An Empire Reborn

Chapter 9: Sowing the seeds of War

"No state can possibly preserve itself free unless it be a match for neighboring powers."

- Thucydides

John blinked the sweat out of his eyes, as he lay hidden deep within the sandy dunes of the Iranian desert. He resisted the urge to wipe his brow for fear of exposing his position to the surrounding enemy, an enemy who was close enough to hear. The guttural laughter of the Iranian infantry that surrounded his position echoed across the slowly darkening landscape as they patrolled to close for comfort, obviously looking for something or someone.

They often came close enough that the pungent smell of their sweaty bodies gave away their position with far more ease than the often-deceptive echo of voices. Even now, he still misjudged the distances of sounds in the stark landscape. It would take a lifetime to acclimatize to these conditions effectively.

The sun was low in the horizon and anything that may give away his position was avidly avoided. His M4 Carbine lay heavy in his hands and covered with camouflaged netting and the dog collars that marked his identity rubbed slickly against his chest as his muscles shook with exhausted tension. He wore two; his close friend and fellow soldier would not be coming home after this mission. His last.

Only his partially buried body and camouflaged uniform along with the tricks he had picked up from exercises with the Australians had allowed him and his last remaining mate to stay hidden for so long. To avoid the Iranian patrols for so long. It would be dark soon and that, he hoped, would allow their superior training and technology to come into play and help them to escape the ambush that they had triggered.

He had started this mission with two of his mates accompanying him, veterans in this type of mission and confident of their eventual success. One had been hit early on and they had been forced to leave him or risk exposing themselves and their mission. Nathan had died knowing that his body may never be buried on home soil. It angered him and filled him with a sense of frustration at how the mission was going.

John allowed his eye to flicker to his remaining companion, Matt who like him, was barely breathing as the sun slowly slipped lower in the horizon, too slowly. Their eyes shared the frustration and desperation they both felt. Death remained a real possibility but worse was the potential for exposing their country to a foreign agenda through capture.

The mission had been a SNAFU since the start, almost inevitable when politics were mixed with military planning. Still, his superiors were confident that they had removed the planning process far enough from the bureaucrats and politicians to allow the experience and training of the soldiers carrying out the mission to shine through.

And their mission was important, both to US security and world piece. A nuclear Iran with their fanatical religious dogma served no one. When no one was seen to be acting and the UN was worse than ineffective, the US had acted. John had been proud to be an American at that moment.

That pride had slowly dissipated as the mission progressed. Whatever measures had been taken to separate the political process from the military ones hadn't been enough, not nearly enough. Oh it was a simple enough mission. His team would slip across the border to Iran from Pakistan after dark to investigate and mark any nuclear and weapons facilities that they found for future demolition.

Satellite images and GPS would speed the process enormously and after a month perhaps two the political standoff between Iran and the rest of the world would either be resolved politically or militarily. The forward intelligence provided by assets on the ground would allow for the projection of power that America need to take Iran on if they called its bluff.

The ultimate closing stages of standoff diplomacy, but simple mission or not someone had fucked up.

As soon as they had crossed the border into Iran, the team had started to run into problems. It was almost as if the entire Iranian military knew exactly where they were and where they were heading. This was the fourth time in as many days that they had had to slip patrols and they were running out of supplies. Any drops in these circumstances needed to be avoided and treated with suspicion and there could be no scavenging with such attention paid to the area they were hiding out in.

The Iranians shadowing their movements so closely suggested foul play, his team was good, extremely well trained and equipped with the latest gear. There was no way in his mind that they could have been traced so easily, the three of them had been doing this for too long to be giving away their position.

In fact, tonight he would have to make the decision of whether to continue with their mission or pull out. If caught, they would be the political spark which the United States of America hoped to avoid, disavowed or not, and if he and his team continued to be shadowed so closely then no manner of skill, technological advantage or experience would help them to complete their mission.

The longer they stayed in those circumstances, the higher the risk of capture with little potential return and one of his team had already taken a bullet and would not be returning home to his family.

John had to force himself not to jump then when the sudden roar of engines filled the predawn dessert, easily drowning out the snatches of conversation that broke the previous stillness. The sounds of Arabic conversations became more frantic and hurried as John huddled tighter into the sand as he felt the harsh vibrations of multi-ton vehicles traveling on caterpillar tracks speeding too close to his position for comfort.

'It would be ironic' he thought sharing a confused look with Mathew who huddled beside him, 'to escape the Iranian infantry only to be run over by a tank'.

'But where did they come from?' He asked himself in confusion as sporadic gunfire and pain filled screams light up the air. Vehicles of that size could not be hidden and were poor at espionage work, there was no way they could have snuck up on them or the Iranians and yet unless his sensors had failed him that is exactly what happened. He had not heard or felt the rumbling of their approach, or the frantic fortification of the Iranian position. One moment they had been patrolling, the next tanks were overrunning their position.

It defied belief and he desperately wanted to have a look but short of putting his head up he had to rely on his other senses. Visual confirmation would have to wait.

Bullets thudded into the sand around him and whizzed uncomfortably close to their positions but from the sounds of combat going on nearby the Iranians were having a far harder time of it. Only the metallic clang of small arms fire striking heavy shielding of artillery confirmed to his experienced ear that the Iranians were not massacring their own. Over it all the roar of engines and the vibrations generated by tones of tread stirring up the sand drowned out the worst of the sounds of dying.

John glanced at his companion as the sound of rockets detonating momentarily drowned out even the roar of combat. His ears popped as the concussive blast ripped over his position and hot shrapnel sizzled loudly in the sand. It appeared that the Iranians were getting desperate.

Then slowly the sounds of small arms fire petered out and the fearful, pain filled cries stopped. Replaced by the heavy smell of blood, sweat and death. Such a viscous dogfight filled John with a deep apprehension. He knew of no power on earth that held the power to drop such firepower in the middle of an Iranian troop, effectively massacring them with little apparent effort.

Crunch

Heavy combat boots stepped out onto the battle field and John gripped his M4 tighter as sweat threatened to drop into his eyes, the sun still had not dropped far enough for him and his last remaining subordinate to slip off into the darkness of the desert and he didn't fancy trying to slip past whoever had won the battle he had just witnessed.

Crunch

"Unit Sierra Delta Fower Tree Niner, continue with the mission parameters," bellowed a voice that could have been mistaken for his old drill sergeants. Once again the roar of multiple engines crescendo and the ground shock with the vibrations of tones of heavy weaponry. Several large booms of aircraft breaking the sound barrier preceded the slowly receding rumble of tanks leaving the area.

"As for you two soldiers, don't make me come and get you. It will be painful for you and regretful for me."

A less experienced soldier may have succumbed to the shock of surviving the cluster-fuck, between units of the Iranian army and an unknown attacker that just went down and surrendered. But John had already lost one man and a show of force such as the one he had just witnessed did not convince him that his or Mathew's position had been compromised.

CrunchThunk

The sound of a combat boot compressing the loose sand that had previously been churned up by combat so close to his to his ear caused him to wince but the picture of a combat knife expertly positioned between his partners shoulder blades, millimeters from his partners spine, made him want to jump up and start spraying. That, he was sure that was the intention and he doubted he would be anymore successful than the Iranians had been if he tried.

The injury was not fatal but very very painful. He could see Mathews face drawn in pain and his teeth clenched in an attempt not to scream.

"Don't make me kill your mate to prove a point soldier."

John weighed up his options before sighing and slowly raising from his position, silently motioning for his partner to follow. At least by exposing their position they had an opportunity to see who and what had gone down.

He was not surprised at seeing the massacre of Iranian troops; they had been picked apart by what looked to be numerically superior and better-armed forces. Deep tread marks in the sand showed the presence of some kind of heavy vehicle and the condition of the bodies showed why it was not a good idea to get shot.

His quick visual inspection of the battlefield confirmed what he had heard. What surprised him was the relatively young Asian man that stood relaxed in the middle of the carnage with the look and stance of a seasoned and supremely confident soldier.

Combat amour was worn with apparent ease and flexibility and he was armed to the hilt. Some of the weapons he didn't even recognize and John had been trained to recognize even the exceedingly rare weapons, it was what he did. The way the man stood in the middle of so many ripped and torn bodies was very intimidating as he was sure it was intended to be.

It was obviously not the first battlefield that the Asian soldier had seen or even participated in, even the hardest soldiers he knew found such scenes hard to bear and yet the young man stood with a quiet confidence amongst it all. It was disconcerting and reinforced John's caution in approaching the situation he now found himself in.

Even his bellowing and commanding voice from earlier lacked a trace of an accent, the mark of a seasoned diplomat. Everyone held an accent and even if the man before him had grown up in an English speaking country he would have expected one. No, in his opinion English was not his first or last language. It was he knew a deadly combination, expert soldier and career diplomat, only the very very best combined brains and brawn to devastating effect and if the man in front of him was one of them, then they were in the shit.

John didn't see the rest of the attacking force or any of the heavy weaponry but he gently disarmed just in case. He had heard the heavier machinery leave but could not account for the rest and just because he could not see the force that took these soldiers down did not mean that they were not there. His mission was now a complete failure. It tasted like ash in his mouth.

"You soldier, where betrayed, you both were." John's eyes flickered in surprise as the Asian man pulled a manila folder with the white house seal emblazoned proudly on its cover and threw it over the bloody corpses, streaking the blood of the dead across the pristine pages.

Exchanging a guarded look with his fellow captured soldier, John reached down to look at the folder. Disbelieving everything the man said at face value. Although he had never been captured before, he had been drilled in what to expect and even put through some of the more common forms of questioning their nation had expected to be used against any of their captured troops.

He understood well that he was in this stage now. Just because the man did not look like he was with the Iranians, nor used knives in his questioning, yet, did not mean squat and so he was on his guard.

They would try to break him for information, just as they would try to break enemy combatants if their situations were reversed. John doubted that there would be a rescue and so he was determined to last as long as he could, constantly on guard for any escape opportunities.

Looking briefly at the folder he opened it and took a look. It appeared to be his case file and although he thought about the possibility of it being doctored, small details of discipline matters confirmed to him its validity. Further into the file, he found particulars about his current mission and started at the mission classification in disbelief.

STATUS: LEAKED AND DISAVOWED

"What…." He croaked as he passed the folder to his companion with shaking hands. His anger and frustration at the mission returning in a wave of emotion, his pride vanished as the words 'LEAKED AND DISAVOWED' flashed through his head. The anger and frustration was reflected in Mathews pain filled face as he flicked through the folder.

"I know what you were trying to do," the man said in a sympathetic voice. "But rebel republicans exposed you for political reasons, a tabloid article here, a senate inquiry there and here we both are. You, betrayed and captured, me exploiting an opportunity and offering you a job."

Blinking unsteadily, John steadied his nerves and refocused his attention away from the damning dossier and back to the armored man in front of him. "See, there I was, forming my own security company when I stumbled into the plot in Washington. I find it reprehensible that they would betray such a fine soldier and asset for such petty reasons and so I acted."

"Why us," Mathew croaked from beside him, clearly struggling with the pain of the knife wound.

"A good question," The man acknowledged with a tilt of his head as he approached them. "Quite simply, I am gathering the best and you are now out of a job."

John sighed, they didn't really have a choice and if the Asian was to be believed then returning to Washington wasn't really an option. He had heard about some of his mates from back home moving from the army and working for better pay and conditions in private firms and something about that dossier felt real. His gut had lurched when he had seen it.

"OK"

"Well, the first order of business is to get your friend patched up then. I am Ranma," he said as he finished his approach. John nodded and then did jump in surprise when an inky black hole appeared beside them. "Lets go, leave your weapon you wont need it."

John and Mathew cautiously approached the inky blackness with apprehension. If this was how the Iranians had been ambushed then Ranma held a huge tactical advantage. "Well get in," he heard before being roughly shoved through the portal and stumbling on the other side.

The desert had been transformed into a hospital room of some kind, computer and medical equipment surrounded hospital beds. The desert wind that had been whipping sand into his hair and down his clothes had vanished and a doctor appeared to guide Mathew to a bed.

"Welcome, you start today. Get some rest you have a lot of training before you meet the rest of the troops. You will need to report to lieutenant Ehri in the morning," announced Ranma before stalking out and leaving John wondering about but not regretting the decision he had just made.

Back in Iran, several attacking platforms began emitting an IFF signature that matched Israeli warplanes. They had been programmed with several locations that included the countries nuclear program and several biological weapons sights.

The destruction of the targets was recorded both by neighboring countries and US spy planes and would reverberate around the world for years. That single action of sabotage and misdirection, hidden from the world, would change everything.


Setsuna stared blankly at the time gates. For millennia she had manipulated humanity without a single concern that there may be the slightest flaw in her plans. Every event she predicted had come true, every plan had come to fruition.

Her participation in the messier ends of the conflicts she had encouraged and manipulated over the centuries had honed the massive power that she had been granted through the silver millennium artifact. Around her the gates glowed with an ethereal power and although it had not spoken to her since she had become its guardian she never doubted that it could and would if there was need.

But for all her power and knowledge, she felt uncertainty and that scared her more than anything had since the moment that she had become a god among mortals.

Always in the past, events unfolded as she had foreseen, her plans were executed to the utmost efficiency and she had never failed to carry out her objectives. Now, she didn't even know if her plans were being followed or if events were slipping unknowingly through her fingers.

The uncertainty ate at her.

Around her, the bunker that housed the time gates stood 0.1 percent out of phase to the rest of the universe. It was an ultimate defense but also its greatest flaw. To those that could not detect such a shift, it was as if it didn't exist. Certainly that was the case today and even as she had found out, during the invasion by Queen Beryl.

To those that had the technology to detect it, it proved to be a honey pot and she had to constantly keep an eye out for survey drones looking for relics of long dead and technologically advanced civilizations of other races that they could pillage lest she attract more trouble than she could cope with before her plans were complete.

The occasional galactic criminal or explorer was one thing but until her plans reached fruition an invasion by a race with enough technology to detect the time gates was something she fought to avoid. She had to destroy sensor drones with an increasing regularity and just today she had destroyed one that she recognized.

Oh, it wasn't identical but similar enough that she could imagine that it belonged to the same people. Two sensor drones being destroyed in the same sector of space attracted attention and she was nowhere near the point were she could realistically accelerate her plans of Empire.

Putting the possibility of invasion aside, she watched as the silent alarm that monitored the life signature of Metalia sounded within the time gates. At least there, there was no question of her plans going awry. When the life signature of Metalia increased past the detection threshold she had set for the Mercury computer the school girls she had empowered would be able to track the dread spirit down and finish the threat posed by Queen Beryl once and for all. This would leave her, Setsuna –guardian of the time gates, the sole and unquestioned power in the region.

Once that happened then her plans could move forward without too much trouble. The threshold she had set was low enough that the power behind Queen Beryl was still asleep and locked in the prison that Queen Serenity had placed her in. Though at the rate which the signature was raising, the dread spirit was waking and it would not take it long once that happened to break free from its prison.

It set a finite period of opportunity for her soldiers to act and act she had no doubt they would, with a little bit of encouragement from her puppets. They had to act soon, because as much power as she had empowered them with and despite the artifacts she had given them, they were no match for an escaped Metalia and Queen Beryl. A battle fought amongst the ancient queen and her dread spirits prison was the only option that guaranteed success at this stage of their training and development.

Setsuna's eyes glittered as she thought about the first time she had found out about Metalia's influence over Queen Beryl. The legend of the Moon Kingdom and its conflict with Queen Beryl of earth had not yet been ground to dust and whispers still passed orally amongst the seedier regions of the once great earth cities.

Still young to her role she had immediately incorporated the new knowledge into her plans, knowing that such a power would not be bound forever. Indeed the latest readings had proved her correct and such a being proved a great threat to her dominance.

What really concerned her greatly however was not the awakening of Metalia or the possibility of her release, nor the likelihood of alien invasion but the events that consumed the nations of earth.

She had not foreseen at this stage of the earths development a major war being started and fought in the Middle East. In fact she had been subtly moving the world away from larger interstate conflicts so as to prepare the world for a new age dominated by Crystal Tokyo.

The fact that war was flaring in the region and threatened to spill over to neighboring regions, with the entire world threatened with destabilization as a result proved to be both an opportunity and a hindrance. From her experience in the past, a destabilized world order provided greater prospects for manipulation and outright forcing outcomes into her corner as corruption flourished among political infrastructure.

But the fact that events had gone the way they had, so unexpectantly, combined with the sensor drone at the same time as the awakening of Metalia caused her deep concern. Despite staring at the time gates she had yet to find inspiration or certainty that her plans were on track. For all she new the plans were slipping through her fingers.

She still had not forgotten the relic that had found its way into the solar system only to self-destruct. Perhaps it was time to visit the moon searching for anything she might have missed on her passed forays? After all, the moon had been the kingdoms ancient capital so if anything had survived it was most likely to be there.

Setsuna growled in annoyance and frustration, "After Queen Beryl has been dealt with. Not long now."

Before the war between Queen Beryl and Serenity of the Moon Kingdom and consequent downfall of civilization across the solar system, the asteroid belt, which lay between Mars and Jupiter, was the industrial center of the kingdom. The war almost resulted in the complete destruction of all habitable biospheres in the system and whipped out huge tracts of infrastructure leaving only a few scattered and sealed military bases due to the ultimate blitzkrieg tactics utilized by Beryl.


The large volume of space and mineral rich planetoids that made up the asteroid belt located in the middle of the kingdom provided an ideal location to fuel the multitude of shipyards, trading centers and manufacturing hubs which supported the kingdoms way of life. Everyone benefited from the vast resources and excess manufacturing capacity that fueled the rich lifestyles and high living standards that were enjoyed kingdom wide.

Such vital infrastructure to the military and economic wellbeing of the empire was also among the first targets to be destroyed when Queen Beryl swept through the system on her quest of destruction.

For the rebirth of the great kingdom that once strode the system and its expansion into the stars to take place, then the massive industrial center that once filled the area amongst the asteroids would need to be rebuilt.

More than that, for a sustained capacity to attack enemies and defend itself, the industrial center needed to be restored. Surplus military supplies from before the fall would only provide a stopgap solution to any military conflict that the kingdom faced and the projection of military might was vital to the state.

Over billions of years, and a multitude of collisions, a small percentage of asteroids yielded almost purely metallic compositions. The rocky layer had fragmented off leaving the core exposed. Such a class of asteroids provided the perfect base for the rebuilding of such a vast industrial center.

To this end, over a hundred dense metallic spheres rocketed out from the hidden palace on the moon an on towards carefully targeted asteroids. Each sphere contained half a billion micro-machines that would provide the building blocks upon which an automated industrial sector could be build.

Neither the technology nor the sensors existed on earth to detect the fast moving objects, nor the tightly compressed beam of microwaves that provided both updated trajectory information and power to the extensive and technologically complex systems.

Slamming into asteroids that dwarfed the spheres by many orders of magnitude, they quickly broke apart into their micrometer parts and started the construction of the latest modular systems, which would allow for the harvesting of the rich source of minerals they had landed on. From there, it would be a simple and rapid process of building upon the modules already constructed, quickly expanding capacity.

Schematics and updated instructions flowed from the palace on the moon in tightly controlled bursts and over the next seventy-two hours the first of the modules would begin to take shape.

The latest ruler of the Moon Kingdom didn't intent to just restore what had been lost however. He had learned well the lessons of the previous ruler and the almost complete destruction of their kingdom. No he intended to aggressively expand the area he had direct control over such that no one could threaten them or bring them so close to extinction again.

To that end, fully one third of the schematics that were broadcast to the micro-machines where those of powerful weapons platforms. Weapon platforms that contained technology that had the benefit of millennia of polishing and fine-tuning by the greatest supercomputer ever built.

Once the weapon platforms were online and the shipyards had started to rebuild the lost fleets then the Moon Kingdom would be reborn and the descendants of Beryl and her people would either submit or be assimilated. Diplomacy had been tried and it had failed. Yes, the new ruler had definitely learned the lessons of the past and looked eagerly to the future.


Tom Dupree, 44th president of the United States was an anomaly. An experienced naval officer, a leader of men, he would neither classify himself as a dove or a hawk, instead he mingled comfortably with both. He was also a democrat.

Tom was also exactly what America needed after economically and militarily overstretching in the days and years after September 11th, both in restoring America's unrivaled superpower status, tactically, technologically and numerically and in constraining inflation and booming foreign debt.

So far, he had been moderately successful in both and America was once again enjoying the fruits of its success but the debriefing he was currently receiving from his chief of staff scarred him in ways that another September 11th would not. Around him in the situation room of the west wing where he was being briefed, the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and his more senior generals and admirals echoed the gravity of the situation.

Key knowledge assets were disappearing world wide, from under their noses. Since the cold war, the United States had kept tabs on key researchers and engineers world wide. Their areas of expertise in anything from fundamental physics, applied nuclear and biological work, even IT infrastructure, represented both a potential future assets and a dangerous threat to national security.

They were constantly monitoring not only who had the knowledge and expertise but also the resources to use it in nefarious means. And his intelligence had not even noticed them and their families disappearing until over thirty worldwide had vanished.

The count currently stood at near to fifty and that was only the people he had been keeping an eye on, who knew how many more out their had vanished and would continue to vanish. Even before the briefing it became clear to him that someone was building an enormous amount of capability and expertise, and that held serious security implications for his country.

"Putting aside that I am only hearing about this now, has there been any increase in chatter from the usual suspects?" he directed at the Secretary of State.

"Mr. President, it has become clear to us in the intelligence community that a new and incredibly well resourced player has emerged. They have been smart in avoiding the usual contacts and…."

"So," Tom interrupted in disbelief, "you have no idea who they are or there intentions?" Out of the huge reforms and increases in funding that had poured into the intelligence community over the last five years he found it implausible that such an organized and resourced exodus of scientist and engineering capability could be conducted under there noises without leaving some traces.

"No, Mr. President." Tom shook his head in disgust. Whoever they were could be planning the most devastating attack on US soil in there history and they had nothing. "But we do know how they are doing it. We are getting reports that some of the scientists have been offered a new job with enormous perks before disappearing."

"Well…" he started before being interrupted by a somber looking Secretary for Defense.

"Mr. President, this has just become a lesser priority. I have just received word that Israel has bombed nuclear sites in Iran." Tom swiveled his chair to the massive plasma screen at the back of the situation room and looked in horrified silence at the map of Iran.

"I have marked the nuclear sites that we were aware of, the others judging from satellite images are what are left of underground facilities that we were not and judging from atmospheric testing some of those were biological research labs."

Tom wanted to scream in frustration as he watched the phones begin to ring around the room. What was wrong with people? "Why didn't the Israeli's let us know? And more to the point, if they had intelligence of that nature that we didn't WHY WEREN'T THEY SHARING IT!" He demanded.

"We have a denial of responsibility from Israel, Sir," announced the Secretary of Defense from his phone. "They are claiming it was a set up."

"Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz and ceased all oil exports, Oil prices are spiking." Tom sat in stunned silence as the Secretary of state announced the worsening of the situation. Even today most western democracies were dependant on oil. While it was Iran that was attacked, he felt in his gut that it was the US that was being targeted but who and why? Was it linked to the disappearing Scientists? And who had the power to pull off something like this, certainly no third rate Middle Eastern dust bowl.

"Enough! People we need answers, Don, confirm responsibility for the attack." He said pointing at the Secretary of Defense. "Al, we need a response, now, deal with it and find out if the disappearing knowledge assets are in any way connected." The secretary of state nodded, "Everyone else, we are on yellow alert. Generals, prepare some scenarios, you have 24 hours. Get to work people."

Tom's blood boiled as his body prepared himself for combat. He needed to remind himself that he was no longer, nor ever likely, to engage in combat situations but today's events couldn't have targeted the US's vulnerabilities any better. First their expertise was being stripped and then the oil supply was disrupted. Their economy might not stand the shock and if war was coming recession was the last thing he needed.

No, he needed information fast and if war was coming he vowed that America would be ready for it.

Thanks to daydreamingsamurai for pre-reading this – he does great work