If Lucas said NO!

by Pascal in Quebec

Lucas knew full well that being sent out of the country on a military boat would only end up with him injured or dead, no matter what lies Lawrence spread around. So Lucas did the logical thing: he packed up and left in the dead of night, leaving behind in public forums incriminating evidence against his bastard father to keep him too busy to hunt him down. Arc-1 of the story.

6. Chapter 6

The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.

Disclaimer: I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.

SeaQuest

Abstract

Lucas knew full well that being sent out of the country on a military boat would only end up with him injured or dead, no matter what lies Lawrence spread around. So Lucas did the logical thing: he packed up and left in the dead of night, leaving behind in public forums incriminating evidence against his bastard father to keep him too busy to hunt him down.

This story takes place before season 1, in the months before the SeaQuest is commissioned out to sea in the period when Lucas was ordered by his father to join the ship without any care for his opinion or general welfare.

This story is Alternate Universe, most characters are OOC and there are several mini-crossovers in the form of cameos and snapshots with the maritime-inspired series NCIS and JAG who are the most relevant to the situations facing Lucas and the casts of MacGyver (2016), NCIS and Bones will make large appearances. There is a lot of CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Canadian Mounties and Coast Guard and other multi-varied organizations mentioned along the way. As such, given so many crossovers of equal proportions, I am again placing this in the general SeaQuest section of the fandom since it would not fit in a single sub-genre. My thanks for your tolerance of the situation.

Unlike my other story, "Justice for Lucas", this has absolutely no psionics, magicks or time engines involved even if such things were part & parcel of the SeaQuest canon in all three seasons.

PS; I like flames, they're fun to read so don't hesitate to write them.

{ SQ } - { WARNING } - { SQ }

All warnings at the beginning of Chapter 3 are repeated verbatim.

For this chapter, time stamps will have America's West & East coast hours as well as Western Africa.

This is a very long chapter, over 56,000 words or around 85 pages; have a coffee and snacks on hand while reading if you do it in one sitting.

WHAT IF LUCAS SAID 'NO'?

SIXTH CHAPTER; Burn Baby, Burn, Burn, Burn!

Escapism; when reality ain't your thing

(SeaQuest – season 1 theme)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 09:07am

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 02:07am

Western America; Friday 18th of December, 2020; 23:07pm

Daleminton Hotel, room #204

Park Royal, West Vancouver, BC, Canada

Lucas slurped his coffee with great relish as he considered the nice oily black little nugget of nastiness he had just dropped in poor Director Webber's diminutive lap. Wearing a shit-eating smirk of epic proportions, the teen justified himself by thinking that she had her 'baby Einstein' for a year now so she should be used to having bratty blond geniuses in her work environment.

Snort!

Having 'The Royal Challenge' as ringtone that would specify it was Lucas calling would prove interesting for the woman. He was important in the director's job now, it behooved him to make himself available and easy to reach. The boy wondered if the woman, in her forties, would recognize the musical theme from the old 1980's cartoon series He-Man. Having the herald trumpets and hunting horns sounding our of her pocket every now and then like when King Randor arrived in the throne room to hold court should liven up her days.

Eh eh eh! the boy laughed softly at the words appearing in the lenses of his neural meta-glasses. He lazily read over the small message he had texted to her phone after hacking it and programming the new tone. "You would be surprised, dear Ms Webber, what I can believe, when truthful proof is presented to me honestly and openly. L. , PhD, MD, DP."

"And SMACK in the kisser, girl! That'll teach you to make plans for me without consulting me first!"

Was this brattiness? Yuuppp, you betcha! But it was FUN. And for a young guy on the run from an entire country full of blood thirsty clerics, mercenaries and rioting civilians with torches and nooses, it was a well deserved moment of humor that helped to break his stress levels and go back to a normal heart rate.

Let's just say that the CNN news updates all evening long hadn't been conducive to making him want to turn off the lights and go to bed, all alone in a dark room. And he had no gun with him. Capsules of acid, poison and incendiaries aplenty, but no actual weapon that could do real damage against an armored, experienced foe.

Damn.

Now he would have to find a way to hold on until the conjoined DXS/NCIS protection team arrived at his hotel in late Sunday afternoon. Come to think of it, he might as well call the reception and make arrangements with the manager to reserve the suites on either side of his to be fully shielded during his stay here. Given the spacious well appointed settings and impeccable service, he doubted the agencies would care to downgrade to a cheap motel or vacation camp lodge somewhere in the woods. Especially in light of his legs and general health, neither of which were secrets. He needed to be near enough to a hospital to get his yearly checkup and surgeries done before the end of January or risk developing suppuration's along the gouges dug into his long bones to inlay the reinforcing rods and organic glue.

Chucking another mouthful of coffee, the blue-eyed wunderkind set his neural interface to dig deeper on the Department of External Services and what they did for a living. After that, he would dig up the personnel files and biographies of each person in the team they were sending. He already had the file for the much vaunted 'Matty-the-Hun Webber' that he filched from the CIA's tertiary backup line archival server located at Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, deep in the south Texas forests. Since the machine was a slow-poke piece of obsolete DEC-chip 21064 boards running on a VAX Alpha AXP RISC architecture with OpenVMS operating system and apps, getting in had been relatively simple.

No pile of discontinued, unsupported, scrap built in 1993 would stop a hacker of Lucas's caliber when he put an effort into his work!

Besides, by the server's logbooks, there hadn't been physical maintenance in the room where the machine was located in three years. That was weird. Lucas hacked through the Laughlin Air Force Base records and land usage blueprints until he found the server's location. As he saw the building, he understood why it had gone without being physically touched and cleaned in three years. It was in the basement of an old private mental health hospital specialized in PTSD and addictions that had been closed following a suspicious fire in the boiler rooms but never renovated nor sold off. The building was condemned and shuttered with large thick plywood placards and wire worksite fences but there was no signs of human activity around the terrain. No work crews, no guards, nothing. There wasn't even any electronic surveillance around the charred husk or outside. The old edifice had been flatly left to rot, without any care for its contents.

Smiling widely at the stupidity of humans, even in the self-styled 'intelligence' community, the adolescent whelmed the tremendous capacities of his neural interface to find what he needed through the dark, foggy, back channels of the Dark Web. He wanted a contractor, preferably a team, capable of infiltrating the AFB without causing alarms or calamities, reach the outlying civilian sector, enter the derelict hospital and find the still operating server. At that point, the hireling's job would be to secure the incoming connection, splice in a set of new wires and adapters then plug in the CPU that Lucas will have supplied to create a reliable, secured connection to his Virtual-Private-Network on the neural frequencies of his futuristic network so he could work the CIA's massive trove of decades of secrets and leverage at a respectable speed.

Hacking Matty Webber's file had taken almost an hour. That was far too long in real time but with the neural interface as the work tool, it was utterly unacceptable performance. The archival server was far too old, and programmed far too inefficiently, for the situation to be tolerated any longer. Since forgoing the source of deliciously naughty secrets was not going to happen in this lifetime, Lucas was reduced to doing what he seemed to spend his life doing: call in for service from a contractor.

"Blast it all!" The teenager grumped playfully as he sent messages to a dozen 'reliable' technical mercenaries that he had found or been referred over the years. Some of them had even done small jobs for him in the recent past when his overbooked schedule got in the way of, well, other work. "If it ain't the toilet backing up, or the gas lines leaking, it's the bloody server across the country going haywire. Blergh! Why is it always – ME – who ends up cleaning other people's messes anyways?" Shaking his head in mock despair, the boy got back to splicing the aforementioned archival vault with great care in case of booby traps. This was CIA territory, even if just virtually, and they sure liked their traps, them guys in Langley. Lucas sipped his coffee slowly as he browsed the module architecture and apps directory, wondering if there were some traps that he could find to retro-engineer for his own use. That would make this whole slow-motion fishing expedition worth it. And fun. Disarming traps or blowing them up was always good fun and calmed his nerves when he had an attack of insomnia.

Before he lost himself in the meanders of the CIA's forgotten septic tank, the adolescent needed to set up a few things for the next day and beyond. Just in case things went even more pear-shaped than they had already done. It wasn't pessimism but good old fashion understanding of human nature that made him prepare more contingencies and equipment hoards in secret locations. What was the point of learning about psychology and psychiatry if he didn't use it to save his life?

Allowing himself an hour for some housekeeping chores with his extra plans, the young man accessed his neural VPN to find his semi-trucks roving across North America. He found two near his present position; one had arrived in Edmonds north of Seattle, tasked with examining and opening up the unnamed Manor that Lucas knew he owned there, while the other was in Canada, in eastern British Columbia, in the small town of Castlegar, already heading towards him as he had ordered yesterday evening. That truck would arrive at about the same time as the protection details from the DXS and NCIS who would leave from Los Angeles tomorrow morning.

Not having any other resources nearby to assist his mobility or survival, the teen turned towards the commercial options he could exercise; buying vehicles, filling them with equipment and food then stashing them in decrepit hangars that he would buy under new anonymous shell companies that would suddenly appear in the Canadian Registry of Corporations by his good services. What's the point of being such a darned fine hacker if he didn't use it once in a while? Eh eh eh! Lucas browsed through used vehicle dealers in Vancouver, looking specifically for one that also had a mechanic's garage integrated to the business so he could have his purchases inspected and customized as he needed. Finding a seller proved easy as he found a place called 'Northshore Auto Mall' not far from the Daleminton Hotel, just a short car ride along Marine Drive.

The shop called Tired Re-Works Inc specialized in obtaining used working trucks from diverse types of companies, from simple restaurant delivery vans to telecom tool trucks with crane arms or nacelles. The selection offered by the shop was sturdier, more rugged and far less conspicuous than other choices from dealers of new cars. Looking over the selection of what he himself could drive in a crunch despite his bad legs and limited driving experience, the boy concentrated on Chevrolet or Ford full-size vans with double rear doors, sliding side-door and heavy climate control unit on the roof.

There were a pair of those that were exactly what he needed and available inside 24 hours. Both had been part of a company that did residential construction contracts all over the city. While the tools had been taken out and sold separately much earlier in the year, the vans still had all their internal setup of workbenches, drawers, closets and, more importantly for Lucas, the special devices were left in to sweeten the sale. Each vehicle had a small office fridge (4'cu) with a makeshift folding sink and a folding two-hob propane burning camping stove. The water and gas canisters were bolted to the outside of the van on the rooftop and the owner would need to climb up the ladder set on the rear door to reach and service them. A wastewater plastic drum was set directly inside the van's compartment under the sink's position, and it served as trashcan too, that was taken out and emptied out manually. In a situation of last resort, that drum could be used as a dry toilet too, as the contractors used to do when they worked in the more rural areas outside of town where the clients hadn't rented portable worksite toilet cabins.

Lucas thought about what he might need to change on these trucks to make them practical for escaping into the less populated zones while keeping himself and his escorts alive and sheltered, if not comfortable. These weren't RV's by any stretch of the imagination but if they could adapt a bit, then the vehicles would be quite serviceable for his cause. Looking over the entire lot of equipment that had been procured from the bankrupt contractors, one van caught his eye as it had everything the other three did but also much more. As it had served to install utilities and security systems, not just ordinary construction, it had a roof mounted crane/ladder telescopic arm ended in a cherry-picker nacelle capable of hoisting 2,000 pounds of weight. The nacelle had electrical wiring with a connections box, three network cables (coaxial, RJ45 & fiber-optics) with an 8 port hub for each type, compressed air pipe with multi-plug to connect pneumatic tools, a pressurized water hose with multi-plug to feed tools or hydraulic systems or even test plumbing to find leaks. This particular Chevy Van was about a yard longer than the others, with a snowplow blade and winch already installed on the front bumper, and it had all the extra diesel generator, air compressor, water cistern and propane cylinder for a gas welder and a small counter-top smelting crucible used to work certain plumbing or cable parts.

Making an impulsive decision, Lucas logged onto the dealer website's e-commerce section to create a customer dossier linked to a corporate account belonging to a fake shell company he created two years ago. The company would buy the four vans and have them cleaned, detailed, supplied and delivered to a warehouse or hangar that he would need to find. The solution was simple; near the place where Welch Street passed under the elevated Lionsgate Bridge Road, was the CN (Canadian National Rail Co.) triage yards that passed a lot of cargo every week. Because of this, several companies had located near the zone and one was of particular interest for dry-storing 4 heavy vehicles for a prolonged duration. It was a U-Haul facility that rented storage units, including some that were big enough to serve as garages for RV's or even semi-trucks. Logging into the U-Haul remote service section, Lucas found and inspected the specific facility he wanted to use then paid for 2 double capacity, dry garages with the same & shell company as the one to buy the four vans. The U-Haul franchise would inspect and lock the the two side-by-side units then send two sets of keys by private courier, one for Lucas himself and another to the vehicle dealership that would deliver the trucks directly into the parking hangars inside of 24 hours.

With his emergency preparations for the immediate future finished, the teen logged on to the website of the limousine company he had used when arriving two days ago and reserved a similar short limousine with driver for tomorrow morning at 09:00am to go do some shopping and tourism. What was the point of coming to Vancouver in the height of winter holiday season if he stayed cooped up in the hotel room all the time? It was bad enough that he would be stuck in a hospital for two weeks soon, no reason to deprive himself when he was still mobile and not threatened directly just yet.

When his purchases and reservations were done, he turned back to the CIA's backup server in Texas, thinking that a few hours of straight programming & hacking would help him relax so he could sleep better. Setting a clock to ring when it was 03:00am at the latest, he pooled all of his concentration unto his hacking and lost himself in his virtual realm.

Midnight crisis

(Law & Order – opening theme)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 09:15am

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 02:15am

Western America; Friday 18th of December, 2020; 23:15pm

Condo #15-D; with terrace

1101 Admiral's Walk, Buffalo, New York, USA

Cynthia Holtzenstein was in a mood to throw stuff over the terrace banister, regardless of damages, injuries or liabilities she might incur. She had just managed, at 01:49am in the friggin' morning to reach her condo after getting jammed at the office for hours, then stalled in interminable traffic. She arrived only to find that the bloody elevator in the tower was out of order for hours because some dumb, uneducated, gray-headed geriatric lout had drunk too much at his office party only to puke it all over the cabin two hours earlier. The emergency call to the cleaning crew had gone well; they had come to do the job in record time, given it had been midnight, in traffic, in a light snowfall. But the chemicals they used to clean the carpet and felt side panels were toxic so the cabin was parked in the upper level of the tower for another two hours to let the fumes vent out by the shaft's rooftop maintenance hatch.

Cynthia had to climb up all 15 floors in her damned four-inch dress heels. At her age and lack of genuine exercise ("boinking customers don't count" her doctor said) it meant one minute per floor to ascend to her rightful place atop the building filled with nicely appointed apartments. She had walked into the suite dead on arrival and completely not interested in anything but some hot solid food, a glass of red wine and a foot massage. Luckily, she was about to get at least two of her desires satisfied; she had some leftovers from two days ago in the oven warming up and the bottle in her hands would not resist her efforts at pulling the cork out much longer.

As it was, she managed to pop the recalcitrant device out of the way of her delicious red nectar without accidentally spilling any on her clothes when the doorbell affixed directly to the frame of her main entry sounded loudly. Lips firmly pursed in disapproval at having to delay her much needed libations, the middle aged woman marched on slippered feet to look at the security monitor, thinking idly about who or what could be calling upon her home at this unholy hour. At least, it couldn't be Lawrence or Lucas as both were out of the country and a dozen hours away by chartered jet.

Activating the safety TV built into the wall next to the door, she instantly thanked her lucky stars she had left the wine bottle on the dining room table, otherwise, she would have been horribly splashed when she dropped it in fright at the sight.

An FBI – SWAT team on her doorstep. In flak vests, riot shields and assault rifles.

Taking a deep breath, Cynthia let her more criminally minded professional instincts to the fore of her thoughts and saw that she was not in danger physically. The leader of the FBI task force was in the front, right before her door, wearing only a regular winter jacket over his smaller flak vest. He didn't have a weapon in hand nor a shield so he obviously didn't think he would be welcomed by a gun-toting madwoman. The briefcase dangling from his left hand however had her gut feeling tell her she would need to remember all she had ever learned about federal search & seizure warrants in a lawyer's place of dwelling. Thankfully, her home office was a dedicated room with a locked reinforced door; they could not simply go in unless they had the appropriate court orders.

Unfortunately, she could bet they did. She really didn't think they would bother to come intimidate her at 02:30am in a bloomin' snow storm if they were expecting to return empty handed.

Swallowing her anxiety and pride, she buzzed the intercom and spoke firmly "I can see your team crowding before my door. Please do be careful with the antiques while you visit my apartment. Many are bought at European auction houses and more valuable than the building your offices are located in. It would be a shame if I had to invoice the FBI for compensations due to vandalism and careless manipulations of personal belongings non-critical to your investigation. Please file in one at a time slowly and be careful about those bulky, unwieldy riot shields."

Pushing the button to unlock the door, she turned back to her dining room and waiting wine. She just had this gut feeling she would need it.

"Madam Cynthia Lydia Wise Holtzenstein, ex-Wolenczak, esquire, attorney at law?" asked the man in the shorter lighter body armor the moment he joined her in her dining area. "My name is Sylvester Jacob Ashford, I serve as senior state's attorney of NYS for the Buffalo metropolitan area. I have here a warrant for your arrest and detention on multiple counts of child neglect, abuse, assault & battery, criminal negligence, criminally depraved disregard for the life, health and welfare of a child in your care, by-passing a court injunction that led to a child being subjected to unlawful authority, selling the custody of a child which counts as 'human trafficking' and being an active accomplice or mastermind in the torture, degradation and attempted murder of a child. Please turn around and place your hands on your head while you are searched bodily."

Making the fakest smile she had, Cynthia replied "I am unarmed. Could I please put on my boots and coat before you complete the arrest? It will be easier for all of us that way."

The attorney looked at her blandly, nodding to the heavily armed female agent at his right. The rest of the 15 minute process, 20 minutes down the stairs to the outside parking lot and the following hour long drive to FBI regional office would all be done in deathly silence. Nobody in uniform wanted to sully themselves by having a conversation with this sub-human beast and she didn't speak to them since she considered them socially inferior to her imagined station in life.

It wasn't nice knowing you

(JAG – opening theme)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 09:30am

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 02:30am

Western America; Friday 18th of December, 2020; 23:30pm

World Power Plant Project; General Direction Edifice (topside)

South Africa, western coast near Cape Town

Lawrence Albert Wise Wolenczak was in a nasty, piss-poor disposition as he looked in the mirrored side panel of the elevator cabin, using the time of the ride up to adjust his neck tie and pocket square so that he looked impeccable for the coming meeting. He had received the message at 08:00am that the board of administrators for the World Power Geothermal Subducted Plant Project (WPP) wanted an emergency conference with him. In person. All the representatives were physically present in the building to attend in person, not the usual proxies, delegates or occasional remote attendance via video conferencing.

In person!

And they had commanded that he be present in person too.

Four different ambassador-level governmental officials with diplomatic credentials and immunity come to invade HIS building, HIS work site and use HIS facilities, buffet, washroom and favorite conference room as if THEY were in charge of WPP!

The fact that in reality the governments of the 3 confederations, the UEO and 9 major commercial partners were the actual financial backers behind the project and therefore the genuine bosses never entered his mind at any costs. The fact that in legality their mandataries truly were in charge of everything therefore could issue any orders they wanted, including shutting down work or closing the site completely, was not something that Lawrence would ever admit to his own bloated fragile ego. Besides, he had so many schemes, frauds, bribes, thefts, embezzlements and outright lies to foreign companies and dignitaries about his position carrying diplomatic privileges and immunity (that he didn't really have) that he simply could not afford to think about what the results would be if there were questions, let alone investigations into his tenure as Head of Project and General Manager. He might as well commit suicide before the arrest was made; it would be less painful, and certainly less publicly degrading to his weak mind than being dragged off in handcuffs like a vulgar, low-borne, back-alley ruffian.

The felonious engineer passed weary dull brown eyes over the reflection of his hairstyle whilst studiously avoiding to look too closely at his face or eyes as they were well repaired but still showed damage a year after the surgeries were finished, then glared malevolently at the elevator control panel. The fact that the cabin was painfully slow wasn't any news to him; he had ordered the janitors to make certain the cabin slowed down discretely the higher it went in the edifice. The purpose was to forcibly make visitors feel just how unwanted their presence was in HIS domain and just how low, menial and troublesome their petitions were compared to his own importance and busy schedule. This little trick was supposed to make people aware that dealing with him in person was not practical, certainly uncomfortable, and business would go a lot faster and easier for them if they bothered his minions in the lower levels of the chain-of-command, not him. It worked well enough on corporate reps and low-tier bureaucrats full of their own importance (that's rich coming from him!) so why the fucking Hell's bells could it not work on damned vote-whores and their lickspittles?

And why in tarnation did the damned janitors disable his priority card-key that makes the services work better and faster for him or his high-level guests that he actually did invite?

The cabin finally dinged it had arrived on the 25th storey and the doors opened.

Right into a group of black uniformed UEO military police wearing body armor, utility belts and pulse rifles. In the back of the soldiers stood the face of the one person on the entire planet Earth that Lawrence did not want to see inside his territory, let alone inside the management building. It was bad enough the rabid bitch had to visit the undersea construction site or the underground utilities tunnels that were built to pass the pipes, wires and service trams from the shoreline to the subsurface area, but there were no reasons he would accept to let this garbage dump spawn into his compound's command center, even on a good day!

The person that invaded so rudely his hallowed grounds was none other than General 3-stars Sarah MacKenzie, formerly from the US Marine Corp, then the US Navy's Judge Advocate General for twenty-three years, and now she served honorably as the UEO military police's Regional Marshall of the African subcontinent since the founding of the inter-confederation alliance. She was as hard-assed now as she had been in the corp and as an officer of the military courts-martial. And she never, ever had bought the lies, frauds and self-aggrandizing delusions that Lawrence peddled to everybody he came into contact with. It was as if the woman was born with a lie detector in her ears. Every piece of propaganda, advertisement or testimonials of good friends in Washington DC, each and every intervention he tried to make her believe his spiel so she could leave him alone, none of it worked!

Her presence here with soldiers and weapons could only mean one thing.

The career military woman gazed impassively upon her skittish quarry, from the feet up, observing the high quality steel-blue bespoke 3-piece suit he had chosen for the decoy meeting that had served to lure him out of the underwater bunker that was the WPP's power generation complex. It was a good thing he had so stupidly believed that the reports on TV were so damning that the government leaders would move their own persons to come to his table. The man was gullible and self-absorbed to a level that was hard to believe for one so inured to frauds, hypocrisies and lying with every breath worse than a priest trying to get elected to a political office in a banana republic.

MacKenzie sighed in relief as her men brusquely turned Lawrence around to put cuffs on his wrists and search him for weapons or contraband items. They had just avoided a bloody catastrophe by managing to arrest the treasonous bastard on the surface portion of the WPP compound. The thought of going down some 10,000 feet under the waves in flimsy Zundweil class DSV sub-ferries had given her shivers of dread but that hadn't even been the principal danger in the mission. Following young Lucas Wolenczak's revelations through the media, a far more stringent analysis of the WPP construction plans than any other done before was accomplished by the UEO's corps of military engineering at record speeds. It had made the gear-heads in New Cape Quest open their eyes to see things that were never supposed to be present in the installations, while at the same time several modules or structural machineries that were planned had never been built since their allotted space was used for other purposes, if said space was even constructed.

In the wake of these discoveries, the MP detachment in charge of watching over the UEO's third biggest budgetary expenditure after the Active Fleet Assets and the network of Atmospheric Recycling Towers had been mobilized and given their marching orders. With dire warnings of severely questionable activities related to workers with mafia connections, hidden rooms, unexplained machines and secret docking bays where unidentified submarines were doing cargo swaps off the books still ringing in her ears, General MacKenzie had opted for the more roundabout method to capture the criminal.

Incite him out of his fortified, booby trapped lair with his favorite bait: power & influence.

The UEO – MP were just lucky that the slovenly, self-imbued bastard had fallen for their trick without batting an eye. If he had decided to bunker down in the underwater enclave that housed the geothermal wells and the generator assemblies, only a handful of ships on Earth would have been equipped to pull him out by force. And only two were in service right now; the Russian ocean floor drill & dredge vessel Manaya Illiyushka (civilian) and the English subduction/construction barge Beaumaris (military) but neither were armed to punch through fortifications like WPP. The SeaQuest was in drydock in NCQ and the chinese would never admit to having a ship capable of doing this unless their secret projects in the South China Sea Islands were finished and ready to defend their contents.

That was among the first questions she would ask him when they sat him in an interrogation room back in Cape Town. Just WHAT and WHO was doing stuff inside that damned underwater village of his and how much was he responsible for all these crimes happening. Then, they would start asking him about the estimated 637,000,000 credits that had disappeared from the WPP's bank accounts during the 22 years he had been in charge of the project.

Lawrence Wolenczak wasn't getting out of her custody in this lifetime, not if Sarah MacKenzie had anything to do about it.

Besieged Nation

(US National Anthem)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 10:01am

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 03:01am

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 00:01am (midnight)

Lake Barcroft; underground emergency 'convention hall'

Washington DC, Virginia, USA

The Director of the Presidential Secret Service (USSS) Roland Toopin stood unsteadily at the secondary podium, looking over the truly impressive assemblage of august members of the USA's most elite, powerful and determinant military, intelligence and police groups. The 'convention hall' kept getting fuller as minutes ticked by on the old analog clock set into the dashboard of the podium, besides the equally old landline wired-handset telephone and intercom system with large backlit plastic buttons that hearkened back to the first years of the Cold War.

Roland had honestly hoped that this deplorable period of planetary and american history could be put to rest but every damned year that passed seemed determined to bring those problems back to life. Or at least, the stupid old fucktards that went under the appellations neo-con and baby boomer seemed to insist on doing one last turn around the killing fields before they were too old, sick and senile to have any chance at finally winning the wars that they had lost, or at least not really won.

Toopin could have lived with the decrepit old gray-heads' turpid dreams of spraying one last cumshot in the faces of their equally old, decrepit and senile adversaries IF the fools hadn't been so dead-set on doing their warmongering by proxy of today's generation of barely adult youths. The small group of worn out, obsolete religious wastrels wanted to send to their deaths the grand-children of the entire country just to be able to say one last time "We are the White, the Christian, the Great America!" no matter how many hundred thousand souls they sacrificed for their god-powered imperial utopia.

Toopin redirected his thoughts and attention to the central podium where the top-man of the day was setting up to deliver the USA Constitutional Crisis Briefing #001 of all the country's history. Despite all the most positive thinking and optimism in the world, this could only get so much damned worse before it got any better at all.

{ SQ } - { Hate thy neighborly heathens } - { SQ }

The US Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Laurent Yves stood at the main podium on the middle of the raised scene, readying the solid copies of the notes he needed to run the massive conference through the semblance of a productive work session. That was going to be hard as Hell cuz they didn't have much to work with right now, only the bare essentials. It was 9 hours now since they had declared the activation of the 'Noah's Ark' protocols and it would take almost another 15 hours before the municipal police forces, national guard units, army regular troops and army reserves were all commissioned, billeted, equipped, shipped out and finally located at their tactical posts to watch the critical, or weak, infrastructures from rioters and looters.

As he finalized ordering his papers and thoughts, the comms console operator began accepting the contact lines from the several dozen remote participants and setting the mortises on four lines at the bottom of the gigantic main monitor that hung on the back wall over the raised scene. Each of the attendees would have a similar setup on the personal monitors at their desks, be it here in the hall or wherever they might be during their emergency transports to reach the Lake Barcroft facilities.

Once all of the expected remote links were confirmed active and live, several national guard infantrymen acting as ushers began using tablets to tally attendance then send the compiled identities of the members present back to the central comms operator who would then flash a set of colored lights above the cinematic screen to warn the people as to the status of the meeting. The moment the lights changed from red to yellow, the mass of humanity present sat down, closed briefcases or duffel bags, set their coffees at hand, dropped food wrappers in the bins next to their desks and tried to become as silent as possible.

When the signals turned green, each person present took out their smart phone and placed it on the induction plate that served to recharge and wirelessly connect such devices to the building servers. Then, each highly ranked, severely classified visitor used a secret proprietary app created by In-Q-Tel to log in the bunker's military VPN thus confirming the authenticity of their presence while downloading the meeting's notes and crib sheets for later study. The other benefit was that now they would all be connected to the selective/sectorial intervention dispatching console so they could get the emergency messages and orders in real time instead of delayed by several hours. With the events happening to society outside the walls, they could not afford to have slow reflexes nor sit idle until marching orders managed to make their way to the hands that needed them.

At exactly 03:20am Eastern-America time, the blast doors to the convention hall were closed and the first meeting to 'save our country and people' began in earnest.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I am Laurent Yves, Director of the DIA, the US Defense Intelligence Agency. We are the organization in charge of gathering, collating and analyzing the raw data and work reports or every agency in the American Intelligence Apparatus so that we can then prepare the morning briefing of the seated president. Our product composes 50% of all intel, spying and counter-terrorism reports or suggestions that are handed to the president and the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff every morning at 08:00am, 365 days per annum since our foundation."

Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, director Yves pursued "We are here in the depth of darkest night to plan for the storm that is coming to our shores. A few days ago, our sitting president, who is the incumbent that won the November 2020 elections, wrote out a pair of presidential decrees that are on the farthest side of illegality, illegitimacy and immorality that any president in the 200 year history of America has ever signed and sealed."

"The first document called 'POTUS Decree 2020-12-11 / 01A – Christian biblical authority of parents under God' is an ill-thought, ill-conceived, utterly unconstitutional attempt to use the Oval Office to create a state religion and force down the throats of every child in our land the legally-binding obligation to attend mass, get blessings and sacraments. It subordinates their welfare, health and even their lives to the commands of their father, grandfather or the priest chosen by the paternal side of the family as 'spiritual guardian'. This document destroys several decades of child protection laws and rules, as well as puts in question the very existence of family courts & DCFS and reneges the Supreme Court or Congress established fundamental human rights of anybody under age 21 and reclassifies them as 'children' without any sorts of discernment or regards for their actual age or mental faculties. Under this decree, a 20 year old would get treated the same as a 1 month old, without any sorts of appeals or recourse for anybody to intervene on behalf of the 'child' aggrieved."

"The second document called 'POTUS Decree 2020-12-11 / 02A – Authority of military Christian juvenile reformation under God' is an even worse piece of cold shit that seeks to not only undo, but actually reverse, 200 years of military laws, rules and customs in our nation. This decree seeks to anoint specific chosen officers, soldiers, permanent civilian employees of the DoD and even temporary external contractors as being 'Faithful Crusading Paladins' for the military and 'Worshipful Custodians of Faith' for the civilians. These persons would then be given a series of truly depraved, debauched powers over those 'children' brought to their military installations or ship at sea for the purpose of beating and raping religious education and spiritual belief into them, all the while extorting free – enslaved – labor out of them in exchange for the most inhumane living conditions. These conditions and treatments at the hands of 'Experienced Soldiers of Holy Jesus, our God' are supposedly to redirect these kids from the path of 'dispiritment' and 'criminality'. Since the only kids targeted by the decree are specifically high functioning, highly educated prodigies that attend university classes well before the normal ages for such, the only conclusion is that this is a dirty trick to grab slaves to bolster the army cheaply whilst allowing the soldiers to beat or rape them as a non-monetary reward for those who are loyal to the cult and creed of President Trump and his church minions."

"It is important for you all to understand this: these decrees remove children and young adults who have not reached age 21 from the rolls of known humanity and retrogrades them back amongst the beasts. It is even written clearly both decrees that 'Children will have no rights but those that are granted in public display by their father, grandfather or priest chosen by the paternal side of their ancestry.' It further states that this is the Will of God and all children of America are 'compelled by Holy Almight into Righteous Moral Obedience' to these decrees without any appeals, court session or even having the chance to explain that they are neither christian nor religious at all. In fact, one of the points declared and repeatedly strained in both documents is that 'Atheism is a tool of Satan's Fell Plan and must be fought bodily with the Rod of Disciplines just as it is fought spiritually with the Christian Bible of Jesus our Lord God the Redemptor."

"At this point, and following the reading of these two decrees, we at DIA have advised the Secretaries of the US Federal departments, the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff, and the leaders of the Security and Intelligence Agencies that manage our country, that we are now in a state of 'constitutional crisis' and that the Enemy we face today is organized criminalized religion. Specifically, it is fanatical worshipers and those who whore themselves to cults and ecclesiastes to obtain money, power, guns, drugs, slaves and cheap deviant sex from the sect victims. Also, most urgently at this time are the cult gurus that get elected to government offices or integrate our military and bureaucracy with a determined plan to try, from inside the ranks, to disassemble and destroy our civil state and modern rights by subordinating our laws to their cult texts."

"Furthermore, it is now the determination of this agency, in a report that I have read, validated and signed in the name of the DIA, that President-elect Donald J. Trump is in fact a religious fanatic, a cult guru and an active preacher of white supremacy, hate and discrimination. Due to his clear public subversion of the powers of the Commander-in-Chief of our armies and the Legislative/Veto Authority as the topmost elected leader in Congress; we at the IDA have determined that he is an internal domestic terrorist. This brings us to the logical conclusion of this analytical process to also declare that he is an immediate threat that must be removed from office and incarcerated for trial at the earliest possible opportunity."

{ SQ } - { We're so fucked, t'ain't funny no more! } - { SQ }

The entire assembly hall fell deathly silent.

For four years now, since his election in 2016, there had been rumors of corruption, collusion with foreign powers and willing subordination of US policies to the whims of external entities in exchange of favors, access and financial rewards for members of the extended Trump entourage and companies. The mainstream media led by CNN, the Washington Post and New York Times had given themselves to great daily ejaculations of vitriol and doom-sayings against the entire Trump administration and style of governance. They were being warred against by far-right outlets like Fox and Breitbart who had declared themselves the flag-bearers of Trumpism, white christian dominance of society and the resurgence of American Exceptionalism as in the 1950's, the 'Iconic' reference epoch to which the aging 'baby boomers' wanted to return the entire Earth so they could relive their youth and earn their warrior glories again.

Up to date, a lot of backroom meetings and behind-the-curtains deals had been uncovered then exposed in public, but still nothing truly illegal, just on the very limit between unethical and forbidden. The only people sent to jail or fired from their jobs had been caught when lying to the FBI or the judges during evidenciary hearings, or worse, they had tried to destroy evidence or subvert the process of Justice in some way that involved bribes, threats and wielding the authority of their post to try and quash the investigations. Basically, if the people involved had just been honest and forthright from the start, the Mueller investigations would have lasted a few months then shut down by lack of anything criminal or forbidden to chew on. Instead, the principals in the case all mindlessly did the very worst things they could do for their defense or that of their groups, thus keeping Special Prosecutor Mueller well occupied to this day, and he wasn't even finished.

But now, after four years, they had the PROOF.

The other worst idiocy from the Trumpism Movement, was that the proof they got didn't even come from the Russia collusion probes or fraudulent money movements by Trump companies and so on. No, what they got was very different, indeed.

They had gotten clear and obvious proof of criminal behavior, illegality and usage of his function and position for his own personal religious creed and profit. Said profit, in this case, wasn't monetary but political and societal, in the form of getting millions of voters who are religious fanatics and the ecclesiastics that lead them to support his agenda of extremism, racism and American Exceptionalism to justify warring and enslaving other countries.

And the geriatric blond imbecile had given them that proof in public, all by himself.

All the military chiefs, the directors of the agencies, the highest elected officials, and the highest career bureaucrats in DC, were now in the deepest most toxic cesspit that anybody had ever dug in American political history. And the only way to stop it had the potential to cause the second civil war that was so dearly anticipated and desired by the fringe militia fanatics.

Director Yves stood silently for five minutes, allowing his words to register fully with the gathered attendees before continuing with the suite of events that needs, must, happen for them to still have some sort of a country come Monday morning.

"I apologize for being the bearer of such bad news. I apologize for being the man who has to say aloud that the president is defunct, a criminal, and a religion-driven traitor to every oath he took. However, now, I must also stand at the fore, torch in hand, to say aloud 'this is the way' and hope that you will all follow the road back unto the path of lawfulness and morality that we should never have left."

Seeing several nod their head or settle down with writing implements to take down the list of actions to come, the director of the DIA took a deep breath before speaking aloud the words that would mark the course of US history and society for the worse.

"I hereby declare that the sitting President has been sufficiently tied to acts of immorality, illegitimacy and illegality to force his suspension from his office, position, function and authority until such time as Congress has debated and voted upon 'articles of Impeachment'. Furthermore, I find that several of the acts the sitting President is accused of do, in material fact, constitute outright criminal behavior that is already codified as such by our written laws, and I must thusly emit the warrants to order the arrest, and detention without time limits, of Mister D. by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and his trial by the Supreme Court of America."

After a pregnant pause of roughly twenty seconds, there was a mounting noise of movement as people understood that the ball was in their court and they needed to start doing their jobs according to the laws and statutes of the organizations and postings they were part of. Phones were activated, emails were written, TXT messages sent out and formal legal documents were chosen, filled out, printed and signed as fast as the tired, worn out humans could work through the tsunami of crap that was starting to sweep over them.

As the warrants were written, signed and sent out, the leaders of the FBI and Department of Justice got on their phones to start a separate conference with the Chief Justice of SCOTUS to warn him that as of now, the president was under criminal investigation, and also, potentially, the vice-president as well as several high functionaries who were all in the 'line of succession' in case the Big Man was ever incapacitated or dismissed forcibly.

As things went, everybody in the massive hall already knew there would be precious little sleep in sight, nor any mental rest to be had any time soon.

We stand in service to our countrymen

(The Strength of a Thousand Men – Two Steps From Hell)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 11:07am

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 04:07am

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 01:07am

Anacostia Highway & Beaverdam Creek; on the rail tracks

Washington DC, Maryland, USA

Three massive army trucks, olive drab and black with just the basic road lights lit on them, arrived in a hurry with no indications of why visible anywhere in the area they parked in. If a citizen were to look at the area what they would see would comprise a huge set of highway overpasses, with a good sized creek filled with slow icy water along a set of doubled rail tracks, both passing right under the massive concrete arches and pilings that held the roads aloft, thus confirming they deserved their appellation as 'highways'. The national guard trucks had arrived on the north side of the creek, by rolling on the highways and then going off road southwards a couple seconds through marshy woods till they reached the railways that was their set mustering point.

The standard military 2½ ton all-purpose trucks disgorged a full dozen infantrymen dressed in white camouflage BDU's (battle dress uniform) covered by kevlar & plastic flak jackets and winter trench coats. Each soldier carried an old but reliable M16 assault rifle with very modern omni-scope, laser range-finder, clip-on bayonet and under-slung grenade launcher. Additionally, each carried an old Beretta 9mm sidearm, a K-Bar fighting knife, a hatchet, a folding camp shovel and enough spare munitions to hold in place for an hour against enemy fire. Each soldier was also loaded like a mule, carrying on their backs a large heavy frame pack containing the necessities for camping in rough winter conditions and an equally large duffel bag that held extra dry clothing, more food rations, an extra med-kit and a tool-kit to fix their weapons or other gear.

As the national guardsmen spread out just besides the rear gates of their transports, the officers came out of the drive cabs, marching at double time until the 6 superiors were all gathered in front of the 36 privates to tell them what the new reality was, as of tonight. FYI; it wan'nt no pick-nick no more.

"All right, ladies!" The top-most officer shouted with the usual humor of a drill sergeant addressing a group of young inexperienced men that were still clueless about what real warfare was. They were about to find out. "Listen here people, or whatever you think you are tonight! This here junction has five different highways merging into a knot of loops, on-ramps and overpasses, a double rail track and a cute little creek. We need to secure this here hot-spot and pray everything stays clean and nice until noon when the rest of our outfit comes to join us at making snow forts! You maggots have the next hour to take the nice clean laminated maps and plans you were given when you loaded up and make it happen! I want me six rows of six tents with three bonfires at the ends on both sides of the rows! Line up north to south, between the rails and the highway! The seniors will have point for now, then we'll make our tents in two rows of three on either side of the main formation with yet another bonfire on each end. Now start unpacking the pallets from the trucks! Them plastic racks are gonna serve to keep you guys off the cold snowy ground so you don't get sick! It's important to set your pallets flat and straight so you can mount your tents and sleeping bags on 'em the right way!"

A few hand gestures later and the soldiers, most of them part-timers, volunteers or retirees from active service due to injuries, all saluted the officers and got down to the brass tacks of setting a partial camp that would hold for about a week until the rest of their gear and men arrived. They were expected to have a total of six transport trucks, three heavy 40 foot trailers filled with long-term camp building tools and materials, a militarized backhoe, and a semi-truck hauling a 'Force Provider' mobile folding infirmary module. The municipal power company was sending them a tool truck with telescopic nacelle/crane and chests of tools and parts so they could connect to the power & comms lines at the top of the nearby poles instead of burning diesel fuel in a field generator. That was good as they had the bad surprise to find that their camp power source had broken a set of crankshaft bearings during a test three weeks ago and wasn't finished fixing. No sense of urgency back then meant no money for the Guard and therefore a lot backlogged jobs because they weren't seen or felt as vital.

People sure thought them vital now, hence the Hydro truck being loaned out for a week at no cost but the gas to make it move. The guard unit had a few men who knew their ways around phone poles and high voltage wires, they'd do the work easy enough, so long as they could reach the proper cables and had the specialty tools in hand. With the backhoe and tool truck, they would.

Looking at the Beaverdam Creek's slow, icy flows through the copses of trees and bushes, the corporal made a face as a shiver of dread passed down his spine. They didn't have an amphibious truck and all the boats were being deployed from central locations, right from the hangars they were parked or repaired at. The reasoning was that at this time of the year, there was no tourist traffic on the river, only police crafts. As such, it would be a lot faster to equip the boats fully then send them on their ways via the rivers rather than mount them on trailers, drag them out to some place where the shoreline tipped downwards into a beach flat enough to serve as a water ramp and dump the boats there. In the case of a police search & rescue, they had only a handful of little patrol boats so road travel was the most logical system to get there quick, but the national guard had enough hangars and watercraft to cover most of the Potomac River, Washington Channel and Anacostia River with all their tributaries without too much trouble.

So the corporal was stuck watching the ice patches floating down the creek towards the Anacostia, hoping no redneck idjiot tried his luck in a little dinghy of sorts to deliver explosives, poison, guns or lunatic fringe-nuts to this seemingly uninteresting crossing point. An uninteresting crossing of five highways, a railway ferrying passengers and cargo daily and a water stream that fed the Anacostia, all right on the doorstep of the National Capital of the USA. The spot looked like any old forlorn patch of urban greenery that wan'nt cemented over cuz it was sloped, rocky, in the stream's floodplain and nobody wanted to live in kissing distance of a train line either. Not to mention the constant drone of the five major highways that carried trucks of goods, buses of tourists, car-loads of lobbyists and some such all day and night year round. Even as the soldiers worked diligently, the corporal could hear and see several cars speeding along on their way to who-knew-what at bloody 04:24am.

One of the junior lieutenants approached, asking the grizzled old veteran of four tours in the middle-east "See anything, sarge? I don't think anybody would want to risk the stream this time of year. At least, not anybody with any common sense. Some fanatics, I guess, could try it. I bet they freeze their balls off before they reach us, though. The river ain't no place for a boat ride in December."

Turning to the younger officer, the older one answered "I hope you're right, man. I sure hope so. But with what happened in the White House this week, you know as well as I do that the crazies are gonna come out of the woodworks pretty damned soon. The brass think we have till Monday morning news briefs, but I think it's more till after Sunday mass, when the people in the pews gonna get sermoned into a frenzy, that's when we'll see the first bozos come at us. I wish I was wrong, but the shrapnel in my left leg says to watch our hides come midnight."

Nodding at his colleague's brand of wisdom, he was about to ask about what kind of duration he thought the outpost would see when they heard a 'clacking' noise resound across the camp's frigid air and screams of panic follow immediately as the men all dove for cover, the officers on point kneeling so they could raise their rifles to find the threat. Two more gunshots later, with another soldier down to bullet wounds, and the camp defenders had found their assailant. Perched on the Anacostia Fairway's south-bound bridge's arch that spanned over the railways and stream was a beat-up old Ford pickup with a one man camper cab on its back. The truck was stopped in the service lane close to the cement retaining wall with some unknown bastard laying face-down on top of the camper section, a bolt action rifle with telescope sighted on them. It was only the fact the man seemed rather old, frozen stiff and not particularly agile that had left their team with two injured rather than three dead from the three shots he had sent their way to date.

As a fourth shot rang out, one of the younger soldiers gauged the range and let loose with a short five-shell salvo from his M16. The muzzle flashed in the dark depths of pre-dawn twilight, the report of the shots echoing eerily against the noises of the cars on the roads and the wind sushing through the trees that lined the rails and stream. The guardsman's aim was good; he had targeted just a few inches beneath the edge of the camper cab's roof, thus insuring that when his bullets passed through the flimsy metal they would impact the attacker lying prone on top. The old bearded crone shrieked something harsh when he felt the shells punch through him and the repeated hits actually imbalanced him, making him roll over to his right, and right off the top of his camper, falling down with bone jarring force onto the roadway behind the truck.

From the angle and points of impact, the corporal took a wild guess that the shells hit the old guy in the upper torso, tearing through his clavicles, throat and neck bad enough to either maim or kill on the spot. With harsh gestures and shouted commands, he got a team of six and a driver into a 'deuce' to roll around camp and up to the overpass deck to secure the crime scene so they could find out just who the fuck this dumb cuckoo was that shot their boys. Plus, he had to see to the injured and report back to home base that yes, the shit has indeed been introduced to the ventilation ducts and everyone got their share already.

They had been in the field for barely 30 minutes and the world was already burning. Damn, what a bloody Christmas holiday this was gonna be!

After ten tense minutes of stressful waiting, the corporal's radio beeped, signaling that his men on the elevated roadway wanted to speak with him. Tapping the button to activate the line, he said "This is Chetzy, what did you find up there?"

The response was blood chilling: "The reason this country won't heal in our lifetimes. Get up here on the double, boss! You'll want to see this yourself for when you call the brass back at the base. I'm sending the driver back down to get you. Over!"

Turning to his junior officer on the left, the corporal growled "Get the wounded positioned for quick evac and use one of our two other trucks to get them to the closest hospital you can find on the damned map! If we wait for civilian ambulances to arrive, we could lose them. Make certain that each injured has his own escort to keep his personal stuff and service gear packed tight; there's people prowling the hospitals that steal from the unconscious when they don't have surveillance on them. I'm going up there to see what's got our good private's shorts in a twist."

Marching away from the knot of junior officers, the corporal trotted to separate himself from the gathering around the injured and jumped into the drive cab of the truck as soon as it passed by, slowing down just enough to do a U-turn and speed back up to the road bridge and the waiting team. The moment the officer got off the vehicle, he was waved over at the front of the pickup to see something in the cab. As he walked around the battered old thing, the soldier could see it was a Ford 1998 worksite pickup with a foreman's extended crew cab to seat 5 people and an extra long camper that jutted out of the tailgate by about a yard an a half. The entire thing smelt of animal manure and fresh tree sap with a layer of dead bugs all over the front and sides that told the veteran the driver had spent prolonged time in the outlying rural areas near dairy farms, and that meant this shooter had gone far from home to commit his acts. That and he never cleaned his truck since bugs stopped flying around five good weeks ago.

"You gotta see this, boss!" brusquely said the soldier by the open driver's side door at the front. "Gird your guts, though. You won't wanna eat anything for a while after it."

Coming in sight of the side windows, the corporal could see what his subordinate meant. There were two very young children lying down on the rear banquette, the little girl of about 8 years holding onto the small boy of maybe 4 or 5 years. Both were dead, with bloody froth coming out of their mouths and the stench of vomit and urine permeating the cab. On the dirty tattered rubber mat next to the bench was a plastic bottle of orange juice, lying in a yellow puddle streaked with green lines, with many small holes corroded through the container like it had melted. The little boy held a worn old bible to his small chest and a home crafted set of christian beads made of some sort of animal bones had been wrapped around the hands of the little girl to make certain she didn't let go of her sibling in the afterlife. Both children showed purple and blackish bruising around the heads and faces, wrists and forearms too. The corporal knew instinctively that if their thin autumn clothes were pulled out of the way, the rest of their poor little bodies would be the same.

"We opened as much of the windows as we could reach to air out the truck, sir, without actually touching the evidence itself. But you'll need to get inside the camper to see the rest." the soldier spoke in hoarse tones, holding his military composure only by the necessities of surviving the event.

Walking back to the rear of the derelict truck, the corporal breathed in as much fresh air as he could while standing on a damned highway bridge dead-center in the capital city of the country. It wasn't going all that well for him right now, if you were wondering. Arriving slowly at the rear door of the camping cab, he merely saluted the three soldiers milling around the corpse of the dead shooter and ignored the dead body for now. He knew it wasn't professional, that protocol was he should get on his knees on the pavement to eyeball the sucker himself, but the contents of the drive cab had told him already this wasn't some professional team of hit-men. The body would only speak to the coroner now, not to a jar-head. Stepping around the body and getting a hold of the handles besides the open door, he hauled himself up into the camper compartment and saw immediately what his team leader had meant.

Besides a thin layer of crass and oily residue present on every surface in the compartment, there were unwashed dishes piled in the small sink that seemed to have been dumped there two or three days ago and a mess of crumbs, salt crystals - or maybe sugar? - around the counter. The small single hob propane stove was covered in a layer of shiny brown crass that reminded him of burned oil when you cook too many steaks in the same frying pan without rinsing it between pieces of meat. The old metal kettle was caked in crass from being left near the hob when food was fried so the residue splashed all over it so that even the handle seemed slick and oily. The cupboards under the counter were open fronted and stashed with large tins of dehydrated instant mashed potato powder, dehydrated milk, coffee, uncooked pearl barley in bulk bags, and many tins of jerked, salted or pickled meats of diverse sorts but usually beef or pork. The upper cabinets were also open fronted and contained more dry or tinned foodstuffs. There was dirty soiled clothing dropped pell-mell everywhere without rhyme nor reason, too. Not a single hint at cleaning or doing maintenance in several months, if not years.

Besides the truly dingy living conditions, it was the bed area overhanging above the driving cab that attracted attention. The thin bug-eaten curtain that closed it off for privacy was a political flag that was based on the Dixie Flag with the stars replaced by white crucifixes. An image of a coiled yellow rattlesnake with open mouth and extended fangs was in the lower center while a black crosshairs with text wrapped around the rim occupied the upper center. In each side of the Dixie X were a black outline drawing of an M16 stylized as having a christian bible for magazine and a crucifix for bayonet. The text hand written with a yellow sharpie around the targeting cross in the upper middle of the flag read "Christian Bible Law! White Power Rule! Don't Tread On Me! Minutemen Of The Southern Revival Crusade."

Understanding a bit more what kind of delusional stupidity he was facing, the corporal pulled away the flag/curtain to look around the camper's bunk. Or should he say the gun storage attic? The old crone must have slept on the drive cab's banquette or on the camper's floor because even a field mouse would have trouble squeezing into the crammed space. There were about three old and battered hunting rifles, four revolvers, two semi-automatic pistols, a partially disassembled pump-action shotgun with a B-drum still attached to the receiver, a broken bump-stock for an assault rifle that he found jammed way in the back behind everything else and enough cardboard boxes of diverse munitions types to open a damned gun shop out of the pickup's back door.

Somebody knocked on the outer door, attracting his attention. Turning that way, he saw the face of a man he didn't know wearing the blue colors of a municipal police officer gesturing for him to come out and away from the truck. Complying with the man's request as he didn't think they had anything else to fear from this dead lunatic's lair on wheels, he climbed out of the miserable hellhole and walked towards the patrol car that was stopped about thirty feet behind the parked pickup with its red and blue strobe lights flashing to warn drivers away from the scene. His female partner was placing road flares to warn passing drivers to steer clear of the zone then came to stand by the man when she was done.

"Officers." the corporal began politely as this man and his female partner in front of him were not his enemies in the situation. "Could you give us a helping hand? Two of my guys were wounded by this deranged son of a bitch and they're on the way to a hospital already. There's two dead little kiddies in the front, in case you haven't been told." The corporal was valiantly trying to hold in his bile and thanked the gods of petrol fueled vehicles for the harsh offensive odor of burning gasoline as it washed the rancid smells of unwashed dwelling and human offal from his nose and throat.

Seeing his state, the female cop on the passenger side of the squad car reached inside to pull out a plastic bottle of water and threw it at the senior soldier. "Here, rinse your mouth out and spit it over in the drain grate so you don't contaminate the scene. It'll help wash the taste and smell out of your mouth and sinuses and let the bile settle back in your gut. Rinse twice, then drink and swallow on the third go. Trust me, man, it'll help a lot." The woman looked at him with nothing but sympathy clearly written on her features so he followed the advice. And damn, but it felt good! Feeling a bit more settled he looked at the two cops and asked again if they could help.

"Sorry, but no, we can't help much anymore. If he were alive we'd help shoot the fucker, or if the kids were alive we'd take them off your hands until DCFS came to get them, but now... All that's left is to wait for the mortuary van and the forensics truck to come process the scene. At least you don't have to be present for it, we'll go fetch you in the camp down by the rails when we need your testimony." Answered the male policeman in as soothing a tone as he could muster given the situation and the 230 pounds of angry US Marine he was talking with.

"Well, we can tell you who him and the babies were." came back the woman. "He was until a few years ago a goat farmer in Virginia, about five hours' drive from here but he lost it all in a fire in February of this year. The insurance company refused to pay out the indemnities because he caused the blaze during a roaring drunken bender where he shot up his entire house, his farm tractor and killed his two dogs when they tried to stop him from aiming at his grand-kids. That's the two little tikes in the cabin up front. Without the money to rebuild and facing criminal charges for public drunkenness, shooting wildly while drunk, animal cruelty, criminal negligence that started several fires and aiming weapons at people including the cops, firefighters and rescue techs, well, he wasn't looking at staying free for much longer. During the prelim, it was found out the bastard was some sort of backyard preacher who liked to hold book burnings to cleanse the filth out of the village where his farm was located. He was known in the little township for his virulent rants about jews and blacks stealing land from hard-working white folks like him and his kids. He also preached 'Rod Sacrament'; that's a ritual during which the priest (him) would whip the followers children with a switch or a dowel rod all over their completely nude bodies in front of the entire sect to show how much of God's Power he wielded. He's been accused of assault, injury and obscenely exposing a nude child in public on several occasions because of that, but the charges always disappear from the docket somehow."

The male cop snorted in contempt before he took over. "AFIS says he was supposed to be arrested and held for trial about six months ago but he was warned to leave town by one of the village cops who was friends with the old crone since high school. Their sons were accomplices in a moonshine and gun-running operation that landed the dead bastard's boy and daughter-in-law in prison three years ago. That's why he had the kids with him; he was the only living relative they had. DCFS tried several times to pull them out of the household because of the man's heinous preaching and abusing them but they were always sent back because of his friends and cultists amongst the local population. It looks like there's a lot of the village cops and clerks that are sympathetic to the pseudo-priest, if not actual members of his sect. You can't botch a police investigation repeatedly like this so many times over so long without having a vested interest in it failing or stopping."

The female cop walked to the front of the car to lean her left hip against the front of the hood. "Well, now his instability has caught up to them and this is the result." She said in sad words. "If this bastard's anti-everything rhetoric had been looked at more seriously, we could have avoided this. Besides the fact he was criminalized, an outlaw and mentally unstable most of his life, the brief we got from our station is that this guy had been harping about 'End Times Prophecy' and 'Coming Storm' that the faithful had to face with guns and prayers for several decades. From my read on the situation, this is a demented old crone at the end of his life that didn't want to go to jail for his crimes, so he was looking to commit suicide by cop and found you guys first instead of us."

The corporal wasn't so sure. With all the crap coming out of the White House and the orders to go to high alert on all national guard units across the country, he just couldn't accept that it was dumb bad luck that so happened to have the same religious delirium as the main threat they were preparing to face in the coming days. He explained to the police officers his doubts and the male patrolman, older and with the department longer than the woman, responded with a clear argument that didn't leave much place for skepticism.

"I'm sorry to say this to you, but the children have died over six hours ago from drinking poisoned orange juice. The fact that the poison managed to melt through the plastic bottle and eat at the rubber floor mat means that it has been lying there for several hours already. This is confirmed by the fact that there's a puddle of body fluids and vomit on the bench and near it that is almost dried up already. All this together means that the old preacher finished his escalation into insanity and killed the kids in the rural area out of town before midnight then came towards the center of the District to find himself a 'Glorious Death' to be remembered as a warrior of his creed and faith."

The corporal yanked off his helmet and passed a rough hand over his buzzcut hair, hoping beyond all hope that the cops were right. Deep down in his gut though, he knew differently. This geriatric son of a bitch might have been simmering in his rage and depravity for decades already but it was this weekend that he decided to act out his 'final solution', not another time. And the veteran soldier just could not believe that it was a simple coincidence; his gut said otherwise. There were no accidents or coincidence in warfare, just events for which you didn't have the human intel to explain them yet.

Humans don't need brains!

(Rada - Two Steps From Hell)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 13:14pm

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 06:14am

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 03:14am

Medical University of South Carolina; Neurology Faculty

Charleston, South Carolina, USA

The elderly black woman looked at her reflection in the washroom mirror, making certain that her hair net was in place, the short necklace of pearls well hung about her neck and her wedding ring, gold with three diamonds, was clean and shining. Her poor late Jeremy had worked so hard back then to get this for her. Fifteen years on and she still missed him so. After drying her hands and splashing some alcohol based antiseptic on them, the nurse adjusted her blue scrubs and name tag one last time then walked out to face the day, sitting at the reception desk for the hospital's neurology department.

She had that job for over thirty years this week and enjoyed it much more than any she had before. The people she met or just saw passing by the doors every day was the real reason she had endured in the hard work environment for so many years. Her colleagues were nice enough, the hardships came from seeing so much pain and suffering every day. The worse cases were those when a person she knew finally lost their faculties and memories, becoming a different person that didn't remember the people they had known, or themselves anymore.

Mental illness was such a calamity. It didn't respect kindness, usefulness or heroism anymore than crass, criminality or cowardice; no one was safe before it's destructive path through american society.

Sitting herself at the desk behind the tall security glass panel, Bernice Agatha Coulson, Lady Bee as the staffers called her amicably, took up her mug of coffee and muffin to eat her small breakfast as she accessed her internal MUSC email account to see what happened while she was off. It was a personal routine she had established back when the only mail coming in were paper envelopes and the occasional fax in the large telex machine with the ream of paper rolling out of it. Things sure had changed in thirty years at this desk. With her shift starting officially at 07:00am, Bernice had all the time she needed to eat her homemade oatmeal, nuts and raisin muffin while drinking through the thermal mug of espresso she had brought from home. The hospital cafeteria made good food but it was so expensive if you ate there every day that the elder lady preferred cooking her own treats at her small apartment. It helped to keep her hands active and flexible despite the arthritis that was slowly setting in, and it was much easier on her budget.

{ SQ } - { This is the End Time } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 06:26am)

(Western America; 03:26am)

Settling into her swivel chair, the 64 year old nurse was surprised to hear the large automated doors that gave onto Rutledge Street open to let in a group of people. This was unusual for the department as neurology didn't receive ambulances or emergencies directly; they booked appointments weeks in advance for grave operations or else the doctors went to the other MUSC buildings in the quad for consultations. Why were these people coming here at this time of day, on a Saturday morning to boot? Looking at the young woman that she was due to replace at 07:00am, Bernice asked her "Aisha, dear, did we get any paperwork for an early intake during the night? I don't have anything in my emails."

The young nurse apprentice, a black skinned girl in her early twenties that was actually doing her nursing school internship at MUSC to finalize her diploma, frowned as she checked again her own messages and the pile of papers on the small table between the two desks. "No, ma'am Bee, there ain't no sheet about a patient coming in for intake today. We have a couple of them regulars for the ongoing treatments and Mr Dumont is coming in this afternoon for his MRI about his brain tumor, but nothing else that I can see."

Taking the minute before the group reached the reception & registration area proper, Bernice followed her instincts hard earned from raising five kids and some twenty grand-kids over the last fifty years of life. Her nose was smelling trouble, so she discretely pushed the little red button under the lip of her desk that would signal the security station to watch over the lobby area for the next ten minutes or so to see what happened. If the roving guard was on his morning rounds already, he might even show up in person while his partner stayed in the booth to watch over the screens and phones.

The two nurses watched with apprehension the very odd group composed mostly of elderly white folks, with just one lonely little black boy of about 9 or 10 years that seemed to be helping an even older man stay upright as he walked with two heavy ornate metal canes. In total, the group held 14 persons and that was a lot to come in on such a cold, lonely Saturday morning when no stores were opened and even the breakfast restaurants had barely warmed up the grills and started the coffee pots. The two para-medical staffers had a bad feeling about his.

Finally, the 6 white men, 7 white women and lonely, clearly frightened little black boy, all approached the reception desk with the oldest, least mobile man in the middle of the formation. Once he was about five feet in front of the glass paneled counter, he straightened up as much as his bad back and shaky legs allowed and took a large, battered and dog-eared book out from inside his winter jacket. Holding aloft over his head the Book of the Christian Faith and Creed, he began his sermon unto Them hat followed the Creed and Message of the Christian God of the Bible.

"Hear ye, hear ye, and hear ye this, ye heathens of little faith! That means you, niggress bitches! The Hour of Judgment, it be upon you's all!" he screamed in a powerful if croaking voice. Pointing towards the upper floors of the hospital with his Book, he exclaimed "Heresy! Sin! Depravity! Necromancy! I tell ye, heathens! Unto you's souls be the Damnations of the One God, our Lord the Redemptor in His Divine Almight!" Now fully in the throes of religious frenzy, the worshipers were answering the calls and jeers of their leader in time to his exclamations and pauses, just like in a mass. "I cast upon you's all the Eye of the Lord, for He SEES the sins and crimes against the very Nature he hath created for us to bask upon and feed upon in our time of needs! You scurrilous peons of Satan's Plan! How in Jesus our God's Name do you justify the debased voodoo you commit in them here torture rooms and foul alchemy workshops of the accursed?"

His small flock of congregants called out in hard, unforgiving tones "Humans don't need brains! Humans don't need science! Humans only need God and His Holy Word! Humanity only needs the Christian Bible as it was written in the Time of the Romans! Hallelujah and Amen! Humanity don't need no stinking lies from Satan's Pits! Humanity don't need doctors when God's Will can cure all! We need Faith! We need Creed! We need the Disciplines of the Rod of God's Chosen on our backs to Guide us into the Light of Salvation! We don't want no stinking lies from science and doctors! Leave our souls alone! T'is the One God we worship and obey! By His Will alone be we healthy or die! Amen!"

Raising an imperious hand in the air as he clutched his leather bound Book to his chest, the geriatric preacher exclaimed aloud, shrieking harshly at the top of his lungs: "Burn it ALL! Burn it ALL in the Name of Jesus our Christ, the Lord Redemptor! Bring forth the Purifying Light of the Fires of Heaven's Wrath upon them heathen dogs and niggers! Make it burn, now and forever! Amen!"

As he closed his heinous sermon, the group of elderly worshipers opened their thick long winter jackets to reveal assault rifles, pistols and pipe bombs while the geriatric priest opened the backpack worn by the small black boy that served as his mobility assistance to pull out a small 1 quart canister of gasoline and a road flare. As the mentally defective followers began spraying bullets all around the reception area, trying incompetently to shoot up the two nurses that had dropped to the floor upon sight of the first gun, the preacher threw some of the gasoline at the furniture and floor before lighting up the flare. He held the flare in the same hand with his bible and the gasoline in the other.

The sounds of police sirens could be heard coming from outside the building, soon accompanied by the distinct thrumming air horns of fire trucks. The hospital's fire alarm bells were triggered by central security that began calling out for immediate evacuation of patients through the public address system loudspeakers, directing people away from the Rutledge Avenue doorways and back towards the main MUSC complex or the Calhoun Street emergency exits, away from the gunmen. As the lone security guard on shift tried to find shelter enough to aim his Sig Sauer 9mm pistol without getting mowed down by the group of elderly mad-people, he tried to attract their attention so the nurses at the desk could crawl away to safety and escape. The middle-aged guard's plan worked too well since three of the gunmen turned to aim at him and, in lucky incompetence, they shot through the corner of the wall and the chair behind which he was kneeling in hiding, thus hitting him repeatedly in the head, neck and shoulders, killing him instantly.

The cleric raised the can of gasoline above the head of the small boy to douse him in volatile liquid, chanting some sort of prayer as he did. When the boy panicked at what he understood was the coming of his death, one of the burly overweight old men next to the priest punched the boy in the head, knocking him to the ground almost unconscious. "Know yar place in life, nigger slave!" The adult screamed, spittle flying from his mouth as he shouted more insults while kicking the prone child in the gut, legs and head several times to make him truly unawares.

Finished with the small task, the preacher raised his croaking voice again over the now silent lobby hall. "Alright, ye faithful men and women o' Christ our Gawd! Take up them tools of Purification as was given you's and spread the Light and Cleansing to it all! Amen, I said! Make it all burn! Make all them crook-nosed bagel eaters and their nigger slaves BURN! In the Name which is Holy, Jesus our Christ, do I command and compel you's all!"

One of the elderly white women walked close enough to the reception desk to see over it, looking down upon the two nurses lying prone on the debris strewn floor. They had escaped gunshot wounds but had been injured when the security glass panel that separated the staff from clients exploded under the volleys of bullets aimed pell-mell across the room at waist height. They had multiple scratches and bleeding cuts from the flying glass shards but nothing fatal. That would change. Lifting her old battered Vietnam-era M16 rifle towards the two cowering nurses, the woman spat out venomously "Die, niggress bitches! Die with the knowledge that we do God's Work today and you's foul necromancies won't sully Pure Americans no more! We don't need no doctors poking at our brains! Brains are useless! It's FAITH that gives life and health! If ye be's faithful to GOD then you's be healthy! Take that message back to Satan, you whore-spawns, and don't ya be coming back to OUR Christian World ever ag'in!" At which she pulled the trigger and emptied her entire 60 shell magazine in the two women, furniture and office machines, spraying around everything she could in her clear ineptitude with her weapon.

With the applause and cheers of her preacher and followers in her ears, the woman took a pipe bomb from her coat and set the simple fuse on the device to trigger the bomb when it sensed movement in its range that wasn't wearing a 'safety' radio-frequency tag to tell it to stay put calmly. One of their crowd was an amateur electronics builder who had served as ordinance and explosives expert during the Nam war fifty years ago. He had built the devices and made them simple so that old folks without training could operate them safely, even with arthritic hands or severe Parkinson's shakes. "No training required for my pretties" he had told them last night. He was right about that.

The small group of delirious rabid religious fanatics began to walk slowly around the hospital building, shooting at people they met, setting bombs and using cigarette lighters to start small nuisance fires in the filing cabinets or trash bins as they moved up the stairs to the higher floors. None of them had any plans to survive this morning's events. All of them were over 65 years of age with severe health issues and limited mobility of legs or arms. Two had been recently diagnosed with diabetes bad enough that one was becoming blind while the other should have both legs amputated in the coming 6 months to stay alive just a few more miserable years. Two women and three men had begun experiencing mental illnesses in the form of memory losses, time-sense disparities, perceptual delays and troubles staying focused on their immediate reality. Not a single one of the 12 'disciples' that had come with the 91 year old preacher wanted to stay alive to live through losing themselves to disease and oblivion.

The geriatric predicator stayed in the lobby so he could harangue the policemen and rescuers if they dared to show their faces to interrupt his Holy Mission of Cleansing against the foul necromancers that followed the unholy Egyptian dogmas of cutting brains to extract the Faith and Creed out of True, Pure, followers of God's Light and Creed.

As the sounds of gunfire petered out with distance and the diminishing reserves of bullets, the old man cried a steady flow of joyful tears. It was just like the good old days, back in his childhood, when the Klan would gather the townsfolk on a Friday evening to preach, apostolize at the crowds, playing hymns and choirs in the background as the Strong Men mounted the podium to speak of Authority and Power under the One True God of White Christian America. They would light ablaze the giant 60 foot tall cross and, when they were lucky enough, they might even have a nigger to whoop raw and noose up to the cross as it burned deep into the night. Oh, good times, his childhood had been! Such good, clean, family fun it had been!

As the medications and religious fervor that had allowed the defective geriatric crone to stand all the way from the car to the lobby finally ran their course, fatigue set in and he started to sway and shake worse than before. An episode of confusion swam visibly through his eyes as he gazed questioningly around the place to try and figure out where he was and why it was all so damaged with the stench of car fuel in the air. Urine flowed down his trouser legs but he didn't feel or smell it, too used to that particular odor in the last three years to remark it anymore. A small burp of gas eructed from his mouth, carrying out a minute amount of bilious vomit composed from ill-digested pills, toasted bread and coffee. Hearing a soft pitiful moan from near his feet, the cleric looked down to see the unconscious little black boy, lying battered and bloodied on the floor, who was making efforts even in his state, to try and wake up to save his life. The priest didn't recognize the child but thought it was Just and Proper that he be beaten down and set at his feet like this; he was negroid and such low-borne crass should never be allowed off the floor or else they would think they could run the country in the stead of white people.

Sensing suddenly the weight of the heavy book and torch in his hands, the old man looked at them curiously, uncaring that he had almost set himself ablaze with his careless handling of the fiery roadside flare. He opened his old family Bible to the dedication pages in front and saw the piece of cheap paper that had been glued there by his own hands no later than this morning before their Holy Mission was undertaken. It explained that he had been suffering memory loss and personality disorders for almost 20 years now and this was the last few days of true cognizance that he had left. If he wanted to make a difference in the country, he had to act NOW while he could still move about and give orders to his small congregation composed of his eldest children and in-laws that still lived and followed the True Faith, as he had preached unto them for all his 91 years of life. A short basic description of the mission and tools was added, with a prayer at the end for good luck.

Seeing this, the last coherent message ever written by his Faithful hand, the preacher of hate, racism and terror remembered why he had come here this morning. He had seen on the news last night the depravities committed by that despicable little jew-boy who fled up north to avoid the Authority of his father that had been confirmed by none other than the President himself. Traitors and bastards, all them olive-skinned bastard juden! But, the father had converted! He was a messianic jew, now! And that was a worthy, respectable endeavor indeed! So the old priest had seen that the 15 year old kid had become some sort of champion head-shrinker and made the connection to his preachings: psychiatry and neurology are Satan's tool to make True honest worshipers into lobotomized puppets.

The conclusion was simple and clear: kill all the shrinks and burn the hospitals. True Believers didn't need anything but Pure Faith; God would heal them back to full health anyways, so why bother keeping up places that were nothing more than glorified butchers' shops and torture halls for heathens?

With his last act of 'mental coherence', the preacher splashed the rest of the gasoline on his body and legs, dropping the canister to the floor carelessly as it was now useless. He dropped the lit road flare on top of the unconscious child, watching gleefully as the nigger floor-stain was consumed by cleansing fires that soon crawled along the wet oily floor to climb up his legs and chest, spreading the Purification to him at long last. He would die in this world, as all good things did, then be Reborn in the Kingdom of the True, Pure, Christian Lord and achieve Redemption from all the crass and depravities this defective world of heathens and disbelievers had imposed on him his entire life.

"There is a God in Heaven and He is Just! So was it Scriptured in the Bible, in the Time of the Romans, in the Time of Prophecy! Amen!" he screamed as the flames reached his face and pain made him fall to the floor in crippling agonies, never to rise again.

{ SQ } - { Grief } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 06:45am)

(Western America; 03:45am)

The conflagration was massive. The entire neurology edifice was engulfed in flames fueled by the pipe bombs of the attackers and the chemicals in the pharmacological laboratories in floors two and three that ignited or detonated, spreading outward shrapnel from the glass and metal containers. Then the natural gas principal pipe was ruptured by a sabotage explosion that created a breach topped by a 120 foot tall plume of fire. Seconds later, several nuisance fires became infernos in their own rights because the fanatics had opened the faucets that normally feed pure oxygen to breathing regulation devices for patients in pulmonary distress. All these sources of fire and extra fuel caused a calamity like none other in the state's history; all 12 floors of the hospital's neurology department were ablaze in less than a quarter hour, never allowing anybody any time to evacuate to the other buildings or the streets for safety and succor. Since the attack had happened before the official wake-up and breakfast at 08:00am, almost the entirety of patients were still asleep and only the small night staff, shortened for the holiday period, had been present. It was never enough to help anybody, not even themselves.

The hospital burned for almost 27 hours straight due to all the chemicals and drugs that had spread or the liquid fuel that some of the attackers had spread around as they climbed the stairs to spread death and misery before their own ends. The flames were so bad that they spread across the quad to ignite the other edifices of the hospital complex, but those were empty of patients and staff by then. Still, the fire destroyed over five massive important buildings and killed directly over 200 sleeping convalescent patients and 22 staff. An additional 36 patients from the critical care and immune-therapy quarantine zone of the other buildings died in the following hours from being disconnected from the life-support devices they needed since no replacement machines were available anywhere in the city. With 258 victims confirmed, it was the largest hospital fire and the deadliest terrorist attack in the histories of both Charleston and South Carolina.

Despite the tears and pleas of the innocent, it didn't stay the biggest for long.

We see the storm clouds gathering

(Criminal Minds – opening theme)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 14:26pm

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 07:26am

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 04:26am

Malfunction Junction; FBI emergency & civil defense bunker

Birmingham, Alabama, USA

Hidden deep underground in one of Birmingham's most central sectors, the FBI's emergency crisis management facilities for the state of Alabama were quite impressive. Roughly 500 meters on each side like a perfect square, six levels in total, buried an astounding 200 feet beneath the surface with the added visual decoy of the massive 'Malfunction Junction' roadway bridges and overpasses built right on top of the bunker. This emplacement was truly secure as it could be accessed only by underground tunnels that reached the surface in-between the public-use highways. It looked from the public perspective like access ramps to the construction zones of the pilings and road decks, something banal in this day and age of colossal concrete monoliths. A few flashing lights and signs warning to wear safety hats, hard boots and goggles when accessing the worksite complete the disguise easily enough that nobody had ever bothered to ask questions since the facility was built in 2013.

People might start asking those questions now however, as they most certainly saw the motorcades of black SUV's coming out of traffic to enter those reserved off-ramps that now suddenly had concrete and steel pillars topped with automated cameras and weapons turrets to manage inbound vehicles. The long lines of heavy black trucks made many morning commuters frown in curiosity as they all seemed to go the same place, but the event was quickly forgotten to the woes of Christmas shopping and impending family meetings.

The inbound trucks all carried a variety of FBI and other Federal-level law enforcement people into the safety of the central arrival bay in the topmost level, dropped them off and continued on their way out of the sub-structure via another off-ramp connecting to another set of highways on the other side of the 'Junction' hub.

The arriving personnel were quickly put through a set of scanning arches guarded by canine patrolmen whose dogs were trained to sniff explosives and several toxic chemicals used for explosives, incendiaries or poison grenades. Each person was submitted to a fingerprint scan, retinal scan, voice print match test and handwriting match test while their luggage was searched on a metal table next to the questioning station. The arrival lobby could process 12 candidates at the same time and so had four rows of twelve three-seat couches (144 places) to make people wait in case they had too many arrivals in a crunch. And that was the case right now; half the seats were taken by people and luggage, all twelve scanning stations busily processing personnel as quickly as they could. The extensive battery of tests however meant that they would always be taking roughly 10 minutes per individual at the shortest.

Once accepted inside the secured area, the people were marched towards the stairs and made to walk down three or four flights to the dormitory zones then got assigned bunks per agency they belonged to. Men and women were put together with little more than inch-thick mobile plastic partition panels to separate the bunks and common areas with almost no privacy except inside the enclosed bunks themselves. Even then, there was no soundproofing and every breath, gas or burp was heard by every person in the 9 bunk clusters. And they were clusters, not rooms. These levels had been built with long wide corridors in which the beds were stacked three high and grouped on each side in a way that shaped pairs of alcoves with a small common zone in the middle of the walking lane. All washrooms were communal, and the only facilities separated by gender in the entire bunker.

As hundreds of people filed into the two sleeping levels and placed their belongings or work materials in the foot lockers and standing steel cabinets, they also read the documents given to them upon entry. From those they would get the schedules for the mandatory medical checkups in the infirmary, the open hours for the commissary and cafeteria, as well as... The shower stall schedule and number that was assigned to them. A glorious fifteen minutes of sonic & Ionic waves, not water, followed by five minutes to brush their teeth and hair then move out to leave the place for the next person. Given the ratio of people attributed to each washroom, the showers were assigned in three 'rush hour' groups to cover all three shifts and then there were the free-for-all 'off-time' periods. Laundry room usage was similarly managed.

Oh, joy! The bureaucrats who did these schedules must have been in brown-socks heaven!

The special agents, uniformed officers and judicial office workers all found their assigned bunks and lockers then proceeded to change clothes into the more practical dark blue BDU's bearing the FBI crest and logos of the service sector they usually worked in so they would be easy to identify, even with the flak jacket covering 75% of the upper body. Shoulder patches and armbands were such useful inventions, as were the ID cards manufactured like credit cards out of pressed thermoplastic with a photo of the person, a magnetic strip, an optronic chip and an RF-ID tag, all optimized for quick-swipe and Wi-Fi devices. Once the personnel had their change of clothes on with their ID badges and cards well positioned, they looked at their schedules and went to their assigned positions in the multitude of tactical or support departments of the massive underground enclave.

Deep in the sixth floor, the machines that kept the bunker alive thrummed with electricity, pressurized cold water pushing through to the few wet systems above while tempered humidified and ionized air was turbine fed through several kilometers of ductworks to keep all floors and sectors filled with cool breathable atmosphere. A set of enclosed severely isolated rooms in the middle of the floor housed the massive supercomputer Cray-Apro XK8 Cloud-Bank assembled in 2014 that was still to this day one of the fastest and most reliable HPC (High Performance Computing Cluster) in the USA. It was outclassed only by the World Bank's San Francisco regional office machine constructed in 2018, the Wolenbahn WOL-01/A Neurotronix Torrent-Surfer built by the very same genial teenager at the center of the conflagration they feared was imminent.

The higher level personnel that were classed as SSA (supervisory special agents) or above were directed to the second floor where the main situation management hall was located. It was big enough to hold two hundred remote surveillance desks for the active overwatch of almost two thousand events or zones simultaneously along the tactical planning table which could sit 36 senior managers. From this room, the state's law enforcement leaders could gather to centralize all police and civil defense activity for the entirety of Alabama with the immediate surroundings in Birmingham having priority since they couldn't help anybody if they weren't alive and operational to do so.

As the top leadership arrived, got situated and changed then came up to the Ops Hall, they were able to witness the preludes for the unfolding catastrophe that could potentially turn into a tsunami of lies, hate and violence horrendous enough to swallow the entire country thrice over before it stopped. The senior agents, officers and civilian managers could only clench their jaws to hold in the cries of rage and despair as they saw attacks against police, national guard and even non-armed services like the firemen or the paramedics being reported by the public news agencies then confirmed by internal law enforcement channels. All the way down the eastern seaboard there were several dozen major incidents that resulted in hundreds of deaths, tens of buildings ablaze and as many vehicles wrecked.

The common denominators of these attacks were always the same; racism or anti-government phobia created and fueled by religious bigotry and sectarian disjunction from reality. Several of the monitoring desks had signified to the leaders that there were hundreds of private radio or TV channels owned by churches that had begun transmitting sermons of virulent hate, openly telling their followers to take arms to defend and impose the Faith unto heathens and the hidden deep-state accomplices of the Beast. Added to this were several thousand fanatic cultists taking to social media on the Internex to liaise with right-wing militias and neo-nazi gangs in the hopes of coordinating enough armed people to stage violent protests that would scare jews, blacks, browns, yellows and mixed-race bastards into leaving the country altogether or else they wanted 'Christian Rule' terror acts to shut down or destroy any place of worship that wasn't a christian church. Several neo-nazi or white-power militias had posted monetary rewards for who brought them the corpses of muslims or jews in an effort to convince people who were economically desperate to join in their depraved movement.

Here in Birmingham, there were protests gathering in front of the Family Court building, the DCFS edifice, the central Police Station and the FBI regional office. Several hospitals reported having gotten death threats on their voice boxes or email servers telling them to "Stop trying to pull people away from God's Holy Plan with poisonous drugs and the lies of psychiatry, otherwise the New Inquisition will punish you".

In several districts of the city, small groups were walking the streets with homemade fliers, trying to convince people that the federal government would seize and sell their children if they weren't 'good white christian kids'. The solution proffered by these groups was that the parents should nominate the priest who printed the fliers as 'spiritual guardian' of their kids, thus guaranteeing in public their baptism, christian loyalty and protection from over-reaching federal agents. Anybody who wasn't white was simply told that "their kids should be safe as nobody would want them" to serve in the army, navy or other functions anyways since the White House was after 'decent trustworthy servants', not mongrels and heathens. The bunker's overwatch managers took the names of these preachers to lodge charges against them in person and their groups at large for fomenting fear, hate, riots and active sedition. The bunker dispatched arrest orders as fast as they saw the situations and accumulated the evidence to back it up in court, although with Trump's decrees in place, nobody knew how that would play out.

As the clock above the three main monitors reached 07:52am, one overwatch desk signaled an alarm in progress at the UAB's Children's Hospital and its adjoining Pediatrics Primary Care Clinic and the Adolescent Medicine Clinic across the street. When several monitoring desks were pooled to scan the zone and find the cause, they found that five different groups of 5 to 8 people, all heavily armed and wearing body armor, had led a coordinated attack to invade those three sectors of the University of Birmingham in Alabama (UBA). They were trying to do room-by-room sweeps, destroying medical equipments and forcing children, parents and staffers to kneel in prayer at gun point, shouting loudly that "Science was a pack of satanic lies and medicine never healed anything". The leaders claimed loudly over the din of protesting medics and patients that "Only Jesus and Faith can heal people, but only if they proved loyal and worthy of such miracles".

Apparently, the one and only way to know who was worthy of miraculous healing was to disconnect all machines and medications then make people pray until God revealed the worthies by letting them live whilst the traitors and hidden satanists would see their kids die in their arms. At that moment, the self-styled 'combatant preachers' who led the militia teams would judge them and have their 'Faithful Paladins' execute them like the anti-Christian, anti-American scum they were found to be.

Similar situations were erupting slowly all over the state but in some cases they stopped abruptly when the innocent civilian population decided to take up arms and repel the fanatics with the same tactics and weapons as the cultists used. In such cases, the incidents were rather short but inevitably ended in mass casualties with both sides of the fight decimated beyond hope of recovery. By the time the clock indicated 09:30am, there were about a dozen 4-alarm fires raging in Birmingham's districts, including the UBA's Adolescent Medicine Clinic since several teenagers and parents had decided to get nasty with the attackers. By the internal recordings, about a dozen youths, all in terminal phase with diverse cancers or tumors, had ganged up against the terrorists and bull-rushed them with scalpels or pieces of furniture to cut and bash them. Many young people had been shot or stabbed to death but each and every attacker in that building had died inside of 40 minutes of setting foot in the building. The truly depraved act happened when the 'combatant preacher' of that team was killed. His death triggered the life monitoring switch in his clothes to detonate the incendiary bomb-vests worn by his bunch of monsters thus causing a massive conflagration right in the ground floor of the hospital that blew out the windows and set fire to the floor, walls and ceiling at the same time. Several innocents were killed by the blast's pressure wave, shrapnel and flying dollops of ignited fuel-oil. It was an act of monstrosity that would mark the minds and souls of Alabama citizens for decades to come. The police SWAT intervention to clear out the other two sectors of the UAB hospital were met with similar results; the terrorists all fought to death and exploded upon their preacher's demise. The entirety of the university's capacity to heal sick children or do research on infantile health that took decades to build had been set ablaze and would burn out of control for three days before the flames ran out of fuel to consume.

Them there waters be a' risin'!

(NCIS - NO – opening theme)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 15:41pm

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 08:41am

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 05:41am

Naval Air Station - Joint Reserve Base, New Orleans

Plaquemines Parish, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

The guards at the naval base along the shores of the Mississippi River in the Belle Chasse area of the Plaquemines Parish were busy closing wire fences, setting sand bag defensive emplacements and a small diesel powered forklift was busily taking inch thick steel plates from a flatbed truck to pile them up on the grass next to the pavement. Those steel slabs would be used shortly to create above-ground bunkers so that the perimeter guards could take shelter if they were attacked by groups carrying heavy weapons, something which had a high risk of occurring these days.

The problem with Louisiana was that like many southern states of the USA it had a large segment of it's territory that was undeveloped to the point of being completely wild. The difference with other states though was the water; the sheer surface and quantity of water in Louisiana was a blessing as they couldn't ever experience a drought but the flip side was the annual flooding and the immense variety of animals who always invaded the homes and companies every day because the lakes, rivers, canals and bayous were everywhere in the state, thus giving the critters easy access to human dwellings. This also meant that even when you decided to build something permanent, so much of the ground was a soggy muddy mess that it limited where and how you could build along with the kinds of land usage.

Such wild lands conditions with vast tracts of swamps and marshes that could only be reached by boat or on foot were what historically caused the Louisiana people to develop their rich culture of gathering, hunting, trapping and fishing inland as much as on the ocean. To this day, thousands of people went just outside of their backyard to forage in the bushes and streams to find their meal or work product since the wild nature was always so close at hand, even in the hearts of the big cities. Unfortunately, the very legitimate need for guns and other weapons to hunt or trap so as to feed one's family or supply the fur & meat trades led to several problems because obtaining a firearm had become so easy in the last 50 years. On top of loose gun ownership and usage laws for law-abiding citizens, there was a huge black market in smuggled or illegal guns that thrived because the vast marshes that composed about a quarter of the state were almost impossible to patrol or watch over in any coherent way. Since these marshes were in the southern most tip of the state that protruded into the Gulf of Mexico, that meant that criminals could pass from foreign countries over the sea to touch land in uninhabited zones of the swamps to then ferry their merchandise up the bayous and rivers into the heart of the state, and then the rest of the USA at large.

There were many, many illegal guns hidden all over Louisiana, not because the people were bad or worse than elsewhere, but because the geography and climate facilitate the situation all year long. And that meant that in a situation of anticipated riots, civil unrest and possibly open warfare in the streets, the police and military had to obligatorily think about those big high powered assault rifles, machine guns and even grenades or RPG's that get smuggled in all over the sea shores where nobody watches.

Thankfully, the majority of the citizens in Louisiana were decent, hard-working folks who didn't want to hurt anybody. The bad luck of the draw was that two or three handfuls of utter fools sitting on large caches of guns and explosives would soon be making enough racket and damages to make it look as if the entire population had rioted twice over in the same day. The civil emergency planners had taken the statistics into consideration when they elaborated the defensible zones and guard schedules all over the state. Some zones in the northern part would be easier to protect as they were drier, had more firm ground to build on and far less bayous or streams to float a canoe with a sniper around the static defenses. In the swamps, they would need to be extra vigilant as those zones would rely on scanning with pole-mounted cameras and rooftop automated gunnery turrets that were operated-by-wire from secure underground bunkers in the protected areas inside the military bases or police stations.

As that stood, the Naval Air Station - Joint Reserve Base, New Orleans was an important part of the defensive array of NOLA. The city had always been a navy town with thousands of sailors coming and going every week. Ships came to New Orleans to give crew shore leave, commit repairs, resupply and then leave after a week or two of hard work and harder partying in the bars and brothels of the Mississippi Queen's blue and green bosom. Unfortunately for the CD planners, practically everyone, his dog and the mutt's fleas knew full well how important the Navy base was to this city and how it served as a choke-point to control traffic on the river while serving its primary purpose of coordinating surveillance and defense for the entire southern part of the Louisiana coastal areas.

If anybody wanted to knock the USA a bad blow, all they had to do was find a way to make the Navy shutter the base or place it on lockdown for a few days and the trick was done. That vulnerability, relatively isolated position in the greater metropolitan area of NOLA and the proliferation of easy to buy guns with so many damned canals and foraging trails all around the base perimeter had forced the commandant to gear up his people faster and harder than might have been deemed wise in other cities or climates. Hence the construction of steel plate redoubts and sand bag machine gun or mortar emplacements at critical road access points.

{ SQ } - { Open house policy } - { SQ }

The base commandant however was presently swearing a storm in English, French, Cajun and Spanish as he contemplated the air view map of his base complex; the damned fucking big hole in is right flank called 'The Mississippi River' left several kilometers of unfenced, barely watched shorelines. That had to be changed ASAP or they would find bodies floating in that river come lunch time. Not that they didn't occasionally find a floater lazily passing by like a lost tourist, but usually it came from deep inside the state, not from his base or his men, so he didn't panic about those.

The other headache for the general was the fact about ¾ of his compound was occupied by civilians.

As had become the US military tradition since the early 1900's the families of the servicemen had the right to lodge, live and even work on base so as to receive the few measly benefits they were entitled to due to the enormous sacrifices made by their loved ones. As such, most of the Joint Base's constructions were actually the houses, apartment buildings, stores and workshops, even some schools and places of worship, everything a village would need to serve its residents. The genuine military buildings or worksites were swallowed up and drowned inside that swamp of basic daily human activity. Which also meant that the actual square mileage of purpose-built defensible or militarized structures inside his 'perimeter' was in reality negligible when compared to the whole lot.

In other words, his damned base was a fucking sieve and trying to think it could be secured into an airtight fortified position was a pipe dream come up with by some stoned out loon in some obscure basement level office in the Pentagon or worse, the budget planners in the Capitol. Neither of them worn out rusted 'tools' knew anything about the navy, army or defending anything worth saving if it wasn't their own oily hides. Washington DC would be relatively safe as it sat on firm ground with not that many rivers and no swamps to worry about. The folks down in Florida, Louisiana and parts of Texas couldn't plan the same way if they wanted to keep safe. Not that their opinions about their reality was ever asked all that much when the time to make decisions came.

Passing a rough calloused hand over his bald head, the general turned to his senior staffers and said "We're fucked harder than a willing sailor who paid his whore for it, people! But! At least, we know it, therefore we can plan around it. In need ideas and options, men! That there bleeding wound in our flank has to be secured somehow and more than half the land perimeter fences are falling apart so much that a kid could walk through and not realize where he's wound up!"

The women and men in charge of the navy presence in New Orleans bent to the monumental task of securing what had to be one of the most open and least structurally sound bases in the US naval organization. With tens of cargo barges cruising the river every day to deliver any kind of bulk goods you could think of plus dozens of small fishing boats and tourist crafts, finding a way to secure the city's main artery of commerce and life wan'nt gonna be easy.

{ SQ } - { Ah, crap! } - { SQ }

The New Orleans MEPS inside the Naval Airbase was a relatively quiet little building on the corner of Blonski Avenue and Rinard Road. Clean, modern and recently built barely a decade ago when many of the military activities on the eastern side of the Mississippi were folded into the Naval base to give better work efficiency & support through proximity of all related services inside a single campus. MEPS means 'Military Entrance Processing Station' or, in daily speach, the way into the service. First you go to your local recruitment center where they make you pass some aptitude tests, a medical exam and do a background check via Internex. If the results of the tests are promising and you sign up, then you get a date for an appointment at one of the 65 MEPS buildings closest to where you were recruited.

As the second decisive step into becoming a member of the US military apparatus & community, the MEPS was critically important for all that it was basically just a two storey office building that looked more like a neighborhood restaurant than a military posting. Then again, all they did inside was talk to people, push papers, search online for information about their applicants and, since around 2010, the entirety of the army's multiple laws, charts, training schedules, officer manuals, catalogs of services to soldiers & families, and all the general information kiosks had all been moved online. This meant a lot less employees to do the jobs and much smaller, ordinary, less conspicuous buildings to do it all in.

On this fine Saturday morning of December, the staffers at the MEPS were actually busy, but not with processing applicants as it wasn't their heavy season. That was more in July and August just after schools let out and the young ones just finished with high school or college got their diplomas and made life altering decisions. Winter break was for partying and gathering family, not joining the service and potentially changing one's entire world.

As the crew of the MEPS went about their morning routine of sweeping the floors in the reception area, getting the coffee pots on the burners, booting up their work stations and doing all the basic stuff any office needs done to deal with customers and bosses in the day, everything seemed ordinary. Except for the conversations between workers, some in camouflage fatigues, others in dark blue BDU's and only a handful in civilian clothes who were quickly being directed to the building's basement areas where the supply closets, armory and safety bunker were located. They needed to get changed and equipped ASAP before the first 'clients' walked in the door at 09:00am.

The 'Noah's Ark' protocol had been activated by the Secretary of Defense late last night.

That meant that the morning routine had been slightly altered. It now included verifying the armored shutters in the windows. Setting a defensive gunnery emplacement at desk #4 in the far left corner with half-inch thick concave steel riot shields locked together to form a safety wall with a single slot to put a rifle muzzle through to shoot out at the enemy. Stashing pistols, flash-bang grenades and knives in the drawers of all of 4 desks just in case what the personnel carried was not sufficient to hold off an altercation. Packing two more foam fire extinguishers, a first aid kit and several cans of pepper spray in the cupboard under the coffee maker reserved for the clientele. Washing the restroom thoroughly since it served as dedicated emergency infirmary on the ground floor due to the folding baby-changing table big enough and sturdy enough to hold the frame and weight of a fat adult male. The cabinet containing three med-kits, thermal blankets, propane camp stove with fuel cans and some dehydrated soup tins and tools with four M16's and shells besides the toilet was checked, cleaned and re-locked.

By the time the internal bell that reminded the workers to open the doors sounded, they were set up very differently than before. In fact, if it weren't for the practice runs held four times a year, none of them would have been able to recognize the place as their own. With a pair of marines standing on either side of the doors, the lieutenant in charge of the building opened it to the public. He was stunned to see a small crowd of people gathered in front of the entryway, waiting patiently in the still mild weather. As he looked over the group of about thirty or some humans milling around, he saw something that sent a chill down his spine. The group was composed mostly of adult women with one or two high school aged boys, but some of which looked to be only 11 or 12 years old.

This couldn't be happening. It was Saturday morning. The only people supposed to be lined up in front of his door on a weekend were the military mail and the Quartermaster's corps as all their regular supply deliveries were scheduled for when there was practically no intakes to process. Who the bloody Hells were these people and what did they want? Gesturing for the marines to come out and bracket him on either side at two paces, he walked out of the building thus immediately obtaining the attention of the small group. As he came closer to them, without the windows and shutters to alter his view of them, he could see more details. These people were not rich but not miserable either, for the adults at least. The kids looked ordinary but several wore oversized saggy jeans showing off the butt of their shorts, flashy fluo colored sneakers or had hoodies pulled over their heads low enough that the rim of the cloth hid their eyebrows even as they looked at him with frowned angry faces.

Deciding that he wouldn't solve the situation by staying silent, the lieutenant asked aloud "What are you people all doing at this office on a Saturday morning like this? Could someone tell me what is happening here? Please?"

His answer came from one of the adult women, an african-american that seemed to be thirtyish years or so in age with a young teenager that stood by her side with a lot of ill grace, a mulish expression on his face and 'gangsta' style clothes with his rear hanging out of his jeans. The woman dragged the boy forward so she could push him at the soldiers. "Here. You take the boy and make a good Christian man out of him, just like the President said you would. I wrote out the permission letter here." She held out a piece of cheap lined paper for the officer to take.

Grabbing the sheet and reading it made his world a whole lot more complicated. The sheet referred to the two illegal presidential decrees that Trump had created at the beginning of the week that had become public knowledge just last night on every channel on TV. Raising his face to the woman he asked for confirmation. "You want us to take your – 15 year old nephew – and commit him for christian disciplinary redressment on a navy warship away from the street gang and public schools because he did petty thefts, bullying, armed assault, skipped school and you caught him with pot and ecstasy pills last week. Is this correct?"

The black skinned young woman nodded strongly just as she yanked the hoodie off the boy's head and laid a rough smack to the back of his skull. "Mongrel! Look at the man when he's talking to us! Oh, my poor sister! If she saw what her boy's become! You better walk the straight line, boy, or it's the strap for yo' tight ass! Them boys in the service, they know how to handle little pieces of kiddy trash like you! After years in the Navy, it ain't a shit-head like you's that'll scare 'em off!" Turning her angry face to the soldiers, she told them out loud "Well, he's here. I brought him, just like the Big Boss said. He said that his Navy would make men out of disobedient, dispirited boys. So you take him and do something with him. I tried. Gawd knows I tried! Ever since I got him when my sister died in the hospital about seven years ago and he ain't been nut'tin but trouble since. I spanked and strapped and slapped and even got my priest to try and help, right in open church, to pray for him to get better. No nut'tin made no difference. So you's take him now and beat some manhood into his skinny ass so my sister's ghost can be proud of him."

With a yawning pit of despair in his gut, the soldier asked the group at large. "Are you all here for the same reason?"

One older asian woman in her late forties came up front with the two young boys she watched over and they followed silently, fearfully even, in her wake. "Yes sir." she answered in a sneering nasal voice that made several in the crowd wince at such harsh aggressive tonalities. "My two sons here need a firmer hand than just a single mother can wield. I broke a cane on their backs and they still act out like animals! They need a man's solid, unyielding grip on their sorry hides or they'll run amok the moment you let go! I saw on the news last night that the country was finally going to do it's job of making boys into good Christian Men that serve the community. So, I searched on the web how the military hires the men and saw that the recruits all come here to get assigned their jobs. So, I came here with the boys to hand them over to you. Their bags are in the car, I'll get them when I know what room you make them wait in until you hand them over to one of your Faithful officers like the President said."

Raising his voice over the din of the approving adults, the lieutenant exclaimed: "Now hear this! We have received confirmation by the Departments of Defense and Justice last evening in relation to what you are talking about. The decrees made by the President are ILLEGAL and we are ordered by the judges to not do it in any way, shape, or form. It has been the Law of the Land since 1979 that the USA cannot use the military as an orphanage or juvenile reformation center. We don't ever, and we can't ever, take in kids to do anything to them. The minimal age for any recruit is 18 years old; no exceptions, no special cases, and no orders from the President, the states' governors or city mayors or county judges can change that."

As the kids seemed to get livelier at his words, the adults got angry and shouted nasty comments at the soldier, even going so far as to calling him a coward, un-patriotic and anti-christian. One big burly white-skinned man with a bald head and short reddish beard who had a heavy, tight grip on the shoulder of a slight, fearful, red haired teenager screamed out at the officer in rabid loss of temper that made him red-faced. "You bastard! You fucking traitor! Nothing but a damned communist liberal! Your fucking kind's always trying to betray the President we elected to make OUR country Great Again! He promised us an America in OUR image! A Biblical World that the True God of the Christian Bible gave us to Rule in his Name! It's HIS Holy Law that Trump speaks aloud and you don't have the right to say otherwise! When a soldier goes against the President, that makes him a traitor! A coward! A God-damned jew-fucker whore that don't have a drop of red blood in his veins! No wonder Trump wants to get the kids when they're young and Pure in their souls! That's what's got you scared inn'it? You're afraid them kids will make good solid worshipful men to finally kick you liberal trash commies out of the services and remake our military Loyal and Faithful to God again!"

Trying to keep his temper in check against the stupid skinhead, the lieutenant addressed the entire group altogether in his loudest voice. "Ladies! Gentlemen! I am sorry that you were all made to come here this early on a Saturday morning but the news programs were all quite clear and perfectly accurate when they reported the events last night. The presidential decrees are illegal and inapplicable. We do not, and will not, take your children, and we certainly won't beat and rape religious belief and worshipfulness into them. THAT is immoral, illegitimate and most certainly ILLEGAL, not just for the military but at all levels of society, no matter who you pray to, or what color you are."

Hearing the crowd getting ready to protest he decided to break up the movement before it got out of hand and civilians made stupid decisions. Gesturing to his escorts, he had them step forward to aim their M16'S straight into the crowd, pointing out specifically the choleric fat skinhead and another, a black woman in her early fifties that was waving her styrofoam coffee cup around until she actually threw it towards the building's windows. That gesture was perfectly useless against the cement and steel structure but it marked her as the second most volatile temper in the group so the marine on the left aimed towards her and made certain to not be subtle about it so that he could scare her into calming down. The lieutenant took out his service pistol and visibly drew back the slide in a clearly threatening gesture that immediately had all the adults go quiet.

"Now, if any of you want to make a formal WRITTEN complaint about events today, you can go on the US military website and find the tab for 'services to the civilian population of the US' then browse that until you find either the 'public relations' or 'complaints' pages and fill out the forms. We will not be accepting paper letters and certainly not verbal requests. If you don't disperse quietly and politely in the next minute, I will call the military police to come and arrest you for trespassing and making a public disturbance as well as troubling the peaceful orderly functioning of an active service military facility."

As soon as the small crowd broke up and dispersed towards their cars parked all around on the near streets, the lieutenant exhaled a deep sigh of relief then holstered his pistol. He gestured the marines to get back at their posts inside as he gave the area one last long look to make certain no other problems were lurking. Satisfied that the zone was emptying and nothing else was coming at them to create havoc, the officer went into the building and straight to his office to contact the chain of command with news of what had happened. As he sat at his table, he saw a slew of emails waiting to be read, most of them bearing a red ticker indicating they were priority messages from the central MEPS / Recruitment commandment of the US military services. With pursed lips and frowned brow, the officer was relieved greatly to see that most of the MEPS stations that were open had suffered similar situations and handled them about the same as him, so he was in the clear. He hoped that parents would get the message by the end of the day and stop trying to shove their kids at the navy.

As he typed his report and joined the film of what happened on the building's porch to his superiors while CC'ing his colleagues at the other MEPS offices, he could see through the security monitors that a pair of adults seemed to have brought their 14 year old son in to register him and they weren't in the mood to be turned away with a negative answer. After sending his message out, he searched for the local DCFS address and emailed it to the 3 functioning desks so that his workers could refer the families at need. He really hoped that the Christmas vacations would cool down tempers but was pragmatic enough to know better. You don't live long as a US Army Ranger if you don't keep your eyes on reality the way it is.

There be blood in them waters

(US National Anthem)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 16:16pm

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 09:16am

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 06:16am

Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority

Buffalo Bayou, Pasadena, Houston, Texas, USA

The Houston Police Department (HPD) was in the process of installing portable street poles in cement bases that had been brought by the municipal works department just an hour ago. These poles would then be connected to the water treatment plant's electrical grid to power the lights, cameras and communications suite built into the long metal pipes. The cops were happy to have this job compared to their colleagues in the center of town who were now in riot gear, patrolling on foot around the critical buildings of Houston while surrounded by civilians walking less than arm's length away at all times during their shift. Those blokes wouldn't have an easy day of it, they just knew it. The news casts since last evening had all been alarmist, panicky and would no doubt bring the worse characters out of the woodworks for law enforcement to deal with. Here, at the water treatment plant, they were isolated enough that they would only need to worry about monitoring their mobile camera poles for unusual activity and the plant employees who weren't that many anyways.

As the three men and woman lifted the tall heavy pole for the left side of the road, the water company's tool truck with a crane arm and nacelle came into view from inside the treatment plant's campus to assist the cops in their installation job. Most of the utilities workers inside the industrial campus were not convinced that society was about to collapse under the weight of what the idiot-in-chief in DC had done, anymore than it had in the previous 4 years. Then again, none of these guys had the basic training in Law and Politics that was mandatory course load at the police academy. The USA was a democracy and the population expected its policemen to understand at least the basics of how the culture and customs worked in daily life. It was also a way to make certain the officers applied the laws the same way across the board as much as possible. What the cops had access to in terms of information sources, surveillance recordings and the National Alert System operated by the FBI in cooperation with the State Troopers in each state of the Union meant that the uniformed officers already had in hand several reasons to be worried. The briefing they had gotten this morning before leaving the precinct house to reach their assigned watch post had been anything but reassuring.

After a couple of minutes to salute each other and explain what was needed, the plant workers set the truck and deployed the crane/nacelle to finish lifting the street pole in place then hoisted the 'tree' that capped the top then screwed the cable connections between parts so that electricity and network signal could reach the cameras and diverse sensors. After that was done, the pros lowered the crane to its 'at rest' position while they moved the truck to the other side of the street in order to not have to extend the crane arm beyond a certain length to keep the guy in the cherry-picker basket safe.

As the tool truck was placing itself on the right side of the private access road, a pair of RV shaped vehicles escorted by two police cruisers were seen to move up North Richey Street straight to the water treatment plant. As they passed the security portico being installed, the cops and workers could see that each of the four vehicles were dragging a medium sized 4-wheel enclosed trailer similar to that of contractors. The convoy didn't even try to stop or signal the work detail as they passed by, obviously in a hurry to reach the final destination of their travels.

"What the Hell is that barge doing in this corner of town?" asked one of the cops to his colleagues as they trooped together in the middle of the street after the convoy was gone deep inside the agglomeration of buildings, warehouses and chemical vats that composed the treatment plant.

"That's a mighty big lot of coppers, it is" commented the aged trucker who had gotten down from his nacelle to join them with his partner. "What were them big rigs for, anyways?" the old man asked in his thick southern accent.

The policewoman answered in doubtful tones "That's a field command post in the front and the second RV is a mobile ICBN (incendiary, chemical, biological & nuclear) detection lab that they use when they find a nasty piece of crap like a meth lab or some artisanal bomb maker's shed. They must have found something bad in the intake pipes or stuck in the bayou just next to the plant's discharge."

Her colleague, older in age but at work in the HPD only since 2016 when he moved into the Houston area after living most of his life in Dallas, asked her interrogatively "What 'bout them trailers? I don't rightly remember seeing those in the garages downtown or hearing 'bout 'em in the training period back when I joined the HPD."

It was the second policeman who replied "Those are the emergency disaster camp trailers. They have all sorts of gear to put up and maintain a working camp for 24 people with electricity, water, climate control and a mobile comms hub to take over telephone and internet dispatching in an area. They can also slave the town's CCTV poles like ours and the existent traffic lights/cameras and have a program to identify cars, aircraft or boats then forcibly connect with their onboard comms to have an open line with them to manage traffic live. The ICBN lab is exactly how bad is sounds. They usually come in when they found materials that are explosive, toxic or radioactive; they identify the problem and tell the other guys how to solve it."

The younger man who had driven the tool truck wondered aloud "So, they're gonna make a camp inside our plant campus because they found a problem or because they want to make certain nobody hijacks the water outlets to the bayou? That doesn't seem so complicated. I mean, it's a water treatment plant; everybody who watches the news understands that terrorists want to burn down or take control of these kinda things. Having a cop camp here aught to keep things calm and clean for a while."

The four law officers nodded at his evaluation. The man had the clearest view of events. "Welp, let's get our backs into it, people! Them there poles aren't gonna go up all on their own!" The oldest of the cops exclaimed while clapping his hands and making 'shooing' gestures at the team of workers. The brass could handle the rest of whatever happened.

{ SQ } - { Muddy streams } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 09:21am)

(Western America; 06:21am)

The Houston Police Department mobile command post #4 was a large RV based on the frame of the biggest commercially available such type of vehicle and the contents was customized specifically to answer the needs of senior officers in charge of search & rescue, fugitive tracking and SWAT interventions. The vehicle had limited off-road capacity but excellent mobility on paved roads and the driver had several monitors on top of his dashboard to view the images produced by radar, sonar, thermal cameras and variable light wave frequency cameras. These mobile outposts were a necessity in the Digital Age of Humanity as finding a missing child depended as much on putting out Amber Alerts as it did being able to find and read the social media pages of pedophiles and possible enemies of the parents. The setup served specifically to house the localized telephony network cell, the satellite phone relay, the CB & Shortwave station and the just created wireless Internex Signal routing cell. While having a clean toilet, shower stall and small service bar with some halfway decent coffee and a few sandwiches wasn't bad either, the entire rig's usefulness rested at 99% on the sensors, electronics & comms suite mounted in and around it. The HPD brass did not deploy one of the 6 mobile outposts lightly as they were costly to operate and somewhat fragile, therefore they had to be kept out of the actual conflict zone since the body was not armored in any ways.

The ICBN mobile lab #2 was a similar vehicle, but created to become completely sealed and airtight even when the four hydraulic sections were extended to allow for more working space. This one had several atmospheric sensors, cameras, antennae and little pipes to collect rain, snow or airborne particles to analyze the pollutants in circulation. There were even automated sensors capable of analyzing air & moisture quality as the vehicle rolled without having to stop. This was a piece of equipment even more costly and fragile than the mobile command fleet. Each was always kept well behind the defense lines and never exposed to conflict at all, unless the perps managed to bypass the defending cops and bring the problem to its doorstep. Given that only the Commissioner of Police could order the deployment of these labs, and he never did unless there was a clusterfuck in progress, you could understand that having both the MCP and ICBN-ML wasn't good news for the people inside any installations were they arrived.

Pulling in four trailers worth of emergency camping gear and portable infrastructure hubs certainly confirmed just how bad the situation was getting.

Police captain Denyse Raphael was an african-american woman and third generation of her family in law enforcement. She had joined the US Army at age 18 and trained to be part of the Military police corps which she worked in for 15 years before taking her honorable discharge to be closer to her kids and extended family. She did a year of professional formation to put her police skills on par with the civilian requirements and quickly got a posting at HPD where she had been slowly but surely climbing the ranks for 12 years to date. She had gotten promoted to captain a bit faster than normal on account of her experience in the MP's and her proven capacity to manage large disaster areas both in the military and in her years back in Houston in the 2017, 2018 and 2020 floods that struck the region repeatedly as the global weather patterns changed. The HPD commissioner and higher brass had begun promoting or hiring people with specific floodplain, forest fire and disaster relief expertise to help bolster the survivability of their vast extended metropolitan area as they had understood the new climatic reality regardless of the pro fossil-fuel propaganda coming out of the White House and Congress.

The result was that captain Raphael was amongst three handfuls of experts promoted specifically because she had lived through wide-area disaster relief patrol and support during her MP career. She had been deployed in the Middle-East, her assignments varying from patrolling the construction sites of US installations to escorting humanitarian aid convoys to establishing anti-looter barriers and check-points after a particularly violent earthquake in Afghanistan. The 45 year old woman had been as surprised as all her colleague captains when the emergency muster had sounded on her cellphone last night, with a Txt message telling her to be present a the materials hangar at 07:00am this morning to get her briefing notes, marching orders and emergency camp team. She had gotten an hour to read her briefs, ask the most pressing questions then get everybody in the four vehicle convoy on the road so as to reach her destination and get set up before 12:00pm noon.

The town councilors and police brass were expecting city-wide troubles; they had prepared mission statements that showed the mobile camp teams several recordings of news casts from last evening, through the night, until this morning. Since she was sitting in the command part of the rig, she could have the TV open on multiple news channels during the voyage from the mustering area to the water treatment plant and search the Internex to find complementary information about just how badly the situation was deteriorating across the country. It was horrendous. There had been multiple lone-wolf attacks and organized sectarian militia terror strikes in multiple cities all along the eastern seaboard, and the madness was propagating itself towards the western coast as the sun rose over each time zone.

She had called her husband to get the kids back inside the house and start prepping their home as if another great flood of 2017 was coming in. Since her man was a firefighter who had been in the US Corps of Military Engineers (Sea Bees) for a decade before going back to civilian life, their shared house was quite well built and defended in case of prowlers and looters. As long as the kids were inside and everybody was in either the first floor or the attic, they could be safe from anything and the three last flood events had not reached their plot of land so that particular worry, at least, was out of their minds. Now, if her 3 kids could all follow instructions without bickering, she could go about her own job away from home with her mind at peace.

The city's emergency management of civil unrest & popular insurrection called for the establishment of police commandment outposts in locations of the town that were vital so as to guard them from vandals and seditious forces like the white-power militias and wack-job cults that seemed to grow in the southern states like plant pollen in summer. In this case, she had the dubious distinction of also supervising the ICBN lab because the bosses downtown were afraid that somebody would use the treatment plant to either poison the potable water aqueduct, poison the bayou or just destroy parts of the filtration devices so as to let raw sewage straight into the Buffalo Bayou and out to sea. While flushing crap down river would be bad, it would never be as bad as clogging the sewer lines to cause pipe back-ups in the houses around town or sending poison in the drinking water pipes.

Anyways, the plant was rather isolated where it was; road access was good but limited to just one 2-lane street otherwise you had to use a boat to cross over the 600 feet wide Buffalo Bayou or the 150 feet wide Vince Bayou so the emplacement did offer advantages from a defensive standpoint. The problem was that the chain-link fence around the place was old, rusted and torn with holes so that anybody patient enough to walk around the perimeter could find a way onto the plant campus. This fact was coupled to the number of small motorboats available around the extended Houston area which was a sea-side town, and therefore had a lot of water sports all year long. Hoping that a militia group or cult of fools would never be able to lay hands on a boat to go around the road access blockade was an idiot's pipe dream, especially on a working river like the Buffalo Bayou that was used as a commercial cargo lane all year long.

The secondary problem that captain Raphael faced was the semi-isolated location of the water treatment facilities meant that they would not be getting any sorts of support easily if they called for backup. They were pretty much on their own once they were in place. That was why they had so much camping gear and vehicles; once the set-up was done, one of the cruisers with its trailer would go back into the residential area nearby to do bulk purchases then bring back the food and essentials ASAP. At the same time, the plant employees would be getting a crash course in New American Reality so they could order in extra tools, parts, consumables and even a few appliances like fridges and freezers to store a cache of food. The police officers would then incite them to call their spouses or families to have them come over to form a protected enclave in the slightly removed zone so that they could have extra hands to help in case of emergencies or just to have surveillance rotations in the monitoring rooms while the professional cops patrolled the outer perimeter.

Using the cameras on the command post and Google Maps at the same time, she could see the very worse situation that could be; to the west, south and east were massive petroleum oil refineries and to the north were the Buffalo Bayou with cargo barges and over that were other massive refining plants. In fact, the least dangerous manufacture she could see on the maps was the Houston Cement Company – East Campus that didn't have anything explosive, flammable or caustic in their hangars. Everything else all around for about 2 kilometers was massive cisterns full of oil in diverse stages of refining and mindboggling bundles of metal pipes that resembled the bowels of some unholy beast strewn around Pasadena town and the lower bayou districts pell-mell.

Her job in the coming weeks would be to mount a fixed command camp, control the safety and quality of water in the pipes and streams around the plant while also insuring that all civil services could maintain their comm lines active in her dedicated area. All this with a reduced crew of just 8 officers plus herself. No wonder the brass and town hall had given orders to encourage the water plant workers to bring in their families to help transform the isolated infrastructure hub into a fully sustainable, defensible enclave to pass through the social upheavals hitting them in the guts.

{ SQ } - { Raw sewage afloat } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 09:42am)

(Western America; 06:42am)

Captain Raphael shook hands with the shift manager of the water treatment facilities then the three foremen present to seal the agreement they had. The police would give them the planning and direction they needed while the plant's workers would be the arms to move and craft the resources available on the territory of the waste management plant. This also meant that the HPD would be able to establish a hard-wire link between the mobile command post and the plant's CCTV and security systems which, admittedly, were pretty basic and in dire need of repairs.

As the preliminary meeting wound down, one of the old wired telephones in the conference room rang, its ancient strident tin bell grating on all their nerves at once. The foreman closest to the device picked it up and listened to the woman on the other end as she explained the cause of her call. After hanging the handset back on its cradle, he told them the bad news.

"It was our in-house private security guard Laureen Larding, up in the camera room. She's just spotted something floating down the Buffalo Bayou in the middle of the current. Since she knows about our meeting, she decided to call us, instead of the police station like she normally would have."

"Call the cops?" asked the manager, "What did she see on there, dammit?"

The foreman shrugged helplessly; "A group of dead bodies tied together" he answers blithely. "And from what she says, there's like four o' them cadaver floats passing us by, right now."

Denyse grabbed the walkie-talkie microphone clipped to her shoulder strap, clicking the device active to contact her men outside the building. "Okay, people, we have us some floaters in the bayou. Get them cruisers around the plant's management building to look at the river. Try to have your flotation jackets with you, the plant has a small 14 foot dinghy that we'll be able to borrow. I want you to get in the outboard boat while trailing a pair of lines from the winches on your cruisers to tie those body piles so we can drag them bag to the shore. It's the best we can do at this time. I don't think we can hope for any immediate response from the forensics teams. We'll just keep the bodies on the shoreline and find a way to freeze them or at least store them somehow until we can get support from downtown. Over."

"Ten-four, captain. We'll do our best to reel in your stinky fish outta the drink. Over."

Captain Raphael looked at the grim faces of the men in the room around her and sighed loudly. "There's only 8 guys with me, the four at the front will stay with us until the end of the day, but not come back tomorrow. I do have two forensics specialists in the ICBN truck, but two can't do the job of an entire morgue in a reasonable time-frame. The best we'll be able to accomplish is reel in the clusters of dead people and hope real hard for the best from then on."

What else could the water plant men say after that?

To serve humanity with honor

(SeaQuest – season 1 theme)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 17:00pm

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 10:00am

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 07:00am

UEO Fleet shipyards; drydock 1500-B, command center

New Cape Quest, Florida, UEO Territory

Commander Oliver Hudson stood in the tenth storey conference amphitheater of the giant control tower, in the massive bay window that overlooked the actual drydock part of the installation: a massive cement coffer 1,500 feet long by 500 feet wide by 200 feet deep that could be filled with sea water in just a few hours to let pass the mighty ships of the UEO Alliance or its member nations. At present, the ship in residence for the last 23 months had been the ocean-borne mastodon SeaQuest DSV 6000, the biggest and baddest nuclear powered submarine ever built by human hands to date. She had been Hudson's guest at the UEO Fleet Shipyards of New Cape Quest to undergo one of the most ambitious and elaborate retrofits ever imposed on a working hull before. In a few minutes, the briefing would commence and Hudson would have the immense pleasure to instruct the ship's crew complement on the marvels of creativity that had been put into her massive belly.

Oliver had been intrigued when the opportunity to become project manager for the SeaQuest had been offered to him. He had been 43 years old when a group of captains and senior commanders were presented the basis of the project, three years ago. The ship had still been in active service but showing its age while the owner, the American Confederation that contained the USA, Canada and Mexico, was experiencing severe budget shortfalls and were looking for a way to either change the ship's vocation or sell it off to somebody. Given it costs about 150,000,000$ a year to operate the ship before even factoring in the salaries, benefits and pensions of the crewmen, therefore finding prospective buyers had been a backbreaking chore until Andrea Dre had shown a personal interest in both the boat and the many retrofit options the AC had been investigating.

SO, in 2017 the UEO bought the ship with all its conception and construction blueprints, work logs and shipyard management books, to which were also added all the diverse options' drafts that the US and AC had been looking at to change the ship's usage to make it self-sustaining and self-financing. Secretary General Dre had some pretty pointed views and had a good idea of what she wanted the boat to do as its primary mission so after a year of drawing and planning, the blueprints were done and the ship scheduled for retrofit right here at NCQ where Andrea Dre could come watch the work in progress and supervise any changes or adaptations to the plans required as they came up. The finished boat was as much hers as it belonged to the drydock crews and the engineering planning committee.

When the raw retrofit project was presented to the captains and commanders along with the heavy burden of political and diplomatic involvement that would hover all around the worksite like a pall of gloom, every other candidate pulled out before the selection meeting even got called. Most candidates that had been pre-selected in fact just sent in a polite negative response by courier mail without ever setting foot in the conference room. At the end of things, Oliver Hudson was the only man seated in the meeting, no one else having showed up. He got the dubious privilege of a one-on-one meeting with the UEO SG Andrea Dre that lasted almost four hours before he decided that he wanted to take a chance, even if it meant gambling his career and his name. The project was just so damned crazy ambitious that it would rewrite the history of naval architecture and military management of active fleet assets for ages to come, but it was thought out and planned with a degree of excellence that Hudson hadn't seen to date elsewhere in 25 years of service. He took the job and never regretted it, even when Andrea made herself at home in his office enough to have installed her own desk and chair with an electric tea kettle and piled up tins of european biscuits on the service bar besides his coffee maker and doughnut box.

All diplomats and politos aside, the rebuilding of the SeaQuest had been a monumental pain in every important part of his anatomy for the two years it had lasted. Even dealing with the fallout of their ex-captain Marilyn Stark going nuclear on the Macronesians' fleet just before the boat was brought in hadn't been that hard or onerous to live through. Oliver would do it again in a cold New York minute if he were given the chance at a project like it. SeaQuest was both gargantuan in dimensions and a technological enormity that could twist the minds of lesser men. The drydock crew certainly had its share of explosive rants, burnouts and threats of bodily harm while throwing blueprints and scheduling books around along the totaled 36 months they had worked on this.

Oliver turned back towards the staggered rows of benches that were slowly filling out with every sailor, para-military, civilian employee and external company representative that would be working and living aboard the rebuilt ship for the coming 14 months tour of duty. The ship's original complement on her last deployment had been 201, she would now reach close to 350 and have far more and far better equipment than originally included in any plans the world had heard of before. Andrea Dre had splurged on proven traditional know-how, new naval techniques and cutting edge higher sciences that were fresh off the university drawing boards like no known government had ever done and added things for the crew and passengers' ease of life to boot. When the new ship took to the waves and the media were given the grand tour in about two weeks time, it would remake the popular opinion of what the UEO stands for and almost guarantee Dre's re-nomination as SG for the UEO Council. Nobody would call her 'Trump's paid patsy' anymore, that was sure.

{ SQ } - { The good stuff } - { SQ }

At 10:15am every person meant to be present in the meeting was seated and logged in the system to unlock the monitors, keyboard and earphones linked to the Wolenbahn Conclave 3 beta Universal Translation & Ciphering Network (UTCN) that would allow anybody to follow the seminar, regardless if they spoke English or not, and it would even automatically create and pass the subtitles in the screen showing Hudson. At the synthesized bell tone, commander Hudson walked to the central podium and took the wireless earbud to place it in his left ear as the right ear already had the wired earphone for the brand new Public Access, Address & Location System (PAL) designed by DARPA and Google Corporate Services that was being phased into operation across all the active military assets of the UEO Fleet presently.

"Ladies, Gentlemen... And politicians too, since we have an unfair few attending by comms... Welcome to the relaunch of the United Earths and Oceans Organization's biggest, baddest, and also now, it's finest ship in active service to date. On the top row of the main monitor, for your viewing pleasure, people, is the old version of the SeaQuest DSV 6000 that was valid until 2018, while the lower row has the new hull as she sits in her berth while getting supplied and readied to sail for her new tour."

Hudson smirked at some of the faces he saw; the expressions ran the gamut from impressed to interrogative to flatly worried. Damn, this was fun!

"As you can clearly see, the ship's morphology is visibly different in a big way and the internal workes that were changed will impress you even more. Let's take it from the top then. The old version had 5 decks labeled 'A' through 'E' with the heaviest machineries located on deck 'C', meaning the parking silos, the main engines, main propulsion units, two of the dive planes and the one and only torpedo bay the ship had to its name. The deck nomenclature and overall usages have remained the same and 75% of the compartment names and addresses have also remained as the original blueprints indicate. Given the immense quantity of structurally installed systems, especially the life support, super computer core, parking silos, maglev tunnel and the Aqua-Tubes, we were pretty limited in how we could remove bulkheads so that the ship's structural and hull integrity were impacted as little as possible. However, as you all know, 'with great dreams come great upheavals' and so we dared like never before."

At these words, he changed the images on the monitors to show the insides of the CED level and animated a small film of how the landing platform opens and closes with the lift in movement. Oliver took a second to gaze around the room, seeing nothing but attention and interest on the features of the participants. This attitude was encouraging, especially from the boat's original people that had been kept on during the drydock work over the two years the retrofit lasted.

"Now people, you can see that the ship's profile has changed drastically on top, under and around the middle perimeter. The five original decks remain 'A' to 'E' while the new added deck above is the 'cargo elevator deck' (CED) and the lowest addition is the 'deep submergence workes & services rigging' (DSSR) and as you can see, they don't add a complete full deck, just partial extensions in specific areas of the boat. The CED was one of those crazy ideas Andrea Dre came up with; take all 12 nuclear ICBM's out of the ship completely and replace the vertical launch pipes with a massive cargo elevator capable of moving a fully loaded Chinook helicopter or one our recently built UEO jet-copters, or even an MR-class sub-shuttle since the entire cargo shaft is as fully submersible and watertight as the original parking silos and the DSSR modules."

"The precise use of this change is that the SeaQuest is now the first submarine to ever carry a fully equipped, full-sized aircraft without having to dismantle it then store it in separate compartments to fit the ship's internal limitations like the Japanese did in WW-II. This will make cargo transfers feasible by ISO boxes up to 53' in length while using aircraft, dock cranes or ship mounted cranes. As you can see, the elevator that moves up the shaft to become part of the landing pad when the roof opens doesn't go down all the way to deck 'E', it stops at deck 'C' thus allowing 2 full levels of cargo storage under it and one of the DSSR modules under that. Please note on the left-hand side of the main vehicle lift platform the presence of a brand new cargo box elevator that covers all seven decks of the ship's new frame, thus allowing to move cargo boxes with the brand new retractable cargo cranes in the CED and DSSR."

Hudson was pleased at the highly interested and approving nods made by the attendees. Some were even making handwritten notes on paper pads or touchscreen tablets for later study. It bode well for the reception of the other innovative features they built in.

"As you can see, we thought about making the interconnections between submarine and surface fleets easier to manage, and the loading of supplies & personnel much more adapted to the actual needs. We will no longer be manhandling crates and barrels into the ship, we will be using dollies, forklifts and cargo boxes to bring in palletized cargo like every other boat under the flag. That goes double for med-evac and transfers; we won't have to dangle a man off a rope under a helicopter to bring you a new doctor during a storm or wait 2 months until a glorified soup can of a DSV capsule is available in the zone to switch 6 crewmen and their duffel bags."

Oliver smiled widely at the next batch of novelties since he approved of these a great deal.

"Another addition on the topmost level are the two new gunnery turrets with 8 pulse rifles grouped in 2 quads that serve as CWIS (close interception weapons system) while the new 6" pulse cannon acts as main gun. A pair of retractable launchers on both sides of the turret each contain 12 medium range hydro-jet propelled micro-torpedoes with EMP/ionic wave warheads. You will also note the presence of small protuberances all along the now flatter top segments of the ship's hull; these are the LED tips of retractable post & rail fences that come up to help keep people from falling off the boat when you have EVA (extra vehicular activity) needed to rescue people or repair stuff manually in a hurry. In peaceful climate, it allows the ship to surface and let the inhabitants walk around the flattened top walkways to get some air and sunshine thus staving off cabin fever. This also means that you can welcome somebody aboard without raising the entire ship, using the CED or the sub-parking silos and some sort of sub-surface boat. You will note here, at all airlocks into the ship, we have installed into the doorframe a set of lights, cameras, sensors and comms relays including laser & infra red lenses. Hidden amongst these many lights are several emitters linked to pulse pistol mechanisms thus creating a local short range CIWS to defend each ingress port. Similar arrays with rifle or cannon emitters as needed have been set into all airlocks, access ports and venting grates to protect the ship from invasion."

Oliver was smirking even wider at the sights of so many experienced sailors practically drooling in envy and pride at the ship they would soon inhabit. Most had expected to be simple cogs in a dull boring machine; after all, the usual submarine has no visual imaging capacities, no windows and certainly not that many weapons to use. All the many systems to date meant more activity, more using their brains and skills, a lot less sitting around uselessly until they reached port and needed cargo boxes manhandled. No, the SeaQuest would not treat her crew the same as others, but she would not have the same types of crewmen, officers and technicians either. She would have much better than the usual.

"If I could attract your attention to the ship's bow and saucer section?" said Hudson while switching blueprints and zooming in on the desired section. "Here are side-by-side the exterior and interior of the ship's main bridge. You will note a few differences; the saucer is notably wider and longer because we actually sawed it off the ship and built a brand new one to accommodate the new equipments and facilities we wanted put in. As you can see, she still has 2 clamshell doors but they have been reinforced and they now have an emergency self-welding sealing mechanism to fight off any kind of leak, contamination or invasion to keep the bridge completely secure. Because of this, we had to install a pair of small wet-bath type (water toilet & sink, sonic/ionic shower) sanitation stalls at the back on the raised portion that goes over the Aqua-Tube. We put in place a service area between the toilets that holds two large fridges, restaurant grade drinks maker, 2 microwave ovens, 2 toaster ovens and a large grill with 4 gas hobs in it, in case electricity goes out. The cupboards under and above hold the dry foodstuffs, tablewares and cleaning supplies. Right in front of that we have installed 3 extra consoles to set in place the much needed networkers that will monitor all comms & cybernetic traffic in, out or around the ship as well as be the electronic warfare and wiretapping force. The old comms console next to the sensor monitoring station is converted into another sensor operations chair. The two will now be split between the ship-mounted sensors which have been greatly improved, and the WSKRS or HyperReality Probe data feeds, as well as collating all sensor feeds from any dependent craft that are launched and remotely operated by SeaQuest, with or without living crew aboard."

Commander Hudson could only feel satisfaction as the sounds of excited murmurs rose in the amphitheater, many small clusters of the old crew getting into vigorous discussions about the novelties they saw and why the changes were made. To date, it seemed an overwhelming support for the complete product. Oliver waited five minutes as he drank some water from his chilled carafe then cleared his throat to continue. There was so much more to share.

"Now, most of you know just how blind the average submarine really is; your perception of external reality is reduced t inch screen with green lines and shapes on black background generated by the computers that compile the radar, sonar and radiological data into a drab 2D image with precious few details and no depth. During her first decade and a half of service, the SeaQuest was the only ship to employ the brand new technology of drones: the WSKRS or 'Wireless Sea Knowledge Retrieval Satellites' that have helped so much, especially during DSV rescues and pollution analysis. The WSKRS systems have been maintained and improved greatly, mostly by having a living operator dedicated solely to their control. But, the ship itself proved incredibly vulnerable in case it lost those little metal balls; it would become almost blind and deaf. So, I proposed to Andrea Dre and she accepted most eagerly, that we add several structurally integrated clusters of cameras, sensors and comms relays at strategic points of the hull so that the ship could keep on seeing and hearing if all the drones, probes and signal buoys are destroyed or out of service somehow. This means that there are over 100 of these clusters all over the ship, with 21 spread in 3 rows of 7 just on the newly built saucer section. That increase in sensors, the weapons turrets on top and underneath and the extra internal space all meant that the weight tolerances were off, and the hydrodymanic profile was wrong too, so that's why it got ripped off and built bigger and much better. The turret now installed under the saucer is exactly the same as the two on the CED level."

After a short pause to let comments pass around, Hudson continued his expose on the marvels of the new boat they would get to play with soon.

"At the stern, you will find that four small turrets have been positioned symmetrically in the spaces between the joints of the dive planes. These are CIWS turrets carrying a quad of pulse rifles and a central phonic/ionic disruptor cannon, thus making the SeaQuest the very first ship to mount such evolved high energy armaments as part of her basic combat lines. You will then note that the flat ends of the dive planes, the ship's tentacles as they have been called in the past, are no longer flat but now have a weird raised hexagram shaped form. This is to house a set of long-range sensors, cameras and comms arrays to detect pursuit and incoming missiles from as far as possible while also providing structure to place weapons in the formerly defenseless arms. These balls shaped like an eye that sit in the middle of the hexagram's flat top are actually plasma lasers similar to the ship's main assault beamers that are located in the front of the bow and in the wing tips of the saucer section. That means that the SeaQuest now has genuine principal armaments to defend its rear against a capital ship, whereas before that, you had to shoot a torpedo from the front and have it do a U-turn to go back at the enemy behind you, thus losing precious seconds that let the enemy boat shoot you much faster and accurately. The other problem was also that the plasma lasers in the saucer's winglets were barely 1/3 of the strength the main bow array and had a limited range, plus you had to re-align the whole ship to line up a rear shot, again giving plenty of spare seconds to your enemy to shoot or dodge the coming beams. This will no longer be the case as all plasma beamers have been rebuilt and standardized at the same strength, range and targeting capacity, with respect to their possible firing arcs and safety exclusion zones. Aside from that, you can see these clusters of small red dots placed along the four sides of each rudder arm; they are fixed-angle pulse rifle grade CIWS groups to keep away any object or biological that would have managed to move faster than the four main plasma weapons can track & shoot."

The mood in the conference hall was almost festive at the show of weaponry and just how many thick layers of interlaced defenses kept the ship safe now. It was a veritable motorized fortress compared to the old seaframe they had used for years. The crew leftover from that period were clearly daydreaming about how much safer and easier their jobs would be once they finished the shakedown cruise and had all the screws and nuts in proper order.

"Now, we will look inside the boat's full length on decks 'A' and 'B' because there is a whole lot of change in there. The old design had the boat's iconic 'Maglev' horizontal mover take up almost two decks of height and created a massive tunnel for about ¾ of the ship's total length. This created massive loss of structural strength and deep submergence durability as the entire right-hand upper quadrant of the seaframe was artificially weakened by the design choice. After a long, fruitful brainstorming session with the planning committee, Andrea Dre ordered that we rip out the maglev and replace it entirely with something far less 'energyvore' and much more size-conscious. So the floor and technical inter-deck structures were closed off to create a complete deck 'A' and the bottom part of the tunnel was regularized to maximize the new space and accessibility through deck 'B'. The new lateral mover is a dedicated, custom built, wheeled tramway with small 3 inch wheels assembled in four 'roller groups' with a pair at the front and rear of the moving cabin. The new machine's engines are a pair of lawn tractor sized power plants fed directly from ceiling mounted catenary induction rails, thus ensuring that the cabin will move at comfortable & safe speeds from now on while staying as silent as the original. The shaft floor is now uniformly smooth and unencumbered the entire length since the tram guide rails are instead mounted to the walls and ceiling therefore allowing you to park the cabin and use the shaft for moving furniture or cargo boxes horizontally along the ship's length if the usual corridors are damaged or jammed."

"The space freed up on deck 'B' has been designated as 'revenue bearing rooms' for the self-financing scheme. All the rooms on the ship's right-hand of deck 'B' have been completely redesigned to present one long corridor with only the suites' main entry doors visible; once inside you see an inner partition bulkhead with two doors. That is because each of these rooms will become a 'luxury corporate suite' with its own wet bath and 2 enclosed 2-bunk sleeping compartments. The main area will serve as all-purpose living, office & workshop space available for rent by selected corporate partners. Let's just say that with a base price tag of 250,000$ per month just for the room, then an extra 55,000$ monthly per person for insurances and common shipboard services, before adding the utilities bills like Internex bandwidth usage... Well... These are truly a damned fine luxury on any ship afloat and will make a nice revenue stream for the future."

That news got the attention of many sailors and civilian employees as that meant that there would be a lot less competition for the regular senior officer & crew cabins when placing the representatives of the companies that rent labs and machines during the year. It also meant that the ship's population would be more diverse and get a rather good boost in science and tech given the prices mentioned as only the top tier companies would have enough sub-sea activities to justify renting such a suite. On a side note, the elevation of the average socioeconomic profile for residency aboard ship would resplend on all the crewmen regardless of rank, thus making them all look a lot better in the eyes of the entire fleet and the world at large. "I served on SeaQuest" will mean even more now, passed 2020, than it did before and would open doors to new jobs or higher postings than they could have hoped for before the retrofit and changes in crew choice had occurred.

With a wide, satisfied smile on his face, Hudson continued onwards with more explanations.

"While there are some movements around the science labs and sea-deck, it's mostly space management tricks to accommodate a few of our corporate partners that wanted to have their work spaces side-by-side so they could install bigger devices or have a private conference room setup directly inside their workshop or laboratory. While there are 'common' conference rooms on decks 'B', 'C' and 'D', those will now have to be officially reserved and paid by the hour for company use, similarly to how certain biochemistry or material sciences labs will be 'shared' on a paid hourly basis by those corporate delegations that don't need a permanent full setup of their own."

"That brings us to the other huge batch of structural and technical additions; the DSSR modules under the ship's belly. These are 3 new additions split under the main frontal section, the round one under the central sphere and the one under the main rear section. These new constructions contain a set of decompression/quarantine rooms, living areas and even a full services infirmary, all on a set of infrastructures and life support completely separate from the main ship to guarantee full segregation in the case of epidemics. The goal of these three modules is to make it possible to house a permanent crew of 24 professional divers experienced in underwater oil rigs, pipelines and cabling works without having to constantly get them in and out of decompression, or forcing them to live in cans for days at a time until they can breathe normal air again. This installation was dreamed up by Secretary Dre during a brainstorm with the UEO Council about ways in which we could render the ship self-financing. One of the corporate backers in England was complaining that there is a complete absence of private sub-sea rescue organizations despite the enormous increase in independent submarine colonies and manned extraction rigs. Andrea Dre caught the ball in flight and ran with it until this magnificent piece of convergence between military needs, civilian needs and corporate needs was born."

Commander Hudson switched the images on the monitors to highlight the DSSR level and its separate segments.

"These crewmen will now each have a permanent private room so they can retire alone to fight off stress and cabin fever when the pressure of living and working so tightly with the others gets too much. Each room is built with four solid pivoting bunks in case we need to bring in refugees from failed DSV ventures or damaged military subs, so the total capacity in the non-medical bunks is 24 rooms x 4 beds, all in the rear block. The front block is the medical & quarantine zone which has the exact same quantity and setup of 24 x 4 bunks. Each living & quarantine block has communal washrooms, laundry and recycling facilities set up the same as they are in the main ship. Aside from the sleeping arrangements, each block has a galley kitchen capable of producing 48 meals at once and a 48 seat dining hall, two different living rooms, two conference rooms, offices for the permanent doctors, officers and temporary civilian project foremen, and a small gym to keep up with the much more stringent daily exercise regimen that is mandatory for this cadre of workers. The central round section is where all the heavy machinery and DS-EVA suits are kept. The middle of the section is a circular pipe with a round iris hatch in the middle that allows to drop down winch chains, network or power cables, oxygen or water pipes, or set up the ship's derrick drill-rig to do sea floor prospection through sampling cores. This of course is clearly meant as a way to bill companies; we locate interesting places in the abyssal depths and they pay us for the maps, analysis and occasionally for the job of doing all the geophysics and coring surveys instead of hiring another private outfit that could take months to a year before they have a slot in their schedule to come in the area. Not to mention we will be working at about three times the depths that civilian DS-EVA workers are normally qualified and equipped to work."

Getting polite responses to this part of the presentation was pretty much what he expected so he passed over to the final set quickly, forcing people to shut up and listen.

"Now, in terms of structural changes to the boat's seaframe, we come to the last items and they are bloody major. Some of you may have noticed that the central sphere seems to be a bit bigger and also a bit more separated from the two other components of the seaframe. It's real. We chopped the ship in five humongous parts right from the start, not just the bow saucer or the dive planes. The reason is for this; we discovered during her last year at sea that there was metal fatigue and warping in the longitudinal beams that traversed the joining zones between the bathysphere and the other sections. Basically, at each deep dive, the ship's entire frame was compressed then distended upon raising upwards thus causing a warping effect on the molecular alignment in the long beams and joints. The ship was essentially suffering from the same effect as astronauts get in their spine when they go to space for a few months and come back into Earth gravity. This needed to be fixed and, as you can guess, with a job of replacing that much structurally welded and bolted steel beams and girders, it became logical, economically desirable even, to think about the greater, more complex plan we used."

"However, we didn't just make the bathysphere more large and round, we rebuilt it's entire structural frame and re-balanced all the vertical posts along the longitudinal beams so as to handle the dramatically increased weight of heavy machineries, extra moonpool and crane winches that were part of the DSSR additions. This led to thickening and lengthening the jointing beams and girders between segments as well as thickening the receiver sockets of the beams in the forward and rear sections of the ship. All corridors, inter-deck crawlspaces, utilities ducts and horizontal tramway tunnel have all been severely re-engineered to the new weight and gravity center profiles along with re-armored bulkheads and localized extra thickness of the outer hull at critical inter-sectional joints."

"Now, since we were rebuilding so much and making the boat into a four-piece set, we decided to create new tech to palliate a critical problem in the SeaQuest's mission. We added heavily armored, solid-jointed hard-docking corridor arms on both sides of the boat. One of the most frustrating problems encountered in the ship's first 15 years afloat was the case of an incompetently designed private mining rig built with only the most minimal machinery and living facilities; which usually means only a single space parking and maybe 1 airlock with a docking collar. Maybe. Often enough, not even that much since the docking collar or airlock was used to park the crew's transport shuttle which, incidentally, was also the only escape pod of the colony. This was even worse when you reach depths passed 5,000 feet where even the MR-class shuttles can't go; only traditional heavy tonnage subs or the new Zundweil-class sub-ferry can go between 5,000 and 15,000 feet. Only SeaQuest and dedicated DSV mining platforms can go deeper. So, a set of retractable, armored, hard-jointed connector corridors were designed and incorporated to the ship's new systems to finally be able to effectuate those crushing-depths rescues or transfers of personnel and materials that are becoming so fundamental to our economic reality. You will see here on deck 'A' the joints for the 'regular' transfer corridors, with one fore and another aft of the bathysphere, on both left and right of the boat. A similar setup was done on the DSSR level to help create the armored airlocks & joints between the living, working and quarantine sectors while also allowing us to place 4 rescue corridors that mean the rescued people get taken right to the quarantine beds the moment they are aboard. This also saves us from the dilemma of saving someone from a sinking or burning boat only for them to get 'The Bends' upon entering the SeaQuest as happened several times in the past. The original decontamination & quarantine chamber on the sea-deck just wasn't enough to handle the workload and since it was never linked directly to the parking silos or docking collars around the ship's hull, the problem with rescuees getting decompression sickness would never have stopped happening. This new setup settles this."

Now that got a rave review, with even a few crewmen from the original complement giving out applause upon seeing the completed construction and the animation film of how the 8 armored corridor arms deployed and connected to the docking collar of a ship of colony. They were even big enough to allow movement of medical gurneys or palletized cargo with dollies or a small electric forklift. That was one hell of an innovation to put into a boat! And the central crane winches could even lower down a small rescue cabin, an armored diving bell seating six people able to go down to 25,000 feet and use the two docking collars built in its flank or bottom to hard-link, just like the SeaQuest herself! No more leaving people behind to die alone in the dark depths, not on their watch!

{ SQ } - { We are ready now } - { SQ }

Commander Jonathan Ford stood up and walked up to the front podium which commander Hudson handed over quite willingly. The older man had his fill of public speaking for the rest of the year; this type of 'Project Reveal' was fun but damned tiring! And he still had the bloody TV interviews to do in the coming weeks and Andrea Dre would want to speak to him about it all, all through January until she calmed down and found herself another pet project to obsess over.

"Okay people! It's 11:45am, lunch is coming up, but so is our new captain! So go and get the boat as ready as you can, the old man is getting here at around 15:00pm and we want to be able to cast off with the evening tide! All hands, break ranks! Dismissed!"

Jonathan wasn't stupid; after the presentation they had and lunch around the corner, nothing he could say now would hold anybody's interest for more than a minute. Better send them on their ways and let the new CO make his own inspirational speeches when he got here.

Heal thyself, doctor

(Imperial March – Star Wars)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 18:00pm

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 11:00am

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 08:00am

Daleminton Hotel, room #204

Park Royal, West Vancouver, BC, Canada

Lucas was in a very so-and-so mood as he finished drying off from his bath this morning. Firstly, he'd gone to bed at around 03:00am as he had planned, only to wake up at around 06:40am to bad cramps in both legs at the very same time he urgently needed to use the toilet. That particular wake-up had not been pleasant in the least little bit. After getting back to his bed from the bathroom, he had taken a bottle of grape juice from the mini fridge then swallowed four different pills; clinical muscle relaxers, acetaminophen, ibuprofen and a Gravol to fight off acid reflux and nausea as well as help him back to sleep. He even had to apply a layer of hydrocortisone gel with a roll-on bottle so as to break the muscle spasm cycles and have a chance at sleeping again.

No such luck today.

As it tended to happen, the gel was effective for less than a quarter hour then the cramps were coming back, despite the bevvy of medications he had taken, leaving him with only one option. He painfully got out of bed and hobbled around with his cane, leaning on furniture and walls as he slowly moved about the suite to accomplish his necessities. He stopped by the bathroom to start the bath running then went to the kitchen to fetch a cold breakfast from the fridge in the form of muffins and brew his first coffee of the day, an overly sugared mochaccino that the wall inset machine was quite happy to provide in the extra large format of his thermal mug. Equipped with solid food and two large gulps of hot coffee sloshing in his gut, the boy made his slow trudge back to the bathroom and the filling tub. After setting his foods on the sliding wooden tray mounted to the tub, he looked over to the bed of embers in the fireplace. A few painful steps had him close enough to open the glass door to poke the reddish coals to life before adding some smaller logs from the stack. The hearth now fully a-burn with a cheery blaze, he closed the lights, satisfied that the more restive lighting from the stove would help him see well enough while sparing his eyes from further cold electric whiteness until later in the day.

Taking off his ordinary boxers and T-shirt that had been his sleepwear, he sat on the tub's rim to test the water's warmth before closing the taps and sliding in slowly, extra careful to not slip and fall in as he sat himself and leaned backwards against the backrest portion of the tub. The result was immediate; the warm water helped calm down the spastic muscles greatly and alleviated the pain from his thighs to his toes in a soothing manner that no medication could ever match. Closing his eyes and letting himself slide down until the water reached his chin, the teenager mumbled contentedly in delight as he began to feel more human and less like a short-circuiting server main board. After almost a quarter hour spent in blessed silence and low light, he opened his eyes as squinted slits, just enough to spot his 'Precious' standing so lonely on the tray. Coffee called his name and he answered, taking a long pull of the sugary drink, grabbing a muffin at the same time. With a mouthful of sustenance, he decided to put himself some background noise but no visual as he wanted to avoid getting a lack-of-sleep migraine.

"Alexa" he called out, "Open the radio to the local CBC News Channel, volume at 15 decibels."

The domotics devices collaborated to fill the bathing alcove with the low voices of the news presenters as they discussed the morning traffic and weather. Everything was ordinary until 07:30am arrived. The program reran its top news storeys, which of course included the now confirmed social unrest and riotous climate in their southern neighbor. The USA were burning, slowly but surely, one state at a time, from ocean to ocean to ocean and nobody seemed able to stop it anymore. The litany of lone gunmen, militia attacks and church-led spontaneous 'inquisition' of supposed 'heretics' or suspected 'unpatriotic' traitors to Righteous Christian America just kept getting longer as the hours passed.

Completely disgusted with the situation, the teen told the domotics to switch over to play the relaxation series he had downloaded to the suite's server the evening he had arrived. Was it really three days ago already? Damn, time passed fast these days... When the clock chimed 07:45am he drained the tub and set out for his return trip to the bedroom, an exciting and perilous trip in his weakened condition.

Crud but he hated his legs!

Getting dressed in his clean brown ensemble that had been laundered by the hotel's laundry service yesterday, he swiftly put on every layer of clothing, strapping, sheaths, recorders and tools in order until he had his casual cut business jacket on and needed only his winter trenchcoat to be good for the road. Picking up the wired phone from the nightstand, he called up the front desk to make certain the shift manager was in the admin office to meet him for the 08:30am appointment.

{ SQ } - { This is not how business goes } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 11:20am)

(Western America; 08:20am)

With his coat on and the gloves, scarf and hat stuffed in the large side pockets, he marched out the door, locked it tightly, and aimed himself at the elevator. A short minute later, he was hobbling stiffly to the front desk to ask about his appointed meeting and was promptly ushered into the offices behind the large counter after taking his messages and the express courier envelope from the U-Haul company that contained the keys for his two rented garages.

Sitting himself to lessen the strain on his legs, the teenager just couldn't shake the feeling that this meeting was going wrong before either of them had even spoken. The young white man with black hair, brown eyes and lips tightly pursed in sneering contempt that was supposedly the morning manager had looked upon him nastily the moment he set foot in the small enclosed space. This had increased as Lucas had simply sat himself in the visitors' chair without being invited, but since this was a shared office, not a private home, and he had an actually booked appointment, then getting permission to sit was not required. Plus, given the money he was dropping on the damned hotel by renting three suites for a month, you'd think the man would be more welcoming with his high level guest instead of ignoring the younger man by falsely concentrating on his computer and telephone to make himself look busy-busy-busy, thus pushing back the beginning of the conference right at his visitor's face.

Now Lucas wasn't born yesterday; he had lived through quite a few of these imbeciles and the little power plays they did to make themselves feel big and superior to him, trying desperately to find anything to justify to their minds that as adults, their age was more important than his competence, accomplishments and multiple companies. The menial low-level admin wasn't even a full time manager as was clearly spelled out on his name tag that read 'Daniel Lambert, daytime foreman' and that right there put Lucas in a bad mood. He had scheduled a meeting with a senior executive to complete his business, not the local cock-shaker who thought he was 'somebody' because he was related to one of the higher ups. The adolescent had very easily seen the bronze name plaque on the door before coming in that listed the five top managers and he didn't need his diplomas in medical sciences to know who 'Leland Lambert, afternoon manager' was in relation this low-born fool.

When it became painfully obvious to the 30 year old 'foreman' that Lucas was not now, and would never be, impressed by him or his important 'busy' business demeanor, he dropped the phone in its cradle to sit up straight and imperious in the thickly padded chair, trying to intimidate the boy by an amateurish display of flexing his biceps and deltoids to make his white button-down dress shirt tighten on his upper body to show off how athletic and manly he was. Making the little teenaged shitheads wet themselves in fear at how pumped he was had always been great pleasure to him since he turned 17 and went into amateur boxing. There was nothing like crushing boys under his fists to feel just how much more of a man than them he was and brighten his day. His small gang of back-alley arm-twisters he'd been running with since high school had similar views and backed him up if his chosen victim happened to have a few friends to defend him. With the menial little drug deals and low-amount illegal gambling they ran out of vacant rooms in the hotel, he really saw himself as one of the 'big bosses' in this area of Vancouver. In the 10 years he had worked here, nobody had ever challenged him for fear of what he could do to them or have daddy do in his name. Not that his father would ever know all that he did; the old guy had a weak heart and even weaker will. No backbone in that one, so he just wouldn't understand how his son had become a real 'mano' on his own name.

(Eastern America; 11:38am)

(Western America; 08:38am)

Lucas was not impressed in the least. He had outgrown lesser idiots of this inferior caliber when he was four years old, when he tried to kill that fucking Brit bastard that hurt his hands. This cockamamie imbecile had no idea of what cruel monster he was trying to dick around with.

The dull tool opened his mouth to spew bullshit at Lucas, thinking the boy would be an easy mark to smack-talk around and intimidate, just like all his other victims. "Ya know kid, t's not nice, or even very bright, to pass yourself off as yo' daddy when dealing with a company as big and powerful as the Daleminton Hotel? Ya'll come in here asking for meetings with high managers when you're a 'nobody' then ya drop yourself in my chair like ya're 'somebody' that deserves to sit his lazy punk ass when his betters are in the room? Who the fuck d'ya think y'are?" He barked at the kid while putting in a touch of pseudo-street accent to make himself look tougher and meaner, like a biker who meant bad business.

Completely surprising the idiotic adult, the teen never answered him anything as he got up and out the door as quickly as his aching legs allowed, walking back to the reception desk to lay a complaint against the moron who thought he could hijack his meeting. He had already wasted ten minutes of useless wait, he wouldn't put off his schedule for worse since he had a reserved car coming to pick him up for 09:00am. The hotel administration could clear up its staffing issues on their own time, without making him waste his as they did the housecleaning. Said muscle-bound moron was scrambling from behind the desk to see what the juvenile he-whore would try to pull inside HIS hotel. And yes, the mongrel had that many dreams of delusion, even after being employed by Daleminton for a decade.

(Eastern America; 11:44am)

(Western America; 08:44am)

"Excuse me, miss?" Lucas asked politely, wearing the most non-aggressively urbane smile that he could produce while discretely removing the transparent vinyl cover from his hatchet-cane pommel, just in case. He could see the hormone powered lummox rushing to catch up to him from where he was, and bitter painful experience with muscle-bound oxen bull-rushing towards him meant this situation had a 95% chance of ending up in critical injuries for him. Better be prepared than taken unawares and hospitalized for additional broken limbs that he didn't have to spare.

Turning from the end of her phone call, the young receptionist smiled at what she knew to be the hotel's biggest client in her generation and she had no intent to lose her job. Especially not because the afternoon manager's son had decided to play at 'top-alpha dog-boss woof-woof' in the office with a client younger than himself yet again. If somehow this could blow-back in the criminalized thuggish moron's face, it would make the jobs of everybody in the hotel a whole lot simpler and easier to live.

(Eastern America; 11:45am)

(Western America; 08:45am)

"Yes sir, what can the Daleminton staff do for your comfort and pleasure today?" she asked with a genuine smile. At the end of her shift last evening, she had spoken with night manager Ohyun about how professional and well mannered this young man was, and he would be a good change from dealing with her boss's fucktard son who acted like a wannabee mafia 'gino' all day long. As if he had the balls to even lift a finger to make an effort at anything, let alone causing harm to anybody, the lazy cowardly bum!

"Yes, miss. I would like to know why it is that yesterday evening I scheduled a meeting with a 'senior manager' for 08:30am this morning, BUT this imbecilic retard is what greeted me on arrival? Is it the policy of the Daleminton complex to treat its high rollers like this? I want a real, active, senior executive to meet me to complete my extended reservations for two additional suites. Now. Please. Call the person in real charge of things. I don't want to threaten, but my contract with the hotel does have 'good business demeanor' and 'morally correct treatment' clauses just as all my other suppliers and clients are obliged to sign when doing affairs with my companies. Please remind whomever you call of this fact." The angry adolescent spoke in clear clipped words while trying to keep his temper under control. It wasn't the poor secretary's fault, and he would be damned if he acted like the lummox by blaming and insulting everyone in sight indiscriminately the way he seemed prone to do. Lucas had always prided himself on his good, polite, business comportment; this would not make him change that manner of acting with service personnel.

"Yes sir, I will call the General Manager, Misses Allegra Lucarno. She is in the building and will be with you shortly, since it was her that was supposed to take the meeting anyways." the receptionist answered with an even brighter smile. If they got lucky, this last complaint could be enough on its own to kick out the dumb loser for good. She hadn't even reached the telephone to call when the woman in question was seen to power-walk across the lobby towards them in a clear hurry to arrive from whatever problem she had been solving that kept her from being on time.

(Eastern America; 11:48am)

(Western America; 08:48am)

Lucas leaned heavily on his cane as he observed the older woman coming towards them at flanking speed; she was tall at close to 6 feet, with wrinkled white skinned that was slightly colored without being actually tanned or bronzed, silvery hair and clear lucid green eyes that belied her age in the late sixties. She wore a very conservative but festive forest green business suit with a glaringly 'christmassy' neck scarf in red and gold tones that made everybody's eyes water at the sight. And no, the little tree ornament drawings on the damned thing did not make it any better to behold! Bloody holiday! Why did people dress like that, anyways?

The GM and the usurping DF reached Lucas at the same time. The male froze solid at the sight of just how servile, bordering on obsequious, the elder woman was towards the young dipshit that he had been about to put back in his proper place - on his knees worshiping his manhood - like all the fucking little street-strutters were supposed to be. What in Burning Hell could be so damned important about him that the wretched boy-bimbo got so much attention for anything other than being told how to service his boss's needs? As the daytime foreman was trying to think through the situation to understand why his daddy's boss was so decided to lick the little cunt's wetness off of him, the woman was having a quiet and discrete panic attack. They could not afford to lose this guy! His expenditures in the complex for the coming 30 days could make their entire holiday season all by himself! If he left the hotel in a fit of rage, the entire management staff could kiss their employment goodbye as the owners of the hotel would never let a blunder of this size pass without public reaction. She just hoped that she had managed to intervene before the idiotic buffoon Lambert had opened his mouth to show just how moronic and undesirable he was.

(Eastern America; 11:50am)

(Western America; 08:50am)

"Doctor Wolenczak" the GM started with as much of a smile as she could in the circumstances, "What can our humble hotel do for you this fine morning? I do hope that the extra utilities in your suite are performing up to your standards? It was quite the rush to get everything set up on time for your arrival last Thursday. And I do apologize for not meeting you in person sooner, but the last Friday before Christmas is always a mess with a rush of new arrivals and the suppliers to boot... But being into customer services, you would have the same conditions at your companies, wouldn't you?"

Misses Lucarno was trying to establish some sort of parity or friendly similarity between corporate people with her angry, despondent client. It had seemed to be working for a second there, until the ill-aborted runt Lambert opened his mouth to spew poison all over the kid's reputation and actually flat-out threaten him with physical harm in front of several witnesses and the hotel's security cameras.

"What the Hells kinda bullshit is this kid trying to pull here? He ain't no doctor, boss! He's a cunt! Nut'tin but a stinking little teenaged alley-crawler that needs to be taught not to lie to adults! Move out of the way! I'll take him to the boilers downstairs and teach him a lesson 'bout lying to people in power like he's doing!" The angry man shouted out loudly enough to be heard across the entire lobby. He was also starting to get scared underneath his bluster; he'd heard there were some kids that went to college at age 11 or 12 and got diplomas before they were 18, so it was a long-shot chance that this kid was one of those prodigies, but he doubted it. He really looked like just any other blond cock-sucker he'd beaten into submissiveness all through his younger years. Nothing on him said 'superior intelligence' or 'genius at work' so he felt pretty confident the kid was using his daddy or mommy's name to make himself look big and interesting to look at. Well, he'd teach him a lesson about that too!

(Eastern America; 11:56am)

(Western America; 08:56am)

"Actually, sir, I would be careful about insulting him. He really is a medical doctor with three different doctorates to his name, even though he's only 15 years old at this time." spoke an ordinary looking man dressed in an equally ordinary brown 2-piece suit with a horrendous 'christmassy' neck tie and pocket square to match. "My apologies for interrupting you, misses, doctor. Here is my card; Wallace Herringfjord, investigative reporter for the CNN Vancouver regional newsroom. I was wondering if I could have an appointment with you to discuss the events unfolding back home in the States, as well as what you believe would need to happen for you to change your plans to immigrate to Canada permanently. You have some rather vast holdings with Wolenbahn Electronics' successes with the World Bank, not to mention Wise Apothecary & Chemists having again raised its sales and profit ratios in 2020. I'm certain a lot of people in many levels of US government would like to know how to keep you in the country, and this would be your chance to let them know directly, without some diplomat or church cleric getting in the way to re-write or silence your words. Please take the time to think about it and email me an answer at your convenience. Merry Holidays, madam, doctor."

The reporter nodded politely then left but went to sit back by the right-hand fireplace where his piping hot coffee and croissant were waiting for his return. He discretely adjusted the small decorative pin on his ugly tie that hid a button camera with the recorder held in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. The large high quality microphone was hidden in the pocket square and could actually pick up what was being said twenty feet away without effort. The experienced field reporter had an instinct that something was going to happen and he wanted to capture the images for his channel's evening news broadcast.

(Eastern America; 12:01pm)

(Western America; 09:01am)

General Manager Lucarno was beyond incensed; this miserable incompetent bastard had threatened to kidnap, detain and beat a child, which was bad under any circumstances, but he had the boundless audacity to try doing so inside the hotel complex to boot! He was finished, and so was his father if the gormless old cad tried to keep her from firing his defective criminal son.

"My dear doctor Wolenczak, if you could wait in the management office, I will clear up this matter and be at your entire service momentarily. It will not take even five minutes to solve, I assure you." she tried to calm things down, desperate for a way out of a public confrontation.

Before Lucas could even reply, the angry, volatile, low-class criminal that served as foreman showed clearly that he had no understanding whatsoever of the situation or how bad it could still get. Stupidly going back to his method by default, he flexed his arms and thrust out his chest, trying to look intimidating and brutal so that the teenager would back down and let himself be dominated as should be the way of things. He would have to think about those companies and money the reporter talked about; if the kid was a real doctor, maybe he could make some drugs that could be sold by his crew and make them a lot richer. If he had enough success with making the little dipshit produce drugs for him, he could then rent out his new chemist to the bigger guys in town and make money that way too.

"Don't bother with the kid, manager Lucarno! He's a kid! He's not important! Let me deal with him, I'll handle what he wants so you don't have to waste your time with childish shit anymore." he began to crack the fingers on both hands menacingly, joint by joint, trying to intimidate both his boss and the kid at the same time in an act of utter idiocy while completely ignoring the danger he was in. "Just go have tea with the owners in their office, why don't ya... I'll make the little twerp understand what happens to pig headed little cunts that think they can boss adults instead of obeying silently." he completed by smacking a closed fist in his open hand, attempting to look far more brutal and violent than he was actually capable of. The worse part of the incompetent's little show was that he didn't even seem to realize he was surrounded by many witnesses, several of them adult clients of the hotel upon which he would have no hold to keep them silent, or even out of the fight if things turned to an altercation.

(Eastern America; 12:08pm)

(Western America; 09:08am)

Lucas discretely set his cane against the reception desk so it stood ready then loosed a small knife from his right wrist bracer and an acid capsule from the left wrist bracer, his movements hidden by the long sleeves of his trench coat. The brute saw nothing of this since the man's attention was towards his angry boss, whom he was simultaneously pleading and bullying in a transparent attempt to get her out of his way, so he could attack the slim sickly teenager to his heart's content. Everything came to a terribly quick end, just mere moments after Lucas had loosened his weapons to react to the imminent threat.

(Eastern America; 12:09pm)

(Western America; 09:09am)

"You're fired!" screamed the general manager at the criminal male. "You have been a problem in this hotel's management staff for years and now it is enough! You will most certainly NOT be doing anything violent or uncivilized towards our young doctor here!" she continued shouting at the top of her lungs. "Allie! Call the police! If doctor Wolenczak wants to lay a complaint against this boor, we will be helping him!" she ordered the receptionist who moved to comply quickly.

(Eastern America; 12:10pm)

(Western America; 09:10am)

Seeing his entire career, life and criminal aspirations collapsing around him, and quite publicly too, the cowardly wannabe abandoned attempts to talk with his boss, deciding to get physical with the little cum stain that caused all this to happen, all the while conveniently forgetting it was his own stupidity that started the whole conflagration. Subtlety not being his best virtue, and since it was a well known reality in his limited world that teenagers answered faster to strength and pain, he simply bull-rushed towards the kid, shoving the elderly woman out of his way and to the hard cement floor as he ran at the unsteady boy, gearing up to lay a good firm beating on his pasty hide.

That bad decision would end his life.

(Eastern America; 12:11pm)

(Western America; 09:11am)

The brutal deluded male reached the boy fast enough to grab the clothes on his chest to yank him close and firmly hold him in place as he rammed his cocked right fist into the kid's jaw and neck, finally pounding some obedience and fear into him when his abdomen exploded in pain of his own. Both injured males staggered backwards, looking down to see Lucas pull back his right arm, holding a bloodied 3 inch long blade that the adolescent had just sank all the way to the hilt inside his attacker's guts on what was Lucas' left side without any remorse, before giving it a vicious twist & sideways motion towards his right to enlarge the wound as much as possible.

Lucas had disemboweled his attacker in one planned but very lucky strike.

(Eastern America; 12:12pm)

(Western America; 09:12am)

Trying desperately to hold his blood and viscera inside his opened abdominal cavity with both shaking hands, the brutal degenerate realized he was crying for the first time in almost 14 years. As he wavered on his weak legs, trying to comprehend just how it had all gone so wrong so fast, he fell to both knees, sobbing his last breaths uncontrollably as his white shirt and trousers turned rust red by absorbing so much blood while the rest fell to the floor, creating a matching stain on the beige carpet. Looking up to the boy he had wanted to beat and dominate for his own enjoyment, he no longer saw a human child; he only saw the monstrous beast hidden under the thin milky white skin. Only an unnatural creature could refuse to be afraid of a strong mighty adult man like himself. No normal human child would ever be unafraid of an adult's great strength and authority.

(Eastern America; 12:13pm)

(Western America; 09:13am)

As he died from catastrophic exsanguination, the 30 year old male 'made man' wannabe lost all contact with material reality even more than before, abandoning himself to his delusions of power, strength and the breaking of boys under his cruel authoritative fists. He didn't even close his eyes as he choked on bloodied bile that came out of his mouth to stain his chin, spasming once as he careened sideways to the right, falling to the blood stained carpet never to rise again.

Lucas for his part had fallen against the reception counter then slid down to the floor as soon as the criminal's fist had connected with his jaw and side of his neck, making him choke in spastic erratic breaths for several panicked seconds. It took him a minute after the man was lying dead on the floor to become steady enough to climb back to his feet and lean on the counter. About six feet to the left side of him, a generous client was helping the elderly manager get into one of the thickly padded benches that were placed for the convenience of visitors waiting their turn to be served by the receptionists when there was a large crowd. The woman looked badly shaken by events but not actually injured, unlike Lucas who still had troubles breathing properly through his swelling trachea.

(Eastern America; 12:14pm)

(Western America; 09:14am)

Taking a few short steps away from the crowd gathering around the crime scene, the adolescent deposited the bloody knife on the counter before he took the time to replace the acid capsule back in its bracer. He leaned on the reception desk with his right hand, the left hand holding his cane tightly so he had two points of stability to hold himself upright in the face of adversity. At this point, it just wouldn't do to look weak, or unable to defend himself, in the eyes of those trying to take advantage of the civil unrest to come at him for a surreptitious attack under the radars.

(Eastern America; 12:15pm)

(Western America; 09:15am)

A young man, white skinned with brown hair and blue eyes, dressed in a black 3-piece suit with gray trench coat and matching gray cap came close to Lucas, stopping about five feet away to ask in fearful tone: "I have your limousine ready in the front parking, doctor Wolenczak. Will you be needing it, now, or will you cancel the reservation?"

Everybody looked at the driver with large disbelieving eyes while Lucas just closed his, trying to think of what he could do to avoid the headache the police and lawyers would cause him today. Ah, well! He had his body camera recordings and the GM had fired the bozo mere seconds before he went postal on them, so he should be in the clear. Besides, finding a history of criminal acts and debauchery against a low-life like that should be easy enough to qualify as routine grunt work compared to what he normally dealt with. Taking his cellphone out of his flannel shirt pocket, he called his legal team's criminalist to advise him he was needed at the hotel soon; Mr. Aylmer would deal with the cops and their papers easily enough. Lucas was paying out enough for the service, he'd better get free of this mess by lunch or else he would have to ask truly uncomfortable questions about the law firm's efficiency.

{ SQ } - { Terrifying teenaged terror } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 12:25pm)

(Western America; 09:25am)

Lucas Andrew Wise Holtzenstein Wolenczak, doctor of medicine, pharmacology and psychiatry, was most certainly not in a good mood anymore, he could confirm this to you. R-F-N he would! Who the bloody Everburning Hells hires that kind of unstable, bullyish, low-browed, low-jawed, knuckle dragging attempt at sapience?

He wasn't talking about the guy he had disemboweled; that was done and passed.

No. The cause for his doing one of those famous 'angsty teenager mood swings' was standing three feet in front of him with a black uniform, a cap, handcuffs in his left hand and a pistol in the right hand pointed right at the boy's face.

The idiotic municipal cop had arrived five minutes ago, at the same time as the ambulance, and automatically assumed that since he was a kid, a foreigner and, most damningly, still alive, then – obviously – Lucas was the culprit who caused the whole episode. The menial little imbecile, some white twink not even thirty years old yet, seemed determined to show publicly that he had a gun and wasn't afraid to use it, regardless of witnesses or the truth. Even when manager Lucarno and the young woman from the reception desk tried to tell him what happened, the policeman just waved them aside, telling them aloud that "Hysteric women aren't credible witnesses anyways, so I won't waste my time on you. Calm down, the crown's attorney will contact you later, if there's an actual need." His sneer of misogynistic contempt wasn't even hidden as he told them to go take a hike.

Thankfully, Lucas had managed to call his both his law firm in Vancouver and the Wise Apothecary security division in Buffalo before the dumb-ass came in, threatening to shoot him if he tried anything with his cellphone or cane. The trigger happy 'capo' had even tried to tell the paramedics to not look at the clearly injured boy on account that "It's only what he deserved for killing that good man. He's no victim, stop wasting my time and go away! I have a perp to book downtown!"

To the cop's anger, and fear it seemed, the two paramedics did no such thing, especially when the hotel manager identified herself and, despite the threats from the cop, told the ambulance crew what had happened in the lobby before they arrived. When the cop tried again to scream and intimidate people into shutting up and letting him grab Lucas to bring him to the station, the hotel's own security people moved in to support their manager. That was when the little dipshit drew his gun and started waving it around like he didn't really know what he was doing.

Now, Lucas was 15 years old kid but an unusually very stable, pragmatic one. Under normal everyday circumstances. What did it say about his mindset, that he was more afraid of how his business reputation with the hotel would get impacted by this, than worried about the gun aimed at his nose?

Having already killed once this morning in semi-controlled context as the minion had absolutely no chance against the enemy he faced, Lucas was not displeased by the results nor was he worried by the superficial injuries he had incurred. Since he had bad cramps in his legs since he woke up at dawn, he had taken several pain relievers and muscle relaxers which meant that he was already operating under clinical medications, some of which had actually made him more tolerant to blunt force since they served to deflate trauma or cramps in affected muscles. In other words, he would bruise and be woozy for a while but no much more, and the ecchymosis would be limited to about 2/3 of what it should have become.

No, Lucas was not put off by either the death, the injuries or the witnesses. Those were just the cost of business in North America in this day and age. At least, his childhood, the parents he had and the events of his youth to date all took him to that conclusion, no matter what other data he might have read about sociology and law. Since this was probably the 11th human that he killed with his own hands but closer to number 88 in all the deaths he was responsible for, the teen barely gave the corpse any attention anymore. The carrion wasn't his problem, the forensics crew would load him up eventually then the hotel maintenance staff would clean the stains. The real problem was the armed dimwit goon that was spouting off nonsense at all comers, including the actual victims of the crime.

Giving a disdainful sniff, the boy squinted his blue eyes at the cop, a deeply buried instinct at the back of his mind was niggling him, sending discrete warnings to his fight-or-flight reflexes. His combat experience was telling him that he wasn't done fighting yet, but also that he was outmatched by the enemy he was facing. Closing his eyes for a few seconds as the paramedic insisted on kneeling in front of him to hold his skull to palpate his jaw, throat and neck, the teen's formidable mind tried to reboot and process the scene from a 'procedural' perspective rather than the 'warfare' mode it was in. Going back two years into his own experiences with a police intervention during the period of the attempted rape then days later at the hotel where his father attacked him, Lucas quickly found the missing or different items that were 'pinging' on his defensive instincts. Taking advantage of the fact the paramedic was blocking the line of direct sight and the cop was turned sideways at 20-odd degrees to scream at poor old madam Lucarno again, the boy discretely moved his fingers inside the long sleeves of his trench coat to loosen and grip a neuro-toxin capsule in the left hand and an acid capsule in the right.

As the paramedic stood up, it forced the self-styled 'cop' to back away a few feet and stop his shouting match with the hotel admin for precious seconds. As the lobby became mostly silent, Lucas shouted as loud as he could "Hey, FAKE cop! When are you going to call for back-up units or tell your boss at the station that he has a dead body to come for? Shouldn't there be another pair of cruisers here by now, if you followed the real procedures? Shouldn't there be another four cops here, by now? And come to think of it, isn't it official police procedures to have TWO officers per car at all times, so that if one goes down, the other calls it in for help? So, FAKER, What's the real deal, here? What do you really want with me? Who sent you? Where were you gonna take me?"

The two paramedics immediately exchanged worried glances as the last 15 minutes of the situation played back before their eyes and they realized that, yes, the cop was alone, and no, he hadn't called in any requests for back-up or to report the cadaver. The two burly adult males stood straighter and purposefully put themselves between the teenager and the now suspect policeman. Giving the young male a thorough once-over, they couldn't find any faults with his uniform, gear or ID badge. The only thing to suggest there was foul play was the complete absence of other cops, especially here in a high class hotel like this.

And his comms... The unit he wore was inert. Not activated at all. Ah, Shit!

The paramedic on the left discretely and softly clicked active the cellphone he had hidden behind his back as he moved to shield Lucas, connecting it to the 9-1-1 dispatcher who would receive this as an Ultra-Emergency from an EMT on he job who could not use regular comms or public channels to talk. It would also force the dispatcher to revise all previous calls for the hotel and also ask the police cars in the area if they had gotten any requests for intervention or back-up. If this guy was a real cop, then the talkie on his shoulder would get beeped and he would have to answer or else the central police controllers would send in a SWAT team under the presumption there was an officer down in need of saving.

With his phone vibrating silently in his hand to confirm the EMT's virtual lifeline was open with the 9-1-1 switchboard, the paramedic asked aloud "Yeah, hey, officer Durand... Aren't you going to call in your partner to support you against this supposedly dangerous kid? Aren't you going to call more cars and the forensics truck to pick up the body? Or better yet man! Why don't you start by activating your damned talkie on your uniform to tell the dispatcher what kindsa shits you been up to!"

Making a face of fear, the young cop backed off to keep the mass of people all in his sights as he began to realize he was in fact alone against almost forty people on the main floor of the lobby and another dozen on the mezzanine. The would-be cop's eyes became wide with raw fear when he looked up to the balcony banister to see that several young adults in their early twenties had cellphones in hand, all aimed at the scene to film it and at least two were busy zooming in on his face in particular. In a fit of uncontrolled, panic-fueled rage, the policeman raised his right hand at the balcony to aim his pistol at the crowd of vacationing students, shouting threats at them, along with orders to throw their phones down to the floor so they could be confiscated. He even threatened to have them arrested for interference in an investigation if they didn't obey as he waved his gun around randomly.

Lucas, well protected behind two beefy paramedics, shouted out loud "Oh yeah? You and what army's gonna arrest them, loser? After all, you still haven't called back-up or your station chief! Do you really think anybody in this hotel believes you anymore, fucktard?" he jeered with as much contempt and sarcasm as he could pour into his screams. At the same time, he dropped to the floor and leaned sideways to have his head and chest covered more by the ambulance crewman in front of him, thus making him disappear partially.

The effect was instantaneous; when he realized he could no longer see his victim clearly, the cop screamed in outrage and lifted the gun up to shoot a pair of warning shots into the ceiling, thus scaring the crowd into submission. Or so he thought. As he began to scream obscenities and threats to bring back his prisoner at the room at large, Lucas made his tactical move. Leaning backwards from a partially sitting position on the carpeted floor, the teen took the neuro-toxin in his right hand then reared the right arm back for an overhead throw. He flipped active the 5 second timer then lobbed the minuscule device over the crowd in a curved trajectory that was about 20 feet high inside the 30 foot tall cathedral-style vault of the lobby's timber framed, gabled roof. As the capsule was back down at 9 feet high, it detonated, clouding a zone 10 feet wide around it in fine colorless, odorless, poison mist that had visible effects barely 4 seconds after it touched skin or entered the mucous membranes.

The 'supposed' cop was now in the throes of a fully panicked, out of control, fit of rage and fear, which was exponentialized when some fucking little turdcake threw out a damned firecracker of some sorts over his head. He sidestepped quickly enough that the little metallic thing dropped to the floor instead of his head but hadn't seen who did it. Screaming even worse than before, he took another warning shot, this time right above the heads of the people on the mezzanine, or rather, at the level of their shoulders, forcing them to scramble madly out of his firing line, making a few fall to the balcony's carpeted floor in the rush to escape. He tried to scream more obscenities, to threaten them if he didn't get his prisoner back, but his voice wasn't cooperating anymore and he suddenly couldn't move or control his body.

The false policeman fell to the floor in an undignified heap, silent and still quite conscious but utterly unable to stop the teenager he had been hunting from coming by the side of his prone form to pick up his pistol and remove his tool belt. Then the boy tried to use the police comms unit to call in real police cars and back-up officers, at which point everybody was shown the unit had neither batteries nor circuits in it; it was an empty dud, just like the fake officer had been.

The paramedics became busy with laying the faker on his back with his hands tied over his belly with his own handcuffs while the sirens of REAL police cars coming to the scene could be heard in the distance, announcing the arrival of reinforcements. Lucas leaned on his cane with his left hand, the criminal's pistol tightly clenched in his right hand. Just in case, ya know...?

Poor manager Lucarno was sitting down again, leaning forward with her head in her hands. What would her best paying customer to ever come to Daleminton think of their town, now? She was depressing preemptively at the thought of his packing up and leaving in a snit.

Looking at the mess and carnage, the young driver from the limousine company decided to call his dispatcher and talk to his boss about the kinda day he was gonna have. And he wanted a pay raise and some danger premium too. The client was okay, he told his supervisor, but the people around him were friggin' nutcakes and no nobody was paid 'nuff to deal with this shite.

Burning days in L.A.

(MacGyver 1985 – opening theme)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 19:24pm

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 12:24pm (noon)

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 09:24am

Phoenix Foundation HQ; conference room

Los Angeles, California, USA

MacGyver passed a weary hand through his medium length blond hair, giving his scalp a vigorous scratch at the same time, trying to shake the feeling of 'impending doom' that was dogging the back of his mind since they arrived back in Los Angeles just before dawn. The measly 2 hours of restless sleep in the jet plane during the flight had not been pleasant for anybody involved.

First, they had to brave San Francisco's traffic in the middle of the flippin' night at passed 23:30pm right at the time the cinemas end the evening movies but before the late presentations that start at 24:00am so that put a lot of cars all going in circles around the same places. And they were in the damned Stanford Campus area of Silicon Valley to boot, so the constant press of students moving around the bars and restaurants for their Friday & Christmas parties with school buddies before heading back home for 3 weeks choked the streets for miles all around the motel they had lodged at.

It had taken two damnable hours in congested streets to reach the fences of the private cargo airport where the large DXS airplane was parked. The permanent crew of two always stayed aboard since they had all the facilities for it and they had used the hours since the call to prepare for the short flight back. Or at least, it had been foreseen as short; the national guard had other ideas. With the emergence of civil unrest and mass rioting on the east coast already breaking out as the sun was coming up and people got the news broadcast updates from the Friday before, hundreds devolved into mental breakdowns that led to violence, arson and murder. Their flight was delayed for several more hours until they got clearances from both the civilian air traffic tower in San-Fran and the US Airspace National Defense Coordination Center.

At least they were waiting in style, not sitting on the tarmac in the cold December air. The old thing was a McDonnell-Douglas MD-11 Combi built in 1991 for Alitalia under a rental contract, then was returned per the lease terms in 2009 when Alitalia closed down that division. McDonnell-Douglas tried to sell the five planes but hadn't managed to find a buyer until the US Department of External Services came along in 2012 with a low-ball offer for all five jets together, bundled with a contract to convert and reinforce the airliners to some very specific demands. The entire airframe was adapted to the new insides, rebuilt to military specifications with an eye on prolonged overseas missions during which renting rooms at a hotel was not possible and having high tech gear in the open would be seen as an act of aggression by the locals.

The 175 feet long, wide-body transoceanic jets were hybrids built to carry both passengers & heavy cargo on the main deck with regular freight pods in the dedicated cargo hold beneath the main floor. This original layout had the principal cargo compartment taking up the rear third of the main deck with the freight door on the left side with an interior bulkhead to safely separate the 200 passenger seats from the materials. The most drastic renovation included deconstructing the left side cargo door by rebuilding the fuselage while cutting the tail's underside to place a hydraulic cargo on-ramp capable of passing palletized freight or small vehicles like jeeps, tractors, forklifts and such to help in the offloading of the other cargo when landing in rough conditions. The main deck cargo hold still took one third of the floor when the rebuild was done.

From the hold's armored safety bulkhead going forward, the new plans were very much crew welfare oriented in the mindset that healthy, well lodged crew would perform better for longer missions regardless of how rough the environment and job were.

Mini infirmary with 2 mobile gurneys, 4 medical bunks, locking medical closets, wall inset banks of dialysis & defibrillator machinery at 6 emplacements, ceiling-track hung medical sensors, dedicated wet-bath stall with folding steel wash plate to hold an unconscious adult for cleaning before surgery.

Sleeping compartment holding 12 individually enclosed bunks stacked 2 high with drawers under each bed, foot locker and paired standing closets.

Communal washroom with 6 wet-bath stalls, 4 stacked washer/dryer combos, a janitor's sink & wheeled mop bucket under, the trash compactor and recycling shredder.

Galley kitchen with industrial fridges & freezers, 2 large ovens, 2 microwave ovens, gas grill with 8 hobs, professional drinks brewer, 4 dry storage closets.

All-purposes hall with 5 clusters (1 table, 4 swivel chairs, 1 monitor).

Enclosed SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) for electronic & cybernetic warfare, communications, airframe sensors and regional oversight.

Extended glass cockpit with 4 seats and consoles.

With that kind of 'luxurious' setup compared to Mac's EOD missions in the Middle-East, the small 4 person team had been able to roll their van right into the plane's cargo hold and stash their gear directly into their personal bunks and storage without having to haggle and gripe like four siblings on vacation the way they usually ended up doing when choosing motel rooms or camping in tents. Although, with Mac and Bozer having known each other so long, and already being roommates at home, it pretty much left Jack to room with Riley or whomever was assigned as their fourth by default.

Once they were aboard and stowed, the teammates had been greeted in the APH by their two despondent flight crew's news about the USANDC imposing delays for inspection of flight plans and airplane manifests, with priority given to flights from the national guard, coast guard, US Air Force, diplomats, med-evac, and finally a bevvy of policing and intelligence agencies that included DXS before passing all the regularly scheduled passenger and cargo flights. There had been an estimated 5 to 6 hours of wait before the airspace around their zone was cleared enough at the moment they had called for the take-off procedures 2 hours previously, so another 3 or 4 hours stuck on tarmac ahead of them. Because they were still wired from the hard video conference with Matty and the declaration of the 'Noah's Ark' protocol, the 4 friends sat together to eat a snack while the pilots had a nap in their bunks until they were called on. The mission team had little to do but watch the news on the TV sets installed at each table. What they saw was just the preludes and already it looked like an idiot had run around the entire USA with a drum of liquid opium, throwing the stuff in people's faces to render them completely stoned out of their wits.

When the USANDC called them at 04:11am to confirm they had their flight plans authorized and were slotted a take-off time for 05:00am, the entire mission team was ready to lay down for a quick nap. The pilots got them off the runway and airborne in the allotted time, then back in LA as fast as the old MD-11C-mod could fly. They had arrived at the worst of morning rush hour, even on Saturday. It was afterall the last weekend before Christmas, thusly people were entering the 'panic shopping' period that always happened each year. Damned but it had been a frekkin' mess! Los Angeles traffic at 08:00am is barely passable in normal days, but this time it was clear that they would never make it home to secure their places, no matter what Matty had so strongly suggested. If they tried, they would probably get stuck over there and not come back to Phoenix anytime soon, so they went straight to the Foundation instead. If time and events allowed for it, they would secure their homes later in the day.

And so, here they were, in their usual conference room at work, the building shuttered with armed guards on the rooftops and balconies of the executive offices on the tenth floor. The underground parking lot had been enclosed with several mobile armored metal gun-posts having been placed all around the on-ramps and personnel accesses. Getting subjected to car and body searches to get into the building had been the last straw. All four were in piss-poor mood and yet, here they were, in the remote-ops management salon, waiting (AGAIN!) for Matty to come online for an update to their orders. In the meanwhile, they were watching four different news channels from all over the country and regretting it more with each minute that passed.

{ SQ } - { Hometown disadvantages } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 12:24pm)

(Western America; 09:24am)

At 09:24am, the system beeped to warn of an incoming line for them. Riley, looking tired and depressed, typed a few keys on the room's console quickly to accept the signal on the main view-screen, switching the image from the news channels to an equally worn out Mathilda Webber who was located in a small enclosed communications cabin lined in cheap gray felt and nothing else.

"Okay people. First off, let me say that I'm glad to see you all in one piece, and yes Jack, even you too; several thousand others can't say the same as we speak. Now, I am aware that none of you had time to go home and fortify your preps, you will do that during the rest of today and have as good a night of sleep as you can manage before assembling directly at the airport tomorrow at 11:00am for muster. Then, you'll fly out in the MD-11C mod to Vancouver tomorrow afternoon, leaving the airport at 13:00pm to reach Vancouver International Airport on Sea Island in the city's central sectors at 16:30pm. From there, it will take you about 2 hours by car in the early evening traffic to reach the Daleminton Hotel complex in North Vancouver. For this, you will be getting a long Chevy mini-bus that seats 12 people plus 1 wheelchair/gurney that was adapted specifically for protective transport of principal assets with health problems. The US consulate in Vancouver will have a pair of rented unmodified SUV's waiting on the tarmac at your assigned hangar when the plane taxis in to park. Any questions to date?"

The four teammates were relieved to have some time home to fix things before hitting the road again, even if traveling by private jet was a lot more comfortable than public airlines. Their plane was massive and absolutely needed a commercial grade runway to move so it did have its own drawbacks, but mostly for the planners and flight crew; they just sat in the ride, waiting for it to reach destination. That meant they had absolutely no choice but to wait for the governments of both countries to clear them a flight plan with a heavy-carriage capable runway at each end of the voyage, otherwise they had to find alternate transportation. In December, in North America, with snow storms and gusting winds, that could take days or even a full week to get there by ground, and nobody was talking about using an oceanic boat to get up to Canada.

"Okay then." Matty said. "The 4-men team from NCIS will meet you directly at the airfield hangar and board with you. They are having troubles with an epidemic of sailors abandoning their posts to join fascist militias, sometimes stealing weapons or restricted technology as they go AWOL. It means that they got stalled and can't leave today, even if you were ready to leave right away. And we need them to go with you at the same time; it's their people that will handle the legal & bureaucratic wrangling while you concentrate on the protective perimeter and ECW. Honestly though, you couldn't have left even if you were already in the plane waiting for clearance. The USANDC has taken over the entirety of the air traffic control systems in all public, private and military airports across all US territories until the situation returns to peaceful societal conditions. All flight plans are evaluated according to 'Noah's Ark' protocol standards and that means that our bird is low on the totem pole. On top of that, several zones are being declared 'no fly / no land' danger areas that can be accessed only by national guard helicopters or coast guard rescue teams, with civilian flights being restrained more and more every hour. I was confirmed by the DIA that the end plan is to permanently clear out at least 60% of all flying vehicles out of the air by Sunday's dinner time."

The conference salon door opened to let in Jill Morgan, a forensic technician that also served as their permanent home-base comms manager when Riley was on the road with them. She had been in the central overwatch SCIF higher inside the building, doing active surveillance on several hundred principal assets that could need assistance or exfiltration, including the young genius that had been the unwitting cause of all this kerfuffle.

"I apologize for disturbing you, director Webber, but we have news from Vancouver. Doctor Wolenczak has just been assaulted by an employee of the Daleminton Hotel which he has killed in return. Municipal police are on the scene, the RCMP are on the way with people from CSIS, that's the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and the US Secret Service offices in Vancouver have dispatched a 2-man team to do a preliminary interview in order to see what happened and how it affects the rest of the process from now on. Since the events happened around 09:00am, we just saw it and I came to warn you all. Can I do anything else for the team?"

Everybody sighed at the same time; this day just wasn't gonna get any better.

{ SQ } - { The streets are burning } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 13:31pm)

(Western America; 10:31am)

Riley was forced to stay two extra hours to teach the home-base techs how to un-hack their gear and Jack wanted to be her escort home to help her scare off the rougher elements in her neighborhood while she shuttered her apartment for several weeks of absence. After that, she would go with Jack to his own apartment to help him with his own preparations and lockdown, after that she would spend the night with him and bunk in his spare bedroom so they could drive to the airport together in a single car. Therefore Angus and Wilt were already on the streets, in Mac's car, with the black skinned male driving them through a peripheral road towards home, as they had shared three days ago when they came to work.

Since Bozer had been told about the Phoenix Foundation's real work, they had gotten to fit their schedules and share more activities and items as time went by. Firstly, they had been housemates for years since Mac owned the house outright as it had been a legacy from his grand-father and he let Bozer live there for less than half a rent. They often shared or switched cars if one was in the shop or not big enough for the errands being done, and they shared the chores and housework pretty much equally as they were both very manual guys. Now, they made an effort to match their work hours and vacation days, participate in the same R & D projects and serve as each other's assistant during the final presentation of their work results to the Foundation's Budgeting & Validation Committee.

As it was, it had become a habit for them to take just one car to and back from work, especially on days when they were already aware they were leaving the country. This sharing lowered mileage and wearing out on each car, as well as making the daily commutes more friendly and tolerable than getting stuck alone in a hot metal box in traffic with nothing but the radio and one's own thoughts for company. As the two close friends rolled through a more residential district of Los Angeles, Bozer stepped a bit on the gas pedal to increase speed as they both saw the signs of ongoing violence in damaged cars, vandalized house facades and...

A burning tree?

A bloody south-California palm tree was burning on somebody's front yard with weird undefined objects dangling from the branches, just as blazing as the leaves and limbs, while a group of middle aged white men were arrayed in a circle around it, their right arms raised in the Nazi salute while the only woman, white as well, was throwing books and magazines into a pile of shrubbery, furniture, cushions and trash at the foot of the tree that had served as pyre to ignite the towering vegetal. MacGyver gave Bozer a backhanded smack on his elbow, followed by a hand sign that saw his friend react as if they were on a mission in foreign soil under hostile pursuit; he stepped on the pedal to take them out of the area at the fastest 'safe' speed he could use.

The group of white power apostles looked up to see the unknown car rev its engine to double its speed up to highway velocity for the quickest escape possible out of the neighborhood. As the vehicle passed, the worshipers saw the bi-racial crew in the car and ran to get in the street behind the rushing car. Two of the men pulled out pistols and took potshots towards them, luckily they only hit their trunk or parked cars as Bozer undertook a zigzag pattern to make them a more difficult target to aim at, then turned to a side street at the first intersection he saw to get out of firing sight ASAP.

After five minutes of random, high speed meandering around the neighborhood with more damaged cars and houses all over, they stopped right in the middle of the street at a '+' intersection to look over at the online road maps to find their way back on track. Wilt took out his Sig Sauer 9mm service pistol as he looked all over at the inert vehicles and vandalized properties that surrounded them while Angus used his phone to locate their position to navigate a way back home. Without any visible threats, Wilt turned on the car's radio set, using the DIY mods his friend had inflicted on the poor device to convert it into a full-spectrum receiver to capt emergency services dispatch frequencies and short-wave or CB broadcasts as well. Using his left hand was uneasy, but there was no ways he would let go of his pistol in these circumstances.

"Yo, Mac! Why did you make me step on it when you did? Not that I'm against it or anything, but what tipped you off they were crazies about to shoot at us wildly?" the young man asked his high school friend, honestly perplexed as to what bizarre clue the blond wunderkind had seen that made him react so fast.

Gritting his teeth in frustration and raw gut-churning fear, Angus wiped the sweat of his forehead with a shaky right hand, blinking clouded green eyes as he tried to concentrate on the small screen in his left hand. Once he had found their location, he needed only 20 seconds to find them a new travel path out of this God-forsaken place so they could reach home and bunker down fast. Holding the phone out so Bozer could memorize the roadways he showed him was faster than speaking. As soon as the car was rolling again though, Mac resolutely looked out of his side window, trying his best to avoid looking left towards his friend who was focusing on driving them to the much desired safety.

(Eastern America; 14:09pm)

(Western America; 11:09am)

It was only 30 minutes later, with only the sounds of the intercepted LA 9-1-1 dispatch as background noise filling the car, that the pair reached their own upscale residential sector and slowed down back to normal homecoming speed. It was only when they were parked safely inside the enclosed 4-space garage with the door rolled down and locked behind them, that Bozer took the time to really look at his friend fully. Mac was resolutely looking right, out of his window, to the garage wall as if his life depended on it, but his hands were closed into tight shaking fists, and his jaw clenched so hard the muscles along the mandible were bulging, both telling a story of great stress that he couldn't yet release himself from.

"Come on, bro... What happened? I heard the radio dispatches the same as you... There's fire and riots around town and a lot of sectors aren't safe anymore. But what's got into you? You're tighter than Jack when Matty says 'she has a solo mission for him in Siberia' if he tries to get cute with her..."

Swallowing passed a hard lump in his throat, Mac turned to his friend, showing him the tears flowing down his face as he shivered in shock at what he had seen in his own home country, America, not in some primitive fascistic 'banana republic' in Africa or South America's drug cartel regions. Trying desperately to stanch the constant river of salty water leaking out of his eyes with the heels of both hands, the emotional 27 year old couldn't manage to stop the full-bodied shakes that wracked him all of a sudden. Bozer dropper his pistol in the handbrake lever console between the seats so he could undo his seat-belt to offer support and comfort to his severely distressed brother. He placed his left hand over Mac's chest on his heart and his right hand over the nape of his neck, squeezing gently to lend some human warmth and stability.

After over ten minutes of harsh, choking sobs with his eyes screwed tightly shut against the cruel world he no longer wanted to see, Angus finally settled down enough to calm his breathing and un-clench his fists to reveal bloody little crescent moon shapes in his palms where the fingernails had dug into the flesh. Acting on instinct and years of friendship, he raised his arms to wrap both hands over Wilt's, over his heart, to old onto what little decent humanity he could still feel around himself. Finally opening his teary eyes to look at his friend's stressed, worried features, the so-called 'genius of survival improvisation' was completely incapable of explaining what he saw.

America was a 'free country' and California was a bastion of left-leaning liberal modernism; why in tarnation did this happen here, in this era?

Trying to speak passed the recurring full body shakes of shock and the mental anguish he felt, Angus tried to articulate a basic description of what he had seen that made him give Wilt the emergency 'get out of here RFN' code-tap on the arm. Wiping away at his undone, sobbed out features again, MacGyver whispered harshly in croaking tones that Bozer had to lean in closer to hear the words.

"They killed them." Mac exhaled, "They slaughtered them and dropped them in the pile of wrecked furniture, clothes, books and trash to burn the bodies beyond identification. It's always been part of their ritual, you know, to burn the dead to keep police from identifying the bodies or family from having confirmation of what happened. It always gave the killers protection, to burn the proof, and made them feel powerful to circle around the fire, to hail themselves as great big heroes of the cult of monsters they worship..."

Bozer clenched his hands into fists in the front and collar of his brother's red checkered flannel shirt, imagining the answer but needing to hear the actual words, to know for real what the other male had seen that put him in such a state. "Who did they kill Mac? Who did you see in the burning pile?'

Looking out in empty space next to Bozer's left ear, MacGyver spoke out hoarsely "Kids, Bose, little kids barely 8 or 10 years old, 3 of them, tied at the base of the tree with the stuff dumped all over them and torched. I can guarantee you they were african-american kids, Bose, I can swear it on my life and be ashamed of it for all my days to come..." he said as tears flowed down his cheeks anew.

"How can you be so sure? They could have been little white folk they thought were heretics, kinda their own version of 'Matty the Hun', you know... Why can you swear so hard they were black, or even kids or Hells, Mac... Even anything human in that pile of blazing stuff?"

Closing his eyes again, MacGyver shook his head in despair at the Times of Turmoil that were hitting them full-on. He forced himself to take in deeper, slower breaths to stabilize himself out of his shocked state to become coherent again. Now was no longer the time to panic anymore. "I can swear they were kids and black Bozer cuz I saw the sizes and shapes of the skulls through the burning wreckage. I can guarantee they were black cuz the group of cultists around the fire were all making Nazi salutes at the flames and all had a large KKKK 'Blood Drop' emblem on the chest of the white T-shirts they wore. And I saw the flaming remains of two adults lynched and hung by their ankles in the top of the palm tree, hidden by the mass of blazing foliage and branches. Given there was a vandalized, shot-out SUV smeared with blood stains in the house's driveway and the garage door was wide open... Statistically, given the composition of the neighborhood, the history of racial violence in the USA and the KKK symbols, salutes and shooting at a black man the moment they see him... Yeah, I can swear to you it was a black family with 3 little ones that got lynched, murdered and burned at the stake right in the middle of our town. Just like the fucking 1950's and Alabama Rules never got revoked by the High Court and owning human flesh was still ordinary everyday business."

Wilt could only close his own eyes and lean back into the backrest of his seat, trying to keep himself from lashing out or losing his marbles at the one and only person who had never been threatening or betrayed him in his life. Angus was his friend and his brother; the enemies and crazies were out there, out in the streets or in the damned churches getting lobotomized by the poisonous words the sluts-of-the-pews were spewing out, but Mac was safe, his rock and his best friend. They would make it through, somehow. He didn't know how, but he certainly had the best guy for figuring that out right by his side.

After another ten minutes of morbid, desperate silence, they began to move around the car, grabbing their luggage from the last mission so they could wash clothes, clean tools and pack a bigger, more varied kit for the coming out-of-country job they were expected to do. How that would end up...

"Well, at least in Vancouver we'll be away from the biggest concentrations of the worst crazies since none of them will make the effort to travel that far to reach us." thought Wilt despondently as the two depressive men brought their stuff into the living space and immediately went through the motions of securing and bunkering the entire property against vandals or concerted attack by a cult of madmen. Bozer almost had a heart attack when he saw Angus open a secret closet in his bedroom to access the hidden gun locker that held several weapons the Phoenix Foundation had obliged him to have on hand, even after he had explained his accident with shooting Jack to justify his refusal to shoot guns anymore.

The young white male unlocked the armored door and looked at the assault rifle, hunting rifle, shotgun, pistol, revolver, Taser pistol and assorted knives, batons and metal wire bobbins with vacant dead eyes, then slowly shifted his gaze over to his brother standing silently in the bedroom's doorway. For a second, he hallucinated a soul-searing image of Bozer's family hanging from a tree with all his little nieces and nephews tied at the base under a pile of oil-soaked junk as it erupted in a blaze, the evil chants of the white-robed Klansmen as a backdrop. Shaking off the dregs of the vision, Angus Timothy MacGyver asked God his forgiveness for being an oath-breaker as he took up the semi-automatic pistol that was similar to the one he trained with as an EOD tech for the US Army so many years ago and began the old routine of field stripping, reassembling and loading the second best friend a soldier in the field had after his M16 rifle.

Bozer saw the gestures but could only take a wild guess at what brought about the change. He knew his brother too much to not be aware of what the other male had seen or imagined that he now broke through the mental blockage that accidentally shooting a teammate in the field back in Pakistan, in his EOD tech days, had inflicted upon him. He had seen just how Mack had gazed emptily at him just now, and he knew what the overgrown kid his mother and grand-mother had pseudo-adopted so many years ago. Going to his own bedroom with steady steps, Bozer concentrated on planning the necessary jobs before they could go to bed in safety and the calls he would make to his extended kin to warn them of his out-of-country trip. But first, he had his own weapons and kit to field strip and load, which wouldn't happen on its own.

Captain on deck!

(SeaQuest – season 1 theme)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 19:31pm

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 14:31pm

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 11:31am

UEO Fleet shipyards; drydock 1500-B, SeaQuest

New Cape Quest, Florida, UEO Territory

Commander Jonathan Ford and his superior, commander Oliver Hudson, were in one of the two small airlocks built just beneath the Cargo Elevator Deck in the ship's forward section, waiting for the last batch of crew and passengers they would need before taking the ship out to sea. The drydock coffer had been filled up for several weeks already to complete a series of water-tightness tests and give the seamen some practice time on the many probes, shuttles and EVA suits that were now part of the ship's main mission package for year-round activity. The jet-copter would land on the pad then be lowered inside the hull, the roof closed and the boat would then begin its final departure sequence. The jet-copter was theirs for the keeping, it had simply done the run between the rooftop of the UEO Fleet Services building where the people were waiting and the ship; a simple but effective way to give the pilots some practice at landing on the new mobile platform in easy conditions while granting the crew an exceptional view of the boat at rest with two-thirds of the hull out of water and visible. That sight would be rare in the coming months and years as she accomplished her regular tours of duty.

Exactly on time, the jet-copter appeared and mere seconds later the sound of the combined rotor blades and jet turbines washed over the ship as the nimble medium-sized aircraft finalized its approach to land on a metal slab barely 20% bigger than its own footprint. Immediately, the pilots commenced the 'packing protocol' that stopped then folded the rotors, folded back the jets along the fuselage and made the chopper raise on its legs to then bring the floats completely under its main chassis to allow for the best mobility around the parked craft. The second small airlock on the other end of the CED opened to let out a pair of seamen with chains and ratchets to bind securely the vehicle to the elevator platform so it wouldn't slide during the elevator's vertical movement. Once situated on deck 'C' correctly, there would be solid hydraulic retention bars lowered and locked into place to forbid any lateral or vertical movement of the vehicle in case the ship had to perform emergency maneuvers.

Both Ford and Hudson climbed down the three flights of stairs to deck 'C' to welcome their last batch of people, especially the new captain. Or was that the old captain? Given the man had designed the ship some 25 years ago, it seemed more of a return home than a brand new posting to a new ship, although the shopping cart full of new gadgets and toys certainly gave the original crew some interesting feelings when they had to use them.

The two officers arrived on the parking level in time to see the airframe crew unlock the doors from inside to allow their passengers to disembark in single file from the jet-copter's rear ramp to facilitate reception and logging their presence into the ship's massively complex management programs. The very last to come out was an older man with white highly tanned skin, short silver hair, clean shaven features with clear blue eye and a lean athletic build that spoke of daily exercise and healthy diet. He gave his badge and letter of assignment to the security officer who was registering the inbound personnel, making the younger sailor stiffen at attention and snap of a smart salute towards the man who was dressed only in pale beige khakis and a duffel bag on his shoulder.

Getting a salute in return, the sailor processed his superior into the system and issued him his PAL unit, cabin keys and a new plastic ID card crafted like a high-tech credit card to be clipped to his clothes visibly at all times, even when using communal washroom facilities. Ford heard the man grunt in amusement at that very serious proclamation coming from a 1st class seaman who sounded like the entire navy depended on the procedure being followed. As the ship's new master was the last intake, the security detail moved out to clear the way for the airstrip boffins to clean and stow their bird. Those guys got mighty prissy whenever something kept them from babying the boat's one and only aircraft, and no self-loving sailor wanted to get into a turf war with the naval air corps. It couldn't be won anyways, so they just didn't. They'd settle for teasing them in the cafeteria instead; it was all in good fun, you see...

Commander Hudson saluted the ship's newly commissioned captain, Nathan Hale Bridger, and formally handed over control from the drydock's SQ Project Management Office over to him now that he was present in person. After getting the keys to the boat's SCIF and launch codes for the four nuclear tipped Pilum hypersonic cruise missiles (successors of the Tomahawk), Hudson stood back to let Ford come forward. Jonathan stepped up a pace, saluted then extended a hand to the old sailor whom he knew from having been a student in his classes at the naval academy, half his life away. Bridger gave him a small sad smile as he remembered that his son Robert had been close friends with the black skinned officer from the academy until his death, seven years ago.

"Well, sir, unless you have any further need of my services, I will be going to the drydock admin tower to clean out my office. It seems that I am out of a job as of now." Hudson said with good humor. Completing the SeaQuest's rebuild had put him in the good books of many admirals and companies, so he didn't think he'd have that many problems getting a new position soon.

Captain Bridger teased him a bit "What? Hasn't Andrea gotten you another one of her broken toys to repair yet? I was certain I heard something about the Yatagan class ICBM tracker & destroyer project having some water in the bilge that wasn't draining out. Weren't you supposed to transfer over there the moment you're done here? I could have sworn I heard Bill say something..."

Snorting in similar humor, Hudson replied dismissively "Bah! Noyce! You know how the old rumormonger is... He probably started that scuttlebutt just to see what the woman would answer about it, when she returns from her holiday at home, in New Zealand. Not that I would absolutely beg into the project, I'm not desperate, but I wouldn't beg out of it either. I may not be an actual engineer or naval architect, but I think I finally understand just what you feel when you build something this size and see it sail out to bring peace to the world. Honestly though, I hope my next assignment has less politicians and company reps around it; I felt like I was on diplomatic bodyguard duty half the time I was awake and dreamed about budget committees in my few hours of sleep."

"Ah! I knew it! You got it bad! And knowing Andrea Dre the way I do, she'll smell it on you and have you in another design or rebuild project before January is over! Admit it! You won't even fight her on it." Bridger snarked at the younger officer in jest.

Shrugging dismissively, Hudson replied gamely "I am a good soldier, captain; I go where my chain of command sends me." And he said that with a straight face, too!

Laughing out loud at the shared joke, the three senior officers climbed up to deck 'A' then walked out of the CED shaft towards the ship's port side and the captain's cabin. At least, those compartments hadn't been re-purposed or renamed so finding his way around proved as easy for Nathan as if he never left the ship in the first place. Using the brand new key, he opened the door and promptly dumped the duffel bag on the empty desk surface while Ford and Hudson sat on the two 4-seat couches that made up the conversation area of the cabin.

"Aren't you expected somewhere, Oliver?" Nathan called out amused, as he rifled through the closet by the bunk to see what types of uniforms he had to change in before he walked to the bridge to publicly present himself to the crew via the PAL system.

"Nah... I'm bumming you boys a lift to the harbor's seawall, to my other lift up to the UEO's main building and my meeting with our dear US Ambassador to the UEO Council, Deidra Harkness. She wants a personal account of the ship's capacities, and what exactly it will do for the US, now that it's back in play. Somebody obviously has to remind her that the UEO Alliance owns the boat, not the AC or the USA anymore, since that news seems to have not reached her in the 3+ years the boat was sold out."

"My sincere condolences for your botched end of project." Ford smirked at the other commander, "It was going so well up to date. To finish with more diplomats and bullheaded politicians... They really don't respect us working stiffs anymore."

Hudson snorted in amusement whilst Bridger grabbed his clothes to go into the bathroom to change into working gear. Shaking his head in mock despair, he quipped "The young never learn until it's too late, don't they Oliver? But it's alright; he'll get there, eventually." The old mariner closed the door on the shared laughter of the other two sailors who would walk with him to the bridge.

{ SQ } - { You are not alone in this } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 14:57pm)

(Western America; 11:57am)

Nathan had most certainly NOT missed this type of thing; jumpsuits. Blergh! He understood, of course, the historical reasons why the daily service uniform for submariners had been designed as a jumpsuit, but he honestly always thought they could have moved on from dingy garage overalls to something just a bit more functional. And stylish. Jumpsuits looked good on the young and athletic, not on old biddies like himself.

Now dressed with his pockets filled and the all-important ID card clipped to his chest pocket visibly, Nathan had to admit he felt a lot more like a working man than he had in the last six years since Carol had passed away. Doing a few odd contracts over the internet to keep his mind busy and have a small revenue besides his royalties and investments had helped him keep in contact with humanity, but not that much. His private island was rather isolated; it took almost four hours by boat to reach it from Florida's southern coast, so even grocery shopping was an all-day chore.

Walking out of the en-suite bathroom, Nathan was rolling up his sleeves to be more comfortable in the tightly controlled climate when a loud insistent BEEP was heard throughout the cabin. Across the conversation area, near the large drawing table, shelves and trio of wall mounted Internex monitors, a stout dodecagonal pedestal glowed as it generated a 3D holographic film in a cloud of silvery gas. The image showed a young child, about 13 years old, with milky white skin, very thin features and physical frame, serious penetrating blue eyes and stringy shoulder length blond hair that made him look like an upright yellow sheep.

"Warning! The PAL system has detected a new official user for this cabin. This compartment is subject to security requirements for senior officers, for command level authority and SCIF UEO-#2 clearance. You MUST log into the PAL applications through the Angelator AL-C1-a/mr holo-interface console to complete the 'user login' protocols before you do anything else as it might make your movements and work around the ship subject to unpredictable security alerts & access refusals. Failure to comply within the following 30 minutes will see a security detail hunt you down as an infiltrated spy. Thank you for your collaboration."

The boy's image was replaced by one of an old fashioned grand-father clock that was going backwards in a countdown, with the needle going towards an icon of an exploding bomb. My, how inspiring! Nathan walked around the back of the couch near the entry door to reach the console to figure out how the thing worked so he could log into the programs and defuse this timer. As it was, the process was mostly automated; he just swiped his ID card over a lens, put the PAL unit from his uniform pocket in the charging dock to prime the access codes & priority frequencies attributed to the ship's master, then answered a few short questions about any social media or personal coordinates that were asked. The answers he gave helped the device to analyze his voice print to configure the vocal command apps while also giving the security routines something to work on to find if any threats or intel chatter about him was going around. After 5 minutes of relatively painless Q&A, the system beeped that the ID protocols had been completed successfully and he was now free to roam the ship, to use his card and PAL at will until the next updates or system-wide reboot.

Nathan was flummoxed to see that the system had somehow managed to log into his home through the active Internex connection to find his preferences and configurations on his devices then download the settings and apply them automatically to all matching devices and apps in the cabin. Inside of ten minutes after having completed his ID process, the entirety of the cabin's electronics for work or entertainment had become clones of his household setup without any effort or annoyance on his part.

Now, that was service! Nathan knew hotels not that good with their clients.

"Yeah, it scared the bejeezus outta me too, the first time it did that." Jonathan Ford commented softly from where he sat. "You'll find that the level of automation and humanless management of resources and situations is pretty astounding. And it scares the crap out of us. At some point, you gotta ask if sailors still have a place in the ships we build... And with the number of drones we carry to do EVA jobs instead of divers, it isn't a dumb sci-fi nerd question anymore."

Hudson made an assenting noise from his seat on the second couch. Looking into empty air towards the inner workings of the ship, the senior commander grumbled "Ain't that the truth. When we found them holo-imagers, we thought they wouldn't be any problems. Just like ordinary Internex monitors; unplug, move and re-plug. No biggy. No, THAT system doesn't work like that. The opinionated little runt in the image has ideas and views about everything, and he don't like getting moved around. And just you try to plug him on the wrong wires or not give him enough electricity to work on full strength to see what happens! The damned little jack-in-the-box from Hell can actually hack the power management grid to get the juice he needs and prioritize himself over anything but life-support or sickbay. We never figured out how the dumb can does it, either. We called Wolenbahn Electronics, the company that sells them, and they told us that we needed somebody with a bloody SCIF Level-2 clearance to get the drawings and the access codes to reconfigure the consoles out of the modes bought by the UEO back in 2016 when they were shipped and installed. And no, Andrea never was convinced that we needed to change them that much."

Ford shrugged lamely. "You get used to them watching and talking to you when you work in a room that has one in it. Since there's only a few on the entire ship, and not in the most passing places either, it hasn't been much of a hardship. It was a cultural shock the first few times, I'll give you that."

The new captain grumbled about not being master on his own boat with so many politicians running around him, and now, this virtual kid was trying to hold his hand while he did his job to boot! Just how little control over this tub did have left, anyways?

"Do you want a realistic answer to that question, or just some platitudes that your fragile ego will survive without giving you a coronary?" snarked the suddenly present image of the young teenager, floating above the pedestal.

Bridger turned disbelieving eyes to his fellow sailors only to see them shrug helplessly. "Yeah, I meant to warn you about that." Ford said blithely. "He tends to just wake up and say stuff without being asked if you speak aloud or gesticulate too much around the console. It's got a full suite of all-around sensors for sound and imagery so he can pick up any voice commands or little noises for analysis and the program can also see and 'read' sign language because it's has a priority line into the universal translation & ciphering applications. So... Get used to unsolicited advice from a barely teenaged kid at odd hours during your work shift when you have one of those console nearby."

Hudson made a vague gesture with his left hand. "Don't worry, the holo-assistant isn't so bad. It's just like a boosted 'Alexa' or 'Cortana' with better imaging and a much wider vocabulary. I had one in my office in the drydock tower but I kept it busy by siccing Andrea on it when she wanted too many technical details that I was clueless about. It kept them both busy and out of my thinning hairline, so it was all good." he finished with a shit-eating grin directed at the new captain.

Bridger glared at the floating gaseous 13 year old boy who was actually giving him the same stubborn look that Robert had back at that age when he didn't want to let go of his video game to go to bed on school nights. Damn! He was too old to be a father again! Maybe the system had a function to age the presentation and response style of the holo-assistant? He'd ask later tonight, once he was alone with his unpacking and his thoughts.

"Alright people, let's get this show on the road. Out! Were marching to the bridge." Nathan shooed them out, remarking from the side of his eye that the virtual kid was making bye-bye motions at them before winking out of existence as the console went to sleep mode. Damn, that was weird!

{ SQ } - { A steady hand on the tiller } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 15:21pm)

(Western America; 12:21pm)

A few minutes of brisk walk was all they needed to reach the clamshell doors on the left side of the bridge. Nathan saw easily that security was tighter than before; instead of just a big red button to call inside and a camera to smile at, they now had to pass their ID cards and place their right hand on the scanner to get formally identified, all the while saying their name and rank out loud for the voice print analyzer to confirm. Once they were correctly identified, the security officer inside the bridge triggered the locks to open and let the people in, closing the doors right after they had passed.

"It's an access restriction put in place since we are operating under the 'Noah's Ark' protocol; nobody leaves the doors wide open until the civil insurgency situation is resolved." Hudson explained when he saw the pensive look on Bridger's face.

The older mariner nodded silently his understanding as he moved his head to gaze deeper into all the changes that were made to his original creation. Right to his right were three stations facing forward with an incredible amount of small monitors stacked in two columns besides two medium ones set over each other in the middle before each chair. They also had two different keyboards, two mice and an electronic drawing pad that any architect or engineer would drool over in envy. On the ends of the trio, on each side, were a small 2-drawer file cabinet with a solidly bolted multi-function color laser printer to create solid copies of all the work they did to protect it from hackers or system failures.

Turning a bit more to the right, Nathan saw the food bar, the two large fridges and the two water closets that were now set into the bridge's steel structure to reinforce the back-end of the long, wide oval room.

That wasn't the only strengthening the room had received. In fact, he could see that the command chair was placed on a raised dais, some three steps above the main floor, and four large metal beams going from floor to ceiling had been installed to hold aloft a set of small, soft, reading lights and no less than 8 full-sized Internex monitors, all of them adjustable at the needs of the person sitting in the chair. Another feature was that the pillar front-left had an old analog telephone with push button keypad on the base and wires for both handset and the hard-link to the system. Nathan planned to ask about that to his comms chief, later on. The pillar front-right had several old instruments set one atop the other; several analog clocks, a compass, an elevation & attitude pendulum, a barometer and a metal trellis basket to set paper maps at hand.

The command chair had been changed altogether too. It was much bigger, with wider and deeper seat, taller backrest and a head rest the old model hadn't had. The leg panel and foot rest were new too. But what took the cake was the two curved tables mounted to the armrests that could pivot to become a single solid surface in front of the user. Each of the two panels had one medium monitor with three small ones on the outer side at its far edge, and the colored glass tabletop was a combination touchscreen keyboard and drawing tablet. When the two halves were joined, the two medium monitors appeared to be seamless so the image shown was 12 inches high by 48 inches wide. Nathan realized as he passed a hand over his new chair that it was actually composed of several articulated segments that allowed to adjust to the physiognomy of the user. Small buttons on the armrests showed the controls for the PAL system, telephony and satellite comms on the right armrest while controls for the chair's module positions, temperature and massage rollers were on the left. On the outer sides of the chair were permanent solid compartments to store paperwork, maps or log books while small hidden compartments set between the base of the screens and the colored glass interfaces of the tables contained the office supplies to write, draw or help mental calculations like the slide-ruler he found.

Whomever had designed this new command station had obviously spent some effort and spoken with people of experience. Nathan could only groan in misery at the thought of just how much time he had wasted looking tall and useless in his chair while three piles of paperwork waited in his office. Oftentimes, having the captain and first officer on the bridge was a waste of their time, considering just how much administrative paperwork they had to file, on top of ship inspections, department meetings and running emergency or combat drills at least once a week. With a chair setup like this, he could be on the bridge AND complete his damnable admin at the same time. Looking around, he was gratified to see that all the senior officers' stations had been modified more or less along the same idea of making it easier to be present and fill out the paperwork physically or by touchscreen. The placement of the first and second officers was also changed a bit to allow for more airy desks and better chairs. A few steps had him confirm that, yes, these were also tempered but didn't have the multi-module adjustments nor the massage system.

Oh, well... Captain's privilege and all that...

Jonathan Ford was smirking at his new boss as the older man examined the furniture and positions of things, so different from his original designs. He just couldn't resist pulling his leg a bit, as his friend Robert had told him how his dad liked a well placed quip when it was done respectfully and the person targeted could laugh along with the jokester. "That throne in the middle is a gift from Andrea Dre for whomever became the new CO. She said something to the effect that 'The boat's enough of a burden, the least I can do is make paperwork time easier to bear.' I think she was really hoping to ply that chair as a reward for the guy who took the job, but the way things went..." he completed with a bigger smirk while Oliver Hudson chuckled in the background.

Nathan gave his new Ex-O a tolerant side glance as he turned towards the quad of helm chairs in the front, much bigger, sturdier and now multi-segmented with temperature and massage systems to help the pilots endure longer against strong currents or storm winds when on the surface. They would still face conditions when changing helmsmen every half-shift or less was obligatory, but this could at least help the guys stay steadier and have less cramps when they left the chairs to the next man.

Turning back towards the command chair, captain Bridger saw something hanging from the ceiling that he hadn't seen yet. It was a track embedded into the entire ceiling all around the room in the shape of a twelve-point star. This track had an electric winch that was presently parked above the bridge's moonpool that led into the network of ship-wide Aqua-Tubes. Having assisted in designing and building many things for the US Navy in the last thirty years, Nathan didn't need a big imagination to understand why that had been built or why it was kept there. In case of battle damage or new system upgrades, the winch could help to move things for installation or even lift them from or into the pool for movement through the water filled tubes. Not a dumb idea...

Finally sitting himself in his brand new command chair, Nathan saw the small lens on the right armrest begin to blink and a message appeared in the screens all around his station, demanding him to identify the current user. He swiped his ID card then placed his PAL unit in the hard dock located just near the table pivot on the right armrest. The systems began to adjust the position of the chair modules and the two tables closed together over him to become a seamless solid board to work or lean on. Now seated fully, the captain could see a few more little gadgets like the recessed round metal disk near the table pivot on the left armrest. The colored slider next to it showed it was an induction device to either chill or heat a mug the lower end of which was striated to screw into the disk to avoid spillage in rough seas. Humph! Not a bad idea as such, but certainly a piece of luxury no other captain in the fleet had. With a smirk, Nathan thought it was their fault for not accepting this posting before the UEO got to sending him the invite. His boat, his perks.

Leaning backwards into the backrest, Nathan put his elbows on the table, joined his hands in front of his chin and asked "Operations; how soon to leave the drydock?"

The ship's second officer and chief of engineering, lieutenant-commander Katherine Hitchcock swiveled her chair to face her new superior officer and couldn't help the thought that the chair looked as if it had been constructed just for him. "Sir! The coffer is full and the retention doors have been opened to full aperture. We have received the all-clear from drydock 1500-B to proceed when ready, the taxiway in the main canal is empty of capital traffic, with only a few sub-fighters sniffing around on their routine patrols. My board is green across all structural, technical and support departments."

Commander Ford had seated himself at his permanent station, giving the departments one last checkup before swiveling back towards his new leader. "Sir! All security, weapons and administrative departments are ready to sail. We can launch for the shakedown cruise at your signal, sir."

The clamshell doors on the right side of the bridge opened to let in a pair of very different people who were walking side by side amicably. The two marched until they reached the banister that delimited the walkway around the command dais and presented themselves to the ship's new master.

The rotund white male with a short brownish beard and shorter graying hair gave a military salute to his leader as he called out "Sir! Senior lieutenant Manilow Crocker, chief of security and weaponry, sir! Welcome aboard, Nathan! It's been a bloody long time since I heard from you. All good on your side, old man?"

Snorting at her companion's familiarity with the new captain, the obviously civilian woman wore what looked like a green 2-piece uniform covered by a long white lab coat. She had white tanned skin, green eyes and long rust-red hair flowing down freely to mid-back. She spoke with a slightly nasal, just a tad snobbish, upper class British accent when she extended her hand to the new CO. "Welcome aboard the motorized Bedlam we call home, captain. Kristen Westphalen, doctor of human medicine, veterinary medicine, biochemistry and genetics at your service. I am the ship's chief of medicine in charge of the sickbay as well as remote field medicine and a few research projects that fall into my specialties, like the resident dolphin, whom I am told you know personally?"

Nathan swiveled his large chair around to glare at Hudson. "What does she mean by 'a dolphin I know personally', hum?" he asked with trepidation.

Oliver smirked and pointed at the now occupied moonpool besides him, to the sea mammal that was bouncing up and down excitedly inside the enclosed metal and crystal canopy. Oliver stepped down to the front of the pool and worked the levers to unlock the lid and open it. The dolphin immediately raised itself to the semicircular bench that was a foot beneath the rim and tried to look around the strange unfamiliar room with many people. Just as Hudson was about to speak, a buzzing sound came from the wellhead as several small lights emitted bluish beams that passed through the dolphin, scanning him before they stopped. An odd canary-yellow box bolted to the side of the moonpool automatically unlocked and opened, deploying a set of small loudspeakers from which a synthetic voice was projected loud enough for the entire bridge to hear it clearly.

"Bridger-friend! - squeee! - Darwin warm! - wrrip! - Darwin like new boat. - wrrip! - New boat big. Darwin can visit Bridger-friend now."

Standing up from his command chair, Nathan walked to the edge of the water basin, stopping at arm's length to scrutinize the sea mammal. Yes, it was the juvenile bottlenose dolphin he had rescued from poachers a few years ago, near his private island. The same dolphin that had refused to leave him alone these past four years and been so much help in giving him the little company and living interaction he could tolerate before it became too much to handle. Dolphins didn't have the cares of human society, only the needs of food, shelter and health; such a simple life that allowed them to have a simple friendship, even when they couldn't speak words.

"How?" Nathan asked hoarsely, dumbfounded in awe of the miracle before him.

Doctor Westphalen walked to stand next to the water basin, letting her hand trail in the warm sea water before gently stroking the curious but friendly gray dolphin. "It is one of the many functions in the ship's central computer. The Universal Translation program we use is a product of Wolenbahn electronics called 'WEI Conclave 3 b/mr Universal Translation & Ciphering Network' or UTCN for short. It is actually capable of receiving input from cameras or drawing pads along the usual microphones or keyboards so it can interpret and translate icons, pictographs, glyphs or even sign language. It is quite the hit with our scientists for whom English is not their birth tongue. One of the unforeseen effects of such a high performance program was that it interlaces seamlessly with the PAL systems and all the phonic or written comms we have, including the newly installed hydrophones that dot the Aqua-Tubes and the ship's outer hull at chosen emplacements."

Nathan almost needed to sit down again because he was overwhelmed by emotion. "Are you telling me that some programmer who has never seen a dolphin in his life, let alone touched one in person, has – ACCIDENTALLY – breached the species barrier to speak with a sea mammal? And then nobody thought to make this public?"

Kristen was shameless as she replied with a wide smile "Honestly, captain! If you think a talking dolphin is the be-all-end-all of this ship, you will have a heart attack before dinner. Why don't you put your oversized pool toy in the sea and then come visit me on sea-deck. We have much to discuss over tea and biscuits." She dimpled a friendly smile at the older veteran, adding playfully "I made the shortbreads myself. And don't you let the louts in security tell you they're bad! Every time I bake a tray, some boy in blue tries to 'confiscate the health hazard' but I'm not blind! I know full well my culinary capacities. So, play with your shiny new boat then follow the dolphin to sea-deck. I have some inventory and research reports to file anyways." on this, she turned heels and walked off the bridge, leaving a nonplussed captain and highly amused sailors that were laughing aloud at his plight.

And yes, he said plight. How else should he call this ordeal of a boat?

Cross-burner in chief

(US National Anthem)

Western Africa; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 23:50pm (midnight)

Eastern America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 16:50pm

Western America; Saturday 19th of December, 2020; 13:50pm

White House; Oval Office

Washington DC, Maryland, USA

All around the edifice known to the Earth as The White House, heavy military vehicles were rolling into position, unloading tripod mounted machine guns or grenade launchers while others brought in ready to use pre-cast concrete gunnery cabins that would be connected to electricity and wired comms the moment they were on the ground to reinforce the national monument's entries and symmetrical intervals around the perimeter fence.

All the soldiers were working feverishly towards what THEY considered a worthy, highly moral common goal; the instauration of a Pure, True, Christian Governance over the peoples of America then the willful, forceful spreading of this Faith and Governance to all others on Earth. While the 'Governance', 'Christian' and 'True' parts of this statement could cover pretty much anybody in US society without too much troubles (other than atheists and, you know, followers of other cults...), there was no ways in tarnation that 'Pure' would ever mean anything else than 'WHITE ONLY'.

It was no wonder then that under all the cement-gray urban camouflage fatigues of the toiling soldiers you could only see lily-white skin, and then only 1 woman per 40 men in action. Most women would eventually be pulled back from combat & front-line duty unless they were infertile or known lesbians who wanted to repent their sins honorably by mortifying their flesh through training and killing heathen infidels in the Name of the Holy Cross.

It was nearing 05:00pm on the east coast but peoples from all walks of life across the entire country who hadn't been impacted directly by the rapidly escalating violence were sitting down in front of their Internex monitors to watch the much anticipated Presidential Address to the Nation that was coming up. In fact, even those impacted by unrest, violence and injuries would see it too as most hospitals, clinics, shelters, fire stations, ambulance garages and police stations or prisons would set their television sets to receive it. Almost all schools had canceled classes until new orders and most boarding schools had offered to keep the kids inside their walls where it was thought they would be safe. After the speech, it would be seen that nobody's plans had ever been on the mark, nor sufficient to compensate for the ginormous clusterfuck that was exploding in their faces.

The program had been declared 'mandatory emergency broadcast' by the White House thus obliging all media outlets to grant the program absolute priority over anything else without charging the government any price for it. At exactly 17:00pm US east coast time, all channels for TV, radio, CB, shortwave radio and several hundred news websites were hijacked by the US Department of Communications with permission and assistance of their owners to facilitate the country-wide broadcast of the program.

{ SQ } - { Not the country you knew anymore } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 17:00pm)

(Western America; 14:00pm)

(US National Anthem)

As the image of the last commercial faded to black, it was replaced by an animated film of what looked like an American Flag flying lazily in the soft wind, hung under the right arm of a wooden White Cross planted solidly atop a snow capped mountain peppered with green pines and frozen waterfalls that made for an incredibly powerful emotional pull on the audience.

As the image closed in on the Cross & Flag, details became clearer for the viewers, thusly exponentializing the discomfort for hundreds of thousands.

The huge wooden crucifix was based on a mix of models but the frame was clearly patterned after the ancient 'High Celtic Cross' with a nimbus around the crossing of the bars and widening, flaring ends to the arms, head and feet. The beam-end decorations were similar to a 'St-Thomas cross' with a touch of 'Caucasian Albanian' styling in the flowery designs at the ends of the foot and arms, emerging from within the splayed belled end caps. The middle joint of the crossed beams was sculpted in the form of a 'pectoral cross of Cuthbert' with a red Blood Drop over blue field in the central disc. The whitewashed wood was highlighted by gold lines along the edges of the millwork and an azure blue finish on the oval head point of the crucifix served as noble celestial background for the golden rendition of a 'Royal Crossed Globe', which is an image of Earth surmounted by a 'Papal Cross', the symbol of Christian Kings for nigh on 14 centuries and more. Written in the horizontal beam in azure block letters was the latin phrase 'In hoc signo vinces' that meant 'In this Sign thou shalt conquer'.

The global unease was getting worse as the image lowered and centered on the newly redesigned flag.

The American Flag had been modified more fundamentally, no longer resembling what it had been. The original red and white stripes became red and blue instead, with a new a golden stringy fringe added all around the flag. The 50 white stars over blue field in the upper left were replaced by a single large sigil on a white round-cornered rectangle in the middle of the flag. This new heraldic was created by a gold-rimmed azure blazon inside which was a golden 'Jerusalem Cross' topped by a golden European 'Christian Royal Crown' that had a small, white-rimmed, red 'Blood Drop' in the center. It was no longer an 'American' icon but a 'Christian World' flag instead.

(Awesome God – Rich Mullins 1988)

After showing in great close-up details the new National Regalia of the Flagged Crucifer that would become the rallying point and symbol of patriotic duty for the citizens and allies of Pure Christian America the Exceptional across all of the world given them by Jesus, their True God, the Lord Redemptor in His Almight, the image shifted to a view inside the Oval Office of the White House.

Nobody recognized the room anymore.

It now sported opaque ivory white drapes lined in azure details with golden ropes to tie them open so the waning light of the winter sky could flow in. The carpets had been ripped out and the hard wood floors polished to a dark finish. Most of the original furniture had been replaced by clearly vintage accouterments that would not be out of place in the meeting room of an abbatial council in the Great Abbeys of Northern Europe during the middle Ages or Renaissance. Thick heavy woodworks hewn from oak and maple stained dark, upholstered in deep blue velvet and covered by animal furs that still had the heads attached to be clearly presented as symbols of strength and manhood by the owner of the room. Even the coffee table where once the Defense Intelligence Agency's vital reports had been read and notated had been replaced by a rectangular viking wrought iron firepot with live flames ablaze in its charcoal embers to give the place the feel of a castle's war room where Lords of Faith and Power congregate to pray, speak powerfully and decide in God's Name on the lives of millions.

The Resolute desk had been replaced by a gothic bishop's throne fit for the Catholic Pope and a large deep desk covered in woodwork religious reliefs now held the technology and office supplies needed by the Lider Maximo. In the middle of the desk's front panel was a large sigil similar to the one that replaced the stars on the flag, and a foot tall model of the Flagged Crucifer sat on the right hand corner of the desktop, with a votive candle burning atop each arm of the small cross.

{ SQ } - { A message of hate, crusade and enslavement } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 17:05pm)

(Western America; 14:05pm)

Seated in the shadowy depths of the stained oak throne was the currently seated, and barely reelected, President of the United States of America, the honorable Donald J. Trump. Except he was barely recognizable to his population, even for those who voted for him twice.

The now 74 year old man had somehow, overnight, bleached out his continuously tanned skin back into a milky white complexion more in line with the Caucasian Nordic – Slavic ideal that he now openly preached about. His thin blond hair had been combed backwards and loosely braided with a white felt ribbon tying off the end of the short affair. Instead of the usual expensive dark blue 2-piece business suit he normally wore, he was now presented in an ivory white 4-piece ensemble composed of trousers, shirt, tunic and a tabard similar to that of the Templar Knights in the Crusades. A large colored Crucifer, but without the flag, was embroidered on the tabard's front and small leather shoulder pads embossed with the new Christian World Flag decorated the upper biceps of the tunic, apparent since the tabard was naturally sleeveless. A heavy silver gothic style medallion representing the Crowned Cross of Jerusalem hung on a thick silver chain around his neck and a silver ring bearing a gothified version of the American Eagle sat on the middle finger of his right hand.

At exactly 17:05pm, the man whom many had once thought of as 'The Leader of the Free World' would change minds and realities for generations to come. He began his oration still seated in his great throne.

"Hear ye, hear ye, and hear ye this, you scurrilous knaves and scandalous heathens! I be speaking to thee, thou soulless husks that claim atheism and false gods that know not the One Truth!"

"I am the Papal Lord Amerikus; Donald John Trump, baptized White Knight of Christ, and first-named Son of the Living Christ in this here land, the Pure and True America, the Exceptional and Great America, the land Chosen by God, Jesus our Lord and Savior, to lead all others unto the Light of Liberty from sins and Salvation from Hell's pits! Amen, I said!"

"I come to your homes, places of work and shelters from the storming winds with Merry News and Glad Tidings from the very mouth of Jesus, the one and only True God of the Christian Bible! Hallelujah, I said! As it was written in the Times of the Romans, them vile pagans, debauched lords and drunken scandalous louts, so now comes to fruition the Great Divine Plan for our humble yet eager Nation filled with the honest and forthright Servants of God. As It was spoken in Holy Truth, from His own mouth, then Scriptured obediently by Faithful Men of the Cross, so now Comes to Pass the Times of the Tribulations that were Revealed in Prophecy! Amen and Hallelujah, I said!"

"Now, I know full well and surely, that the heathens and atheists who willfully give their empty husks to Satan as tools of his nefarious hellish plans for Armageddon will conspuate me, vilify me, or even mock, heckle and jeer powerlessly at effigies of me when I turn away from their crass debasement to ignore their worthless sedition. I know this, for He Who Was Risen has spoken this to mine own ear! Amen, brothers and sons! And in His Holy Truth chanted by the Angels in Celestial Choir will I believe! He IS my personal Savior and Redeemer and HE IS RISEN! All other 'truths' are proven naught but LIES before the one and only TRUTH of the Christian God's own miracle of resurrection and gifting unto his servants, The Worthies, the Blessings and Favors from On High as befit His godly power and status amongst all other realms! Hallelujah, boys and warriors of the Faith! Amen, I have said in True Faith!"

"But, beware now the False Speakers! Them dirty belly-crawling worms! Slithering, they do come, out of the carrion of a dying society, to spit poison in your souls like the Serpent of Eden hath once done to deter Adam and Eve from the servile obedience due unto the Rod of God's disciplines upon them! Never again, I say! Amen! In Jesus' name our Savior we obey!

"Never again will the unworthy be given the rights of speech or movement in our Pure and True Faithful society that we will build. Amen!"

"Never again will disgusting juden rassen be allowed to steal land or jobs or riches from our citizens and pollute or towns! Amen!

"Never again will them slave-stock niggers and mulatos and métis and métèques and gypsies ever sully our daughters with their foul seed! Amen!"

Never again will the slave-stock's debased females, them mule-headed she-animals, steal the bloodlines of our Legacy to our sons and grand-sons! Amen!"

"Never again will the queers and faggot peggers despoil the bodies and destroy the souls of our innocent Pure and True white sons in the Land our God gave unto us! Amen!

"Never again will women and females and lesbian dykes and tranny pervies ever again have anything to say or speak or make noise about on the subjects of Faith, Power, Nation, Governance and the Great Holy Crusade compelled into our souls eternal by God, His Own Divine Self, as he set it in motion in the Time of Prophecy! Hallelujah and Amen to that, fathers and uncles, brothers and cousins, sons and nephews!"

"Never again will the unemployed and the homeless and the hobos be a burden upon the finances of the State! Never again will the - unschooled - get handouts from the State! Those that are fit enough in body and mind will be put to work in Great America Projects like the much anticipated South Wall, and maybe even a North Wall as well, until Canada joins us under God's Purifying Halo. We will never again let the whims of progressive bleeding-heart liberals run our Nation and waste our taxes like some Euro-commie potentate that should have died during the Cold War! By the tenets of 'Prosperity Gospels' money is a material proof of God's judgment and approval upon a person; the more you have, the more God approves of what you did in His Name! And nobody is gonna go around stealing God's rewards from your pockets or bank account anymore! Amen!"

"Never again will the untermenschen, those 'maybe, partially, not truly white' diseased, defective mentally sub-human under-beings ever again have rights and places in our society! We will be a Nation of Greats and Giants as was ordained by the Lord God, Jesus Himself, not a debauched country of sickly deformed wastrels and mentally corrupted inept spawns of trash! Amen!

"Never again will the Souls Eternal of the Men-of-the-Cross be declared less than functional, diseased or insane by the fell apostles of Satan's Hellish Plan; the doctors, the pharmacists, and nurses! Them foul poison spewing liars that dwell in the dark butchering rooms and cold humid torturing halls that were lyingly called hospitals but serve to hide evil alchemies that rot the body, vile rituals of carnal debauchery and... And, yes!... The moste potente tenebrarum of putrid Necromancy! Or, as it is named and practiced in modern epochs by its spurious Satanic zealots, PSYCHIATRY! We will never again be judged by these miscreant Servant of the Pits! We will never again be shamed and laid low by the poisonous lies, vapid word-twists, and scurrilous drawings and schemas of the human brain! Only GOD understands the human soul! Only GOD understands the human mind! Only GOD can see whose healthy, whose sane, and whose a corrupted perverted SINNER! Only by believing, adoring, worshiping and obeying our Lord God of the Bible, Jesus the Christian Christ, Redeemer of the Cross of Christian Crucifixion, Who was Martyred and Risen, can you be kept healthy and sane! Only His True and Pure White Light can grant you reprieve from illness and injury! Abandon all the lies and false hopes of doctors, nurses, and them poison peddling drug pushers the pharmacists, and ye shall be delivered from harms of the flesh and soul! A most heartfelt HALLELUJAH and truly resplendent AMEN to you all, grand-fathers, fathers, brothers, sons and nephews under God's Law and Light!"

"A Glorious Hallelujah and a resplendent Amen to Men being powerful Manly Men again!"

The newly minted Papal Lord Amerikus stood from behind his desk to walk towards the camera, now showing what was around his waistline; a thick heavy leather belt with multiple cruel implements that promised his reign would be anything but fair, just, merciful and equitable for all. Now stood about ten feet in front of the lens, besides one of the massive medieval couches, he spread out his arms widely, calling out loud for all to hear.

"Harken and behold, ye low lived servants of the Prince of Lies & Dark Pits! Amen upon the Faithful that see this and know not fear! I bless them aplenty, In Jesus' name, our God the Redemptor, I so speak! Now see these here tools of the Power of Christian Authority as they were given to us by the God of the Cross in his Days of Passion before he died and Rose Anew! Watch and fear, you that gave your empty husks and deviant minds to Satan's legions!"

He pointed to his right side, near his dominant hand; "The Rod of Disciplines, a Holy Sacrament in its own self, it is! A stout wooden pole to break the foul tempers and spoiled attitudes of boys and girls the world over, to bring them back into docile submissiveness to their fathers! Amen to THAT indeed!"

He pointed at the middle of his belt, near the huge decorative buckle; "The Scourge, just like the Romans used upon the bare fleshes of our Risen Savior in the Time of the Passion whence he expressed his Love and Redemption of our unworthy souls. 13 braided leather thongs with spiked lead balls threaded into the lashes to make adult criminals repent fully unto Purity, or make the grownest boys wish they hadn't strayed and acted out of their age and station in life! Amen to THAT indeed!"

He pointed to the left side of his belt where only his left hand could reach easily; "That here is the Noose. A simple, solid length of hemp, braided and knotted by faithful hands, just like in the Days of the Romans, and it can be used for sooo many things! It can flog the beasts and slaves since they don't ever deserve the touch of a Rod or Scourge! It can lynch the runaways who rebel against their parents or just the common criminal that's passed any Salvation anymore. Or, it can be put in a set to wrack confessions and information from the soulless husks of seditious heretics! Amen to THAT indeed!"

As the old man slowed down the breakneck pace of his diatribe, he used the sleeve of his right arm to wipe away the sweat on his brow and face, giving the impression of an athlete having just undergone great physical trials by how winded and out of sorts he suddenly was. Blinking his eyes tiredly, the geriatric hatemonger leaned on the couch to his side with his right hand, using the left one to fish under his tabard for an object to present and speak one last threat to the world at large.

"And now behold the Clean Steel, the Tool of My Great Plan, sayeth the Lord unto his massed hordes of Faithful Worthies, as they knelt in submissiveness before the Altar plinth upon which rested his Great Throne of High Authority. First were swords, then arrowheads, and now this; the Gun Almighty! In His Name and none other, do I declare that 'gun rights' are in fact religious 'Holy Rights' that none shall rule, judge, legislate or blockade but ME, the Papal Lord Amerikus! Amen to THAT indeed, sons of America!"

"Now, as we leave you for your evening meal, I will order, command, declare and proclamate most imperially from On High, the following vital and fundamental news. As of this moment, by my hand and will under Jesus our God, I declare that the Supreme Court is VACANT and no longer operative under the aegis of Christian American Governance. This will be so until a panel of 13 new judges can be selected, therefore all appeals to the higher court will be stalled until then. Hallelujah for some good Christian common sense coming back into our daily lives!"

"Secondly, I hereby suspend and revoke the defunct, defective, weak willed constitution that was written 200 years ago! By my order and will under Jesus our God, a new constitution with updated business laws, gun laws and family laws will be drafted and voted on by the newly modeled Congress when they have new elections, sometime later this year. Hallelujah to THAT!"

"Finally, I give this order to all law enforcement officers or agents, all military personnel and all contractors of the National Governance, at any and all levels they get their contracts or badges. I hereby extend, without limits not specifically written in the Bible under God's own command, that white men of good Faith and Purity not be worried legally or socially or financially for having done God's Holy Works. By that I mean culling the sub-humans, keeping the slave-stock docile and workable, or keeping any and all children, especially boys, silent and submissive to the penultimate limitless authority of Manly White Men as is the Law of the Christian Bible as per the Rod of Disciplines. Hallelujah and Amen to THAT!"

With great snorting breaths and weird nervous ticks about the eyes, the president-turned-king sat himself ponderously on the couch he had leaned upon to stay upright and made a signal towards the camera. Twelve old white men, all dressed like the erstwhile Papal Lord, came to kneel by his side to kiss the Eagle Sigil on his right hand before sitting on the 4 couches around the firepot for the first official meeting of the Pure True Paladin-Crusaders of America.

{ SQ } - { The Beginning of the End } - { SQ }

(Eastern America; 17:45pm)

(Western America; 14:45pm)

It was pitifully little peace of mind for those auditors still logical and pragmatic that none of the old duly elected administration officials had been present at the meeting. It was far less reassuring or even helpful to see on screen 1 minute later, when the meeting became secret, the severed heads of dozens of senior elected & nominated officials stuck on the fence points around the White House perimeter. The victims of the internal purge were diverse and far-reaching; Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were right over the main gateway while Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnel were clustered around the supplies delivery gate in the back. With a few hundred points on the fence, it was completely sickening to see they were all occupied already and soldiers were actually setting up artisanal wooden rakes with thick points to mount more heads as they were brought for display.

Only a small handful of officials and bureaucrats had survived Trump's own version of the Nazi's Röhm-Putsch, the 'Night of Long Knives', by the sheer luck of being those selected to attend the Lake Barcroft convention for the 'Noah's Ark' protocol or made to leave Washington DC and Virginia altogether under 'Last Survivor' protocols to keep the Free Government running somehow in case of an full-on civil war. It was that, and so much more. At this point, with so much division of race, religion and age, it was debatable whether the country could, or would, ever reunite again.

Well, the world had been worried about the president's competence and reliability for 4 years now, they had their answer on Trump's mental abilities and policies at long last. Strangely enough though, that wasn't helping anybody anymore.

{ SQ } - { PREVIEW ch.7 } - { SQ }

Lucas is handling some legal problems, then adding to his doomsday preps as the situation in the USA degenerates faster and harder than anybody could ever have anticipated. Some contractors are hired, personal resources are mobilized and secret safe houses in many localities are bought anonymously with contracts paid to have them prepared.

The NCIS team is finally assembled after a tumultuous day and night of house cleaning.

The DXS team go through a hard night and morning before uniting with the NCIS team in preparation for the trip to the airfield, which is in doubt due to all the civil unrest.

The SeaQuest receives its first critical mission under captain Bridger and it doesn't please anybody, but the guests they get are even less pleased at the irony of their situations, especially when Billy Noyce comes to visit them in all his rotund porcine glory. They wanted to drop his name and invoke his power? They would get to see up close what that power looked and felt like in person.

Janet Noyce goes towards Los Angeles, intent on an urgent meeting with an old friend, planning mayhem, corruption, death and inhumanities aplenty along the way, much to the chagrin of her travel mates who, more often than not, are the intended targets of her ire, or at least the vectors of it. There were very good reasons why the CIA had retired 'La Pâtissière du Diable' from any field duty after her unfortunate deployment in France thirty odd years ago. The US embassy in Paris still had the worse reputation of them all for making its guests 'sick' (or 'dead') with sub-par catering at its banquets during major social or diplomatic events. We wonder how that happened?