another teaser for GWOT 2 - Indictment

GWOT 2 Indictment

[SEALED FOR NATIONAL SECURITY REASONS]

Indicted, as criminal organizations:

[COMPANY] SECURITY, San Jose area
[CLIENT] SECURITY, San Jose area
aka [CLIENT] REACTION TEAM, San Jose area

Indicted, as individuals:

[Site Location Executive]
[Echo 18]
[list from Security duty roster]
[Mo]
Dr. Betty Rize
[list from Reaction Team sign up list]
John Does 1 through 200

Charges:

lying to a government official in course of duties

aggravated conspiracy to defraud the United States, amounting to criminal racketeering

conspiracy to commit the following offenses as outlined below:

criminal espionage
civil espionage for profit
violation of the National Security Act
[specifications further classified for national security reasons]
aggravated treason
murder, of persons in service of US government
Homeland Security agents [list of seven]
murder, of persons in protected categories
government contractor Alan Cartwright
unlawful possession of Class III firearms
unlawful manufacture of Class III firearms
unlawful transfer of Class III firearms
unlawful possession of explosives
unlawful manufacture of explosives
unlawful use of explosives in a felony
murder with Class III firearms
murder with explosives
malicious wounding and mayhem with explosives
terrorism
terrorism with a weapon of mass destruction
misuse of classified government computer systems
arson of an inhabited building
dispensing of controlled substances without a license
trafficking in controlled substances, narcotics (opiates), felony weight
trafficking in controlled substances, cannabis, felony weight, sentence enhancement (>1 ton)
harboring illegal aliens
harboring criminal fugitives
harboring agents of a hostile power
assisted escape of a Federal fugitive
assisted escape of persons unlawfully in the United States
forgery of identity papers
forgery of Federal license plates
presentation of fraudulent documents
transport of persons across state lines without Homeland permit
tax evasion
interference in interstate commerce through electronic means - "wire fraud"
misuse of a Government issued access card
impersonation of a Federal official (Homeland)
fraudulent billing on a Federal contract
fraudulent presentation of expense receipts on a Federal contract
unlawful gifts to a Federal official (over $20) to influence said official in performance of duties
trespass on the grounds of a Federal wildlife refuge during a state of national emergency

Narrative:

That the interlinked criminal organizations outlined and their members, employees and adherents have continuously engaged in a criminal conspiracy against the United States, simultaneously to defraud the United States and to form an illegal Class IV militia; to engage in criminal acts furthering the conspiracy including murder, narcotics trafficking and fraud; and in so doing to call the legitimacy of these United States and the brave law enforcers of Homeland into private and public question.

Disposition:

hold for further investigation

Direction Of:

[Redacted] Office of the Inspector General

GWOT Mass Causality

GWOT Mass Causality

(prior to evacuation of the dependent camp)


GWOT Mass Causality

I'm not sure when I realized that we were becoming victims of our own success.

Against all odds, we had accomplished the impossible.

Out of a dozen Big Tech Firms based in commute distance of the flaming remnants of the City by the Bay, the City That Never Sleeps [because it's dead], we were the last campus standing.

Everyone else had shut down or evacuated. But we were up and running. If our campus were a Star Trek ship, we'd be on partial main power, the engines bypassed like a Christmas Tree, and elevators inoperative above the 3rd floor ... but able to make warp speed and fire torpedoes.

Sheltering in our shadow - over 1,700 employees, 400 contractors, and an additional 300 persons of more nebulous status in the perimeter camp.

We kept them fed, housed, watered and provided preventative medical care. We even provided some chronic health care - although half the diabetics were now dead - and had a nominal ability to treat a handful of medical emergencies. You still didn't want to have a heart attack or stroke or GSW. We could put you on oxygen, give you aspirin, hold your hand and (if you knew your blood type) give you a transfusion.

But in the rest of the war ravaged Bay Area, you had your pick between slowly starving and risking eating fallout contaminated food, which would kill you slow or quick depending on whether it was beta particles or plutonium.

Now they were complaining. About _everything_.

The food was not tasty. The water had a funny smell - well, we ran it through our own charcoal filters. The vet surgeon was not licensed to work on humans - never mind that she now had more experience than any battle surgeon not presently deployed to China. Gasoline was unobtainium. The wifi was slow.

No shit the wifi was slow. We were running a private cellular network and more cameras than I cared to think about, half of it on obsolete equipment salvaged from an ewaste recycler.

But the complaint that caused me to completely, utterly lose my own shit was simply this.

No ATM machines.

Fuck me what?

We owned three ATM machines. One fixed-mount in the wall of the campus credit union, one in the cafeteria, and one in what had been the front lobby prior to retrofit. They were unplugged and not stocked with money. We had run out of greenbacks before the sudden and irrevocable change-over to bluebacks, making the former an eye catching toilet paper and the latter a hot commodity.

Our odds of laying hands on $60,000 in blueback $20s was basically zero. The only way to get paid in bluebacks was to work for a US Government agency. Our contracts and our paychecks were all digital, zeroes and ones on cards. A cobbled together internal pay system, running on of all things our access badges, allowed the cafeteria and my own [Echo 18] Sundries and a few other site businesses such as the laundry and the shoe shop in operation. But cash was not something we could handle.

Coins hadn't been affected by the swap. This made quarters more valuable than one would think. In practice we treated any quarter as if it were a paper dollar.

So the ATM machines would remain unplugged.

But the fact that someone was willing to complain about it signaled me loud and clear that we had created such a bubble of civilization, such an island of sanity, that the inhabitants could no longer observe the motion of the ocean.

We could still lose it all. We could still all get killed. Or merely wish we had been.

It was time to slowly, carefully acquaint the employees with the reality of the world outside.

But how?

IF we ran our own news station, we ran the danger of conflicting with the established propaganda (DEATH!) or accidentally publishing something treasonous (DEATH BY TORTURE!).

If we had tours, we couldn't titrate the dosage. Too much truth about the world outside would be as bad, or worse, than not enough. We had enough psychological issues as we could handle even with Dr. Betty Rize counseling and/or sportfucking everyone who could find her office and lie down on a couch, of all genders.

The only solution I could think of was to take up a charity. Under controlled conditions, start doing small projects that would better the fate of the starving masses outside without making us even more of a target of their resentments than we already were.

It would be for show. Make work even.

Everyone likes kids, right? Even kiddie diddlers and priests, but I repeat myself.

So I sat down with Facilities and Operations to come up with a plan for us to do volunteer work at the nearest public elementary school.

Technically the schools were open, and kids were supposed to be going to school. In practice neither the teachers nor the administrators nor the utterly necessary facilities staff were getting paid; they mostly didn't have water or power; and the classrooms were being used for refugee housing or crime lord offices.

The Security team had blank faces.

This convoy was even more bullshit than usual. And it was all my fault.

"Mission: to sweep and clear [Eastside] Elementary School of unauthorized persons, establish and maintain a security perimeter, and organize a mixed group of outside school district employees and volunteers to hold and operate the facility.

"The use of force is authorized. The use of deadly force is not authorized except in point self defense."

This was going to be about as fun as a colonoscopy with a brush truck fire hose.