drewkitty

GWOT IV - The California University

From: GovCal

To: all employees and associates of the University of California, California State University, UC and CSU Extension, the California Polytechnics, other higher educational facilites public and private, and all community colleges and adult libraries as applicable

Subject: the emergency operations of the California University

As acting emergency governor of the State of California in rebellion, in accordance with my authority under the California State Constitution and applicable state laws, I hereby order:

- The University of California is dissolved.

- The California State University (CSU) is dissolved.

- All private universities, with one exception, are dissolved and hereby nationalized. Their employees may become State employees or go do something else, per below.

- All public universities and associated educational and research facilities formerly under United States Government (hostile) control (example: "National Laboratories"), are dissolved.

- Minor regulatory agencies such as the Department of Post Secondary and Vocational Education, the Department of Consumer Affairs, professional regulatory agencies such as the Board of Medicine, etc are dissolved with their functions transferred as programs to the CU. This does NOT include CAL-OSHA.

These entities are merged henceforth into the California University. The governing body of the CU shall be the survivors of the Boards of Regents of the UC and CSU. All of these employees shall become State employees who take oath to California in the manner prescribed by law for disaster service workers. Any person who cannot so swear, for example by retaining loyalty to the United States, is immediately dismissed without severance or benefit.

The mission of the California University is the same as the mission of every California soldier, civilian employee and volunteer as outlined in previous orders. The direct preservation of human life, the protection of valuable public and private properties, and the protection of the natural environment.

The California University therefore will be reorganized around the immediate post-rebellion needs of the People of the State of California.

Each surviving campus will organize itself around the following basic principles:

The primary purpose of the CU is to serve as an emergency teaching university. All education is to be practical, action focused and technically driven. Vocational certificates and licenses are much more important than degrees. Time is of the essence.

I have identified the following professional educations as emergency priority: medical doctor, nurse, the allied health professions, agronomist, large animal veternarian, military and naval officer, civil and structural and materials engineering, aerospace, computer sciences, manufacturing, operations management, teaching. Programs teaching these subjects shall have priority over other subjects. This list is subject to change.

Whenever possible, education and programs will incorporate public service and direct public benefit. Medical internships in the Medical Cities, agronomy projects on or off campus that feed the poor and teach new farmers, engineering projects that actually build bridges, aerospace work on live projects, etc.

All campuses shall conduct military officer education. The campus heads of military educational programs must hold the Governor's Commission in the Military Department, ranks and details of organization to be determined administratively by the Commanding General and delegates, and thereby hold military authority over these programs. Subordinate instructors and staff need not be members of the Military Department.

The California University may not confer any academic degree unless the holder has completed one year of military-related education and has sworn oath to serve at need as a military reserve officer, or equivalent such as Red Lion or medical service. Recall that all doctors and nurses, and some auxiliary medical personnel in the service of this State, civilian and military, outside of the Red Lion humanitarian organization are sworn to the Surgeon General. Licensed and qualified workers may work without an academic degree, but anyone who holds an academic degree must be so sworn. "To earn peace we must study war."

The secondary purpose of the CU is to preserve and protect human knowledge, including existing archives and institutions, and convey that knowledge through teaching and research ON A SPACE AND TIME AVAILABLE BASIS. The preservation of unique and endangered knowledge, and knowledge of practical value such as pre-Firecracker ownership records, shall be a higher priority than duplicating knowledge that is not in peril.

I have been reluctantly persuaded that it would do more harm than good to put the CU under direct control of the California Military Department. I remind you that the display of symbols of the United States is strictly prohibited in State facilities, as is the advocacy of pro-American politics or contacts or cooperation with the United States, or acceptance of funds from the USA. Actual rebellion will not be tolerated within the CU any more than within the Medical Cities, the Military Department or any other State civilian or military program. If any or all of these things occur, I am likely to revisit the decision to leave some or all of the CU under civilian control.

Three special notes:

In recognition of its extraordinary services to the people of the State of California and to the survivors of murdered San Francisco, the Stanford University shall enjoy the only charter as a licensed private university in California. This is a license, subject to audit and control to substantially comply with the non-American requirements above.

The former UC San Francisco, San Francisco State and educational facilities within the San Francisco area are to instead prioritize the preservation of knowledge about the Firecracker War, the thermonuclear destruction of San Francisco, the rescue and recovery operations during the Homeland Era, and their continuation and support under California State oversight to the present day. The formation of museums and the tasteful and appropriate display of American symbols in this regard is permitted.

The California Institute of Technology ("Cal Tech") has the permission of this office to cooperate with the United States for the purpose of preserving the functionality of deep space programs such as the Voyager, New Horizons and Mars rovers, in the service of general human knowledge and the hopes of an eventual peace.

Special relationships:

The CU shall also take the lead in developing supports for the restoration of the K-12 educational system, the community college and the adult library systems of California, which have been at best neglected and often actively destroyed by the events of the Firecracker War and attempted Homeland occupation. The schools and colleges and libraries must take up their own burdens, but the CU will assist and set standards for performance, content and online education.

It is forbidden to purchase textbooks from outside California. It is inappropriate to use pre-War textbooks without supplements explaining the interaction between recent and current events. The intent is that the CU develops curricula for pursuit of knowledge and practical skills, which will then be generally and publicly available at minimal or even no cost within California, and at market prices outside California.

To summarize: the California University is to conventional universities what military music is to music.

Our people are suffering.

Get to work.

GWOT V - Crew Drills

"Training must be constant and rigorous." - Rule 5, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover

Every military unit has a TO&E. This is the Table of Organization & Equipment. A list of how the unit is organized and what it owns.

Our TO&E was on the whiteboard in my office.

It changed that often.

I also could occasionally borrow other people's assets. But I didn't own them. Their care, feeding and training was not my problem.

What I did own was four platoons, loosely organized.

Alpha Platoon was our mortars section. It ran as a self contained shop. Aside from contributing soldiers to the innumerable details (chores) necessary to run a forward operating base, Alpha's job was to staff four to six 81mm and two 120mm mortars. The former were carried in the backs of their six pickup and three full size trucks. The l20s were towable. They also had 60mm or 'knee' mortars, as seen in a plastic toy I remembered from my childhood. I had procured them four additional 120mm mortars. Two of them were permanently installed at McNasty in bunkers. One was permanently installed at the Campos overlook. One was in warm storage for emergencies. They could fire high explosive, incendiaries, smoke rounds ... but their purpose was to fire nerve gas. They trained with tear gas for the use of nerve gas. The formal term is "Weapons of Mass Destruction Capable." Deterrence, of an invasion. The Mexican Army was strong on a lot of things, but not CBRNE or B-NICE or NBC or the other acronyms of horror.

Bravo Platoon was organized as a scout troop. Only about half the soldiers were actually 'scout soldiers,' a difficult to earn and highly prized designation earned after a lot of hard work. The rest merely aspired to be. Scouting on foot in the desert is a quick path to death, from dehydration if nothing else, so they lived in their vehicles. As roads are fatal funnels and intersections are death traps, they did a lot of off road driving. They owned about twenty vehicles but were expected on demand to staff eight, as our reaction force.

Charlie Platoon was organized as a Military Police unit. Most of them were not scout soldiers. Instead, they studied the mechanics of being a military police officer. This involves prosaic things such as traffic control and detainee processing, but also very hard things like battlefield management, crime scene forensics and executing military justice. The latter involves tying a noose with rope. THey also needed vehicles and needed to do off road driving. They owned about a dozen vehicles, but all were marked as Military Police vehicles.

Dirty Delta was everyone else. The clerks, the jocks, the supports, the bunker ducks, the cooks, the mumblers, the ball scratchers, the pill pushers. Also all the new meat, who had to do their time in Delta before being considered for filling a slot in one of the other three. They took care of all the other vehicles but any movement by them in vehicles was very carefully controlled and only during the day.

I wore a lot of hats. The most annoying one was Delta platoon leader. I was that short of qualified NCOs and officers.

Alpha Platoon's CO and XO were as close to long service professionals as the California Military Department could muster. They were both pre-War military. The NCO had even been through the US Army's pre-Firecracker chemical warfare course. I gave them what they asked for and left them alone. Alpha Platoon ran itself. I occasionally required them to demonstrated their skills. This was most often through the mechanism of a "hip shoot." I declared a target. They took their vehicles, drove out there, set up, fired the mission, broke down and returned. On a timer, because enemy artillery would be shooting back.

Bravo Platoon was under a newly minted Lieutenant whose welcome to the Border had been a complex ambush that left her curled in a ball around a pistol all night, wondering if she would shoot the scavengers or herself. Things did not get better from there. Only harder. She was backstopped by six veteran NCOs, four of whom had actually graduated the scout-soldier challenge course taught at Ishi. The other two were former US Army Rangers. They trained everyone, and also her.

Charlie Platoon had a nice round of bad cop worse cop going. McNasty had not enjoyed a pick of personnel. So I had a pregnant MP Lieutenant and detention specialist supervising a burned out senior NCO who hated my guts. I carefully did not notice that they had started fucking. It was a fickle command team, but the daddy-mommy dynamic can be used to supervise a unit just as it can be used to supervise a family. They didn't have any other NCOs and were trying to grow their own. But we didn't have years, nor even months.

Delta had no formal leadership other than myself. Informal authority was the head cook, who doubled as the base security NCO, and the Doc, who knew me well from a prior life. I'd instituted a number of controls, but most notably a rotating Duty Sentry and Duty Clerk. The Sentry owned the front gate and did the rounds; the Clerk kept the records and answered the phone and staffed what some military units would call a TOC (Tactical Operations Center) and I chose to call the Clerk Desk. Even the most junior personnel in A, B and C had to take a turn in both positions on rotation. Dirty Deltas did what they were told.

I spent about three hours a day writing SOPs and setting expectations. The platoon leaders had to deal with those.

Individual skills were practiced two hours a day. For the scout-soldiers this was driving, sometimes static (which meant sitting in the seat and pretending), and rifle. For the MPs this was rifle, and also pistol, and also grenades, and arrest and control tactics. Dirty Delta practiced in hand to hand, and mopping floors. They could train on firearms only under the strictest supervision.

Crew skills were trained for three hours twice a day, unless other operations forbade. They usually did. I tried not to go more than a day without a training session. Some days were two; some days were none. But the 'other operations' were generally real, and therefore practice with added risk of death and dismemberment, because there is no range safety officer on the two way range.

Every vehicle crew had three positions, just as I had during that first horrible ambush. Driver, gunner, vehicle commander. Everyone cross trained constantly. If a vehicle carried extra bodies, which was great when it happened, they could do other mission tasks as appropriate. But the unholy trinity of move shoot communicate kept everyone on that vehicle alive. That meant constant practice.

SOP could only do so much. It could let different people work together and speak the same language. But it couldn't build the close cohesion, the subtle reading of body language and head movements, that allowed a crew to respond to a deadly threat like a well tuned machine.

Obviously I could do any of those tasks personally. But I had a unit to run and/or incidents to command. So I typically rode as a fifth body. The fourth was assigned to bodyguard me. That way I didn't have to pay attention to all the things that were trying to kill me, so I could instead pay attention to all the things that were trying to kill all of us.

Some of the drills were really annoying. Vehicle repair drills were a great example. I would tell the VC to pull a card. The card would tell them what casualty the vehicle had just experienced. Mobility - coolant leak, flat tire, air leak (the brakes!) on our larger vehicles. Fix a flat is annoying. Fix a flat at the side of the freeway with passing traffic is very annoying. Fix a flat while being shot at is just not right.

Casualty drills were worse. A random member of the crew would be "wounded" or "dead" and the other two would have to take over in a hurry. Put the driver in the back, VC or gunner takes over, and a hard choice whether to do first aid or keep the guns hot. Someone gonna die either way.

The least enjoyable and most vicious drill was the disablement drill. The vehicle is the kaput. Therefore, switch to being infantry. Secure the special equipment - such as the MDT, radios and sights - grab the dismount bags and tools, simulate throwing a grenade in the former vehicle if conditions warranted, and hike to a vantage point. Usually the top of a hill. Lay out a panel and set up an LZ, spot for air support, and/or dig trenches. Be ready to get a ride out, by ground or air, or to fight it out, or to dump almost all gear and attempt to hike out.

All of this had happened to us already, before the drills. We just hadn't been able to react as well as we could have, and people had died.

Alpha Platoon had instituted a system of permanent staffing. Alpha One, Two, Three and Four had a designated driver, mortarman (shortened to 'mortar' because not all were men), gunner and vehicle commander who doubled as gunlayer. Alpha Eleven and Twelve had a driver, backup driver, Mortars 1 and 2, sighter, tail gunner and vehicle commander. This was because of the crew needs of the 120s. But they could practice their individual role, over and over again, and get really good at the quirks of their team and their vehicle.

Bravo chose standardization. Every driver was an interchangeable part. Every gunner as well. VCs owned 'their' vehicles but often were placed on other people's vehicles and had to make it work.

Charlie couldn't train to anywhere near that standard, and didn't have enough drivers to boot. So MP-drivers were designated, the rest were MPs who could either run the guns or run the radio, and vehicle commander wasn't a phrase they used.

Delta didn't staff vehicles on the Border or the highway. But that didn't mean Delta was off the hook. We had two utility vehicles used for training that could be staffed as part of the defense of McNasty. Graduates of that training could then practice driving on the ambulance or the casevac. (The only difference was whether we put the Velcro cover with the Red Cross on all five sides that day). Neither had a gunner. We paired a trainee driver with a skilled driver, the trainee did all the normal driving, and the skilled driver took over if there was actually a need for emergency driving. Gunners were trained with the bunkers.

Instead of crew drills, Delta had PT. Everyone did PT, but Delta's was organized and led by the Delta platoon leader. Other platoons were welcome to join, if ordered or if individuals wished.

Ow.

I cheated just that little bit. I wore armor and load bearing vest with my survival load, but I carried no mission or sustainment load. This gave me a forty pound advantage over the trainees. At my age and in my condition, I needed that edge.

But they hiked what I hiked.

I'd done some research. I'd found out what the old McNasty folks, in the pre-Firecracker days, had used for a firefighter crew hike. This was our morning PT hike, in the morning before the sun was too bad. Sometimes before breakfast because I'm a jerk. Sometimes after, because I'm a jerk that doesn't mind running past vomit.

Just basic conditioning.

Until the day that I had a trainee collapse on the hike.

###

"Sir, soldier down."

No one likes hearing those words.

I doubled back. I could see, from a distance, two soldiers bending over a third flaked out on the ground.

Our SOP called for two medic bags to be carried with us on the morning PT hike. One was carried by one of our gazelle athletes, who was way far ahead. The other was nearby but not close.

I radioed the camp.

"We need a vehicle and the Doc. Possible heat exhaustion."

Then I made my way back. By the time I got there, the other two soldiers had gotten the casualty's armor and rucksack off.

His skin was hot to the touch.

His skin was hot to the touch.

I took my own canteen and poured it over his head and newly bare chest.

Then I stepped aside and changed nets.

"Rampart, Campos Sector Actual at McNasty. Emergency traffic. Acknowledge at once."

They did.

"Dustoff for heat stroke casualty, to McNasty. Patient is a soldier in mid twenties with signs of heat stroke, during PT. Patient is semiconscious and an EMT is with the patient. ALS en route. Dustoff to McNasty helipad."

They acknowledged.

The ambulance (in casevac configuration, so no crosses) came roaring up the single-track. By then we had already taken the folding canvas stretcher out of the medic bag and bundled the patient into it. Two more soldiers were holding up a reflective metallic blanket - what had once been called a Space Blanket - so that the patient lay in its shade.

This is the first aid for heat exhaustion. Rest in the shade and drink fluids. All three are required.

A heat stroke casualty is overheating. Their brain is cooking in their head. They need to be in an air conditioned environment, if they can drink water it should only be small sips, but often they cannot even do that and need IV fluid access to reverse dehydration. Other metabolic changes are occuring as well. They can block their own kidneys with spilled muscle proteins. They can have arrythmias and suffer heart failure. Or just stop breathing and die.

We loaded into the ambulance and I stayed with it.

The Doc was in the back and stuck the IV while it bounced back down the single track. Don't try this at home. It's like threading a needle while riding a roller coaster, except you're doing it into someone's blood vessels.

The AC was already roaring. The ambulance had not been skimped on cooling capacity. I now felt chill. The casualty's skin was still hot.

Another medic was shoving ice packs under the armpits and into the groin. The patient did not notice the ice against his balls. More ice, against the back of the neck, at the wrists and along the sides of the neck.

"Red Lion 14 has accepted the mission and is en route from Irvine Air Base."

Dammit. That was too long an ETA.

Ten minutes later, we drove into the open gate of McNasty and pulled up next the infirmary.

A former cattle trough full of water was seeded with ice out front, in the shade, and we lowered the casualty slowly into it. The medics protected the full open IV lines in case the patient started seizing.

He woke up instead. But unlike say me if you dunked me in an ice bath, he did not shoot out of the ice cold water. He relaxed into it.

"What happened?" he asked blearily.

A very good sign.

"You collapsed on the hike. Try to rest," I said, with all the Old Man gravitas I could muster without choking.

Then he started to shiver a little. The medics took his temperature, reassured him, waited a minute, and then pulled him out. Carried him inside to a bed in the air conditioned infirmary. Covered him with a sheet that would make him feel better but not keep him warm.

Someone came in, dropped a gear bag next to the patient and went out again. Someone had thoughtfully packed for him.

His personal effects. One way or another, he might not be coming back, and would want his stuff at the hospital.

"Red Lion 14, new ETA forty minutes mark."

They took his vitals again. The Doc had a chart. She talked with her medics, then took me aside.

"He needs to go. There's labs and bloodwork I can't do here. It could just be simple overexertion and dehydration. But I can't tell."

I nodded.

"He's going," I assured her.

She could do meatball care, but this wasn't even as good as a pre-War emergency room. Odds were he'd be fine, but if not he'd be dead, and there was nothing here worth killing a California Republic soldier over.

We were, of course, risking an aircraft. This is a normal risk we accept as part of every flight, operational or training. Red Lion was careful and took good care of their birds. I vaguely heard the second PA announcement that a friendly aircraft was inbound, for the benefit of all personnel but especially perimeter guards and bunker gunners.

She oversaw another vitals check. No change. Not better, not worse. A high heart rate, despite no exertion. She used the EKG to run a strip. I motioned. She handed it to me. I read it and handed it back.

"McNasty, this is Red Lion 14, how do you copy?"

"McNasty copies loud and clear."

"New ETA 0945 hours. Patient age condition and weight?"

"Patient is a male in his early twenties, temporarily stable having suffered a heat stroke episode. Now alert and oriented. Last blood pressure 160 over 104, heart rate 140, throwing PVCs, core temperature one hundred point fiver. Three units normal saline administered. Weight approx 160 pounds."

"Confirm ground safety conditions?"

"This is an active military base. We have no security concerns and all personnel have been advised of your arrival."

Soon the Red Lion helicopter was on final approach, then landing, then a red helmeted Red Lion flight medic was in the room, conversing with the Doc in low tones. They briefly considered the EKG strip. Then my Doc set up the EKG and ran it again.

I could have blinked and missed it.

The patient was moved swiftly and smoothly to the helicopter which took off at once, roaring for altitude and banking north. Not for Orange County but for the comprehensive trauma center at Arrowhead in San Bernardino County.

His personal effects bag did not go with him. I had my orderly make up tags for it, an address here and the destination address of the hospital. We would mail it with the daily today, CA Post Express, military frankage privilege.

The Doc stripped off her gloves. Her team cleaned up the ice bath and changed the sheets on the bed.

"Well, fingers crossed."

Now I had to do my own work. Gather information for the investigation and the mandatory safety report. What went well, what could have been done better.

###

As young dumb kids will sometimes do, he'd not kept up with his hydration the night before. Then he'd slammed two energy drinks in the morning before PT. A brutal combination that had stressed and could have damaged his heart. I made sure the additional clinical information was sent ahead.

We would redo the heat illness prevention training for the entire unit.

Policy change. The energy drinks were now one at a time. You couldn't keep a stash in your locker. Vehicles, yes, but if you rendered yourself unfit for duty outside the wire, your crewmates would object before an officer had the chance.

We got the word ninety minutes later. Helicopter landed, patient transferred, preliminary emergency lab results and clinical EKG results read by a duty cardiologist. He'd probably be fine. A day or two in hospital, a week or two of rest.

But he wouldn't be coming back to McNasty. The Republic could find another place to use him.

A casualty, as certain if not as final as being shot in the head.

But also good training. My Dirty Deltas, my weak links, had responded seamlessly to a real world emergency and could be proud of their performance.

We had to work in the heat. We had to do hard physical labor in the heat. There was no other way. PT established the baseline capability to do that work, which kept the California Republic's borders secure and our people safe.

Tomorrow I would lead PT again.

But I would be hydrating carefully tonight, because I would carry a forty pound mission load.

I told myself it was good training.

It was penance.

GWOT 2 - In The Cold

"The well-fed, self-satisfied, egoistic soldier will never perform any acts of heroism. Only someone who has been driven barefoot into the mud and snow, who has had even his bread taken away from him and has proved every day with his fists his right to existence - only this kind of man is capable of showing one day that he really is the best." - _Spetznaz_ by Viktor Suvorov

Shawn failed. The Colonel is very much alive.

All of us are initiates of the mysteries of death. But I am anointed as if ready for the altar. Not only do the Dirty Mercs want me dead, but their foe the Resistance wants me dead as well.

Those who stand in the middle get hit from both sides. The Dirty Mercs are the dirty left hand of Homeland, doing the dirty work even Homeland's Special Troops shrink at doing. The Resistance has had it up to here with Homeland and with the War in general. The Site I protect is essential to the War, and therefore ...

"What do we do with the meat?" Shane Shreve asked.

As best I could remember, in many bitter months of war, this marked the very first time he had shown any initiative at all.

The meat was a Resistance assassin. She had come within seconds of killing me, and only Shane's instant willingness to bayonet someone he did not recognize had saved my life.

Arturo raised a finger.

"Boss. I think she succeeded."

Shane looked puzzled, as he always did.

I nodded. It was certainly a gambit worth trying.

"Shreve. You saw her kill me in that room. You then killed her out here. Give us a two minute head start. Arturo will handle the details."

I took off my uniform shirt with its damning Echo 18 nametape. Added my radio and my wifi cell. Arturo tossed the pile in the empty office as I headed directly for the basement via the nearest stairwell. Facilities keys got me into the maintenance corridors.

"Alert Two. Alert Two. The Reaction Team WILL RESPOND to..."

No cameras down here. We had made several plans for unpleasant contingencies. One was another overt invasion, a successful one, in which we would have to retreat into the warrens under Site as enemy infantry hunted us down with grenade and bayonet. To even hint that it might be Homeland would be treason.

Another was another nuclear attack, a more sustained one, in which only those parts of Site well below ground would be survivable for three to five weeks. We had laid in a supply of drinking water. We had wanted to store food, but between general shortages and Cartwright's mismanagement, that had not been possible.

The idea that we might have to hide a few people had crossed our minds. I had not thought that the person might be me.

The best way to keep the Resistance from trying again would be to let them think they succeeded. Also a potential approach for smoking out their agents on Site.

We were really, really careful about unauthorized personnel. The assassin has not teleported through our perimeter or into the building. She had help. We needed to know who so we could patch the vulnerabilities. Perhaps by transferring them to more appropriate duties, such as sorting recycling in the Trash Yard with a red PRISONER badge. Or pushing up daisies. Whatever.

My team was not stupid. Within minutes they would be reviewing cameras and badge traces, for as long as it took to link backwards from the leaky corpse to how she got in.

A side benefit would be tracking who was happy that I had apparently taken the Big Dirt Nap. I might enjoy their discomfiture when my resurrection was at hand. More importantly, it would further identify security vulnerabilities.

All that was required was that I stay out of sight for a few days. No badge trace would reveal my survival. As long as I stayed down here, in the subbasements.

I made sure I had a water bottle and an empty five gallon bucket with a tight fitting lid.

###

It was so cold.

I hugged my knees to my chest. The one thin cushion I had liberated from a pile of old office furniture kept the concrete floor from sucking the heat out of me.

I occasionally refilled the bottle of water from the little sink and toilet room off the sub mezzanine. I suspected it had been originally installed to use this entire area as a shelter, but forgotten about. It had no toilet paper, but not because we'd run out months ago. Because Janitorial has forgotten this bathroom existed some years ago, long before the Firecracker.

The toilet was balky but flushed with help from a full bucket of water. Not as good as I had hoped but much better than it could have been.

I had to wait until middle of the day to flush. Sounds down here might be investigated.

I dozed fitfully, when nightmares let me.

###

Approximately forever later, I recognized brisk footsteps.

Dr. Betty Rize with a blanket over one arm and a paper clamshell full of warm food.

"You look like shit," she greeted me amiably.

She had forgotten utensils, so I ate with the fingers of my right hand with the blanket wrapped around me.

"Wyatt and Arturo think we've got them all. An office clerk, a coder and a dependent. What we don't have is the off site link."

That was bad. That was the problem in a nutshell.

"So he wants you to hang down here another day. Up to it?"

I nodded.

She put a hand on my shoulder and even through the very welcome thin blanket, I flinched.

"I won't forget utensils next time. Um. Bye now."

Her footsteps, now hesitant and uncertain, retreated.

I returned to my hollow thoughts.

###

An endless time of half dozing later, someone was trying to sneak up on me, which was as good as a shout.

I sighed.

"Sarah."

"Sir."

"Report."

"We have a problem, sir..."

###

Both the Resistance and the Dirty Mercs were ramping up their efforts to intrude at the Site.

I couldn't do a damn thing about the Resistance. I had very little intel and no way to action it, or develop more.

I could do something about the Dirty Mercs. I knew where they were based. I had done a full mission profile for Shawn, sending him out with everything I knew.

To get killed.

So it was time to send a man to do a boy's work, instead of the other way around.

###

This was bound to be some serious bullshit. The manuals said you start with a good night's sleep, well hydrated and with full gear. You get dropped off by a vehicle near the objective. Infiltrate. Then go overt and do your Ramcommandonator bullshit. Then run away before your target recovers.

I am starting strung out, hungry, as mentally fucked up as I have been in weeks.

Good. Suffering is the path.

I exfiltrated the building, made a stop at the bomb shed, cached my keys and access badges and effects that linked me to Site, and started my night hike.

I had no firearms. I didn't need them.

###

The house with the Special Troops was as easy for me to avoid as it had been for Shawn.

My heightened awareness, like his, was enough to avoid the trip wires and trigger plates for the flares and directional mines.

I briefly visited each house. Left my present. Like Santa, or perhaps the Grinch. Treasuring what George and Mo had taught me.

The house nearest the top, that one had been the Colonel's. I left no present there. I could not dare a close approach. Like me, he feared assassination and had survived multiple attempts.

The last thing I wanted to do now was kill him. He was essential to my plan.

I waited loosely, fiercely hungry with my belly full of garden hose water, until each house below simultaneously exploded. Small explosions. But next to each house's propane ... ah, a big one. Another.

I could see into the Colonel's bedroom as he cuffed his sex slaves out of his way and opened his safe.

I threw a rock and shattered his window as he grabbed his rifle.

"Colonel!" I shouted. "Colonel!"

Then I moved. No pause, no hesitation, which was good as bullets kicked up dirt where I had been.

I had no firearm. Which removed a temptation to be killed, as I would never be as good a shot as the good Colonel.

But I was a much, much better strategist

###

My guards gathered to cheer me as I walked from the South Gate to my quarters in A building.

Sharon and Arturo brought me a jacket to conceal the ripped undershirt and bruises.

"Homeland is _pissed_ at the Dirty Mercs. They pushed the big red button but had no bodies to show. Just some burned houses and the Colonel swearing up and down it was you. Badge trace shows you were here the whole time."

Nice.

It was Brooke in the shower who gave me the dirty part.

"Four Resistance agents. The conduit was through the school. Volunteer to child to Resistance parent."

I was too tired to care as she scrubbed me down.

"We didn't have a choice. Janine decided."

A fierce whisper in my ear.

"All six are dead."

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

I wasn't worth that.

I started to collapse as if all my strings had been cut.

Brooke grabbed me in the one place you don't grab a man. You just don't.

"Get your shit straight, soldier." Her grip was light but firm. Then she let go.

Slapped me on the back.

"You got this, sir."

I was poured into bed. Too tired to think.

Too tired not to.

The six deaths weren't for me. They were for the Site. We couldn't tolerate a Resistance direct link.

###

"Go," Janine ordered. "Do not come back!"

"But..."

She got out of the fire engine and raised an empty fist.

The four slunk away down the road.

It was not her fist. It was what she could order.

Janine got back in the engine and made a three point turn. Back to Site.

GWOT III - Why The Fuck Bother?

At long last we were reaching the endgame.

The sheer amount of suffering I'd had to endure to get to this point.

The physical torture was bad enough.

The way the first interrogator had mistreated me - even by the standards of destructive interrogation - had enraged and annoyed me. Enough to kill him; not enough to break me.

The second interrogator had gotten under my skin. Reminded me of things I preferred never to think about. Asked questions that made me think and sent me back to my cell to think about them. He hadn't put burning slivers under my fingernails. He'd slid them into my soul instead.

But he was gone and I was now in the hands of the finishers.

Increasingly I was a thing to which things were done.

I remember the blood gutter mostly because they removed the head restraint to make me look at it, as the fingernails on my left hand were excised. First the damaged ones, then the healthy ones. With a scalpel indistinguishable from a hobby knife.

Oh it hurt. And it was horror. Doesn't grow back.

But I was reconciled to my death in this building, on this floor or the one below. The surgical wards, or the incinerator. So life altering injuries no longer moved me.

Each time, I was given "one chance" to start cooperating.

Every now and again, I was asked, as if casually, while being rolled to and from or while we waited for a 'technician' to be available.

"Why are you [R]esisting?"

I could hear the capital letter. The Resistance was doing things. Even though my file now read that I wasn't a Resistance member, in order to torture me properly everyone had to pretend I was a Resistance operative.

I knew better.

I was still on a third side. My own.

America may have receded into the distance. Site was a memory, mostly bad. Before that, I had merely endured.

When you are in the middle of the road, you get hit from both sides.

The Resistance had tried to assassinate me at Site. I had killed Resistance troops, both covertly and openly.

Homeland had taken me into custody, murdered my last few friends in the world, for all I knew run Site through a blender. They accused me constantly of killing Homeland troops, but as far as I knew, the first Homeland officer I had murdered was the one in this building. After arrest and torture.

(Murdered? An interesting question. If I were a Resistance operative, it would be killing in war. But as I was not, it was just civil murder, actionable treason by Homeland standards, but outside whatever protections a partisan might enjoy from the laws of war.)

This might be my last moment of clarity. Like, ever.

Eternity awaited. My open grave yawned in front of me.

I had no illusions of a hereafter. Dead is dead. I'd seen it enough. I'd _done_ it enough.

So why the fuck did I bother?

I'd watched a dull science fiction movie. But a quote from it had caused me to do a little reading.

Captain Ahab's last words.

"To the last I grapple with thee; from Hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."

It wasn't that. I didn't feel the hatred anymore. I was past that. Just as I no longer feared death, I no longer hated. Not even the clerks and jerks who wheeled my dying meat around and hooked and prodded it. Just meat market workers. Not worth the effort to hate.

The closest I'd come to breaking was my interview with the (not good) Colonel. He'd asked smart questions and he'd actually _listened_.

Intellectual interest. Gossip between peers. We both were useful to Homeland in our own ways. And we'd both taken losses. Mine worse than his, but there had been a point where I might have ended up in Homeland employ and he might have ended up strapped to one of these rolling gurneys.

He'd played the game. I had not. A lesson worth remembering, if I get a next life.

I knew intellectually that I was disassociating. Even when in that rare and vague moment of clarity. Not a good sign.

I did not hate Homeland. Perhaps intellectually, for so damaging America - but I'd fallen out of love with her too, so it evened out.

I no longer hated the H-1B visa holders for whom I'd risked and suffered so much. Their own graves awaited. Soon or late, we are all initiates of the mysteries of death.

At long last, I stopped hating and resenting my family. They were long dead.

They had given me a dark gift, that had helped me immensely as the torture in this building worsened.

There was no new ground here. I'd been beaten, raped, tortured and emotionally abused as a child.

This was not worse. It was just more.

The crazy was still there. But in this moment, it receded, like a wave and a beach.

This was my last walk along that beach. I could sense it.

I'd told myself, more than once, that if my death were imminent, that I would attempt to appreciate some beautiful thing in that last moment before the dying of the light.

There was little to admire here.

Perhaps the little flicker from the pilot light of the incinerator, when they wheeled me into it again.

(Yes, I said again. The most mercenary teasing bitch you can imagine at a nightclub has nothing on Homeland's final stop for her victims.)

I'd learned, in my studies of psychology as it affects military history, that most people love and that other people are all the meaning most people can find.

There were perhaps a few people I'd cared about, that maybe Homeland hadn't murdered yet.

Brooke. Betty. Sarah.

Least first. Sarah. I felt for her, she'd gotten a very raw deal in the Firecracker. But while we had a debt between us, and I'd cared for her like no one had ever cared for her - or for me - our relations were neither romantic nor sexual. I suppose adopted daughter is close enough. But she had HIV, and she was symptomatic, and she was a fugitive from Homeland. She would cut a swath through whatever Homeland unit took her down, but take her down they would.

Betty. Bitch. There had been sexual tension between us, mostly on her side, but never consummated. The idea of her surviving Homeland hunting her was almost laughable. But she was clever. I knew she wouldn't turn. So she would lose, and die, and if she were lucky, it would be quick.

Brooke. I sighed.

A little sexual tension on my side. None on hers. Also never consummated. Her sexuality could be used as a straightedge - 100% full bore lesbian, laughing at butch and femme but borrowing from elements of both. We had fought together, trained together. As her commander she was a reliable extension of my will. As her leader she could count on me for her life - even if I chose to spend it. We had lived together for months, so closely that some fools thought we were lovers. When the triple beeps of a Site alarm went off while we slept, it caught us in each other's arms. We thought nothing of shaving, showering and shitting in front of each other.

My darkness was my past and my life. Hers was her first and only wife, dead. Murdered by bandits, but given what Homeland had done to make all that banditry possible, she might as well have been sidewalked. We were united in that dark, a pair of lonely flashing beacons that synced.

In a sane universe we would have never been what we were. But in this universe, this insane mess, I was *her* wife. Outwardly she was my orderly and bodyguard. But she was in fact my keeper, and I was hers. A wedding made of the blood of those we suffered to protect.

Even Hercules cannot fight two. Homeland would take her down. She would die hard, but die she would.

There was nothing they could do for me, and I could do nothing for them.

So, the living or dead, the people were also receding into the past. There was beauty there, but even the memory of the memory was fading.

There was a sunk cost here.

I had suffered so much pain. Sunk cost fallacy. What was a little more?

Why not?

At the end of the day, my last hour of my last day, it came down to the most cynical point imaginable.

Oh well, what the hell. Never mind that burning smell.

Cauterized fingernails.

It was something to do.

The pain punched through my clarity, and I howled.

I would die as I had chosen to live.

Why the fuck not?

GWOT V - Typing Drill

Camp McNasty is Camp McEmpty. We have temporarily abandoned it, locking the gates and arming the mines.

Because we're a little busy.

"Rampart, Echo 18, OTX Traffic."

"OTX Go."

"We have a major incursion. McNasty destroyed by Mexican aircraft. Enemy scout units in force along the entire Sector boundary proceeding North. Campos Nation also destroyed. Executing Tripwire. I have fire missions."

"OTX unable to service, artillery is in movement and air bases are also under attack. Advise of main enemy advance when possible. Out."

Well, damn. There went engaging the enemy scouts with air strikes and barrages. That left direct fires.

There was absolutely no question of my force of lightly armed scout vehicles defeating a Mexican invasion. The scout forces arrayed on my mobile display terminal - MDT - outnumbered my forces six to one. They were only the eyeballs for the Mexican general deciding where to punch his armor through. I checked the OOB again.

A fucking armored brigade. Lovely.

If every single one of the Mexican soldiers stood in front of us unarmed, and we fired one shot per Mexican, we would run out of bullets long before a brigade ran out of bodies.

Rampart needed to know, very badly, exactly _where_ that brigade planned to cross. Were they going to punch west for El Cajon and San Diego, punch east for El Centro, or hey diddle diddle through the middle up into the softer underbelly of the California deserts?

That was our job. Figure it out.

"Echo 18, all units, execute OTX Tripwire. Spread out, stay alive, report contacts through your MDTs. If you sight armor or heavy log, break radio silence."

One of the many, many supports the Mexican brigade brought to the party was a dedicated battalion of rocket assisted 155mm self propelled guns, with radio direction finders.

Anyone talking on a California frequency could expect shells in the air flying towards them before they finished their second sentence.

The enemy scouts wanted to know where our main defenders were, what was in place to block their advance (not much) and the condition of the road net. They also wanted to keep us - California's scouts - from figuring out where their armor was going.

Tanks need fuel. A convoy of fuel trucks was good as a shout, "Over here, vatos!"

We couldn't meaningfully engage tanks.

We could engage a convoy of undefended fuel trucks. But they'd be more likely to advance in their underwear than without a guard force to protect them.

My role in this was almost over. Either my people knew what they were doing, or they didn't.

###

"Two five, two seven, the military crest."

"I see it."

Dust cloud. That meant a vehicle. Smugglers weren't going to be running during a major invasion.

"RTX?"

"Negative."

###

"Echo 18, Bravo 7, real world. Runner, Phase Line Mary."

The total information systems could lock up your brain if you let them. But I knew how to remote a camera view without losing the rest of my picture.

Yup. Runner.

Fuck the RTX and the Mexicans.

"All Two Units, intercept Roger One at Phase Line Mary."

I had to make a phone call. I didn't expect it to go well.

It didn't.

###

Clicking END on a data link call is nowhere near as satisfying as slamming down a handset.

But I was in command of Campos Sector, so it was my decision no matter how much Rampart disliked it.

"Two seven, making contact. Warning shots. They're slowing. Fuck me blind, they just dumped two bodies. I am pursuing."

Smugglers. Apparently they had not gotten the memo, and were playing by the old rules. No migrants on board, repatriate to Mexican territory.

Commit murder in front of California forces ...

"Target destroyed. Two five, can you check the bodies? We'll close on the target and gather intel."

###

The smuggler vehicle had burned to a crisp. Nothing had been blown clear. Two charred corpses grinned - they always do that when the muscles burn away.

The dumpees were another story. One was still alive. But not for very long.

"Multiple GSW to the abdomen. Not happening even with a full trauma center here and now."

And our nearest trauma center at Arrowhead was an hour away by air.

She spoke no English or Spanish. But our translator was recording and sort of spoke a Mayan dialect, related to but not the same as the casualty.

She was also desperate to tell us. She knew she was dying. But it was important.

###

"They were doing recon for a larger refugee movement. The two were brought along as entertainment."

About six hundred migrants in a particular canyon south of the Border. Thanks to the RTX, we had some access to battlefield intel that we normally did not. Optics and IR can see more things when you know where to point.

We could not under any circumstances whatsoever cross the Border to rescue them from their captors.

That did not mean there was nothing we could do.

"Continue the RTX. Reopen McNasty. Be careful. Let's leave a nice big pocket near Mary. Let them think we're busy doing other stuff. And set up for mass internment."

Then I called a ursine friend of mine. Hairy bastard.

###

The battered old buses and trucks formed up and the migrants were prodded to board them. A couple were too slow, and were shot or stabbed as was usual.

A single off road vehicle made mostly of welded pipe was in front.

Several battered pickup trucks were in back. None displayed flags. All had machine guns on hardpoints.

It was dusk. Good light to cross the border, the illusory protection of night once across.

North of the border crossing a ways, the road narrowed to cross a wadi, a ravine created by rare but powerful desert rainfall.

The pickup trucks blew up, rather suddenly, within a few seconds of each other. The burning wreckage of the first blocked the road. The buses floored it. No one fired at them.

Men in unmarked fatigues and peasant clothes immediately broke down the tripods of their automatic grenade launchers and started hiking out, each carrying parts of the launchers. Their work was done.

###

Several buses, stopped. A handful of armed men surrounded by a much larger crowd of men, with women and children crowding in but a little behind.

"Go in?" someone asked on the tac net.

"Wait," I ordered callously.

One of the armed men opened fire. As if it were a signal, the crowd surged over their tormentors.

"Go, go go!"

###

Our medics were not in time to save three of the migrants, the bravest, who had gone bare handed against the one machine gun and several rifles of the scout vehicle.

Of course we were far too late to save the smugglers, all of whom had been beaten to death before we closed the distance. That is exactly what I said in my official report.

We did save several others, and interned all of them. Processed.

"What will happen to us?" one of their leaders asked, through a translator.

"You have lawfully crossed the border into California fleeing violent crime. You have properly surrendered yourselves to immigration personnel. You will be individually cited and taken to El Cajon, where you will be fed and clothed and housed until your immigration hearing. As Category II border crossers within the regulations of the UN Treaty, almost all of you can expect to be granted California temporary residency. Only those who have illegally crossed since the founding of the Republic will be rejected."

The news spread. People started weeping.

Not sadness. Joy.

If their captors had followed the original plan, they would have worked in fields and sweatshops, a language barrier and threats to families between them and seeking help. Illegals, hidden from and deprived of access to any services but those provided by their captors.

Now they would work in fields and factories still, but with full access to California's healthcare and educational systems. Carded. Legal.

There was no one alive to dispute my version of events. They hadn't paid to be smuggled across, they had been trafficked.

That was my story and their story and the only story I would permit to be heard.

Ever.

###

"After review we have determined that Campos Sector has passed the Regional Training Exercise and is typed out as a Scout Soldier Unit."

We'd passed the RTX. Not even trying. Going through the motions, focused on the other thing.

The evaluators had no doubt that in the event of general invasion, we could do our jobs.

I had not been concerned about it.

Dying is easier than living.

GWOT V - Rollin'

GWOT V - Rollin'

Ever since those very first frentic days at the beginning of the Firecracker War, I've been accused of doing things backwards.

Pretty much the instant we had a (somewhat) secure perimeter, I'd started setting up an auto shop.

Dead and dying Employees, little food, radiation, periodic harassing attacks (which only got worse over time) ... and the security manager wants to play with automotive toys?!?

My logic was very simple.

We didn't have enough food to feed the people we were sheltering. We also hadn't recovered some (most!) of the people we needed to go save. So that meant leaving the Site to do the things, and that meant vehicles.

Working vehicles. In good order. Because breakdown meant death, or walking back.

I'd only ended up walking back three times. Each was ... memorable.

_That_ is why the auto shop.

So pretty much the moment we had everyone at McNasty under canvas of some kind, I'd started setting up the auto shop. Same reasons, same logic.

I can't control a border by sitting with my thumbs up my ass forty miles away. Or even eight - the true line distance from here to Mexico.

This was helped somewhat by the burned-out wreckage of what had been the apparatus bays for the pre-War conservation camp from which McNasty took its name.

McNasty had gotten thrashed in at least five separate events.

When it had been no longer used as a conservation camp pre-Firecracker. Abandoned in place, to face the vagaries of weather and migrants and trespassers. (1)

When Homeland had reopened it as a processing center and killing site. Put in some temporary buildings and tents, brought in backhoes and bulldozers and a couple of excavators. Nice neat trenches full of bodies, occasionally lighting them off with whichever accelerant was cheapest that week - when the smell got too bad. (2)

When some nice people (the Resistance, the descendants of whom I now worked for as an Army officer) blew up the Homeland control point at Boulevard, in a burst of practical logic the Homeland sector commander had shut down the processing center, sped up the killing, and used the newly emptied facilities at McNasty as his new command post. The outlying buildings were used to house Special Police, who treated their new homes with all the respect and decorum they treated detainees and the public, i.e. none. (3)

When the Resistance in turn blew up McNasty (4), only to abandon it in place again (5).

So we'd brought in a bunch of 40' metal storage containers, placed and leveled them, and made a fortress of sorts. Eight of them, double stacked two deep and two high, gave us an 80' by 40' area covered first by canvas and tarps, later by an engineered truss roof. This was our multi purpose area, which as the name goes served many purposes.

All that was left of the apparatus bays was concrete slabs. But they were exactly what I needed to put in vehicle lifts.

In peacetime building a shop like this would take two to three years. Design, construction, environmental reviews, funding, construction, safe work practices, yada yada yada.

Instead I placed an order on the California Construction Corps onion site. Charged it to my Sector budget.

Three weeks later, a field construction team arrived with my order, assembled it to spec, ate in our cafeteria, pissed in our porta potties (as the one working flush toilet was reserved for the infirmary), and departed north to safer climes.

So we had eight working bays, a tire shop, a welding shop, a paint enclosure, secure storage, an armory complete with weapons shop and test range, and metal racks as far as the eye could see - or at least to the perimeter berm - loaded with possibly useful scrap.

That was a third of the problem, a place in which to work.

Then we needed the people to do the work.

Mechanics were in very short supply in the post-Firecracker California Republic. Nearly all of them could demand and get better working conditions than an isolated field site subject to casual Cartel sniping.

One of the joys of commanding a unit of any size is that if you take the people upside down and shake them, you find skills. So I had a couple soldiers who liked to work on cars, an apprentice welder (she got better) and a landscaper who really liked small engines and wanted to move up to the big time.

It was a start. So I placed another order, on the California Prison Industry Authority onion site - CALPIA for short - and made several assurances, only stretching the truth a point or three.

This got me three mechanics. All wore orange. Prisoners.

Not that there wasn't a rich and recent history of prisoners being compelled to work at McNasty.

But you really want to _trust_ your mechanics, so your combat vehicle doesn't break down at an awkward moment.

So I met them as their convoy arrived, signed for them, met them in my office with the door closed ... and we had a little chat.

I could, if I chose, recognize their contributions as sufficiently meritorious as to allow them to join the Army of the Republic directly from prison. This would not only be based on their output, but on their willingness and ability to teach soldiers to help them do the simple stuff.

Or I could give them a ride back to CALPIA.

Meanwhile, they didn't have to wear orange as long as they stayed within McNasty - installation commander's discretion - and they could work and be treated like free human beings otherwise.

Two took me up on it. The third, a pro-American sympathizer, was more equivocal. It took me a few months but the other two wrenches and I turned him around.

Second third achieved.

The last, of course, was the actual vehicles and parts themselves.

In the old days, there'd been an array of programs that diverted surplus, demobilized and demilitarized equipment to local uses from the Feds.

That had basically gone up in smoke with the Firecracker. They needed their surplus, rather suddenly, as all the Good Stuff (TM) was sent to China and the rest was desperately needed.

At Site I'd had to buy, borrow, beg and steal vehicles beyond those that happened to be in the parking lot when San Francisco was vaporized.

Post-Resistance California was even shorter on rolling stock. Everything that had been made pre-War had been ridden hard and put away soaking wet. No one was making vehicles during the Resistance campaign. Only now were factories starting up, and the priority was medium trucks and tanks.

I wasn't getting a tank. I could call for armor, but they would arrive in formed units.

I needed trucks. But what I really needed was the World War II era Jeep. Or a Hilux or even beat up domestic pickup. Something with four wheels, a cab and a hardpoint. Welders could add the hardpoint.

I could wait in line with all the other California military units which needed rolling stock.

Or I could cut in line, buy, borrow and beg and steal.

So I did.

Exactly why I needed the auto shop.

In my initial force mix, I'd horse traded to get one medium duty wrecker - a tow truck with a flatbed and recovery cables.

I sent it out, with escort, to go recover whatever chassis we could scrape up. Some of this was merely to clear the roads and clean up debris. But a lot of it was to make it possible to turn six wrecked cars into one working one. If nothing else, metal scrap was metal scrap - and the occasional engine or transmission could be put to work.

By the time we were done, the results looked a lot like Mad Max vehicles painted by a ham-handed model vehicle collector who only liked drab colors.

But they rolled, and had brakes, and could shoot when appropriate hardware was mounted, and had enough electrical to power a radio and a mobile computer rig.

Now I'm going to get really pedantic and technical.

Says right here in the California Vehicle Operations Manual (CA-VOM, beloved only of a certain breed of logistician who liked to look at specifications but had never personally touched a wrench).

"Every vehicle in AotCR service shall carry a first aid kit, a fire extinguisher and field tools."

And so they did. Not always in the same places. Sometimes we had to bolt them on where they might fit.

But, gosh darn, sometimes we just could not make it work. Just couldn't make the shovel fit.

So those vehicles were surplus to Army requirements, and I could as unit commander cut the Army's losses and ... sell them.

Well, not sell them exactly. That was just money.

I could _trade_ them. For the vehicles I really wanted.

So I did. Both within the Army, and to other state and local agencies.

Because I had an auto shop and most of them didn't.

Our beloved CA Post's Sector office - California's answer to the United States Postal Service - didn't care what kind of vehicle they drove as long as it worked. So they got a trickle of the modern California Jalop - a Jeep clone - and gave _ALL_ of them to us in exchange for three times as many working vehicles of dubious heritage. But no first aid kits. Came with free breakdown and repair service, another savings.

The Jalop was one of those vehicles you either hated, or you hated. Spectacularly ugly and readily recognizable. But for its many sins, it was still four wheel drive.

Once I put it in Army colors and painted MP on five of six sides, it was a tolerable police car for the terrain.

I also was on the list for a Jalop. I think I finally got two total over the next year, to add to the fleet of fourteen less formally acquired.

Many little issues were identified and disposed of along the way. But the one I actually had trouble with, was courtesy of our friends at the California Environmental Protection Agency.

CAL-EPA - not to be confused with CALTRANS, CAL-OSHA, CAL-FIRE, CALPIA or CALPERS - had finally discovered that California agencies and facilities were engaged in disposal activities involving used motor oil, useless car parts, non working lead acid batteries, electronic waste, etc.

We had, in proper field practice, identified a sump pit where we could pour motor oil basically forever and it would never enter the local water table. It also happened to be a mass grave.

The dead batteries just piled up on pallets. We would find a recycler eventually. Or so I told myself.

Metal car parts were harmless to the environment. Or so I had thought, until the CAL-EPA inspector frostily told me that flakes from the car parts as paint were micro contaminants.

There was no point trying to bribe her. A true environmental believer.

So we had to build a containment area for the metal parts. So that the flakes from them would not enter the soil at a Homeland killing site, where any digging found recent human bones.

Logical it was not.

Fortunately for my cardiovascular health, I'd cheerfully lied when asked what we were doing with the used oil.

"We use that pallet tank to take it into San Diego for recycling."

The lie had to suddenly become truth when the CAL-EPA inspector asked _which_ recycling center.

Driving gallons of motor oil, using gallons of gasoline, a good fifty miles west where someone else would take the Republic's money and _then_ pour it into the ground, that much closer to an urban population and a fragile water table.

Oh well, stranger things happen in war.

But we had the vehicles with which to try to extend California's will over the Border.

Which saved entirely more lives than I had ever been expecting.

Chaya Al-Hadin - Street Theater

In an ordered Islamic society, there is a place for everything and everything in its place.

The Great Plaza was a place for reflecting on the history that had brought humanity to this world. Some of the laid stones had been quarried in the first generation of colonists. A few - covered in transparent acrylic to protect them - had come as relics from Old Earth herself.

There was no apparent center, no ka'ba, no circle or focal point. Despite the premium of space in the Emir's capital, the Great Plaza was large enough that one could see across it only with difficulty.

The only powered vehicles permitted - and that very rarely - were ambulances actually transporting an ill or injured person from the Plaza to care.

The walls of the Emir's Palace took up the north end of the Great Plaza. The west end was an extension of the Gardens, built for the Emir but open to all - even Christians - and containing amenities both prosaic and wondrous. Fountains, toilets, zoo exhibits, light shows.

The east end bordered the general City. A shopping mall, of course, because merchants would do as merchants had always done. A terminal of the WAT, the Wide Area Transit, that brought people from near and far to this place. Apartments that overlooked the Plaza. Services of all sorts. Even, in a half-embarrassed corner, a single Gnostic church with an elderly priest, the most senior of the Christians on the world who was in good standing with the Emirate.

The south bordered the city's star port. A series of three fences - a polite line of wrought iron chain, easily stepped over but with no breaks in it. A hundred meters on, an easily moved line of waist high concrete barricades that bore firm warning signs. ("Restricted Area - Do Not Enter - By Order Of The Illustrious Emir") A hundred meters past that, a line of poles, each ten meters apart and ten meters high, that supported a loose mesh made of razor ribbon and spikes. Unclimbable. Also bearing the universal skull and crossbones that authorized deadly force. That last was new, a product of the Christian unrest.

There were yet miles of concrete tarmac between the Great Plaza and the Port. Generally only ship watchers and small children were found between the line of chain and the barricades, and no one beyond them.

The ceremonial Great Gate of the Emir's Palace was in bronzed metal and hinged. The walls were dressed stone, twenty meters high. No warning signs. Instead, two Emirate soldiers stood either side of the Great Gate, their issue rifles their greetings to everyone, their purpose ceremonial only. It was one of the highest military honors, keenly competed for, to be appointed to the Emirate Guard. Blood counted but was not itself sufficient. Inherited, often. Spilled, occasionally.

Tourists who visited the Capital would make the circuit. Past the Great Gate, the Emir's Palace had historical displays and waiting rooms, and the Jewel Room and Treasure Room. Then the Gardens with its zoos. A quick cut across the plaza, or loitering to see a ship take off or land, then back to the shops and the city and perhaps nightlife, for those so inclined.

The very size of the Great Plaza and the neighboring structures was a boast of power and prestige and might.

Chaya Al-Hadin found herself in one of the lesser guard rooms of the Emir's Palace, with four other Guardians, getting her instructions from a bored Doorwarden. Not an Emir's Guard, a member of the permanent Palace staff. A sinecure for family of minor officials or the occasional retired soldier.

"Today we have received warnings that a large Christian contingent will insist on its right to tour the public places of the Plaza. They have assembled in numbers at several WAT stations. The crowd is estimated at four to six thousand souls."

A pause.

"It is not clear who is paying for thousands of WAT fares or how so many Christians have arranged to take the time to visit away from jobs and family obligations. There is ... rhetoric ... that is distasteful to the Emir and his servants. Nonetheless, the customs will be properly observed."

It was a Guardian's job to consider the obvious. And the less obvious.

"How is it that they have been screened?"

The Doorwarden yawned.

"They will not be permitted through the Palace Gates as a group."

There were detection instruments built into the gates. They were capable of sniffing out explosives, energy weapons, other such devices. But many bodies confused them and weapons did not necessarily need electronic energy storage. Kinetic was possible, chemical more detectable but also feasible.

Even a kitchen knife could be deadly in the hands of a skilled or determined lost soul.

"How are they to know this, and who is to tell them?"

"You."

That ... did not bode well for her odds of reaching a retirement.

###

So it was that she, in full but working uniform as a Guardian of the Emir, saw the line of people leaving the WAT station. With banners. And amazingly, the sound of trumpets, although she could see no instruments.

Walking straight towards her, where she stood a hundred meters before the gates. Alone.

To touch her, treason. To raise a weapon to her, rebellion. To resist arrest, death.

The banners read, mostly in Christian runics, FREEDOM and JUSTICE and OUR RIGHTS. The few Islamic syllabari read WE ARE NOT YOUR GOD'S and CHRISTIAN > ALLAH.

"Star One, and I state this clearly and calmly, what the actual FUCK," she said, making sure her body camera remoted the scene.

"Numbers five hundred plus nazrani with banners and projected sound, approaching my position in formation, with no prior warning. Flag entire event for post incident review. Chaya Al-Hadin."

Her name was not necessary. It was more of an indictment.

What Star One, her dispatch service and the one of the ways in which the Emirate guarded her People, not given any warning of the apparition that now approached? It was beyond lazy incompetence. It was impious. It itself bordered hard treason.

"Ah, Al-Hadin..." and there was a crisp interruption from a new voice, another Star One dispatcher.

"Override, Star One, Star One. Enemies approach the Palace. Closing Palace Gates."

Her visor displayed an image behind her. Gates. Not closing.

"The Gates!" she complained. "Not closing! I say again, the Gates are NOT closing and are open!"

A squad of troops double-timed their way out of the Gates. A mere two dozen.

They were ... as much as she hated to see it ... slovenly. They were not of the Emirate Guard. But they were armed, heavily, with burners and with grenades.

This was not right. This was wrong. All wrong. All of it.

Wrong in ways that could not be made right.

A set up.

And, she the token piece in between the crowd and the fire.

The soldiers took up a line formation and prepared to level their weapons.

The crowd walked forward.

At least one of her problems was no longer an issue. She did not need to seek a discreet toilet in a palace built primarily for men. Now a matter for decontamination, not personal hygiene.

Some question as to whether her remains would be in the condition to require a mortician's services.

Burners.

Who brings burners to a crowd action?

She mentally discarded her orders. They did not apply.

Her task, any Guardian's task, was the preservation of human life.

She spied the officer of the soldiers. He was also slovenly, and as she approached him he tried to wave her off.

She ran forward towards him. Forty meters.

"Datalink, officer, withdraw your troops at once! Back into the Palace! That is a direct order, I am a Guardian of the Emirate!"

"Shut up, you dumb bitch..." he started to say.

Twenty meters.

She felt as if her entire life had led to this moment.

She knew she would suffer for this, if not be executed.

"Treason most foul," she hissed. "Withdraw your troops or suffer present death! By the Emir I serve!"

The law was clear, both civil and military.

Her orders were his law. His disobedience, as she had said, treason most foul.

The officer turned towards her, and as she hoped and prayed, began to level his burner.

Not at the crowd, that atrocious crime from which there could be no coming back.

At her.

Freeing her to act.

As if it had a mind of its own, her needle-gun leapt into her hand and she sent a whirring string of ultra high velocity needles directly into the face and chest of the Emirate military officer.

He crumpled into a mess of blood and guts and torn flesh.

"Star One, command override, disable every burner in this Plaza."

No answer.

Military weapons were configured to obey the Emirate's orders, even if the men carrying them did not.

So either Star One had nothing for her, or they were not authorized ...

She activated her loudhailer as well as the datalink.

"Soldiers sling your weapons or you will be destroyed by loyal Emirate forces! There is treason in the house! There is treason in the house!"

That was the words of present nightmare.

The soldiers looked at each other, in horror where they had not in seeing their officer emulsified.

Treason could result in a long sit on a short stake.

She dared not even spare a moment for the crowd. The soldiers and their weapons, that was all that could be allowed to matter.

She reached the first soldier in the line, held her pistol at waist-point, flush with her belt.

"Sling or die, do it now."

He hastily slung. Then the next. They all followed example within moments. So she holstered her own.

She could only then spare an instant to consider gates and crowd.

The gates were closing, slowly but inexhorably.

The crowd had split. Some headed for the gate, some headed for her, not running but at a walking pace. Angry but determined.

"Soldiers, you shall walk with me to the wall. There we will wait for proper supports. As you love Allah and fear His Wrath, keep your weapons slung even if we together die for it."

An aircar silently overflew, she saw the shadow, but could not take her eyes from the soldiers. They were under only the most cursory control, doing what they were told because of her uniform and replacement of their officer.

The loudhailer on the car spoke. "The Palace is closed for ah... spring cleaning. The Palace is closed today. We are very sorry and shall honor your tickets and travel on a future day."

Someone else was using their head for something other than holding up their hair.

The Gates closed with an audible click.

The crowd started to reunify. They looked about them for a focal point.

Much as she hated to do it, much as she did not want to lose her rear vision and some of her sensors, Chaya Al-Hadin discarded her very expensive helmet.

"Soldiers, remove your helmets. Take them off. Leave them on the Plaza stones."

Puzzled, it was something for them to do, so they did.

The crowd approached, more slowly, as a boy does with a scorpion he plans to poke with a stick.

They could now see her hair and know that she was a woman, also an initiate of the mysteries of death.

So.

She had read it right.

"The man or men, who lead this crowd, I would talk with you. As person to person I beg of you."

She could not beg as a Guardian. She could serve, or die.

"Fuck you Islamic whore!"

It was truth in that she wore trousers.

It was false in that she neither sold her favors nor allowed men between her thighs for any reason, professional or personal.

"Star One, battlesight, agitator," she whispered.

"Got him," a voice whispered.

He suddenly starting screaming and tearing off his clothes.

"It burns, it burns!" he screamed in the Nazrani language.

And so it did. A Palace vibratory projector was heating his skin without killing. At least not for quite the while.

"Pardon me, sir, but who in their boldness of Lust is now unclothed?" she asked sweetly.

He ran off, sideways to her and the crowd.

It was funny.

Allah inflicted a mercy upon them all.

A Nazrani in the man started laughing, at the absurdity.

Soon the crowd was laughing.

Behind her, a concealed door - a prudence door - opened in the wall of the Palace and two of her fellow Guardians were leading the soldiers through it.

She could not take the path. The crowd was still regarding her.

Further distraction was needed, so she dodged forward.

This... would hurt. And not just in pain.

"Star One, battlesight, me, friendly fire ordered."

A frozen pause.

"Friendly fire as you love the Emir and love your God!"

A burning sensation covered her body then.

She shouted involuntarily, then began to caper and spin to and fro.

"It burns!" she shouted first in Arabic, then in Nazrani. "Burning! It is the burning of my womanly time! I do feel burning in my body!"

The crowd roared with laughter as the last of the soldiers made it through the prudence-door and it sealed and disappeared from sight.

She kept up her screaming, at first with willingness and then in genuine agony.

But as she crossed the line of the crowd, the vibratory projector lost line of sight and the pain cut off as if with a switch.

She kept up the running, not the screaming.

"Star One, extraction, aircar, swiftly," she gasped instead. "Cease fire."

One of the features of her uniform was resistance to genuine fire. Not projection.

Certainly not military burners.

The aircar swooped down and she ran right into the open hatch. A rescue technician - as it turned out - grabbed her without hesitation or consideration of her gender.

"Uninjured," she said to his query as they lifted.

Safety.

"Star One, tactical, Palace Gates secured, crowd mingling, no apparent threat or escalation. Concur?"

"Concur," a different cool voice said. "Investigation is indicated."

She caught her breath. Someone offered her water and she drank greedily.

Investigation was in fact indicated, of many things.

Who was it that attempted to profane the Emir's peace by taking burners - Shaitan damned burners! - to his mildly unruly children?

It was known who had taken a needler to one of the Emir's appointed officers. Or at least someone wearing that uniform.

She had ruined a horror plot.

Whose?

###

"Am I under arrest, Guardian-Captain?"

His face hurt.

"No. That you are not. There has been a review of your actions, by the Nextmost High."

The Emir that was to say, because the only higher review could be by Allah, notoriously unresponsive to requests for decisions, let alone interventions.

"Your actions are endorsed. By Star One, by the Emir, by the Council..."

Her heart sank and her soul fell through her boots towards the Starless Dark.

It was poorly to be judged by Star One, although a part of her job.

To come to the personal attention of the Emir. Unhealthy.

The Guardian-Council - it was theirs to judge the fitness of any Guardian to serve. She was already a special case because of her gender. A special case again, under the watch of the Morals Officer of her brigade, for her personal choices.

"I see that you get my point. I also judge your actions."

A long pause.

"I am very proud. You have upheld the traditions of the Guardians at great risk. You prevented a slaughter. That is what we are there to do. Not just of the crowd, but of the draftees dragged into atrocity by a traitor officer.

"Investigation continues. You are restricted to this Barracks. As much for your safety as for any other reason.

"I understand you are a student of the esoterica. Enjoy your study. Guardian by rank, hero by trade."

He turned away from her, seated at his own desk, dismissing her.

But not disrespecting her.

GWOT VI - Ministry NI

The need had gotten worse.

So many hungry people and not enough food.

The security situation had become very bad.

It was all they could do to keep order in the immediate line of sight.

Keeping order in the line of people waiting for food was becoming difficult.

When it became impossible, they would have to leave.

Langar Aid had not gone into the places where it was easy to feed the starving

Before the Firecracker War, it was a hidden fact that no hunger in the world was accidental. Refugees would be fed unless war forbade.

After ... ah, after ... there was so much war and death. East Asia at first, but it spread and spread and spread.

One of the unsung heroes of fighting poverty in the global South had been China.

Wrecked and fighting for her life, China had nothing left for anywhere else.

Disorder had spread. India had not been spared domestic turmoil, but had so far avoided nuclear conflict. So far.

Langar Aid was one of the few things India could do to help the rest of the world. Like Cuba's barefoot doctors and the very much not barefoot Doctors Without Borders, they were quietly famous if you cared about humanitarian aid, and not otherwise.

Neither Cuba nor MSF were here. They operated in places where medical care mattered. Also where their security procedures could protect their staff.

Langar Aid provided their own security. Their cooks carried iron rods. Some cooked. Some patrolled. And all could fight at need.

They set up their kitchens where food mattered. Where starvation lurked.

So when the American refugees of China's retaliatory strikes on the Midwest had started going hungry, Langar Aid had come.

When it became clear that the hunger was deliberate, it was time to consider leaving.

Now this was war. The small United Nations contingent and the larger but less brave Iowa State Police were swamped by Christian militias.

There was a disturbance at the back of the line. Then people were running. Panicked.

Langar Aid staff stopped serving and retreated, forming a tight circle around their food truck and supply container, nearly empty, with their rods in hand.

Then the jacked up pickup trucks started driving through the crowd towards them. Through. Not going out of their way to hit anyone. Not caring if they did.

A scream and crunch.

Several trucks stopped short and men got out. Carrying weapons. Not just rifles and pistols, but the local sports tool - baseball bat - and blades already rusty with blood.

Langar Aid had stayed too long.

"Who is in charge of your group?" a leader demanded.

A brief scuffle, as a younger man was slapped by an older one. Then the older man stepped forward, beyond the line of useless rods. Enough to protect from refugees in a panic. Useless against paramilitaries.

"I am head cook," he said calmly.

The leader raised his pistol.

The head cook put his hand on the knife at his belt.

"Shall I make this easier for you, and draw?" the cook asked. "Or do you prefer murder of diplomatic personnel to add to all your other sins?"

"Diplomatic?"

"We are all citizens of the United Kingdom as well as of India. We are noncombatants, neutrals. We cook and serve. And every single one of our names is known. Our passports are made out, and crowns in our purse for convoy."

The literary allusion flew over the leader's head.

"You shall leave. Start walking west."

"We take our truck."

"No, you do not."

"So you add stealing vehicles to stealing food and starving children. How brave you are."

The head cook turned his back on the Christian paramilitaries and waved a hand. His group formed a line and started walking west.

One threw a set of keys in the dirt, and spat.

A rifle barked, but a Christian officer had knocked the barrel skyward.

It was notable that the Indian men did not flinch.

The thought crossed the Christian leader's mind that it was fortunate that these men were armed only with iron rods.

"Attention. Once they are well clear, start the separation."

An euphemism.

What they separated, often enough, was heads from bodies.

It was only much later that the Christian leader learned. His actions had been recorded, on video. Uploaded to the world. Condemned, outside Iowa. Quietly praised, by the powerful within it.

###

A hand over his mouth, as he lay asleep in his bed.

First he smelled a heavy copper smell that he knew so very well, but did not belong HERE. Not in his house. Not in his bed.

Blood. A lot of spilled blood.

The hand was leather gloved.

"Remain still," someone whispered in his ear.

He did not, and thrashed in sudden electric agony, biting the leather.

Stun gun. Pressed to his neck.

"Remain still," the voice said quietly again.

This time he did.

"Are you hearing me? If so, nod once."

He nodded.

"Good. When you get up, this we want you to know. What you see is all your fault, for violating the diplomatic immunity of Langar Aid. For murder, we would not do this. For starvation and separation, we would not do this. We do this for your interference in helping the helpless. You didn't just murder. You pissed on hope. That is unworthy. Nod again."

A cold line, wet, rested on his cheek.

"Nod or die."

He nodded.

"Good. Count to sixty and get up."

The hand withdrew.

He knew the trick, having used it himself. Telling the man he would live. Then killing him. Or perhaps the goal was for him to live, and the first twenty seconds was merely escape time for his captor.

He counted to seventy anyway. Then smoothly rolled off the bed, reached under, grabbed his loaded rifle with sling and magazines, came up into triangle stance with stock welded to his shoulder. Bullet time, weapons engagement.

So he saw the body of his dead wife over his sights.

He left swept, the hallway, the children's bedroom. Not empty. No life. More blood.

He continued his sweep, his house as familliar as the inside of his mouth.

Rage and grief would come later. This was the time to kill.

The house was empty. The doors remained locked from inside. The windows closed.

Mindful of enemy observation, he used the escape tunnel - tell tales undisturbed - to come up in the side shed. Sliced the pie of the door with his rifle Scanned the yard.

Patrolled twice around the perimeter of it. First looking outward for threats. Second looking inward for ground sign, tracks, how the invader had entered and/or left.

No findings.

Rounds in the air would draw reaction.

So he fired. Three spaced shots. Emergency. Then moved position and kept scanning, already planning how he would call out to the reaction team and link up.

No one came.

He checked his neighbor's house. Dead.

In horror he stalked the town in which he had grown up, all his life.

Dead, dead, dead. Sentries on watch, families asleep. Dead.

For lack of anything else to do, he returned to his home.

A children's bedroom.

In a room splattered with blood, a pillowcase had been spread out with a little teddy bear - clean - sitting on it.

The teddy bear held a little printed card.

BEAR FORCE.

He would kill and kill and kill. He would kill every refugee in Iowa. Then he would go to California and kill there. He would kill and kill and

He picked up the bear to throw it against the wall.

The instant fuse on the anti tamper tremblor inside the IED disguised as a toy activated.

No one heard the bang but him.

He spun, flailing with his one remaining arm, fumbling at his belt for the tourniquet that was not part of his equipment because he had been undressed for bed.

His face pressed against the carpet, looking at blood soaked dolls as his cold and heavy fate blurred his vision.

No one heard the second bang, from the corner of the room, a few minutes later.

###

RCS Panoptes

"Combat data link destroyed. Video uploaded to Mammoth."

It was grisly viewing. The video techs in California would clean it up, a little.

But not too much.

The point was deterrence, after all.

GWOT IV - The New Divide NI

It was not perhaps the world's cleanest piece of propaganda.

It was however, heartfelt.

First was the fact of how it was being broadcast.

The usual brassy America Now brought to you by Homeland was nowhere to be found.

Nor was any other station.

All that played, for over a week, was the short eight minute clip, on every station - digital TV, the old analog TV that most people had to dust off to plug in, satellite channels where ground stations in the formerly United States could not regain control, even local cable in those cities not yet wrecked by fighting.

The opening was as if a focus group had asked everyone to pick, "Who would you trust if you had to trust a general?"

A man in his forties with a deeply marked face, soot on his cheek, wearing the notorious R armband of the Resistance and a general's stars on a battered old-style camoflauge jacket. Behind him, a dimly lit room that somehow suggested both video studio and command post.

"It is my duty to introduce the Provisional Emergency Governor. Pat."

The screen cut to a view of a severe-looking person sitting at a glass table with a backdrop of the Sierra mountains. A serene scene apparently in an undamaged conference room or office building somewhere.

Pat's gender ambiguity was the first thing anyone noticed. "Born in the Uncanny Valley," mocked one American commentator. In between male and female but having elements of both. Fuzz as from a day's missed shave with suggestive curves and big hairy feet in Birkenstock slippers clearly visible because of the glass table. A cream pant suit that matched Pat well.

"My fellow Californians. My name is Pat. Through an accident of history, and only because of the misfortunes visited upon us all, it is my duty to act as the Provisional Emergency Governor until free and fair elections can be held."

Cut to a long shot of the ruins of the City of San Francisco, so familiar to all from Homeland's own propaganda.

"We now know that China did not destroy San Francisco."

A shot of a piece of paper, printed in blue on red glossy paper. Recognizably TS/SCI not least because of those letters on the top. A handful of experts would recognize it as flash paper. What America printed her most secure documents on.

Its title, zoomed in.

"War Plan Red," it boasted.

"The nuclear destruction of the City of San Francisco was carried out by a ballistic launch from an American Navy submarine. On orders. It was a deliberate sneak attack on America, by America."

A computer generated graphic showed a ballistic track off the California coast, near Pescadero, and three lines streaking east. Two struck, horrifically. The third faded away further east.

"As we all know, over one million of us perished in that initial attack. But that was not enough for America or for the genocidal fanatics at Homeland."

Horror shots of people rounded up, gunfire, piles of bodies, long shots of internment camps as far as the eye could see.

"They stole us from our homes. They kidnapped us. They starved us. They put us to work for no pay, enslaved in all but name. And if we were different or if we spoke up or we Resisted, they murdered us."

More horror imagery. Some stock footage, annotated very differently. Some new footage, gathered by Resistance fighters and fellow travelers. A helitorch lighting houses. A Resistance tactical team breaking into gleaming steel halls full of torture instruments, and the people suffering within. The work of triage as a Resistance medic team tried to cope with the nightmare Homeland called a camp infirmary.

"No more. We Resist. We fight back. This is not enough. As your Governor I take full responsibility. The great California Republic divorces herself from the so-called Union. We assert our independence. We assert our sovereignty.

"In China they tell a story of a cruel Emperor who makes every crime punishable by death. They had conscription. A band of conscripted farmers was ordered to report to duty, but they were stuck in the rain. One of them stood up and said, 'My brothers, what is the penalty for treason?' 'Death,' he was told. 'And my brothers, what is the penalty for being late reporting to duty?' 'Death,' he was told again. 'Well, my brothers, I have some bad news for us all. We're late!'

"And so we are, here in California. We are dead either way. We are late in standing up for our murdered millions. The residents of the City who had done nothing wrong. Our brothers and sisters of Chinese ancestry, murdered not just by Homeland but by the rest of us. The internees, the transgendered, those who protested, who stood up for their fellow human beings. Murdered.

"There is a time when someone has to stand up and say, 'We're late.' Enough is enough. All of us have lost someone. I saw my spouse murdered right next to me. If we are to die, let us at least die free or die fighting to be free.

"If you would help us, find someone wearing an 'R' armband."

Pat stopped, picked it up from the table, showed it to the camera.

"These are not easy to forge. Notice the scalloped edge."

Pat put it on.

"If you do not wish to help us, do not get in our way. We don't want to mistake you for an American patriot or sympathizer. We've had enough of American lies and American murders."

Pat's voice turned crisp and cruel, "If you're still an American anyway, get the fuck out of my state while you still can."

Then calm again.

"Californians, your brothers and sisters desperately need your help. If you don't feel right fighting, that's OK, we still need you to help care for the millions who are refugees, sick, starving or worse. There is our national aid society, the Red Lion. They wear a literally red Red Lion logo, and once you see their logo once you will never forget it."

Red Lion crews, ambulances, camps. The Red Lion logo was a rampant lion sticking out a paw. But the paw was pixelated. The camera lingered briefly on the pixelation.

The camera cut back to Pat.

Then the camera panned out and moved away. Either a long boom or a drone.

Pat hadn't been sitting in a comfortable air conditioned office building.

The glass desk, the clean floor, had all been a fake. Someone had swept up broken glass and concrete to create a patch of normality amid shattered ruins.

Beyond the ruins, the sudden CRUMP of a mortar barrage.

Troops moved past Pat. All armed heavily, all wearing helmets and R armbands, mostly male but a few female. None spared a glance for Pat as they moved forward. They had a mission.

Pat stood. Someone handed Pat a helmet and held out a body armor vest for Pat to put on.

"Let's go, my fellow Californians. Die fighting or die in a torture camp? I've made my choice. Make yours."

Someone handed Pat a rifle and Pat walked out of frame with the troops.

The video cut to black. A test screen. Then words.

"The Republic of California" in gold. The California state flag, waving, but notably missing something. It took a moment to realize.

No star.

After a minute, the repeat.

Guardians of the Emirate - Hail Mary

[Followers of the GWOT series - this is _very_ different.]

A richly appointed palace. Fanatically loyal staff willing to satisfy any whim on command. The delicacies of a world at one's beck and call.

These were poor compensation, the Emir thought acidly as his valets and maids dressed him for the day.

The previous day's briefing haunted him in his thoughts and in his nightmares.

He had prayed, long into the night.

As was Allah's want, no answer was given.

Ninety and nine of each hundred souls in the Emirate gave no thought to the larger galaxy.

It was of course common knowledge that the Emirate had been settled from ancient Terra.

The World Wars, the fall of the American-Roman empire, the Devastation and the Evacuation.

The fragment of ruined Mecca brought on the last colony ship.

A Muslim colony, in obedience to God and his Prophet. Peaceful evacuees, Christian and Jew. Wanting only to be left alone to enjoy their world in peace.

But the Christians had grown strange, and restive, in the last three generations.

The Jews ... were worried, as Jews always did. But they had kept tentative contacts with the larger universe.

Revelations.

That the Christian revolts were caused. Encouraged. By off planet elements.

That two vast star spanning empires, styling themselves the Republic and the ARC, were fighting each other in wars where planets counted for little and casualties were calculated by zones.

The ARC had attacked the peaceful spacefaring colony of Ayer's Rock. Killed most of the inhabitants. Put the rest into lifeboats and flung them at the Emirate, on trajectories that suggested bombardment. Hoping the Emirate would use them for target practice.

It had not gone quite that way. The survivors were now encamped and cared for.

The Republic had shattered the distant but friendly planet of New Brunswick. Disregarded treaties and peaceful nature alike, investing the planet in waves of wasteful bombardment and massacre for the joy of killing.

Perhaps it was the ARC behind the Wiccan insurgency. Perhaps it was the Republic. Perhaps, and this could be true, it was both at once.

The word they had was through an unlikely happenstance, a dreaded ARC infiltration agent, who owed a New Brunswick Army officer a life favor, and saw him deposited among the lifeboat refugees from Ayer's Rock.

The ARC were spacedwellers. The use they had for planets was none. But they would destroy the space infrastructure of anyone who annoyed them.

The Republic lived anyplace a Senator could lord it over their slaves, but preferred habitable biospheres. They didn't always stay that way, after generations of Republic rule.

His experts - Admiral Saiid of the Emirate Navy chief among them - allowed less than a year before ARC or Republic would stumble across the Emirate, like a drunk in the dark. And then kick it to death, irritated.

The choices were few. Perhaps none.

But it was not the first time the Peoples of the Book had faced nightmare and annihilation.

The Emir had many, many titles. A full recitation would take over an hour.

Chief among them was "Protector of the Faithful."

There were options. Few and weak.

The Admiral wanted to massively expand the Emirate Navy, in the hopes of deterrence. It was a mad hope. They were one planet, and fallen behind in technology. The only result would be death fighting, and not long delayed.

The civil defense - the Guardians and the fire-rescue and the Red Crescent - could only imagine bunkers, shelters, ways to hide the population. They were kidding themselves, and merely building targets.

The Jews were trying to buy or borrow or build a starship, any way they could. They had many millenia to hone their instincts, and their instincts screamed to run. Yet they were loyal, and would not abandon the Emirate because the Emirate had not abandoned them, despite the tensions of ancient Terra and the disputes of theology. If they had two ships, they would send one away to run and the other would stay to share the fate of the Emirate. Two had twice the odds of one.

There was another way. It was one of many reasons the Emir had unlimited access to all the knowledge that they had taken with them from Terra, and much that had been gathered since, from all across the wide human universe.

A trade fleet. He could neither outgun nor outrun the enemy empires. So he needed information. The way to gather information was to go get it.

The Jews had also given him an idea.

###

"Al-Haydin, to the Operations Deck."

She rubbed her face. Unlike nearly all of her fellow Guardians, who treated her like a sister, she did not need to shave.

She in turn treated them like brothers. Usually. Unless a kick to the groin was needful.

The sleep she had not been getting fogged her judgments.

She had no rank above that of Guardian. But a Guardian was a mighty blade in the Emir's hands.

She had three taskings, two more than was prudent.

Liasion between the more different survivors of Ayer's Rock and those caring for them. This required frequent trips to their encampment and endless explanations of why Muslim custom did not serve egalitarian spacefolk.

Expertise in the exotic and alien cultures. She had started in counter terror, a Wiccan and Satan student with her own faith devout and supreme. Then desperate need had led to desperate study, of the Rock and Republic and ARC and half a hundred other human cultures, space and ground alike.

Last but not least, the continued prosecution of that counter-terrorism, with a foreign intelligence component where foreign meant other worlds. Her hope, to identify and take into living custody a Republic or ARC agent.

So what could the Operations Deck have for her now? Another riot in the camp? Another flash report of a hundred pages to read in minutes? Or perhaps a lead on a agent whose weapons could liquify her or dissolve bone, because she would be at the front of the stack to take them alive at any cost. As she had in fact done before, against lesser foes.

She reported.

The benefit of a reputation was that someone put coffee into her hand, and she drank gratefully.

"It is an order of the Illustrious Emir. You are to meet with him for the noon meal."

Her mind blanked. She had no time. Did she even have a dress uniform left? And time to don it? She had no maid or valet to dress her.

"As you are, combat rules apply."

She blinked this time with her eyes.

"Combat rules?"

"Go now and swiftly."

###

The flight was an hour. She spent it reading.

The flight was met by the Emir's strongmen - the only strongmen trusted with power weapons, on the planet entire.

She was a Guardian. She carried power weapons as part of her uniform.

No one suggested that she disarm, just as no one suggested that she bare her breasts and don a veil and join the hareem either.

Not that some thought such would be her only proper place.

Swiftly scanned, to make sure she carried no exotic poison or virus or nano.

Then a waiting area, in which she was discreetly served tiny tumblers of thick coffee while continuing her reading.

A chamberlain bowed her into a discreet apartment.

A table covered with tablets and actual printed papers.

The Emir, seated, while she was standing.

She of course knew his face. Picking it out was a test in Guardian Academy.

Her powers came from him directly. The Eyes on her collar were His.

He had, personally, authorized her for unlimited information access. That was something only the Emir could authorize.

But they had yet to meet, before this moment.

He waved her a hand. Permission to sit. The way in which he waved, she knew from her fragmentary training in Court protocol, was a dismissal of genuflection as well.

This was combat rules.

Seeing it chilled her soul.

It was as if instead of her praying to Allah, the Great God was instead praying to her. A reversal of all that should be.

She sat.

"How may I serve..."

"No time. Al-Haydin. It is all a horror. I know you are fully briefed. Today I am as well. And I have a question for you and I to work out, in the hour we have over biscuit and tea.

"What is it that we are to do, to save Our People?"

###

The wall was a smart wall, of course, in the Emir's private quarters. She made of it a whiteboard.

They were using an ancient technique. Brainstorming.

Between the two of them, master and servant, they could freely conspire.

Number one in their minds was the survival of the Emirate's people.

On the world. In local space. Migratory, new colony ships and flight.

Unthinkable contingencies were explored. Submission. Surrender. Self destruction and concealment of survivors under the ruins.

Alliance with the Republic. Who would never make of the Emir a Senator. Perhaps a playtoy of one.

Alliance with the ARC. As unlikely as a sheep making peace with a wolf any way but from the inside.

There was no third power. And no way to leverage between them.

That they knew of.

"We must take every path," she dared to say. "Those who cannot leave, stay and we protect them best we can. Those who can, go, with the seeds of a new Emirate among them. That means the Prince. Peace with wolves or with those who admire them. Do we have people so brave or so desperate?"

The Emir frowned.

"The Republic knows Christians. It is a tolerated faith. We are not."

No, they decided wordlessly. They would put the fate of their People, even a subset, in the hands of the alien empires, except by peacefully staying behind and suffering what the conquered always must suffer in every age.

"A trade fleet it shall be," the Emir commanded. "Go and find us our miracle. Or tell of our fates. Take the Prince. Guard his life as you would guard me."

She almost complained. But she had to say it.

"Why me, sir?"

She almost scared herself with the lese majeste of not addressing him by title.

"The Prince is a young man. Easily besotted. You can control him without ensnaring him. I know you would not marry him, and if you did it would be for the Emirate not for power. Or for pleasure."

"We are truly desperate," she said for them both.

"Truly, as we have in our history never been. Admiral Saiid will have his Navy. You shall have a ship in it. The Captain, the most skilled survivor of Ayer's Rock. We need a spacefarer who thinks like one. The Prince shall have his separate yacht, a mighty warship. You shall be his bolt hole and his refuge, should all start to fail."

"Because no Islamic captain would take my orders," she said bitterly.

"That is but one reason of the many. Star One, Emir, special authorization. Guardian Chaya Al-Haydin to have unlimited Emirate authority. Her voice is as Mine. To be logged and programmed, Our Will Be Done."

Jesu Christo, she almost said aloud.

It was as if she were the Princess, with that Word spoken.

And so she might be. Or have to be. Or make hard decision in orbit about a world in flames.

Star One acknowledged and signed off. Those who served directly the Will of the Emir were notoriously closed mouthed. Rumor would not leak at first.

But it would.

By then, the fleet would have left.

Or doom would have arrived.

He reached out and grasped her hand across the table.

An old man's hand, but strong with will and with destiny.

"You have your entire life served my People. You read the report on New Brunswick?"

It had given her nightmares for weeks.

Because she had no trouble at all imagining it happening.

Bombardment ships, lavish ordinance. Power armor troops. The sorting. The useless, culled. The useful, worked to death. The attractive ... also used.

"Do not let this happen to my People. If they must it is to die, you must deliver them safely into Allah's Hands."

She was not being asked to die for the Emirate which was to say for Allah. That she had accepted.

Guardians are asked for the toughest tasks.

She was not being asked to kill terrorists, or rebels, or even mere infidels.

She was being asked to kill God's Own so as to spare them.

That was the reason for the Emirate Authority.

They could deprive the Republic of the joy of bombarding an alien world, by doing it to themselves first.

Could she do such a horrid thing?

She took out her soul and examined it, as she had done during vigils and study and deep despair.

The choice - Republic investment or hitting their own cities with effect weapons?

It was a bitter thing.

She could.

"Now for the hard part, my Daughter."

The Emir had the right. He was Father to all his People.

"Can you do the thing. And live. And save the Prince. And go to a new world, and tell what lies you must for the remnants of our People to survive?"

That required thought.

Push the button, and die with her People.

Hard.

Push the button, kill her millions, and live a lie to the end of her life, that a remnant might endure? Hunted like beasts but by men worse than beasts?

Harder.

She swallowed.

"I will do what it is that must be done."

The Emir nodded firmly and released her hand.

"Go. Things will move swiftly now. A last thought. You must also take some Jews and some Christos with. They will be essential."

She started to bow, remembered combat rules, and saluted then fled.

A single tear dripped from the corner of His eye as he watched her go on his orders.

###

"And for so doing this shall be your warrant," she read again, from her hospital bed.

It was lawful. A free world could grant a naval commission to anyone it chose. Even an alien. Even a refugee.

She was a desperate woman from a dead colony. Ayer's Rock was particles and all she had loved were dead. The lucky ones, by fusion ordinance. The unlucky, aboard ... she rejected the thought.

The Emirate was dying, and knew it was dying, and dared to fight. That took courage.

She in turn dared to call to verify her orders.

"This is Admiral Saiid. Yes. I will not be accompanying the Trade Fleet. But each Captain has certain special instructions. Your first. A Guardian will be assigned to you. With great discretion, you shall do as the Guardian orders, even above the orders of the Commodore and of even the Most Gracious and Pruissant Prince. Second. Guard the Prince at all costs. Any cost. Your vessel is the fastest frigate we have. Board him and run. Even out of this galaxy if needs must."

Theoretically possible... but a three hundred year trip, with only the endlessness of Between, to the next closest.

"Nominal crew of a Sword class frigate is 300 souls. We shall crew with 150 souls and you shall embark 50 of your own, 50 of ours, 50 of the Christos and special delegations of a few others. Train them as you can. But the mix shall be male and female and more female than male. No children. But no methods of timing either. Plan for children. Plan for generation voyage. Every corner packed with rations and with parts."

She shuddered.

There was a legend of a ship doomed to wander the cosmos, manned by neither dead nor living, the Flying Dutchman, not that anyone knew what a Dutch was.

"As you command," she acknowledged.

If that way it went, she would living represent the end of Ayers Rock at the end of the damned thing.

That was not much to live for. But perhaps enough.

Itty Bitty Bigger World - Residency

I was once asked, as a thought exercise, to explain Protocol's view of residency as if someone had never been exposed to Protocol or lived in the modern world.

It's really hard to explain.

The inverse is also true. A lot of people who have grown up in a Protocol-compliant society don't understand much of human history either.

A famous science fiction writer, Lois McMaster Bujold, wrote in one of her books about a fraught confrontation between father and son over the son's choice of a wife. The son said at one point:

"My home is not a place. It is a person ... people."

This captures almost precisely the tension between the view of nationality by birthplace and nationality by tribal membership.

The predecessor state to San San, the United States of America, asserted categorically that a person born in the United States was therefore a United States citizen. They were entitled to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - but if they lacked housing and starved to death in the cold, that was on them.

(Children raised in Protocol consider this shockingly cruel. "You mean they didn't care? Why didn't someone take them in?" When the discussion reaches the idea that there were entire classes of people - security guards and police - employed for the specific purpose of keeping them out of warmer places, the usual conclusion is that our ancestors were simply barbarians.)

Conversely, there are many cultural and tribal groups that believe that you must be born to parents who are members of a group, in order to be in that group. That same United States had a Bureau of Indian Affairs that tracked membership as a Native American by the percentage of your ancestry that was of tribal descent. Being born on a reservation meant nothing; having a mother of half blood meant you were only one quarter Indian. Last but not least, the Nazi empire used blood to determine if a person was Jewish - and that determination was often a death sentence.

So at one level, Protocol dodges the question. You're a citizen if you're a human. If you're homo sapiens sapiens, you're a human and therefore a citizen.

"No matter where you go, there you are."

At another level, the right of residency is one of the most difficult and thorny problems defined in Protocol.

The right of departure, to use a term coined by another science fiction writer, is one of the ways in which Protocol guards against slavery.

The only way you lose the right to leave your current residency situation is to be convicted of a serious crime. Otherwise you are welcome to leave, with your personal effects, and go somewhere else. If you can't leave, you're in civil or criminal custody - and Protocol puts strict limitations and controls on all custodial matters.

That does not mean you have the right to live in any particular place or in any particular way.

The private property rights enshrined in that same America - the one that would let you die in the cold - applied to real property (i.e. land and buildings) and to personal property (all the rest).

A person could live in a house they owned, or pay money to live in someone else's house (or apartment), or rent a space in a mobile home or trailer park and own or rent a mobile home or trailer within.

But just owning land did not mean you could build a house on it. Local governments asserted zoning regulations, themselves a crude and rudimentary form of Protocols that applied to safe and aesthetic dwellings.

The inverse was also true - just building a shelter on a piece of land gave you no rights to the land underneath. The shantytowns of the 2020s were a product of people being able to get construction materials but not land, so they assembled unsafe ramshackle shelter any way they could.

Empty houses would be 'guarded' to keep squatters from living in them, while shantytowns were demolished (and soon after, rebuilt, sometimes in the same places.) Students often complain, "This makes no sense! Why not put the homeless people in the houses and deal with the details later?"

One reason was that adverse possession could endanger the ownership of the empty buildings. But more practically, the homeless would damage or even destroy the houses by living in them.

"OK, keep them from damaging the houses by building them better or using surveillance to enforce right living methods!"

Ubquitious surveillance of the type we are accustomed to under Protocol was not yet widespread. But using it in that way would have been viewed as an invasion of privacy.

"So to protect their hypothetical right to privacy, you make them freeze publicly?"

There are a number of reasons the 2020s are referred to, to quote yet another science fiction writer, as the "Crazy Years."

In Protocol there are several ways that a person can establish a right of residency. Local governments, such as San San, are welcome to establish additional residency paths, but cannot interfere in Protocol rights.

1) Birthright. A person born in a Protocol state is a resident of that Protocol state. That means they have to be sheltered, fed, cared for and offered education and opportunity by that state. This applies to adults but especially to children. However, there is no right to a particular shelter location. Housing may be offered or assigned. A person can leave their current shelter and the state has to offer them some other shelter - but they don't have to be offered a better shelter in a more desirable location.

San San has large numbers of transitional housing options of many types. So there is always a right to leave and go somewhere else, but the somewhere else is about the same. You get a bed to sleep in every night, but have no particular right to the _same_ bed. It is convenient to provide that housing in one place, but Protocol does not require this.

2) Rental or ownership. If a space is owned or controlled by an entity, they can as an economic transaction provide residency in that space. Protocol defines minimums for safe human occupancy - the equivalent of an early 21st century 'capsule hotel' but there is no effective maximum. THe granting entity must comply with the notice requirements below prior to termination, but the renter can leave at any time, with or without notice, paying only for the time used and damages if any.

San San chooses to allow rentals and building ownership but not land ownership. As part of the founding of the San San Arcology, existing land rights were converted into ownership shares in the San San Arcology Corporation. A person or more often an entity can own the buildings or structures but the actual use of the land is assigned and governed by San San land use regulations, which are extremely complex and have built in assumptions such as "highest and best use," "historical use," "environmental conservation" (which means something very different), and "utility" (which has nothing to do with services and everything to do with efficiency.)

Some Protocol states permit land ownership. However, the concept of "economic battery" - depriving another person of the means of life without justifiable cause - comes into play. Often the use of land for a certain purpose requires devoting land to other uses in addition. If you wish to build a luxury home on your land, you must also contribute to efficiency housing in parallel.

Note that this applies to "renting rooms" as well as to hotels, motels, campgrounds, hostels, any way in which someone pays for access to put a roof over their head.

3) Cultural heritage. Protocol recognizes that some human communities and tribes have special rights to continue their historical practices. The classic example applied in every Protocol state is the so-called Travelers, Roma or Gypsies. A member of these groups has special rights to dedicated housing, campgrounds and cultural sites that are only for the use of that cultural group. Of particular importance is their right to refuse entry to their spaces or residency to persons who are not members of their groups, and even more importantly _set their own rules_ for who belongs to that group and who initially does not. This could include financial contributions, ancestry, or human relationships such as marriage, but could also include the ability to speak a language, to contribute to the culture as judged by a panel of cultural experts, or other criteria.

An important caveat of cultural heritage residency rights is that the criteria for granting residency can be as complex, convoluted and arcane as may be desired, but the revocation of any residency right becomes a matter of strict Protocol. Losing cultural residency must be a voluntary surrender or a punishment for criminal conviction. A violator may be socially ostracized but cannot lose their residency rights.

In San San, the "science fiction fandom" owns convention center spaces and houses that are intended for residency by registered science fiction fans. Obviously, anyone can be a fan of science fiction, but a capital-F Fan must have attended a certain number of conventions, worked a certain number of conventions, be a published artist, contribute heavily in labor or finances or both, and/or made a Friend of Fandom by vote of existing Fen to establish this form of residency.

4) Employment. A common 'perk' of post-economic employment status is the temporary, constrained right to live in surroundings that are convenient to the work. The conditions of employment remain a subject for local law, except that Protocol forbids what a prior age called racial or gender discrimination. Housing in sensitive areas often carries with it an obligation to live lightly and with due respect to the sensitive environment.

Employment related residency is casually revocable with the employment relationship. No one should live in a San San CHP Barracks unless they are a CHP officer.

5) Charity. A person, entity or member state can choose to grant residency above and beyond all of the types above, voluntarily. The only limit on charity residency is the requirement for notice prior to termination of residency. Otherwise, as it is not an economic transaction, the criteria for charity residency can be as arbitrary as the grantor wishes - including what Protocol would consider discrimination in an employment relationship. The right of departure also applies, with no required notice by the recipient who is leaving.

There is an important caveat to all five residency types.

Requirement is that residency over time requires notice of revocation proportional to the time spent in lawful occupancy.

Twenty-four hours = 4 hours.
Seventy-two hours = 12 hours.
One hundred sixty-eight hours (1 week) = 24 hours.
One month = 1 week.
One year = 1 month.
More than one year, less than 10 years = 2 months.
Ten years or more = 3 months.

This is a safeguard against sudden or unexpected homelessness, which is considered unnecessarily stressful on both the person and the Protocol state with obligation to house them.

San San chooses to have an additional safeguard against accusations of violating the residency rights of a San San resident.

In parallel with the public food dispenser system is the public beds system. This is a warren-like hostel setting in which a citizen's identity card opens the door to and temporarily rents - for 23 hours exactly - a safe space with bedding in which to sleep, with nearby restroom and shower facilities. This happens to meet the capsule hotel requirement of Protocol, but the 23 hour limit is specifically tailored to avoid creating any right to residency to any particular space. Any personal items left in a public bed are removed by bots before the room is flash-sterilized and bedding replaced. Bots also enforce the "one person per bed" rule with stunners. As there are public spaces in which human sexuality may be expressed, this does not violate any related Protocol rights.

A habitual uzer of a public bed is likely a VR or hard drug addict. Like public food dispensers, everyone has used one, but rarely and without pride in the fact.

GWOT II - Epilogue - Crowning Achievement

The War continued, as wars do.

Site continued coding for the War. The executive offices were moved to F building. The fourth floor of H had had just too many bad things happen within, for anyone who knew the Site at all to be comfortable going there.

A few of Echo 18's adherents fled Site during his arrest. They were duly listed as wanted.

The food got a little better. Onsite was as safe as it ever had been. Offsite, anti-American partisans and the Resistance rose from a nuisance to a threat.

After interrogations and review of files, Sharon was confirmed in charge of the Security forces. Her background, impeccable. Her story, plausible. Most importantly, she had not risen from within the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Site and therefore was not regarded as a threat.

As ordered, she excised all mention of Echo 18 and the others from Security's files - except to note briefly that if they returned they were to be detained and Homeland to be notified.

Somehow this entire time, the Homeland Bound program had overlooked Arturo. His execution was merely a minor correction of an oversight. Foreign born, not naturalized, not identified as an alien. It was simply faster and less embarassing to sidewalk him than to send him to a collection site and put him on an aircraft.

Sharply worded memos began to fly between Homeland, the Office of the Inspector General and the Department of Defense.

Finally Homeland was informed. Keep your hands off the San Jose Site. We're using it. It's important. Leave it alone.

###

The campus minimart was still named 'Echo 18 Sundries.' Homeland hadn't bothered with trivia like how Site named its departments.

A picture of Echo 18, scowling, was still posted on a support column unsuited for shelf space. "Shoplifting is stealing from your fellow Employees."

A little hand-carved table appeared below it, with six eye bolts on the underside for some unknown reason. A candle or two, a few coins at first. No notes or pictures; paper was still expensive. Every now and again, a stray padlock would be found locked to one of the eye bolts. Then chained to each other. Occasionally, when there were too many, the Security shop would remove them to be repurposed.

###

What did the Site code for the War?

Projects were always compartmentalized. Massively parallel computing, complex database management, hyperrealistic simulation and training software, and language translation and modeling were all components.

It was the one place where a Department of Defense customer could come for custom code, or repair of legacy code dating from the 1960s onward, and get their fix in a militarily useful timeframe.

When the simulation software used to load freighters with military cargos had a glitch, Site fixed it.

When the database used to track Naval Aviation parts worldwide went down, Site put it back up.

When a tank or helicopter glitched, and the glitch was "somewhere in the computer," Site would find it.

But the most useful purpose to which Site code was put was actually on behalf of Homeland - as a customer.

###

"This program would not have been possible without the detailed analysis at Site of population trends, characteristics, identities and addresses, drawing in detail on both public and non-public datasets including the raw United States Census and the credit reporting agencies. The special capabilities of Site, including the ability to track individuals and plausibly falsify their personal communications, made the entire effort run much more smoothly and without causing premature public alarm."

- From Executive Summary, Homeland closing report on her crowning achievement, Homeward Bound

GWOT VI - Walking Out

Bogdan Munteanu regretted three things in his life.

The day he'd decided to become a police officer, to serve his country without becoming a soldier. Seventeen and stupid.

The day he'd accepted appointment in the Moldavian National Police. Nineteen and stupider.

The day he'd agreed to accompany his country's contribution to the United Nations peacekeeping effort in America. Twenty three and likely to be no older.

Each of the decisions had resulted in grueling, unpleasant experiences.

The provincial police academy had been tough. The national police academy, tougher.

It was not the skills. He knew soberly that while he took pride in his nation, the training was not of the best.

It was that he had a tendency to think when he should be doing. This earned him more than his share of push-ups, and of beatings.

In his personal life, he liked his drinking, when it was safe. He liked women, but willing and smiling not running away.

Despite his nominal rank of Police Corporal, he was neither well paid nor had anyone to lead.

He spoke English somewhat well but liked to pretend to only speak Moldavian.

He spoke enough Russian for battlefield purposes (Stop! Police! Drop your weapons! Lie down!) and did not care to learn more.

He had been Christian until he came here. The third time he'd helped bury bodies, he'd tossed his wooden crucifix in with one. He did not want to mistaken for these nekulturny bastards.

He liked his cheese too, but not at every meal.

He'd had a good piece of cheese at lunch. His mother had sent it, and he'd been saving it.

As likely as not, his last meal.

Because the grueling, unpleasant experience today was not likely to be one that he survived.

Captain Somol had confronted the Christian militia, as it was the duty of United Nations troops to do.

By pure chance, he had been returning from answering a call of nature, tucking in his little gun when the American style jacked up pickup trucks had arrived.

He had not come closer. Certainly nowhere near his SKS, left with the rifles of the other police in their single purchased farm wagon, a Ford Bronco.

So the only weapon at hand was his bigger gun, the large frame revolver Americans called a 'Magnum.' Also the only brand of condom that on him would fit.

When the swivel mounts of the machine guns had come down, he had fallen immediately ... and saved his life.

Now, Bogdan was hiding among a pile of bodies. His mother would not like to see him now. But then again, she was not likely to see him again.

So he waited his moment to retreat.

It was a grisly game of hide and murder.

Screams, the flash of machetes, shots. Movement, rustling noises. Then the screams and slaying again.

As much as it disgusted him to do, his only hope was to run away, and to allow the murder of innocent people to be the distraction that permitted his flight.

The cheap tracksuit that was his country's chosen uniform was an elastic polyester yet still stuck to his skin. Now it was soaked from both sides - his sweat and others' blood.

His only equipment was that which had been on his body when he pissed. A nylon belt with holsters as if for police equipment. His handcuff pouch held a single zip tie - just in case - and a supply of hard candies to slip to children when he could. His straight baton vexed him, so he always left it with the others in the car. Its ring was still on his belt. His revolver speedloaders, and the packet of loose rounds, was carefully secured. No radio, so no radio holster. A holster instead for his mobile phone and an additional portable battery. One long cable, two short cables and three small chargers tucked away in what could have been mistaken for a small medical pouch. Others carried such supplies, and he and they knew how to use them. But he did not bother with such. Either one was in a civilized town, and medics would come - or not, and not.

What he regretted most was his water bottle. Metal with a lanyard, it had been empty and he hadn't been going off to fill anything. It was now irretrievably lost, but of no sentimental value.

It might have helped stave off thirst.

He did not at all regret his nylon baseball cap with "UNNAPID POLICE MOLDOVA" and a colored badge of a lion with a sword. It could only get him killed, by refugees who mistook him for Christian or Christians who did not like foreigners, which was all of them.

A scream, shots, and he scuttled swiftly into motion, cold muscles protesting as he ran.

So did several others. So did shots fly.

None touched him.

He ran, ran and ran ... until the joke about what to do if one is swallowed whole by the elephant in the zoo, he ran until he was all pooped out.

He stopped, panting, stretching each leg in turn.

There was little point to calling for help. But his training had drilled into him the need to communicate.

His cheap looking dual SIM phone had a few features - a hidden application, a passcode to access it, and the ability to send text messages in some way that was not depending on Christian charity or long since deactivated public GSM networks.

He did not need to know how it worked. But he could send a message.

"Rodeo Gulch. Unit destroyed. Many killed. Killing continues. UNNAPID Moldavia Contingent PC Bogdan Munteanu."

It would attach his GPS coordinates, which would tell their own tale.

A swift reply. Surprising.

"California Control copies. Stay alive. Attempt to extract north or west. Enemy in disorganized company strength. If captured give your name again. Good luck. End message."

He shrugged while squatting. There was nothing they could do for him, and the little he had done for them to give warning.

His phone also had an offline mapping capability, but he could think of no easier way to get killed than to look at it while walking, except perhaps to call out to the Christian murderers looking for strays.

So he consulted it briefly to pick a direction, and start his walk.

It was cold, and drizzling. But he was in great health, much better than the refugees, so he had at least two days of hard travel in him before he would truly be able to call this suffering.

Some of his compatriots had mobile phone shaped flasks instead of mobile phones, to keep their vodka or other spirits in.

A swallow would be courage. Two or more would be rash foolishness. But no drink meant no temptation.

The important part was to not get killed. Then to move as swiftly as he dared in a straight line. No need to worry about trackers, this was not that kind of war. Not like pig dog Serbians chasing their sisters or Belgrade city Muslims terrified of their own shadows in the woods.

He had to harden his heart to these refugees. He could not help them. That was not why he was here anymore.

He was here to be elsewhere, as fast as his own two tracksuit wearing legs could carry him.

So he stretched one more time, and began.

GWOT V - Cougar

The Cougar medium tank project was the result of a competition between three California military corporations - FMC California (aka FMCC, a spinoff from the company that manufactured the Bradley), Lockheed-Martin California Division (aka LMCD), and the new upstart Maker Space Tank Party (MSTP). FMCC, LMCD and MSTP each proposed several designs, some conservative and some radical. The final design was derived from the FMCC chassis and turret assembly, the LMCC main gun and targeting systems, and numerous innovations from MSTP.

California military decided that while it needed a heavy tank design desperately, it could neither afford one nor could the state afford the manufacturing capability required. Therefore California purchased a number of Leclerc tanks from the French and the United Arab Emirate.

Thousands of medium tanks in time was considered better than hundreds of heavy tanks too late.

The LMCC main gun system is based on a 120mm main gun shell with additional propellant options - a hybrid cased / caseless round. Like all Lockheed-Martin inventions, it works reasonably well most of the time. Crews often forego the additional propellant due to the difficulty of cleaning the barrel after it is used, required after as few as thirty shots. (Eventually if not cleaned, the barrel will blow up.)

The FMCC chassis was a reliable tread system with an overpowered turbine engine to a continuously variable transmission. The Cougar tread system only throws treads if too much power is applied to them. This is remarkably easy for a novice tank driver to do.

MSTP provided what third parties consider a 'unique' armor option. The honeycomb armor does not protect the mobility components of the tank at all, only the turret and crew compartment. MSTP's battlefield analysis claimed that just as most tanks have little to no top armor, most hits on the front slope (or glasis) are above the midpoint of the tread line. So only the top half of the front of the tank, and the front, top and sides of the turret system, are armored against tank and missile fire. The turret top can actually resist a hit from a dedicated top-attack weapon such as a Javelin - but the top of the engine pack immediately behind is almost completely unarmored. The lower half of the armor is proof only against small arms fire.

The combination of top-heavy armor with lighter overall weight and an overpowered turbine gives the Cougar similiarly 'unique' handling characteristics. An unskilled Cougar tank driver, or a tank driver trained on other chassis, is very likely to flip the Cougar sideways in a turn at any speed, as well as throwing one or even both treads.

The turret assembly, as is standard with modern tanks, is gyrostabilized and has computer correction for windage, elevation and weather. However, the turret (just below the armor line) has a secondary turret ring that spins around the primary turret, which mounts over 120 individual but lightly armored cameras. If (when!) some of the cameras are battle damaged, the secondary ring spins to bring undamaged cameras into the turret's forward arc.

Also mounted on the same turret ring are ball bearing explosive strip charges, which are fired to disrupt incoming anti tank missiles and can be used in desperation against close enemy infantry. Boxy and fragile smoke grenade projectors are mounted forward on the main turret giving it a "fireworks" type appearance.

Mounted in coaxial configuration with the 120mm main gun is a 25mm "chain gun." They cannot be fired at the same time with any accuracy. However this gives the Cougar an intermediate option for engaging soft-skinned vehicles or enemy infantry while leaving the main gun ready to engage enemy tanks.

The Cougar also mounts seven (7!) medium machine guns, each equipped with a pre-loaded belt fed ammunition pack that cannot be reloaded during an engagement. In exchange, these machine guns are mounted two to the front (under the control of the driver), two on a three dimensional servo swivel mount (controlled by the loader), two forward on the turret assembly controlled by the gunner (but not coaxial!) and the seventh on a spade grip for the commander. This seventh is typically pointed aft and up at a 45 degree angle as it otherwise blocks the commander's forward view.

In an effort to reduce mobility losses, the Cougar computer-controlled driving system limits the power that can be transferred to the treads and substantially reduces the turning radius at any speed. While the tank can be moved from any of the four crew positions, only the dedicated driver position can actually 'drive' the tank, if an override switch is operated by the driver that lights a warning light at the other three positions.

In urban warfare the Cougar is festooned with barbed wire and chain link mesh to set off anti-tank grenades and keep enemy infantry from climbing the tank.

MSTP (Maker Space Tank Party)'s numerous minor refinements were developed based on incessant play of numerous armor game simulators and "mods" of optional features. Some of these - such as the balloon guided top attack weapon - were so impractical as to be impossible to implement.

However, one of the simplest and most practical innovations was the "camera on a stick" - a periscope variation that would allow a Cougar to "peer" above or around an obstacle, much like the mast mounted radar of the Apache Longbow. Some are mounted on the chassis and some on the turret assembly. All are disposable and easily replaceable in the field.

Another MSTP innovation was the addition of four side, two bottom and two rear hatches as well as a hatch from the driver's compartment to the main crew compartment, in addition to the two conventional turret top hatches. The Cougar is therefore the most "escapable" tank ever designed. It is possible for the entire crew to escape the tank from all six sides (front, port, starboard, aft, top and bottom).

Typically one of the two rear escape tunnels contains the crew's personal effects, which are discarded prior to tank versus tank combat if at all possible. Like the Merkava, these tunnels (on either side of the engine pack) could be used for sheltering wounded personnel or storing extra ammunition. The side hatches, being below the armor line, are impractical but not impossible to use as fighting hatches; a 'tube' for dropping smoke and fragmentation grenades is incorporated into all of the external hatch covers.

Another Cougar-specific innovation was the blade mounted server rack built into the rear behind the engine pack and powered from the engine alternators. This allows the use of COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) computing components as the 'brain' of the tank, driving the camera views, the targeting and the battlefield intelligence systems. This rack is only armored against small arms fire.

These innovations come at the expense of a survivability system now considered standard - "blow off" ammunition storage. If the ammunition in a Cougar detonates, there is no survivability for the crew. Another survivability standard - the built in fire extinguisher - is limited to the engine pack only and does not protect the ammunition or crew compartments.

There have been no combat engagements between Cougar and other tanks since its development and deployment.

The engine pack has proven highly reliable. Off road performance has been modest in automatic mode and either spectacular or spectacular in manual mode, depending on the skill of the driver.

Bulldozer and lowboy drivers appreciate the ability of the transmission to roll the wheels in neutral so that a trackless Cougar can be more easily loaded onto a trailer for return to depot.

In theory the Cougar could out-maneuver and out-flank other tanks while meeting them with parity of firepower. Survivability is an open ended question that cannot be resolved in any way but on the battlefield. The patchwork nature of the armor is an innovation that may or may not work in combat.

Cougar tanks are assigned a bewildering variety of names by their crews. There is a superstition that all Cougar tanks are queer, and it is considered rude to refer to the tank using a gender that matches the name. For example, "Bertha" and "Beth" are male tanks; "George" and "Roger" are female tanks. "Alex" and "Riley" and "River" are neither male nor female. No tank may ever be named "Pat" out of respect for the Governor.

Unlike many other tank chassis, the Cougar chassis is not used for other purposes. The tank is too new for variants to be proposed.

GWOT V - The Great Rescue

It started out as an ordinary day, as these things so often do.

Then it was a routine call.

Then it was balls to the wall, fangs out and hair on fire.

Then it got weird.

###

"Rampart, this is Echo 18 Actual. Priority operational traffic."

The controller was clearly bored.

"Echo 18 Actual go."

"GPS coordinates. 32 degrees 35 dot seven six minutes north. 116 degrees 23 dot seven seven minutes west."

I made him confirm the coordinates. He did.

"Level Seven repeat Seven Mass Casualty Incident at these coordinates. Prepare to copy a large resource order."

There was a reason I had sent the coordinates first.

"Say again level of MCI?"

"Seven repeat seven."

An audible gasp.

The voice changed to the duty officer. She was crisp and efficient.

"We copy a Level 7 MCI at thirty two degrees thirty fiver dot seven six minutes north by one hundred sixteen degrees twenty three dot seven six minutes west. Clear to copy your resource order."

"Seven BLS ambulance strike teams. Six ALS ambulance strike teams. Two physician strike teams. One field hospital. Logistics in proportion for sheltering an additional five hundred endangered persons. All repeat all available air ambulances on expedite. Request that all air ambulances carry maximum stock of intravenous fluids inbound. Break."

A brief pause while they made sure they'd heard what they had heard. All on a recorded radio channel, so they could play back as needed.

"Echo 18 continuing. Security situation is stable. Moving my entire unit to this position minus a security detail at McNasty. Also requesting four potable water tenders and two non-potable water tenders, immediate need."

Immediate need meant Right The Fuck Now.

"What is the nature of the MCI?"

"Rescue from multiple containerizations."

A long pause.

"What is a containerization?" the duty officer asked.

"They locked refugees in containers and left them there. Time period unknown."

This provoked thought. But as the front of my brain was thinking about all the dying people, the back of my brain was thinking about next steps.

"Break. Alarum alarum alarum. This is not an exercise. Requesting air cavalry forthwith and a full defensive package."

"Rampart copies all."

My mobile display terminal pinged as the resource order hit and a huge number of incident templates, frequency assignments and combat intelligence updates slammed into it.

I ignored the MDT and went to my MP platoon leader.

"Put out observers and snipers. Everyone else except you and me on primary rescue. I will coordinate comms. You will set up a landing zone and serve as air rescue manager. Kids fly, adults die."

She nodded, went to the back of her vehicle, gave orders to her squad leaders, and got out her signal panels and comms bag.

A few California scout-soldiers melted into the rocks to our north and east.

The rest made a human chain and helped carry feeble people out of the double doors of the rusty ancient forty foot containers and into the shade just outside them. We'd already popped the padlocks of course, as soon as the scout had reached the first container and heard the cries for help from inside.

The medics moved from person to person wearing fanny packs with rolls of flagging tape. A touch, a moan, and a strip of colored ribbon tied around the right wrist.

Within minutes they had an exact count.

Seventy four immediates. Red ribbons. In immediate danger of death, from altered mental status related to dehydration and heat stroke.

One hundred and seventy two delayeds. Yellow ribbons. In need of immediate medical attention, but delaying that attention would not kill them swiftly. They could wait a few minutes. Not a few hours.

Sixty seven walking wounded. Green ribbons. They needed to be processed and were thirsty, but did not appear to be at risk of dying suddenly. We could be wrong though.

Not an exact count of dead. Over eighty though.

Our single ALS medic was on her knees next to a pile of IV bags, our entire stock made up of the medical kits plus the bag every scout-soldier carried in our web gear. A stretcher team would bring her a pediatric body. She would efficiently put an IV into the dying child's arm, a soldier would hold the bag high, and the child would be moved to the shade. A green ribbon would be recruited to hold the bag up, in lieu of an IV stand, which put them mostly in the shade too.

Twice she did not place an IV. She motioned and the body was carried away and dumped in the sun.

She ran out of bags before she ran out of child patients. With the help of tarps, we did not quite run out of shade.

A sonic boom announced the arrival of air cavalry.

They were very, very careful not to overfly Mexico. But they could see and their sensors could update my MDT.

Observers in the rocks and hills to our south.

Almost certainly Cartel.

What this was, was a distraction. A distraction we could not ignore, with so many lives in peril.

But the Cartels would ruthlessly expend hundreds of civilian lives to smuggle across an especially important shipment.

I was already in gross violation of my mission.

We're not out here to save lives.

We're out here to secure borders.

But they shouldn't have put me out here and expected me to turn my back on dying children.

They can court martial me tomorrow.

Not today.

"Raven Four, Echo 18 Actual on Air Ground."

I acknowledged.

"We have movement north of the Border on Shockey Truck Trail headed northbound. Four trucks no IFF."

I thought about it. Court martial if I'm wrong.

It was about the timing.

The refugees were not all dead. So they hadn't been here for three days or more.

The refugees were dying. So they'd been locked in the containers for several hours, possibly a day or two.

"Are the trucks tractors?" In other words, could they tow container trailers like the four I was looking at?

"That's affirm."

"Fire mission in hot with guns. Kill them all. Strafe the survivors until you are bingo munitions. War code Anetsky Four."

This wasn't technically a war, so the containerization was not technically a war crime.

I didn't care. They were therefore mass murderers fleeing the scene of their mass murder.

"Kill them all," I repeated brutally. "Break. Echo 18, California Eight Control."

That was the border checkpoint. West/East not direct. Protecting San Diego from the wretched hive of scum and villainy that was the California deserts.

"Shut it the fuck down. No traffic except emergency and military and resource immediate need. Deadly force authorized. We have a potential major incursion."

That cut off a third of the sector and a third of the problem.

It also cost the California Republic thousands of dollars - even if inflated CAD - per minute that traffic was interrupted.

Fuck 'em.

The first ground resource other than my MP company arrived.

A single CHP unit with a single CHP trooper.

I flagged him over.

"Officer. This is a complex crime scene. Process the ever living fuck out of it."

This may be the Border, but this is the California side, and this is not lawless territory.

The CHP officer nodded, got out his digital camera and crime scene tape and notepad, and started a task that would take a war crimes investigative cell weeks. But evidence was perishable, if not as perishable as the victims.

A second ground resource. A single battered fire engine. Campos Indian Reservation volunteers. Three wildland firefighters.

"For this purpose your water is potable. Your rule is, everyone who can swallow gets water. Figure it out. We have medics, we will keep doing patient care. All I want you to do is water these people. How much water do you carry?"

"Five hundred gallons," the weather beaten volunteer driver said. They had already unloaded their ice chest and ran it to the ALS medic, who started using ice and water bottles on pediatric victims at once. Now, moving with the quickness, they hooked up hoses and connectors and made their engine into a forest of small diameter garden hoses flowing water to fill containers people could drink from. More walking wounded were pressed into holding hoses and being human water fountains.

"I've requested four potable and two non-potable water tenders. Use all yours up, more is coming."

A single Red Lion medical helicopter made a smooth landing but kicked up a plume of dust. The flight medic paused and the air ambulance crew stripped all their portable equipment and made a pile of it. Gear weight for lives per pound. Four babies were loaded and the helicopter took off immediately, running west to El Cajon instead of north for once. Basic care now was better than advanced care too late.

I checked the MDT for deployments. The air cav had worked over the putative enemy convoy. My reaction platoon was headed right for them but would take another hour to get to the burning hulks and search for any survivors. Once caught they would be interrogated, tried and hanged. I wouldn't allow them to be merely shot. Not for this.

Soon we had an air game above us. Circling fixed wing aircraft on one side, circling rotary wing aircraft on the other.

"Hellguard on Air to Ground Three, incident commander, your wishes?"

Callsigns Hellguard, Hydra and Horatius were incident command aircraft. Their role was to keep the military and civilian aircraft from "conflicting" i.e. crashing. They would keep track of all that for me.

"Air cordon, report vehicle movements especially north. Maximize throughput of air ambulances, we have a major MCI here."

I listened distantly as Hellguard and my MP platoon leader made a landing zone into a field helibase. Three pads, to minimize helicopter loiter times.

The next helicopter to land disgorged California Republic soldiers.

Not mine. Not scout-soldiers at all, although they wore scout soldier insignia to which I knew they were not entitled.

On our side of the border they wore uniforms. Not on the other side.

"Operative Ramos," one saluted.

"Take two of our vehicles. Push a roving patrol west and another one east. Engage what you find. Put air cav on them. This is a distraction for smuggling. Whoever is doing the smuggling ordered _this_," I waved my hand at the bodies and frantic activity. "So fuck them up like angry bears do."

"Hooah! Bear Force!" they barked as they complied.

The Americans did not have a monopoly on special operation personnel, and I had ordered ours to go hunting.

Their helicopter lifted with several casualties and one of mine with a sprained ankle. Someone had to keep them under control during the flight.

That was a patch on the problem. We needed more. A lot more.

My duties were to wrestle with the Mobile Display Terminal. Incident Command. Set this shit up.

So much as I longed to make sure that the babies got water, my job was to see that their torturers got lead. Or hemp.

When I stuck my head up from the terminal, hours had passed. I was very thirsty and had to drink water from my own field pack's canteen.

This was now a forward operating base of the California Republic.

Two Cougar medium battle tanks now faced south, turrets quivering as they scanned the opposite side. Any cross border sniper would not survive to make a second shot.

Ground ambulances pulled in, were loaded, and left. The air game continued, if more slowly now that every air ambulance in a hundred mile radius was now in the cycle. Fly here, load, fly to hospital, dip out to refuel, fly here again. Repeat until out of sunlight.

In addition to the logistics support, the armor, the infantry, the mortar section... we had reporters.

Escorted by a Collections agent, of all things. His business suit was horribly out of place in our desert and already dusty.

I had no PIO. I was trained in some things before the War. I thought about where we were. Could I spare half an hour?

Yes.

"I can make a statement and take a few brief questions." The reporters pounced. I identified myself and my unit. "At 1145 hours this date, scout soldiers on border patrol discovered these four forty foot containers dumped at this location. Upon hearing cries from inside, we breached the doors and found that they had been packed full of people. Over one hundred of them are confirmed to be dead and another three hundred seriously injured by heat exhaustion and dehydration. This is an atrocity and the full weight of the California Republic will land upon those who ordered it, who assisted in it and who knew about it in advance but did not report it."

I paused. Then I used some magic words.

"Justice will find them, whereever they may be, anywhere in the world, by the ghosts of Alviso."

The Collections agent flinched. He knew what I had just said.

I wasn't still on the Commission. But I had said what I had said, and I knew what I knew, and the Governor had chosen to allow me to continue to have the authority to say things like that.

"Do you think this is the work of the Cartels?"

"No opinion." Of course.

"Was anyone taken into custody outside the containers?"

"No." No. If we had, they would be having a talk with me right now, possibly up in the rocks where their body could be discreetly recovered later.

"Why do you think this was done?"

"We are conducting a full investigation, there are several possibilities." The Cartels wanted to flex and wrote their message on the bodies of migrants.

"How do you feel?"

I felt like a broken record trapped in a vicious loop.

How do I feel? What does that have to do with anything? Feel? You want me to feel? Like that mother over there wondering which of the little bodies being flown out is her son or daughter or both? Like that father who is holding a garden hose because that's all we can trust him to do, but is saving lives by doing it? Like that man who clearly clawed at the interior and broke his fingers scrabbling at the seal, possibly when it was slammed on him so many hours ago?

"The Republic has asked us to uphold her honor." I found myself saying. "This is a despicable dishonorable deed that soils all that it touches. Blood washes off. Guilt does not. Whoever did this has no honor. This is not our culture. This is not Mexico's great culture. This is American styled skullfuckery, a poison of atrocity and genocide that has infected whoever thought of this. Anyone who loves California or loves Mexico would literally take the person who thought of this crime and take them outside and kill them. Right the fuck now. That is what I feel. No further questions."

###

She turned from the screen, looked at her associates, put away the gold and jewel encrusted iPhone, motioned to her most loyal bodyguard.

"Enrique, my associate, my dear associate."

Cruel, strong men turned as pale as their ancestries would permit.

"This ... was a misstep. An embarrassment. I do not like being lectured to about honor by a Goddamned gringo Californicator. Especially when he is right and you were wrong."

"Take him out back and beat him to death. Send the BBC the video. Express our fury and that we had nothing to do with it."

Enrique knew he was dead.

But there are deaths and deaths.

He stood, bowed, and walked out to the back courtyard with an entourage.

He did not start screaming until the third blow from the baseball bat.

GWOT II - Reaction Team

I had to train our security personnel carefully and in detail with respect to the client's Reaction Team or, in shorthand form, REACT.

Most employees and even some Reaction Team members didn't fully grasp the nuances.

If it wears a uniform and carries a gun, it must be Security, right?

Wrong.

Very, very wrong.

The CLIENT and COMPANY had a contract. It was very vague. We'd added a number of addendums to that contract. The post-Firecracker ones were schitzophrenic at best. Arguably highly illegal, depending on how you viewed weasel wording such as "use force to exclude trespassers" and "reasonable efforts to provide services under any and all conditions" and especially "the terms 'force majure' and 'act of war' and 'act of God' shall not be reasons that justify nonperformance under this contract."

Under that contract, COMPANY had agreed that it would supply a certain level of 'security services' which obviously have to be performed by 'security personnel' equipped with 'mobility equipment' and 'tactical equipment.'

This did not get CLIENT off the hook for providing for its own security, especially under disaster conditions.

Pre-Firecracker, one could call the police. The police could call SWAT. The Incident Commander could request mutual aid through multiple levels of government, ultimately the National Guard or even the Army.

Post-Firecracker, none of that was happening. None of it. We'd had a sheriff's deputy visit. Once. We'd had San Jose Police visit several times in the first three weeks, each time in fewer numbers, and then they were too far away to come back again.

What we had instead was Homeland. The one time we'd asked them to come out - to take custody of a terrorist prisoner - they'd shot him to avoid the nuisance of transport.

The propaganda said Homeland was our brave defenders. By reputation, Homeland was much better at gathering up refugees and putting them on buses than they were fighting anti-American partisans.

Even if they felt like helping, and were able to help, they would be far too late.

Staffing up the contract security force to answer all the threats was just not tenable. Even the CLIENT - wealthy as they are, providing essential services in the War On (Of?) Terror - can't afford to have hundreds of people standing around with guns just in case something bad happens. Again.

So they had chosen, with some prodding, to cross train their own employees as combatants.

This is the literal definition of a militia. In this case, a corporate militia. Lots and lots and lots of issues there.

I am continually amazed by the number of people who think that soldiers and police have unlimited access to the weapons they use on duty. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The VP of Human Resources had expressed ... concerns ... about her problem children having access to firearms. She could kind of wrap her head around the idea that security personnel needed to have firearms because the bad guys did. She could not appreciate that security guards armed with pistols were outclassed in every way by intruders with rifles.

That her Employees might be trusted with rifles hurt her brain.

So we had strict weapons controls.

Security carried handguns and would be issued appropriate longarms as needed, based on duties and role. But the big toys would be turned in between occasions.

REACT members carried no weapons at all. But when gathered together and issued weapons, would considerably outnumber and also outgun Security. However, they also would need to turn in their weapons when not needed. ALL their weapons.

To who? An armory, of course, staffed by a mix of CLIENT and COMPANY personnel who thoroughly understood the tension, with procedures written that would allow COMPANY to audit and maintain control but CLIENT to seize control if it ever became necessary.

Each REACT team consisted of five personnel. Four gun toters and a team leader. The team leader was always a manager. Leadership is leadership, except when it isn't. So the SLE, VP HR and VP Operations formed a panel and personally up-checked every REACT team leader, and occasionally removed one from REACT when necessary.

The gun toters could be ordinary Employees. They could not be Contractors. Ever. They were required to participate in trainings, be vetted by a process that had Security as well as their line managers and HR involved, and meet a couple other criteria that weren't ever shared with me.

Most importantly, they could go nowhere and do nothing without their Team Leader, who wore TL armbands as part of their REACT uniform. They could do nothing alone. Only in pairs or more could they possess firearms. But any configuration but the five-pack with a TL present was automatically suspect.

How many REACT teams did the Client field? That would be telling, but well over a dozen.

We didn't dare have them all go to a central armory to get their weapons every time. So instead, we had lockers set up that were under the control of the central armory. The lockers would only unlock if the site alert conditions allowed for it, or someone took bolt cutters or a combination saw to the emergency locking pins. We didn't want anyone taking over the armory and therefore the whole site, but we also didn't want an Employee helping themselves to their gear and deciding to re-negotiate the terms of their employment. It did happen a few times, because security procedures are never perfect, but never worked out well for them.

On the command and control side, the SLE had been very blunt. I call out the Reaction Team. _HE_ owns it. I can borrow it but I have to give it back.

I tell them what needs to be done, and they do it according to their procedures. A blunt instrument. If it's a delicate problem, it should be within Security's capabilities, right?

There was another issue there. There is a rich and majestic (literally) history of security personnel taking over from the people they used to work for, prior to self-promotion through use of force. The CLIENT wanted to stay in control of its own Employees and premises and assets.

A quick way to do that, that did not depend on whether I personally tripped in front of a bullet, was to make that a fight between REACT and the security force would not be a fair fight.

We'd even written a procedure for what to do if the contract security force went off the reservation. In a few words, RT kills us all.

However, the integrity of the Reaction Team and the behavior of the individual Employees was very much a security, or Security, issue.

The effectiveness of the RT was directly linked to quality of training, past and present. That wasn't my issue. A stable of Employee line managers, some ex military and some not, took it in turn to "administer" the RT.

The big advantage Security had over REACT was that we trained all the time, and they could only train in what time could be spared from coding. But some of them were former military - more on average than in Security - so some of them started from a higher baseline.

The great equalizer was the Kill House. A training course type experience, with subcaliber ammunition, that Security and REACT both made use of, a lot.

The training facilities were shared by Security and RT but were owned and developed by the Client.

Why? That would be telling, and telling would be followed by sudden unhappy ending. Something something coding something the War something cutting edge.

I'd helped with their procedures book. I had to know their tactics.

They were deliberately modeled on the needs of a pre-Firecracker Police SWAT team. SWAT stands for Special Weapons _a_nd Tactics. The SLE had determined, in logic that followed from our situation, that the situations that exceeded Security's capability would therefore demand an advanced response not a basic one.

Given the limitations of time and training, there were a lot of the classic SWAT missions that they didn't have time to train in.

High Risk Warrant Service? Not happening. No courts, no warrants. Security could handle any locker or area searches, using REACT as the heavy if more force was needed.

Barricaded suspect? Sort of. The 'no hostage' policy meant that we would just go in and kill them. But that didn't mean we would have to be stupid about it. All the departments would contribute to solving the problem according to their talents. Facilities could do some interesting things to modify the environment. Fire Brigade would breach doors and force barriers. Security would handle the OODA loop - observe, orient, decide, act. But REACT would go in and kill them.

Hostage rescue? See 'barricaded suspect,' with more casualties.

Vehicle assault? Basically a barricade or hostage situation aboard a bus, or armored truck, or other small enclosed space. That would be a "nice skill to have" but we just didn't have time. So I tried to make damn sure that any time Security took control of such a vehicle, that we would either keep control of it or practice dumping people out of it so fast that a bad guy couldn't take it over any way but empty. Then we blow it up and problem solved.

Riot work? Our employees were just not that tough a crowd. So REACT didn't carry much less lethal. What they did carry was batons for beating people and zip ties for temporarily securing prisoners.

Armed intruder / active killer? That response was the bread and butter of the REACT teams. They would get their weapons, go to the sound of the guns, and at the end of the engagement they would have fired the last shots. It's a lot more complicated than that, it always is, but it disconcerts a murderer to have his would-be victims shoot back, and while he is disconcerted he can become discorporeal.

Dignitary protection? Supposedly. I wasn't allowed to know anything about that aspect of things, because REACT might be protecting the SLE from the Security group. The one guy I could have asked is dead now. But when the SLE had his doubts, a REACT team or two would be present as if by magic.

I resolutely refused to allow REACT to be used on convoy protection operations. Their strength was on Site in defensive roles. Taking them off campus put them at great risk for little reward.

They still had to train in certain light infantry operations that most SWAT teams don't spend much time on. Patrolling, movement to contact, sniper suppression and defending fixed positions from military attack.

The thing that I wouldn't let Security do, that REACT had to do, was room clearing and close quarters battle.

We trained on it, of course, because we might have to do it in a pinch, and in fact did it an awful lot. But it was always a high risk low reward evolution, and on the numbers killed almost as many security personnel as our other big killer, IEDs.

Details matter. The problem was the 'fatal funnel.'

I assume that you have at some point in your life visited a restaurant. There is typically a clear delineation between the public spaces of the restaurant, mostly seating, and the working areas of the restaurant, mostly the kitchen. This doorway typically does not have a door because people are carrying stuff back and forth. Food the one way, dirty dishes the other way.

Imagine that there is a bad problem in the kitchen. A cook who throws knives, say.

If you have to go through that door, and you know it, and the cook knows it, he can put a dozen knives in you before you can say sashimi. Or get off a single shot.

So you go around. Go through the back door. Climb up on the roof and come down. Get down into the basement and come up the stairs from behind. Take a card from the Kool Aid Man's playbook and go through the wall. Or the window if you're less into that brick breaking thing.

But if you can't go around and have to go through that doorway, you are in the 'fatal funnel' and the funneling is generally fatal.

Now add a door. Opens in? Opens out? Left hinge or right hinge? Metal, wood framed or wood?

We used this trick defensively all the time. An invader of our premises would now find every doorway and many corridors exacting a price at every turn and twist. Security personnel would kill one or two, fall back to the next, kill one or two, rinse and repeat.

Offensively, however, we lacked the cheat codes to overcome a nominal defender.

Distraction devices? When they worked. But even a "Mo Special" could not be as reliable as a manufactured dazzle munition. Some people, especially those with training, just don't distract. They ignore the flash and the bang and fire at where the door was before the explosion.

Shields? Unobtainum. Even if they stood up to heavy weapons which they would not.

We did have one cheat code. Fur missiles.

Alvin and our dogs. Not K-9s, that was a different level of training and utilization.

But a dog will go through the door and bite the SOB(s) on the other side, allowing entry to happen.

But Alvin couldn't be everywhere and the dogs were a finite resource. Given a choice, we'd rather lose a dog than a person.

Sometimes we didn't get that choice.

What we could always rely on spending to get through the fatal funnel was blood. Violence of action. Speed. The willingness not merely to roll to the sound of the guns, but charge them without thinking.

If you tried going through one at a time, you would be killed one at a time, and fail.

If five of you went through together, the enemy would kill two or three, and the survivors would be in an even fight. Then the next REACT team would enter and that particular fatal funnel would be overcome. Then do it again, and again.

Very expensive of personnel.

Also the reason why REACT teams were in groups of five.

Sometimes you win by stealth and speed and skill. That was Security.

Sometimes you win by taking a sledge hammer to the problem.

That was REACT.

But when you break a sledge hammer, you don't have to tell the factory or little Baby Hammer that Sledge and his friends won't be coming back to the toolbox.

GWOT II - Taking A Swing

"A lot of regulations are written in blood." USCG Captain Kyle McAvoy (retired), marine incident investigator

Title 8 § 5157, California Code of Regulations. Permit-Required Confined Spaces.

"Entry means the action by which a person passes through an opening into a permit-required confined space. Entry includes ensuing work activities in that space and is considered to have occurred as soon as any part of the entrant's body breaks the plane of an opening into the space."

Much later in my life, someone who was in a position to care asked me, "So, what was your worst day at Site?"

It wasn't the raging gun battles.

It wasn't the various IEDs and other badness.

It wasn't even the intramural fights, stupid and useless, that cost us lives and gained us nothing but the privilege of living to the next day.

It was the technical rescue.

###

I was attending a Facilities meeting. Having competent supervisors, I dared to turn my radio off.

This was a mistake. Because my phone pinged.

Everyone stopped and looked at me, and I slunk out to look at my message.

I'd barely been allowed to start attending Facilities meetings at all, and they were critical in that Facilities touched every aspect of the Security department. The Facilities VP had started out by having no respect for me and my profession, rather suddenly hated me with a passion, and had slowly over months and years allowed his fury to simmer to a more casual dislike.

I read it.

I forgot Facilities and interdepartmental politics, walked back into the meeting and interrupted.

"We have a confined space emergency in F tower between 3 and 4," I said and ran right back out again.

I turned on my radio just in time to hear the second repeat of the Fire Brigade page.

"... will respond with full equipment to F as in Foxtrot Tower for a person trapped ..."

The stretcher bearers would get their gear from within their department areas. That was their big advantage in response time, that they had their gear virtually next to them because they couldn't hurt anyone with it, and might help.

Our Fire Brigade was our slowest resource. Captain Janine - I was lobbying for her to be promoted to Chief, but her utter lack of tact was hindering my efforts - insisted that her firefighters always report to station, and ONLY THEN report with equipment to the scene of the emergency. I understood the logic. Control, accountability, making sure they had the right equipment for the call. But it meant they were slower, because they sometimes had to go right past the emergency to get their gear, without which they were useless, and double back. But they could not keep their gear with them for the reason that it would then be scattered to hell and gone when we had so very little of it to begin with.

My run slowed to an involuntary jog. I wanted to run but I dared not be out of breath when I got there.

"There" was F3 exterior hallway. The tower was a hollow core with wings of offices sticking out on all sides. Imagine an asterisk made of corridors with offices on either side, with two of the spindles connecting to E and H respectively.

The core contained an elevator shaft, two stairwells on opposite sides of the shaft, an elevator equipment room, a few offices, a kitchenette, a vending machine area converted to an employee lending library, two restrooms and a janitor's closet. And a door, propped, open, with a waist high railing just behind and a crowd of Employees clustering around hearing someone shout. The shouts were faint and tinny.

Someone small. A child. Goddamn it.

"Manager, control that motherfucking door!" I shouted at the crowd and demonstrated a skill I don't like to use.

Our stairs are a half spiral. If you know the stairs and have confidence in your physical abilities, you can vault the railing and slide down the inner guardrail.

If you biff you fall to the bottom, in this case three stories.

I didn't biff. I set what was probably a new speed record for a floor change and used my Grand Master Key to open the corresponding HVAC air shaft access door, which looked like any other office door except for the MAINTENANCE ONLY KEEP OUT on the office plate, ran to the railing and looked up.

No joy. The child's crying was below me.

I could see a foot. A white sneakered small foot. In between the hot water intake (heavily insulated) and the cold water return (not insulated at all).

I keyed up radio.

"Fire Ops, Echo 18, immediate need. We have one child victim trapped between Foxtrot 1 and Foxtrot 2 in the HVAC air shaft chase, at least a sixteen foot fall, head down trapped between two water pipes. Technical rope rescue forthwith."

I had no equipment. I was not even wearing a rigger belt. My handgun belt was high retention and would demonstratably support several hundred pounds of weight, but it was not a rescue harness and I had no business trusting a life to it. Let alone two. But there was no easy way to clip anything _to_ that belt.

The crying was getting weaker. Not because the child was calming down. Because the child was injured.

A couple Employees were watching me curiously.

I walked into one's office, picked up his laptop gently, set it to the side, swept off all the rest of the crap on his desk in one motion, away from the laptop, and dragged his heavy desk out in to the hallway and across the door.

I started to key into the fire hose cabinet. The key did not open on the first attempt, so I dropped my keys (my retainer would retract them), drew my baton, shattered the window, and opened it that way.

I detached the fire hose from the standpipe and yanked it off its mount and over my shoulder.

The Employees were still watching, obviously wondering if I had gone mad.

I looped the fire hose over the top and under the bottom of the desk. Screwed the fire hose to itself. Gravity would hold the desk against the door frame.

I now had a rope, of sorts. This was not an approved use of a fire hose by any means under any conditions. I really should knot it, not screw the connector together and then fail to tighten the connection with spanners. This hose wouldn't even hold water, and now I was going to use it to hold my weight.

I climbed over the railing with the hose in my hand. Lowered the loop down into the half-gloom.

I lowered myself hand over hand.

This would be a good time to have a free hand for a flashlight. No such luck.

I could see the foot.

If I did nothing else with my life, I was going to go get that foot.

I ran out of fire hose rope with my legs against the side of the shaft, the 1st floor landing several feet below me, and almost level with the child's upside down foot.

I didn't have a free hand.

So I climbed up, stuck a foot into the loop - it held - and used a hand to steady me against the wall. This freed up my right hand for my pocket light.

I lit up the foot.

It was a shoe.

There was no foot in it.

Goddamn it.

"Fire Ops, Echo 18, correction last, child is in F air shaft, I am trapped between 1 and 2, child has fallen further down and has not repeat not been located."

The door below me opened and two Site firefighters looked in, then down.

"Hey," I said, and they jumped a little and looked up.

The hot water pipe was a four inch pipe covered in three inch thick insulation. Probably asbestos.

The cold water pipe was a two inch pipe.

The gap between them was perhaps twelve inches, perhaps ten perhaps fourteen. Enough for a toddler to slide between.

Not enough for me. And I did not think either would support my weight.

But what I could do is swing a little bit left and right, checking the other fittings for signs of damage, blood or a body.

No joy. So I lowered myself further, allowing myself to dangle by one hand from the loop.

This put my foot almost - almost - on the 1st floor landing railing.

The two firefighters caught me and helped me down to the landing.

All three of us used our lights.

We saw nothing.

Basement level was a maze of confined space piping between buildings. A few access doors to what the old timers called the steam tunnels and the rest of us avoided.

I reluctantly excused myself to 1, down the half-stairwell to B, keyed in, walked across the connecting path to the other stairwell - intended only as a fire emergency exit connector between the two stairwells - and halfway along, got to the waist height 3 foot by 3 foot metal wall hatch.

My small Facilities key opened it.

A little innocuous metal wall plate.

"CONFINED SPACE. A Site CONFINED SPACE PERMIT IS REQUIRED TO ENTER THIS SPACE. FAILURE TO COMPLY IS A TERMINATION OFFENSE."

The wording dated from before the Firecracker but was just as true now as it had been then.

The difference being, that if I managed to get myself stuck or asphyxiated or poisoned or whatever, the San Jose Fire Department would NOT be responding. I would not be rescued. My body might not even be recovered.

I did not want this child's rescue to become a recovery.

But the fastest way for me to kill this child would be for me to enter without doing the process.

The long, annoying, frustrating, complex bureaucratic process.

Sticking my head in and shining my light around is not entering the space, I reasoned.

So I did.

And saw a leg, without a shoe, about thirty feet down the pipe chase.

The pipes down here were not WATER HOT and WATER COLD.

They were WASTE SEPTIC and WASTE HAZ LOW and WASTE HAZ HIGH and H2 and H2S and CO2 and O2 ...

This was the _hazmat_ pipe chase.

Suddenly a firefighter was pushing me out of the way and I was grabbing him by the scruff of his neck.

"STOP!" I ordered.

"I see the child too. We CANNOT go in there. Go get your SCBA and tell your company officer!"

He shook his head, took a breath, visibly regained control over himself, actually saw me for the first time, flinched when he recognized me.

Then took my orders and did as told.

I keyed up my radio and of course it did not work.

Basement. Concrete and metal doesn't like radio waves. People weren't supposed to be down there so the Site radio repeater didn't have an antenna down there. No antenna, no repeat.

I was not going to leave until a responsible person relieved me. But I had a ton of things I needed to be doing, and neither sticking my head through the hatch like a doofus nor being stupid and crawling through it was getting any of those things done.

Two firefighters. One had SCBA. Oh thank God.

The other had a TIC. Thermal imaging camera. By that, the radio, the scowl and the different colored helmet, I could recognize that they were a company officer.

"I am Echo 18," I said clearly and loudly. "By my authority I am issuing a confined space permit, verbally, for entry into this space. There is a child down about thirty feet to the left in the hazmat chase. We need an air monitor, a entry line and two additional lights. I need two more rescuers, three runners and a Stokes basket."

A slight pause.

"NOW. Air monitor, entry line, two lights, two more rescuers, three runners, a Stokes. GO!"

Both firefighters immediately went back the way they came.

The next ninety seconds of my life were the longest of my life. And I've had a bad life.

The child's cries got weaker with every passing moment.

Janine was in the lead holding a portable air monitor. She was wearing a SCBA but had not put on the mask.

Three firefighters were behind her. One was holding a coil of rope. Another had a large two handed portable light. I had a flashlight. All the firefighters had lights on their gear. Another had their SCBA.

We were in business.

"Janine, authorized time of entry 1335," and I wrote 1335 and a slash on the wall with a Sharpie, directly on the concrete.

She nodded crisply, clipped the gas monitor to her harness, put on her mask and SCBA, and crawled through the hatch. The second firefighter followed her, also wearing his mask and SCBA, with the rope tied around his waist.

I did not have an SCBA. I shouldn't need one.

A runner came up. Security, one of mine.

"Echo 18, message, Security Control."

The runner took out his pen and notepad.

"Confined space entry made 1335 hours by firefighters Janine and Tom. Resource needs. Stokes litter. Oxygen. Stretcher bearers to stage on 1. Secure access points on 3, 2 and 1 and both basement stairwells. Establish personnel accountability and souls count. Runner to replace you. Three runners, top, bottom, in middle. Go!"

He wrote it down word for word, not understanding most of it, but he would repeat it correctly into the Site telephone at the other end of the loop I was trying to establish. Then he ran.

Voices echoed back down the narrow chase.

"Unconscious and breathing!" Janine shouted.

The next runner was carrying a Security medical bag.

"Go back, keep the chain going," I commanded as I tore open the bag and checked for the two items I wanted.

Both present.

I gave a yank on the rope. Stop.

I then used the middle of the rope, not the end, to tie a loop around the handle of the medic bag. Eased the medic bag into the chaseway.

This would all be so much easier if we had radios.

We would just have to use telepathy instead.

I could not walk up and tell them, they could not go back and ask what. Even at such a short distance, the radios would not work. Pipes don't just carry fluids and gases. They conduct electromagnetic energy.

I yanked twice on the rope. Go.

The rescue team hauled on the rope and the medic bag went sliding up towards them.

A single yank when it stopped moving.

A long moment.

Then two yanks.

So I took up the slack until a single yank told me to stop.

Two more firefighters now.

I gave a brief passdown. To my horror, it was already 1350. Fifteen minutes had slipped by.

A double yank.

A hard pull. Not a yank back, which would mean stop, but resistance.

So we maintained a steady pull.

This was not a cliff rescue or an over the side rescue. Then we would have to set up a rope system, with main and safety and belay and haul and all the clicky-clacky metal gear beloved of rock climbers and a certain breed of sadomasochists for whom handcuffs were too simple and safe.

The medic bag had contained a folded piece of stitched heavy cloth with handles. An emergency stretcher for picking someone up out of that awkward spot between bed and wall, or toilet and wall, or collapsed in the shower.

Janine and Tom had put the child in it and tied the end of the rope to the handles. Then followed it out.

We lifted the child out. The other item, the oxygen, had been attached to her face and the cylinder nestled between her lower legs. The standby firefighters, until now had been doing nothing, rushed the child in their arms to the stairwell, to the stretcher bearers, to what little help our infirmary could be.

Janine started to lift herself over the hatch coaming. Stopped.

I grabbed her wrist. Hard.

"Runner! More firefighters with SCBA! Now!" I shouted.

Then I used firefighter profanity.

"RIC! RIC! RIC!"

She started to break my grip, but I cheated and grabbed her SCBA cylinder rescue handle with my other hand.

"NO! NOT WITHOUT A ROPE!"

Tom had not, in fact, followed her out.

I was not calling for help from a person.

RIC means Rapid Intervention Crew.

It's what you need when firefighters need to call 9-1-1 and they can't becuase they _is_ 9-1-1.

Most RIC evolutions are not successful.

Janine panted in my grip. I checked her air.

Something on her was flashing and buzzing.

It wasn't her SCBA air monitor.

It was the hazardous gas sensor.

"OUT! OUT!" I shouted.

I grabbed her and started hauling her through the hatch.

She stopped fighting me, then she helped climb through.

We clambered down the corridor and up the stairwell.

Janine collapsed halfway up.

I then did one of the harder things I have ever done in my life.

I ignored the fact. I kept going up to the 1st level doorway.

Gasping on my hands and knees.

A mixed crowd of Employees and firefighters and stretcher bearers.

Most watching the CPR being done on the child.

The AED saying "Pause, analyzing, do not touch patient."

I got a breath and used it.

"Mayday mayday mayday. Firefighter Janine, down on the stairs. Firefighter Tom, down in the chaise."

A horrified frozen pause from the firefighters. Puzzled looks from the crowd.

"Go On Air! Go get Janine! Only!"

A couple more pauses for breath. I could not catch my breath.

I could barely think.

Two firefighters masked up, went down, dragged her up by her arms, dragged her right out of the lobby, out of the propped double doors and to the grass, started stripping off all her gear.

I did not follow.

"Clear this area," I gasped. "Hazardous air. Everyone outside now."

I repeated "Everyone" and people stared at me. "Every." "One." "Every every one one." "Every every." "One one every."

The next thing I knew, I was out on the grass under the clear blue sky with a transparent mask over my face and someone was taking my blood pressure.

Security personnel were holding a perimeter outside the building.

Stretcher bearers were setting up mass casualty reception.

A forlorn little body was covered by a yellow highway blanket.

Janine was sitting up, took her own medical oxygen mask off, shouted "PAR CHECK!" and put her oxygen mask back on.

The VP of Facilities was holding a clipboard on which he was writing.

There were four people wearing SCBA bottles. He looked carefully at the gauges of each and wrote down a number.

"Entry authorized 1405 hours," he said.

They went inside.

Ten minutes later, they came out with a body.

Again, CPR was started in the lobby.

Again, it was not successful.

Meanwhile F building was evacuated and the emergency doors to E and G were closed.

The leak was heavier than air but no one was taking any chances.

Two additional teams made entry. One to the roof, to manually open the vents and spin up the exhaust system designed to push fresh air into the chaise for such ane vent. One to shut valves on both sides of the leak.

My head was clear enough to sit up, I thought, but the piercing headache proved me wrong.

Arturo was talking to the VP of Facilities.

He was processing the scene.

The crime scene.

When people are dead, it's a crime scene.

###

We knew a lot more now. I was not involved in the investigation or the scene management. I was an involved party. It might be stretching a point to say I was a suspect.

Face it.

I was a suspect.

Before the Firecracker, this would have been a cluster fuck of the first order and what I should have done - with absolutely no possible doubt - is chased everyone away from the accesses on 3, 2, 1 and B. Waited for the Fire Brigade (if there had been one, which there was not) and Facilities (which had not had a year of practice in being on their own plus radioactive and terrorist horrors) to in turn wait for the San Jose Fire Department's first response, which in turn would wait for their Hazardous Materials team to drive down from North San Jose... in a word.

Wait.

As a child died.

If I had done that. If I had had the moral courage to do that. To tell everyone, sorry, the little girl is dead, and we're not going to let anyone join her. She might have a fragile sliver of hope, and I'm going to stamp on it with Security's heavy boots and shatter it because we need to wait for the experts and we're afraid of the lawyers.

This is post-Firecracker. There are no lawyers and no courts. There is a San Jose Fire Department but they only fight fires, and we were too far from their core to even do that here. Their hazmat people certainly would not be coming; they were too busy with the leftovers of San Francisco, between one thing and another and now terrorism too.

So we did what we always did. We tried to wing it with a shoestring and a prayer.

The VP of Facilities had done my post incident debrief personally.

Key excerpts.

"You are trained formally as a Confined Space Attendant. When were you trained in Confined Space Awareness? By who? Have you been trained on the confined space protocols of this site?"

"Are you a Confined Space Technician?"

"How much time have you spent working in hazardous gas environments?"

"Are you a Hazardous Materials Technician? Are you formally trained to the Hazardous Materials Operations Level? By who and when?"

"How many hours have you worn SCBA?"

"How many incidents have you worn SCBA in an IDLH?"

"How many confined space entries have you attended? How many of those confined space entries were initiated as rescues? How many of those confined space entries were suspended or terminated early? Did any of those confined space entries, which started as routine, became a rescue while you were an attendant?"

"How many different air gas monitoring systems have you been trained to use?"

"Do you realize that when you opened the hatch and entered the space with your head, you completed an unauthorized entry in violation of the permit required confined space program?"

"Did you know there is no such thing as a verbal entry permit?"

It was the verbal equivalent of a precision beatdown.

I absolutely, positively deserved every word of it.

He turned off the recorder.

"Janine and Tom were fully qualified to make entry into a confined space for rescue, IF and ONLY IF I had personally issued them a Confined Space Permit. They knew it. They decided not to wait. They had every right to ignore anything you said, instead of taking a less qualified person's word as permission, and either authorize their own entry under exigent conditions or refuse to enter for their own safety."

A pause.

"I have interviewed Janine. Her version of events is that she designated you as the confined space attendant, which she knew you were qualified to do, and made emergency entry under exigent circumstances because the victim was in her sight. My report will reflect her version, not yours."

He looked me over carefully.

"Do you understand that that child was dead the moment someone left that 3rd floor door unlocked and the child wandered through it, climbed the railing and fell?"

I shook my head.

"My job, sir, is to wonder if she climbed the railing or was lifted over it. Whoever left that door unlocked committed involuntary manslaughter, twice. If someone did put her over that railing, the crime is murder. Twice. Her, and also Tom."

"This Site has never, ever been a place where children were intended to be. I have taken my own children to tour this Site. But I would not have them live here with me for the same reason I would not let them play on the side of a freeway. Accidents. Can. Happen."

I knew for a fact his own children were dead. I had in fact checked their dead pulses despite rigor, hoping against hope.

Our eyes met.

"I blamed you wrongly for the death of my wife and children. I will not blame you for the death of this girl or for Tom's death. I blame him, he should have known better. I don't blame Janine, she does not know the Site, she did not help build it. Tom did.

"This place will fucking kill you if you do not respect it. That climbing over the rail with a fire hose was the stupidest damn fool stunt I have ever heard of. But I can't cripple you by taking away your freedom to act to protect us from threats we are not trained for. I am not a bomb disposal technician. I have never run a security force. I have never been on a threat assessment committee and the first active shooter training I participated in was the one you taught.

"We have identified a lot of safety issues from this tragedy, and we will address every single one of them, and anything else you or I can think up. But I am going to fix one of the biggest ones right now.

"You, personally, are required to stage for any incident involving fire or hazardous materials or confined spaces, unless there is an act of violence involved. Even and especially then, you will respect the hazards. You don't have time to train as a firefighter or hazmat tech or confined space tech. So I am revoking any past training certifications with respect to all three, insofar as this Site is concerned.

"What you are authorized to do instead, if you decide it is necessary, is send undertrained or even unqualified Fire Brigade or Security contractors to die in your place."

Fuck me what.

"The SLE and I had this conversation at length before this interview began. He stated in no uncertain terms that we were all dead without you, that you had saved us all several times in ways that I did not need to know or even would want to think about, and that if he had been forced to choose between you dead in that hallway and _me_ dead in that hallway, he would have chosen to save _you_ - because he knows I have trained backups and he knows that despite all efforts, _YOU_ sir do NOT!

"So my challenge to you is this. Don't tell me, I don't need to know. But what would have happened to all of us, to the Site, if they had dragged out your dead body instead of Tom?"

Long pause.

That ... did not bear thinking about.

Not just one dead child. All of them.

Not just one dead firefighter. The entire Fire Brigade, sidewalked or interned as a suspected terrorist organization.

The Reaction Team. The stretcher bearers even. Criminal conspirators in unauthorized militias.

Plus what some wag had called the Homeland Friends and Family Plan.

I realized with a chill.

I'd had no right.

Not to authorize the entry, that was a minor fuckup. Besides they'd have gone anyway.

Risking myself, my own happy ass, that was what I had no right at all to do.

The moment I realized the child was in the hazmat chase I should have gone right back upstairs and let the Fire Brigade do the heroing. And if need be, the dying. Even if Janine as well as Tom had been killed as a result.

I wasn't _allowed_ to get killed.

"I see that you get it. Good. We will talk again, every morning, for a while, while we patch all this up. Meanwhile, go do your job. Find out if this was an accident or a murder."

I got up and walked out, started the process to do exactly that.

###

It had been negligent.

The door had been left locked but unlatched by a HVAC tech changing air filters. He felt really bad about it. This did not bring the child back. Or Tom.

All accesses to Site confined spaces now have an additional surface mounted padlock. A Facilities key _and_ a Security key are now required. This also fixed the latch issue. Changing filters is slightly less convenient but no one cares about that.

Child tracking procedures were revised. Her mother is seeing Dr. Rise to try to handle her grief and guilt.

The railing areas are now caged, in lieu of a second door. Belt and suspenders.

The hazmat needs of the Site were reevaluated, and two of the more hazardous lines taken out of service in certain buildings. The changes would not have saved Tom but were worth doing in their own right.

All Fire Brigade and Facilities staff were retrained in SCBA and IDLH procedures, by Janine, personally.

All Fire Brigade, Facilities staff and Security supervisors were trained in confined space procedures, by the VP of Facilities, personally. Except me. I sat through all the trainings and completed all the requirements, but was not issued a certification. My certificate of completion was stamped "Knowledge Skills Abilities Verified, Attendee Not Authorized To Enter Or Attend Confined Spaces At Site."

Tom was buried with honor near the top of Boot Hill.

The Fire Brigade had a private wake to grieve him. I was the only non firefighter to be invited to attend. Janine put an arm around my shoulder and made me stay for the whole time.

The Site tried to buy a lot more emergency equipment but couldn't because of the War. Gas sensors were backlogged because of the priority for chemical weapons sensors for our use of nerve gas in China.

I redoubled my efforts to train my backups. Arturo was most promising of a bad lot, but Sharon was catching up fast to him from a lower starting point.

I have been told by a sober Dr. Rise and a drunken Janine, that my efforts that day saved at least one life and possibly several. I'd bought that child the best possible chance of survival, the same chance Tom had knowingly risked his life for - and given it.

It will never feel that way to me.

If I'd had the balls, to lock it all down.

Instead I'd taken a swing at it.

GWOT III - Helping

"And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely." - Surah 5, Verse 32, The Holy Quran

The process of removing me from the rolling stretcher was as non-trivial as the process of putting me into it had been.

The designated safety officer watched, less than benignly, from as far away as the geometry of the corridor would allow given his two duties. 1) To closely observe what everyone else did. 2) To draw his handgun and put multiple rounds in my happy ass if it looked like I was going to break free.

I knew he was the safety officer because he had a (huge) vest that read SAFETY in yellow letters on Homeland baby blue.

The other members of the cell extraction team were wearing riot armor. Helmets, neck guards, armatures, leggings, torso armor, elbow pads and knee pads. Their gloves were a compromise between dexterity and protecting the backs of the hands.

Helmet visors were down. I suppose in case I spat.

They opened my cell door, made sure the cell was empty and clear (as if it wouldn't be...) and locked the wheels on the stretcher.

On the command, each of my four limbs would be grabbed by one of four team members in a two handed opposing grip.

Only then would a sixth officer, a team leader, unfasten first my leg restraints then my arm restraints.

Once the restraints were DC'd (disconnected), the two on my arms would pick me up off the stretcher by my arms while the other two first lifted my legs, then slammed me forward with one hand on my butt and the other hand on my shoulder blade.

This allowed them to propel me bodily into the cell.

Bouncing off the concrete bunk was my problem.

Slamming the door right after me in case I decided to get back up and fight them, was theirs.

THey didn't bother with handcuffs or leg restraints any more. If I left the cell, I was in the grip of four burly Homeland guards or I was strapped down to the rolling stretcher.

There was a reason for that.

I'd seen it.

At some point, likely soon, they would take me out, strap me to that stretcher, roll me to the elevator, and take me to the theater.

The surgical theater. With gleaming instruments and the smell of blood and rust. And screams. Oh, there would be screams.

The challenge would be keeping me alive as they cut into me. Battle surgeons of the Age of Sail raced pain and shock to do good to their patients, usually high amputations because shattered limbs would rot off and take the patient with them.

They would use certain drugs, carefully, and nerve blockers and cutting nerves I would never need again. They would use hemostats and retractors to minimize blood loss. I hadn't smelled burning flesh in my one visit to the surgical interrogation, but cautery has a time honored tradition in torture. Stops blood loss and hurts intensely, what's not to love?

There was another reason.

They had a method of body disposal.

Imagine, if you will, an oversize rotisserie oven.

Now imagine that you can roll a gurney into it.

With a body attached to it.

Dead. Or living. Or in between.

Mine, soon enough.

Oh, how I longed to take one or more of these mo-fos with me into the valley of the shadow of death.

That was why the procedures. They also were initiates of the mysteries of death. They knew, and were bored with, the superhuman strength and desperation that any person can put forward at the end of their life. But they wanted to go home, presumably to their loving family but more likely their harem of lesbian sheep and he goats and bitch-dogs, without being injured.

So yeah. I could talk, or die screaming. Or go mad. I was well on the way to that last.

This pause, between a bored grave shift showing me the ropes, and the day shift applying them, was my last chance to change my mind.

I wouldn't.

Over 800 reasons I wouldn't. The H1Bs I refused to murder but claimed I had.

They were safely far away.

I hadn't seen a single living soul here, who wasn't a Homeland employee and therefore criminal conspirator, murderer, traitor to America and all she has ever held dear, etc. etc.

Except the one person I had just not met.

The surgical victim they had rolled into a furnace in front of me, to prove they were serious. This wasn't a fake, this wasn't a bluff. This was a place where they cut people up for steaks and chops and put them in the grill until they were well done and beyond.

They had taken only one action in my presence.

Hadn't said a word. Likely couldn't.

When the team leader had asked us, jokingly, which of us wanted to go first, we had both raised our hands. Easy for me, I was only somewhat exhausted and terrified. Incredibly difficult for them. But they had done it.

How I wished I could have helped them somehow.

The most obvious way in which I could help them would have been to kill them. Hard to do while tied to a stretcher. If I could get a hand free, I knew where to apply pressure to end a life. They were likely too injured to resist, and likely smart enough not to try.

Doing first aid on them would be cruelty. They might live longer.

It made me realize something.

The eight hundred people were far away, I had already helped them as much as I could, and any further contact would have been hideously dangerous to them for no benefit.

This one person, this one surgical victim, had been less than ten feet from me. And I had done nothing to help them.

I could have said something. Said that I'm not with Homeland. Said that I'm a fellow human being, a presence in a room full of all too human monsters.

Yet another person I had failed.

###

The world was bright and dull shades of pain.

No eating any more. No drinking either. The occasional needle prick and cold rush of fluid told of IV fluids. Staving off the natural dehydration that was usually a dying person's last friend.

Only rarely did words intrude.

There was no reason to leave the stretcher. No food meant no defecation. Urination took place in place.

The stretcher would be wheeled from here to there, from time to time.

At first the trips to the furnace had been torture. The fear of being burned alive.

Then each had been a last shred of hope. This time might be the end. The last time. The end of the pain that was otherwise the world.

This trip was different. Hearing is the last sense to go, and although sight was gone, the squeak of a second stretcher was as good as a shout.

Mockery. The usual.

But a question. An important one.

"Who goes first? Volunteers?"

Oh my God. Me me me me me me.

Couldn't speak. Mouth too dry, teeth and tongue too damaged.

Put all the fading effort into putting up the less injured hand.

More pain. But success!

"I should make you two flip for it. Or maybe fight for it? No matter. We'll get to you both. In good time."

Us both.

I'm not alone.

I wish I were alone. No one should have to go through this. I would save them if I could.

My friend. My brother whom I had never met and never would.

"Sir. Excuse me, sir?" the tenor voice spoke. It was not respect. It was mockery for mockery.

"Yes," the Homeland torturer replied.

"I'm not sure how this works. Can you go first and show us?"

My brother. The fearless one.

My God, what a man he must be, to dare that much pain.

From two of the torturers, laughter. So out of place in a torture room. Even if from the torturers. A piece of goodness in a world of horrors.

Silently I laughed too.

I stopped hearing. But my stretcher rolled forward and I felt the wave of heat, as I had felt it before.

It was so good not to be alone anymore.

To die amid defiance, hearing joking.

God bless my brother, my soulmate at the last minute of the last hour of the last day.

It was a glimpse of heaven.

A sudden flash of white light. A true end.

GWOT III - Sidewalk

At first, I just laid on the cold concrete bunk of my cell and hurt. A lot.

Then I realized that for my health and survival, if not my sanity, I needed to keep a routine.

So upon returning to my cell, I took no more than a few subjective minutes to lie there and try to stop suffering.

If I needed to, I used the toilet.

Then, whether I had used the toilet or not, I got up and washed my hands.

This was important. A symbolic separation of myself from what was being done to me.

Then I drank water. As much as I needed, from the sink tap, and then some more because thirst is a late sign of dehydration. Drinking more water than I needed would only be good for me.

My only cup was my hand. So I had gone full Islamic. Left hand for abulations and touching the parts, right hand for drinking water and eating.

Then and only then did I begin first aid.

A careful, frank evaluation of my new injuries. Mostly bruises, but from time to time, cuts and scrapes. These needed to be checked and to the extent possible with cold water and no soap, cleaned.

I got pretty good at doing a touch self check of my buttocks and anal area. Unfortunately this was important. I needed to know if the bleeding was surface bleeding from having electrical butt plugs stuck in my rectum, or internal bleeding from prolapse or worse. I typically had to rinse my hands several times. That was OK, I finished with making that area ss clean as I could. See no soap.

Then I would take my own vitals. Breath deep for a bit. Then count my pulse and my respirations. I had no real way to check myself in the mirror, unless the sunlight hit the plexiglass covering the security camera at a certain angle. Assess capillary refill by pressing on my own nail beds.

Done with that, I would warm up by exercising. Slowly, painfully, mostly by stretching. Occasional pushups or if I felt particularly vicious, situps. (They hurt your butt, and my butt was hurt enough already.)

Around this time, my dinner would be delivered. Less said the better, except that if I wanted to eat, I had better get up with a quickness and face the wall as far away from the door as possible with my hands behind my back.

I was done eating by the time the guard returned for the tray. If I wasn't, there would be no next meal. Not that I wanted to loiter over the food anyway. Aside from a quick check for inedible rinds or bones, I ate it all without trying to taste it. With my right hand.

There were never any bones, damn it. That would have been nice. A single bone sliver could have been used to clean my fingernails and debride wounds better than the long torn-off toenail I kept for that purpose, up on the window slit where the mop (always when I was out of cells) wouldn't brush it away.

After dinner, I had learned the hard way that it was better not to think, generally speaking. Dwelling on what was being done to me would merely prolong the torture session into my own time.

Mostly I acted out a movie to myself.

But once, this one time, I decided to dwell deliberately on what Homeland was doing. Not just to me, not just at Site, but as an organization.

To survive this I needed to refresh my hate. Make it professional, not just personal. Catholic, not just specific.

The pre-Firecracker Homeland or Department of Homeland Security was an anemic Cabinet level agency that except for the utterly incompetent TSA (I'd had the displeasure of supervising one of their supervisors in secondary employment at a data center), did menial security tasks pretty well.

The nuclear destruction of San Francisco and the immediately following nuclear attack and invasion of China had caused the fabric of American society to be not merely torn, but shredded.

The Coasties - United States Coast Guard - had been wrapped up into the US Navy and taken out of Homeland per general war plans. They were mostly fighting in China, on the rivers.

All domestic law enforcement agencies but one had been folded into Homeland. The Department of Justice was removed from Cabinet level status and most of its non-armed programs - Office of Criminal Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, the Federal prosecutors, and so on - simply disappeared. They also went to the War.

But, how do you go after criminals without Federal prosecutors?

There were no courts.

Let me say that again, loud and clear.

There were no courts. No prosecutors are needed when there are no judges and no juries being called.

The one agency that hadn't been folded into Homeland?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation. You know, the Fibbies. The Quantico boys.

My best guess is that a lot of them objected. Some got sidewalked, some were drafted into the front lines of the War, and the political or useful or slimy took transfers to Homeland. (Found out much later that a few of them went rogue, but they were out of the picture during the entire Homeland era.)

A hand was raised. Yes, student, your question?

What is sidewalking, sensei?

Sidewalking is the slang term, used by the public and by Homeland (although not in media), for the casual murder of enemies of America.

If there are no courts and no judges, and millions of Americans are being held in detention camps, what is the next step? Can't imprison someone who is alraedy in custody, right?

So why bother taking them into custody if all that will result is that they get fed and housed at America's expense during a very costly global war?

Homeland asserted the power of summary execution.

They kept that power because the courts were closed and they got away with it.

That summary execution is a prima facie violation of the 4th, 8th and 14th Amendments - and the way Homeland ran her detetion camps the 13th likely as well - was not a healthy thing to say out loud.

Objecting to sidewalking gets you sidewalked.

At Site I hadn't wanted to believe it was happening.

So I'd run a beta test. Very scientific, very in line with how Site ran its business.

We had a medically unstable prisoner, who I'd nursed back to health and questioned (kindly!) for intel, who I'd given a choice. We can keep caring for you here, or we can try to send you over to Homeland where they may care for you. He'd picked the latter; I'd tricked him into it.

The care we were giving him was the best we could do, but frankly crap. By pre-War standards he needed sub-acute care and immediate access to hospital facilities. Just the surfaced bowel was bad enough, he had other problems.

As he'd been captured shooting at us in an incident where we had lost people and taken wounded, and I had all the intel value I wanted from him, and his labor would never be worth his keep, I had one more use I could make of him. Actually, two.

1) See what Homeland actually does with captives. I had reliable, stoic guards present who would let Homeland do what they did and not try to interfere.

2) Make sure our infirmary physician, a vet surgeon who had been promoted to working on humans due to the Firecracker, also knew face to face what Homeland does with captives. Partly to keep her from running and screaming, partly to inure her to the horrible things we were choosing to do to keep more horrible things at bay.

They'd sent a single Homeland cruiser to pick him up.

The driver had blanched at the thought of having to put him in the back and then clean the vinyl afterwards, even wrapped in blankets.

His corporal had saved his driver the trouble, and himself the smell while driving back, by expending one round.

My guards had been out of the way of the spilled brains. Our physician had thrown up copiously. She had the presence of mind not to appear upset at how her work (not mine) had been wasted. Although she was.

After Homeland had left, we'd taken the body to Boot Hill, removed the blankets for rewashing and reuse, and I had personally dug him a individual grave instead of rolling him into the usual charnel pit for enemy bodies.

He'd earned out. He had died as one of us, helping us verify something we couldn't learn any safer way.

So not only did I knew for a fact sidewalking was happening, I had Site security video of it.

Then I'd seen a lot more of it. On recon in the Valley, on mutual aid missions (drafted to support Homeland), and finally, when Homeland lost all sense of tact and proper conduct, broadcast as part of propaganda on the brief, heavily censored news.

They hadn't sidewalked me. They'd taken me in. For interrogation.

I had a feeling that they wouldn't be sidewalking me at the end of this.

I hadn't heard any gunfire from my cell, which is a very distinctive sound for those of us who have been around it.

When I'd been threatened in interrogation with a handgun, the goons - cell extraction team and warders - had neither flinched nor moved away from me to avoid being sprayed with blood and brains. A useful tell, that.

One touchstone of this sort of business. It can always get worse.

So whatever death they had planned for me, a bullet to the brainpan would be vastly preferable.

I had an insight.

That's why they call it "sidewalking."

Because it takes place outside the facility, on the sidewalk, before they get back.

So what happens inside?

I had a feeling I would find out.

I'm pretty sure I dreamed this next bit.

I spent nearly my entire time in the Homeland building (formerly the Federal Building) in one of three places.

In my tiny cell.

In an interrogation room, chained to the table to prevent shenanigans. (Mostly.)

Strapped down to a rolling gurney, to properly enjoy the haunted house of horrors that awaited lower down.

I would have had no opportunity to walk around freely, to speak to ordinary Homeland staff, or to talk about subjects Homeland would consider either treasonous or security restricted or both.

So I have to assume I was dreaming.

It's really the only explanation.

###

The guard was pretty strak. That means squared away. Neat. Well dressed. Having that combination of poise and fashion sense.

As posts go, he found it pretty straightforward.

He didn't have to go out with the teams to do stuff, not that he really wanted to. He would of course do whatever he was told, but he had been a security guard before the Firecracker, so he would stay a guard now.

They were really big on cross training. So he covered the lobby surveillance, the camera surveillance, the loading dock entry point, the sally port, and the office interior patrol. Special procedures applied to all of them.

He could recognize each of the seven Homeland credential types on sight.

We discussed his gear. He only had the one pair of handcuffs, largely for decoration as any situation that demanded physical arrest would result in a response from hordes of Homeland troopers.

He had a high retention holster. He really didn't need one, as his duties never brought him in contact with detainees, but it was a holding site as well as administrative offices, so high retention it would be.

No helmet, no vest. No real plans for him to be in a gunfight, so he didn't need them.

He'd been trained on the Guard Manual. Taken tests on it. Pretty much every situation not covered by instruction was one where he would call for immediate assistance.

The few public visitors he so closely observed in the lobby were cringingly compliant, even if arrested. Not like before the War at all.

The guards, the admin staff, the managers - all were civil, if harried and busy.

There were a handful of problem children, which he learned to recognize on site. They were Homeland Agents, the elite, and they demanded the respect they felt their positions deserved.

But the Guard Manual was clear. All persons shall display their credential visibly at the waist or higher at all times on the premises. So as long as he stuck to that, he was safe.

The upper floors were prisoner holding and interrogation. He never saw them.

The first floor was adminstrative offices. He patrolled them, checking exits carefully. A safe working environment.

The basement level was loading dock, trash dock and ash removal.

There were lower levels. He never saw them either.

So he did his twelves - 12 hour shifts - six days a week. Didn't tell anyone where he worked or what he did there. Green Zone credentials, pay in bluebacks, and the right to buy groceries at the lowest level grocery store in the Green Zone made him a wealthy man.

He was not paid to think. Or to wonder.

So if he occasionally heard an outcry, or saw a MRAP pull up on cameras and a couple people hustled and dragged out of it into the building, that was not his business. They were traitors or they wouldn't be in custody.

It never occurred to him to wonder why prisoners trickled in, but never ever left. The upstairs would be crowded to overflowing by now if prisoners had not been ... removed.

That they were leaving as ash was as beyond him as rocket surgery.

###

"Why are you here, bro?"

"Earning a living. How about you?"

"Trying to keep a bunch of people alive in this madness."

"So how did you get tagged by Homeland?"

"Somebody said I killed the wrong people. No idea who. How did you get the cushy job?"

"My uncle knows a guy who's a Homeland Agent. It was this or China, and I have flat feet. Why didn't you go to China?"

"Just lucky I guess. You know what they do in this building, right? Torture people to death."

"I somehow doubt that. This is America. That wouldn't be allowed to happen. Sounds like the kind of thing a traitor would say."

"I can prove it to you, let's go look."

"I can't leave my bounds, and you shouldn't be out of your cell at all."

"I can walk around freely, so can you. Follow me."

Access cards, cameras and other guards did not seem to notice that we existed.

I showed him my cell. I showed him the interrogation rooms - both the ones where I was chained to a table, and the ones where I was strapped into a chair. I showed him Dental and Medical.

Then I saw the kitchens where the food was prepared, the wardroom where Agents and interrogators talked shop and hustled up simple meals when the first floor cafeteria was closed. The janitor's closets, elevator equipment rooms.

We went down the never-used stairwells covered in fine layers of dust, not leaving footprints.

He turned pale when he saw the surgical rooms.

He turned green and obviously fought hard not to vomit when he saw the furnace, and the arrangements for burning the dead or the living, as appropriate.

And the mercy bat.

"This is what is happening here. This is what you are protecting. This is what pays you."

Then we saw the arrangements for putting the ash in covered pallets and elevatoring them up to the loading dock for disposal.

The technical terms, if you are a mortician, is cremains.

Enough that a covered 40' container was needed to store it between monthly swaps of the container.

"They accuse me of murder. You are an accessory before and after the fact to hundreds and hundreds of counts of murder."

###

I aat up bolt upright in my cell, on my bunk.

I had been asleep.

###

He sat bolt upright at his console, blinking. Shit. I fell asleep. I checked the cameras and alarms quickly, nothing had happened, no one had noticed.

What a horrible nightmare.

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