in?

The garage door retracted, his lady groped for her gown.

"Who's there?"

His wife scrambled away, he clutched a handy board, but no one answered his query.

The door's never done that before!

Paul Evens banked the controls from one residential area to another, mindful to keep the UAV's electronic footprint over a widely diverse area. He ran through the full spectrum used in terrorist improvised explosives. The box currently ran through some of those detonated at shorter ranges...

Khadijah Abbas enjoyed company. She'd lived alone, as widows are expected too, but since the American occupation, she's begun inviting more visitors than usual. She spent her days patiently reading western literature, in hopes she could better relate to her distant son when he returned from school in Michigan. He's studied diesel engineering, in hopes the country would again demand the skill. He promised to return after the semester, but when do those end?

The doorbell! Maybe class is over!

She clutched the door.

"Hello?"

Nobody.

That's odd, it never rings itself.

Mamoud Asad had never seen the likes of a Super Bowl before, but liked seeing the rough game they played. The team in blue looked better than the white-and-green team, and Mamoud wished to see them rough up those cats some more, after this halftime distraction ends.

The show was loud and proud, the worst of the American culture. He couldn't quite decipher what the white boy and black woman were singing about, but it sounded as lewd as the pair looked. Good, it seemed to come to an end. The music stopped, and the boy is reaching over...

"Huh? The TV shut off!"

The remote sat in his lap. He clicked the power button, and resumed watching. Surely, he didn't miss anything.

"The guy that once performed with Cheb Mami was much better, and so was the girl with the exposed midriff."

One second didn't change anything. The show was awful. More football!

The box had moved through the infrared band, used by most television remotes, as Evens piloted through another neighborhood. It probably exited a few sets, but was worth the potential of exploding some mines.

Rashid Mohammed lived in a home of demanding kids. They knew he was wealthy, somehow, and always begged for the flashiest toys. Now it's remote controlled vehicles. They always want more! What happens to the old ones? Who knows?

He grumbled over the bills coming in from around the world. Toys cost too much.

Look at that! Am I keeping Tycho RC up all by myself!

He absently thumbed through a colorful toy catalogue in the long hall of his home, when one of the cars wheeled under his lead foot.

Evens hoped his sweeping didn't harm any innocents, but pressed the thought to the back of his thoughts. If some harm comes to some good people, it's ultimately the fault of bomb-makers...

"Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!"

After a minute of lying on the cold hardwood floor, Rashid came to realize the car had somehow initiated without any help. He was alone. Well, surely someone will arrive to rescue him later in the day, InshAllah. Just wait on the floor.

Abu Massin slept peacefully in a secret labyrinth far below the grounds of a Nassaryia mosque, after a long marathon shift of crafting bombs for the coming uprising.

All the IEDs are ready for the fates of infidels; it's only a matter of dispersing the bombs among the mujahadin.

His sleep forewarned of troubles, but his thinking mind dismissed the visions. Every Jihad comes with burdens, and martyrs will be necessary for Allah's will, but these good men will vanquish the infidel, InshAllah.

Most pilots would feel apprehension about putting a mosque within the detonator's footprint, but Evens rationalized that he had no orders to avoid painting specific buildings with electronic emissions. Besides, he's supposed to destroy the combatants.

He ran the full spectrum orchestra over it, keeping his optical attention open for any flashes.

Aha! A plume of sand!

The author has a note: You have my promise that I'll have a new chapter full of villains and conflict by the US Thanksgiving, just as I did for the Canadian Thanksgiving. Please give feedback in the meantime, and thanks for following my work.

Until later!