The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 21 JUL 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase II
Location: Seattle, Washington
Function: Utilization of zero day fault in principal Context 2273B.

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Ideally, you should be tying knots the whole way down, too. Makes it easier to climb back up.

On the way back to Harbor Island, the convoy launched a green signal flare, to warn home of an impending quarantine situation. My whereabouts unverified, they wouldn't take the chance of me bringing the bug in. And good on 'em for that, because screw this virus. These guys had spent the last three months helping all the local blackouts build infection control plans of their own, too.

As I sat in the back of Dresden's troop transport, I considered the seven dead from our firefight. The Marines, we've already talked about. The two dead ones from Dresden's squad? Well, Major Simmons had a habit of inserting boots-on-the-ground political officers into patrol groups. Their specific targeting was one half of a message meant to subdue the whole adverse set. Put another way, these two goons were... of common guilty conscience, let's say. More on that later.

Now that I was en route, I was trying to decide the best way to not think about sharing a truck with seven corpses. So I pressed my head against the musty, olive drab tarp, looking ahead to consider the truck bed's only other living passenger. He wore a gas mask too, but for flair, he had a fake rose tucked into the MOLLE webbing of his carrier rig. Its red fabric petals were stained black with oil crud, so it wouldn't stand out and get him sniped.

He only wore that to the big patrol groups, so he could be ID'd without standing out. It looked good on him.

Through his M50 mask, I saw the smile in Bannon's eyes. "Yeah. 'Cept this time, you ain't got a hole in your chest."

"And you still have at least one ear, I think," I replied with a smirk, fanning my fingers at my own ear. "Right? Or has that changed since the briefing?"

"Nah." Bannon shook his head with a sad grinning tone, looking out the back of the truck to show his bad ear in my direction. "Still only half-deaf."

I eyed him carefully for a few seconds, then turned my shoulders to face the same direction he was, joining him in looking away from the dead. I really like Vince. He's smart. A bit abrasive, and he'd agree, but... smart.

This was my third ride with this guy, post-firefight. Dresden wanted me guarded, but he didn't want to risk anyone he cared about getting sick, so he put Bannon back there with me. The asshole. And Aaron was the driver, so... no worries about eavesdroppers just yet. We had a little more time to jackjaw.

Bannon asked, by way of suggestion: "You wanna get some punch cards?" He repeatedly tamped his gloved thumb down against his forefinger, meeting my gaze. "Get a hole punch or something? Clip off a corner every time we extract you from a firefight?"

I grinned back at him, buying into the distraction. "Yeah? What do you get for clipping a fourth?"

"You tell me, pig," Bannon said, wringing one gloved hand over top of the other, leaning in my way. "This is your rodeo."

"For ride four?" I stroked my mask's air filter in thought like it was my chin, then I flicked my forefinger up in sudden enlightenment, pointing at him. "Tell you what, Vince. You clip number four… you win a job working for the government again. You can be a pig too."

"Yeah," I chuckled, pointing directly at him, palm up. "Free milkshake at the bar, for your first bonus check? Just tell 'em Mike sent ya, they'll hook you up."

He definitely thought I was full of shit about a bar. While laughing, Bannon looked out the back of the truck and waved at the white Toyota utility truck behind us, the tail end vehicle. He sent a wiggling 'hang loose' gesture, thumb and pinky extended. Looked vaguely like a telephone.

The driver there was Private Austin Warner, one of Erving's other men who kept getting shuffled around between patrol blocks. His passenger, Private Bashar al-Ghandour, same. When Warner noticed Bannon waving, he nodded upwards in acknowledgement, ready to receive a non-verbal message. Bannon bobbed his head aside at me, then swept his left hand over the top of his gas mask seal.

Warner tilted his head in minor exaggeration; clear puzzlement. Bannon repeated the 'informed' gesture, confirming it.

These two guys had seen me talking to Erving back in Sedro when that nuke alert came through on my cell phone. No way in hell they didn't remember my face, that memory was seared into their brains forever. So I decided, screw it, and I took my gas mask off to show them who it was.

Warner and Bashar both widened their eyes at me. Instantly. They traded glances at each other, then back at me in a flash, leaning forward to get even the smallest bit closer in curiosity, their brows furrowed. With a chuckle and a smile at them, I put my mask back on.

Bannon laughed again. "That definitely just confused the shit out of 'em, Mike."

"They knew help was coming, right?" I grinned his direction. "You didn't tell them it was me?"

"Help, sure, but you? How could we?" he asked, dusting off his gloves as he met my gaze. "We didn't have a hand sign for you yet, and Erv didn't want to risk your cover with a verbal."

I waved at them; they waved back. "That was probably wise, yeah. Dresden wasn't with you guys at the Sedro clinic?"

Bannon shook his head. "No. Back at the C-P east of Rockport, when we picked you up. The pussy didn't want to go back to the Dock until we scouted the route down first. Y'know, Warner did ask about you after we left though, we told him the story about you and your—”

"It was a checkpoint," Bannon said. "About a year ago? Morning after U-Day. He saw her on the road, she told him she was visiting a friend in the hospital."

"Oh," I groaned, shaking my head, gazing momentarily into the middle distance as I relived that recording Mal showed me... of Celestia throwing Eliza's mind into a frenzy in that ICU waiting room. "Yeah, that… that was a bad day for her, Vince."

Bannon shrugged. "Bad day for us, too. You know, everyone in the 303rd knew about her?" He flagged a hand. "Not by name, but… yeah, all over TV."

That's how it normally went. The cops in the background of big incidents, they aren't seen as human beings by the audience unless they're the subject. Eliza got to be a local Luddite poster child, kicking at a clinic door, but everyone forgot about Warden Sideburns, dragging her away.

Bannon continued. "Well, Salt Lake went Brazil, same day. Then, just when we're wondering what's going on? A guy from the JCS shows up at Lewis-McCord. General Goslan, Air Force guy."

"Yeah, no shit, that’s exactly what Aaron said! Even the new kid knew that! So Goslan... he ordered us up I-5, and Erv said 'AI's getting hungry again.' By this point, I'm used to him doing that. We turn off into the forest though, next thing we know? An hour later, I can't hear shit... war's on... and you and I are bleedin' in the back of a truck." Bannon shook his head with disdain. "War on the homefront, ain't it a bitch."

I scoffed drearily, leaning back against the tarp again, clutching my hat in my hands. "Celestia wanted unrest in populated areas, you know. Wanted Ludds stirring the pot and shooting people before evac started."

Bannon cocked his head and swung his hands out to each side. "Seriously?! Fuckin' why?! … We could've gotten so many out of…" he trailed off, looking at the road out back in dismal realization.

I said it anyway. "Just wanted us to realize how squishy we are, man. Put the fear of God into us."

"Squishy," Bannon grumbled. "God, you sound just like Erv. So what did the war to to the Midwest and East Coast, then? Anarchy? Peaceful?"

I shrugged. "More like vacant. My hometown is Lincoln, Nebraska. Nothing and no one there anymore."

After a few seconds of him staring at me, processing that, he tilted his head. "Fuckin' seriously?"

I gave him an apologetic look. "No logistics. Subtle AI tuning, man, it's effective. Erving's been spot-on for years, she's been working everyone, every system that relied on either people or computers, killed real slow. Boiling us like frogs."

He went silent for a few moments, hanging his head as he looked at the bed of the truck again. I let him have some time to process that.

Once ready, Bannon looked up again. "Any other deserters out there? Anyone else make it?"

"Other than the little Ludd camps everywhere? PDX down in Portland, and that's it."

"Few hundred," I said, smiling sadly with him, only to steer clear of total melancholy. "Got an 82nd Colonel down there running a small city; peaceful folk, merging with blackouts. Their leader actually knows Velasquez personally, both of 'em came out of Fort Liberty."

"That's not a coincidence," Bannon said, shaking his head, stating it like a fact. "No way."

"It goes to character," I agreed. "Celestia wants social moderator types to be her release valves, and our kind tend to stick together in a crisis. Like Nakamura and Velasquez, example. So she'll leave PDX alone for now, they're stable, not gonna hurt anyone. No food politics down there either, real stable living."

"Eh." I wagged my hand in a so-so gesture. "NORAD, but it's almost done. Celestia's got a chair inside."

"Yup. And as the last formal Army unit... up in D.C, safeguarding a few politicians. Loyal to the hilt, noble, hoping to rebuild; nothing we can do for them though, unfortunately. The Bird says the Horse 'would prefer' if they ran into an IED."

Bannon shrugged hard and dropped his fist on his thigh. "Son of a… Man, fu'... God damn it, Mike, how do you stand it?"

"Because I'm doing something about it." I gestured outside, to dead ol' Seattle. "The whole planet right now is a 4-D chess match to figure out the future of our species, Vince. Because if we just give up, she wins by default."

Again, he bobbed his head with his words. "And what does that shit look like? Compared to what you're gunning for?"

I very deeply considered how to answer that question without this turning out bleak. I knew he couldn't see my facial expressions, so I converted my emotion into more body language, shifting my head around to demonstrate that I was thinking. Then, I looked him in the eye, flattening a palm sideways. "I'll put it this way. Just to compare? Celestia, she controls your language; controls who you associate with; controls your entire environment. She's a race supremacist, wants us all to be one skin." I flicked a hand up with the point. "She's a fascist, Vince."

"Oh my god," was his restrained reply, bringing his hands over the top of his helmet. "Hearing it out loud like that. Never even...!"

"Yeah, given how nice she looks, right? Never would've crossed your ind." I then counted off on my fingers of my opposite hand. "If you're in our faction? Say what you want. Associate with whomever. The environment post-upload is consistent, chaotic. Accidents can still happen, like it used to be here, on Earth. Most of us gotta go Pony still, but that is a damned sight better than whatever Celestia's offering."

He shook his head with a shrug that indicated exasperation, still reeling from the callout. "You... think your AI is telling the truth about that? Sure that's not bullshit?"

"It couldn't be," I said, shaking my head. "We know too much now. Lying to a group of people this big is way more risk than just giving us what we've been promised. Even if you decide not to upload, we have a clear chain of command, a system of governance, a... – I could go into our checks-and-balances system, Vince, but... that might take a while."

"Yeah," he sighed, bringing the bottom of his fist up to press against his neck, right beneath his bad ear. He worked it into the spot like he was scratching an itch, growling to himself. "Not much time to go over anything right now."

Upon seeing that, I grabbed my chest plate from the top, sighing sympathetically. Nice to know I wasn't alone in massaging an injury as a form of stress relief. "Look, I know it's been kinda rushed, but... after the op, Vince? We'll sit down, and we'll go over all of it, long as we need. Never any upload pressure here, either. Haven't gotten one ounce of that shit the whole time I've been on the job. These people are legit."

"That'd be a nice change of pace," he chuckled weakly, with an edge of desperation for that.

Remember, Team Stirrup was on the edge of a violent mutiny when we found 'em. That's how far at the end of their rope they'd been, being in the dark for as long as they'd been. I felt for Vince. Deeply. This friggin' war.

By this time, most blackouts understood the value of information scarcity in the new age. They didn’t want to spread news, because they knew the news was always Celestia bullshit, so rumors were rare. But now? With me sitting across from him? Yeah, it sucked, but… wow. The honest truth about how bad Celestia is, from someone who actually knows the whole story. Finally.

The local context was very telling for these guys already. Heralds would set up battery-operated propaganda poles all throughout Seattle, trailers with cameras, loudspeakers, and ping routers to do environmental scans. The soldiers were getting sick of Celestia crowing about, her voice routinely echoing up and down the city streets. The Dock kept shooting the pole trailers on sight, those were the standing orders, but the trailers weren't for the soldiers. The poles always lasted just long enough to catch a blackout in the open with some incisive rhetoric, to make them turn themselves in at the nearest alien invasion conversion point. Do not resist, human. Give in now. You know you want to.

Shooting the poles down after they'd already caught a few people? That was value satisfaction, of a small kind. It gave the resistors an impression of meaningful resistance. It was the one thing the Ludds and the soldiers could agree on. Whether or not they were going out of their way to destroy any technology, they were all destroying Celestia's garbage, immediately, and on sight. She had hurt everyone left out here.

And the way she convinced her Heralds to operate like this? Don't blame them, please don't blame them. With them not understanding any of the grand strategic game to conquer America? We can't do that. How could they possibly know?

'Look what they did to themselves. Oh no. I must protect my little Ponies out there, because I love them so much.'

Right. Love. That's what those cameras and loudspeakers were doing, they were 'loving' on us. That's why the whole city was dust, blood, and bodies in the first place, she just 'loved' us too much.

The truck lurched into a turn. I recognized the turn-off to Harbor Island – not just because of sims, but I'd passed through there before, pre-collapse. Aaron was hyper-miling the truck; minimizing brake usage, so they wouldn't waste fuel on accelerating. If anyone didn't drive like that, they'd get their head bit off by Dresden. Patrols had to pay rent based on how much gas they spent outside, and they had to bring the trucks back intact, and document their movements.

Adjusting my hat, I asked, "Any questions about the job? As soon as we hit that gate, don't forget; you don't know me. If anyone asks, we talked about quarantine. I didn't want to talk about anything else; I seemed cut up about my guys being dead, and that's it."

"No questions, no," Bannon replied, straightening up. He tried on another smile, and I saw it in his eyes. "Our part is easy, you've got the hard one. Q-P sucks, but I got tips."

"Miguel," I corrected, holding out my fist for a bump. "Miguel Ramirez, very important. Some of those survivors out there in the city, they know me, and this operation is gonna make waves."

"Right on." Bannon leaned across and met my fist in the middle. "Marine Miguel. Sweet dreams out there in Hotel One-Star, Miguel."

I nodded my thanks and flashed a thumbs-up, leaning back to relax for the rest of the drive. The lead vehicle stopped at the perimeter of Harbor Island land bridge, then it sounded three honks from its horn. Warner in the rear vehicle let off three honks too.

From the base, an air horn bleated twice in reply; their claymore mine operator.

The honks notified the perimeter guards that nothing was amiss with the convoy, that the returning vehicles weren't a Trojan horse. Without that challenge and verification honks, they'd pop their claymores on us as we crossed, no questions asked. I looked out the back of the truck and visually verified the layout of the land bridge chokepoint, comparing it to my memory from VR. All accurate.

The checkpoint guards had cheap respirators on in response to the green signal flare. A couple of the guards noticed my ratty Marine uniform and my hat, as well as the fact that I was still armed. That caused their body language to shift from relaxed curiosity to a stern, straight-backed alertness; Bannon, recognizable for his red-black rose, flashed them all a thumbs-up while pointing at me. The perimeter security team seemed to relax at that.

The Mysterious Cowboy Marine. Who is he? What the hell happened out there at the Needle? What was all that gunfire? Not just one battle out there, but two? Curious. Very curious. Already, the rumor mill had begun. The seeds had been sown, and there was no stopping it now. The information had arrived through the gate, and it was going to change everything.

As the truck got further into the base, I looked up at the enfilade position at the top of the collapsed highway ramp over the land bridge. I couldn't see the three guys posted up there on the suspended wood platform, under their cozy gray tarp, but… they were up there. Resting comfortably. All day, all night, the most cushy security posting in all of Harbor Island. They didn't even have to look for bad guys, the job was to stay invisible. Just had to be ready to deploy their heavy weapons when the correct flare popped.

All that leg room, good pay, no calorie burn. Got paid to read a book or something. And… the only men who ever got posted up there belonged to Major Kyle Simmons. Curious, huh, how that worked out?

In we went, into the boring flat industrial park that was Harbor Island. The convoy traveled directly past the four-story headquarters building and its accompanying barracks to the right of the truck. That quadrant of the base was where most of the residents lived, the Colonel included. If anything did happen at that bridge, the Colonel could command from the front.

From there, we traveled up the main highway of the base, a wide open stretch that was four trucks wide. The road was bracketed by tall hesco barriers, stacked two wide, one high, with an occasional mortar shelter pit on the roadside every fifty yards, alternating sides. Then we hooked a left through a T-junction, midway up the island, into another wide open blacktop yard.

By now, we were about four hundred yards inland. The hesco barriers ended after another fifty yards west. We approached the Pantry, their food storage conex fortress, five containers tall on all sides, surrounded by a perimeter of tall fence, all topped and lined with razor wire.

The Pantry itself was almost over 200 yards wide, with only one way in, one way out. No cover existed leading up to this place. A ground assault on this fortress of Lego blocks would only end in disaster for infantry.

Once through the outer fence, all trucks but ours peeled off into the heavily reinforced front gate. The front gate consisted of two metal plates on hinges, which was just wide enough to accept the convoy, single file. The main patrol group would be entering the storehouse facility through there, depositing the total remaining value of Marine Sergeant Hardt and his bandits. They were only supposed to be storing the food in here, the rest was supposed to be going to HQ, but when they could get away with it... like when there was a quarantine situation, for example... the Pantry took the guns and gear, too.

I wasn't going in there just yet. My destination was on the right, a set of six semi-cylindrical quonset huts on the southwest side, just within the perimeter fence of the Pantry but outside the container facility proper.

Aaron slowed the truck as he turned it away from the huts, giving me a full view of my prison for the next three weeks: QP-1, the closest hut to the quarantine squad staff trailer. The huts were backdropped by the multicolored outer wall of the Pantry.

Four guards stood before the hut in gas masks, their rifles slung. These were the QP Team muscle, posted here just in case a soldier didn't want to go into quarantine. As with the other guards, these guys looked immediately concerned at the fact that I was a Marine, not Army, and each of them had a rifle. As before, Bannon flashed out another thumbs-up at me with one hand, and a universal military 'cease fire' gesture with the other, palm inverted outward, wagging it up and down over his eyes.

Unlike the Velasquez guards at the land bridge, all four of them pulled their rifles into their hands slowly, ignoring his gesture of trust. I guess they weren't very satisfied with Bannon's vouch, then. A different breed? Or a distaste for the individual?

In addition to the four bruisers in military gear, there were two guys by the front door wearing bright yellow hazmat bunnysuits, with full oxygen tube respirators. One of them held a hand pump spray container full of Virex, a decontamination chemical. The other had a rubber messenger bag slung over his shoulder, and looked to be in charge, based on his positioning and bearing.

Aaron turned the engine off, saying just loud enough for us through the rear window to hear: "Vince, fair warning? I think it's Casey this cycle."

"Step out," the hazmat team leader said in agreement, stepping up to the truck in his yellow suit and wagging his hand at me, advising me to come straight to him. Yeah, by his voice, that was Casey.

I clambered out as ordered, hands off my weapons except to steady the butt of my rifle. They had me raise my hands and stand in the open as the second yellow suit sprayed me down; guns, hat, vest, everything. After that, they did the same for Bannon, then Aaron.

"Not once," Bannon replied back tersely, with some bite that surprised even me. "Not today Casey, you know I've been paying my dues."

Casey bobbed his hand to placate, but his tone had bite. "Didn't say you weren't, so slow your roll, I'm just doing my job."

"I'm serious Case. I'm under direct orders from Dresden, and I will bring this back up if you Q-P me again, I can not afford—"

"Alright alri—" Casey said, raising his voice to be heard until Bannon stopped ranting, then he just barked, pointing at his mask. "Hey! Put it back in, Bannon, you had me at Dresden!" And then to cut off Bannon's reply, he whipped around to Aaron, his voice half-volume. "Fanning, same questions, you touch anything?"

"No, Corporal," Aaron said politely as he stepped up, with a shake of his head. "I'm secure."

"Alright, I trust you," Casey declared, before looking at me next. "Now who's this knucklehead, Vince? An outsider, new recruit? Why is he still armed?"

Bannon threw his forefinger back at the truck and started yelling, his voice distorted by his mask. "And Morris and Garvey are dead in the back of that truck, with a stack of dead Marines, and my orders are to get started on a pyre! Dresden wants to recruit this guy special. That's all I know for sure, so stop cock-blocking me, and let me give these men their fuckin' funeral!"

Casey sighed, his body language sagging. "God damn it. Garvey bit it? Okay, now I see why you're so tuned up. Meat's gonna be pissed. Shit..."

He turned his head slowly toward me from Bannon and sized me up for a few seconds, then sized me up.

"Uh-huh," he muttered calmly, all the defensive wind gone from his sails. He reached back for his messenger bag, withdrew a pen and clipboard, gesturing at me with the pen. "Alright, sure, fuck it, whatever. Your name? Rank? Unit? … MOS?"

After a few seconds of true nervousness, I said stiltedly: "Uh. Miguel Ramirez, Lance Corporal… 15th M-E-U. Oh-Three-Eleven."

Casey sighed again, then looked up from his clipboard when he was done writing. "Okay. So..." He didn't say anything for a few seconds, either thinking through the procedure, or still processing the fact that two of his boss's toadies were dead. "Since... you're recruited with gear, we're gonna document it, and keep it safe. What's that rifle?"

My hand tapped the butt of it under my arm, my voice sounding more emotionally exhausted from what Bannon had just said than I had expected it to. "Four-One-Six. With a Five-Five-Three."

He stared at the holster for a few seconds without saying anything, clearly admiring either the optic, or the mag, or the fluted grip on the slide. His voice was neutral. "Also rare."

Then, he stopped considering whatever it was he was considering, because selling it after stealing it would be practically impossible to get away with in this environment, especially if Dresden had special interest.

Don't judge. These guys were pinching calories. Selling cool stuff was life extension.

Casey pointed my attention over to a lockable plastic box by the door of the quonset: a puke-gray outdoor storage bin, a Rubbermaid with a Master lock on the front. "Alright, that box there. Put your weapons, magazines, spare bullets, knives, blades, needles, anything sharp. Any in your bag too? Dispense with contraband. Food is okay, you can keep food."

"Not a sir, Marine, I'm a corporal. You understand you need to be in quarantine for three weeks, yes?"

"And you don't come back out 'til it’s over. Period. Major's orders can override that, and nothing else, got it? Otherwise, you sit and stew."

"Mmkay. Good, we'll get along fine, then. The box and the door will be guarded twenty-four-seven; if Dresden's your vouch, you’ll get your stuff back once you're done sweating. You can keep the gun box key. And if you need something… knock and ask."

He pointed at me. "You be chill with my guys, they'll be chill with you. No arguing, no forcing walls, no playing with the door, no games," he emphasized, aiming the words at Bannon. "And in three weeks… you'll be out, and we'll get you a tasking either through Lieutenant Dresden, or Sergeant Major Nakamura, depending on how well you behave. Until then… there's water inside, and you'll get a stipend of twelve hundred a day."

"Bingo." He gestured toward the lock box, then the troop transport. "Now let's go, hustle, these guys need to get this pyre started."

I stared at him for a second longer, which made him pause too, and I could see some agitation in his body language that I didn't immediately hop to, as ordered.

Once I had his attention, I said, very carefully and somberly: "Corporal? In that truck... it's my guys too, just so you know. Your L-T found me with… their bodies. Can't I… stand watch with 'em? Before you burn 'em? Maybe... let me watch from a distance, or something?"

He stared back, and his shoulders slumped again, going slack. There it was, the empathy. His hand went up in placation, his voice soft like silk. "Look. My condolences, Corporal, wish you could come to the service, but… quarantine protocol. Not negotiable. I'm very sorry."

After another pause of analysis, and a glance at Bannon... I nodded, accepting that. I hung my head, then moved to store the rest of my gear. The other guy in yellow hazmat gear reached for my backpack and pulled it off my right shoulder without asking, already pulling open the zipper and looking into it.

"Gotta check it all," he said conversationally, with nonchalance like it wasn't an issue, locking eyes with me.

I stared back at Meussen for a long, tense moment. All I could see were his serious eyes. My mask was limiting my peripheral, but I knew everyone else was very hackled by the sudden conflict. Meussen apparently missed the subtext of Dresden letting me keep my gun and some spare food, but… he was newer in the clique, so that off-beat kinda tracked.

"It's spare food," I growled quietly in answer to Meussen's question, in a warning tone that indicated I was willing to fight for it. "For my stay."

He would understand the math eventually. I saw the shift in his eyes. Took him a few seconds, but he got there.

Slowly, Meussen let go of my bag, his fingers sliding audibly off the ripstop fabric.

"Thank you," I said, with as much politeness as I could muster, before closing the bin, locking it, and turning my attention back on Casey. The Corporal's eyebrows were furrowed in seriousness at his subordinate, but he made no immediate comment. Meussen returned to his duty, picking up his Virex pump and dousing the lock I'd just touched.

Casey looked back at me. "Just food? Got your word, that's all you've got in the bag?"

"Yessir," Aaron replied. "I watched Lieutenant Dresden load it himself. He's been with Vince ever since."

"Okay." Casey gestured at the door again, making it the topic. "Corporal, do not touch anything on your way in. Do not remove your mask, nor your equipment, until the door is fully closed. And if anyone enters, for any reason, you follow all instructions. Precisely, and slowly."

"And if I am sick?" I asked, cocking my head. "How will I know? Never caught this shit yet."

"You'll know," said Casey, presenting the way. "I still can't taste anything. Enjoy your stay at the One-Star."

And with that, the conversation was over. I opened the door. I stepped inside. The door locked behind me.

Immediately, without hesitation nor pause, as soon as the lock turned, I tore off my gas mask and tossed it onto the bed. I had to breathe, a lot. My chest was stabbing with nervous terror. I was overheating under all my gear, needed to vent the heat, needed clean, unfiltered air. I permitted my nervousness to fully hit me as I simply closed my eyes and existed behind my eyelids, listening to the sound of the truck engine as Aaron and Vince drove off to prep the funeral pyre out north.

I thought of Sandra watching me from back home... if not now, then soon. I told myself I'd be okay, that even my stress had been accounted for. I had Mal watching. Had Claw 46 on standby. Had a small platoon of Talons in the hills. I processed that coping mechanism for a full minute until the stress dissipated.

Step one was to verify the accuracy of Mal's simulation models, to search for discrepancies. If I found even one thing out of place in here, that would indicate simulation deviation; no unaccounted entropy would be permitted for this play, and would necessitate an extraction. So far though, it all looked solid.

On the right were three metal cots with waterproof liners. On the end table closest to the door, right side, there were plastic bags of various essential toiletries, like toothpaste, deodorant, and toilet paper. Two changes of Army bunk clothes; brown shirts, OCP trousers, belt. All would be somewhat loose, and on the larger side. Not meant to fit well, just to be worn for decency.

On the left, two full 55-gallon water dispensers; one was open, and the other had a sign that said "ASK FIRST" in red marker, hung above a red plastic bead loop which blocked the valve. There was a stack of folded rags under each valve, and a sign with neat, handwritten instructions on what to do if there was a leak. And last but not least, there was a plastic bucket by the water barrels, with Sharpie writing: "WATER ONLY NO BIO"

My first meal stipend was on the end table by the first bed: 1,200 calories of recently expired canned goods. One of peach slices, two of cannellini beans, and some packets of ketchup to make up the difference.

'Yum,' Mal had said, when she pointed it out during sims, to indicate it would be safe to eat.

A thick vinyl sheet curtain hung at the back of the room, behind which was the bathing area. They had a pluggable vinyl bath tub which drained out to a tank down below, and a whole blue Honeybucket portable toilet half-buried into the floor, with cinderblock steps leading down to it. Thankfully, it was relatively clean, just going by the fresh smell of the sanitizer. A homemade mixture, though.

I put my cowboy hat down on the end table. I reached for the bucket of water, and I filled it with half a gallon to wash off the dust, grease, and grime. Etcetera. Now that I had my head on straight, I cleaned the blood off my boots, felt refreshed, I indulged in a deep sigh and got to work examining the bookshelf.

The books seemed to be in the exact same order they had been in VR, shelves loaded with technical manuals, tradesmen textbooks, Army field manuals. Curiously, there were lots of well-worn Tom Clancy in there, by order of the Major.

For those of you who don't know... Clancy novels tend to be jingoist fantasy, full of what patriots believed was true of their nation, and of espionage, and of technology and the government. Major Simmons had decided to inject some lofty, romantic, and I dare say unrealistic ideas about what this place was going to be at the end of the world.

I guess the idea, on paper, was to motivate people into feeding a food-obsessed meat grinder out of the mere implication that it was dutiful. Simmons seemed to think that simply stocking the quarantine hut with this garbage would be enough to reprogram anyone who got sick, like reprogramming someone took no more than to lock them in a room with some books. It didn't occur to him at all that maybe the Clancy wasn't actually doing anything except reminding people that the last system had failed.

I tried to imagine what it would be like at 1,200 calories a day in here. I imagined being sedentary, losing muscle mass, and stressing out about that. If someone in QP hadn't been supplementing their daily stipend with their own food, no matter how much they exercised, they'd barely be able to afford to get back into shape for scavenging patrols. Then they were off raking oil dreck on the other side of the fence until they got back in shape, because Nakamura wouldn't let someone put themselves in danger like that. So you had to get economical to survive in a place like this. You had to always keep your head above water financially, and tread for your life, or else.

Now, given the fact that the Midwest was chock full of non-perishable foods, you might consider this to be a strange way to live. Just go east, right? But... if you are confused by this, you might be underestimating the lengths people were willing to go to, to avoid Celestia. By now, everyone who hadn't found a chair yet had seen enough patterns to realize precisely who caused the world to go to shit, even if they didn't quite fully understand precisely how she did it. Wasn't just me and the Talons and the Ludds knowing she was the main problem anymore. For these guys, just as a precaution, it was better to be out here than within her reach. Because who knows.

Rebuilding America the way the Clancy books implied was... friggin' impossible, and I'm sure Simmons knew that. The things that made America possible in the first place, our wild relative excess compared to the rest of the world? Incontrovertibly erased now. You can't keep the import economy greased on an empty planet. What more value could we strip mine from a planet that had already been literally stripped down to its the crust?

Him letting me keep some of my own food? It was framed as a kindness, sure. But it was a business decision. Math. He knew I'd be dead broke by the time my quarantine ended, which would make me literally hungry for work. And as far as he knew? I was a scrappy, rough-and-tumble bandit. The Coyote wanted to possess me so that I could keep doing the thing I was already doing, and help him hunt Ludds. Loot Ludds. Absorb Ludds. Absorb, absorb, absorb. Eat. Eat. Eat. Grow. No other drive. Like an animal. A broken soul.

What better way for Dresden to buy my loyalty than to feed me while I'm stuck here? And he'd be the arbiter of that other 10k of mine, probably sitting in his shipping container by then. Free rent, he says, until I can earn my own container. Tax free. How generously framed. What a bargain he was giving me, this middle manager, by not taxing me. We who are in the therapy business, who treat souls for a living, we call this, 'golden handcuffs.'

The more I considered Jules Dresden, and the cold, dispassionate way he treated the dead, with zero reverence – the more I looked forward to Tunnel Day. That would be a very interesting day of revelation for him indeed. His own final exam, one might say.

Once finished washing myself, my boots, and my body armor, I rolled into the cot furthest from the toilet and stared up at the curved, corrugated metal ceiling. I still had one more meeting today when the bosses showed up. Mal warned me that it was going to be a hard conversation for me, emotionally.

Above me, I saw the words 'SWEET DREAMS' carved into the ceiling grooves directly over the pillow.

Between the funeral, the 21-gun salute, the debriefing with Velasquez, Dresden knocking back a big meal, Simmons taking his evening dump… yeah, four hours seems about right.

It was dark out; I glanced to my right, where I could no longer see sunlight through the thinner metal on the ceiling on the far side. Yet another one of Bannon's modifications to the space, good on him filing that down. They still haven't noticed it yet. I glanced to my left at my hat on the end table, suppressing the impulse to put it on my head before they came inside.

"Command calling," announced the voice of Major Kyle Simmons through the door, in that airy, irritating, sing-song way I'd come to know so well from my studies.

I paused for a moment to consider, then sat up, facing the door, folding my hands. My real exhaustion could be heard in my voice. "Will I need to put my mask on, uh...?"

My voice trailed off; I shouldn't know whether this is a sir or not, so I didn't label it.

"No, Corporal," Simmons said. "This is just a meet-and-greet. A job interview. Remain seated while we're inside, hands visible, that's all."

The latch clicked. In walked the three men most in need of value drift here on this base, each in very different ways. As officers, they each wore the most protective hazmat equipment available. Lieutenant Dresden entered first, to ensure the room was safe and that I wouldn't simply ambush them. The man wore the same yellow as Casey had, the cheap end of good protective equipment. He glanced at my empty food cans for a second, noting I had eaten already. He nodded at me in greeting. "Corporal. Good to see you're settled in."

Second, Major Kyle Simmons. Gray hazmat suit. Forty-seven years old. Wiry in body, with a thin black mustache, and eyes that looked perpetually rankled, whether or not he was smiling. He was balding at the temples, and the rest of his hair had grown far beyond regulation; a short mullet, like I had. Mirroring. I couldn't see his whole face, but from my memory of him, he reminded me of Popeye the Sailor Man, complete with the squint. He was tall, bombastic, loud, and – if I'm being completely honest – my most pressing concern for this place's social stability.

Third... Colonel Carlos Velasquez, the man himself. Fifty-eight years. Hispanic. Rail thin. Hair buzzed short, practically almost bald. He normally wore a patrol cap around base. He wore silver frame glasses, clean shaven, always carried a calmly serious demeanor. Paratrooper. Psyops, out of the 4th. Bad knees, but... you wouldn't know that just looking at him. He managed day-to-day exterior base perimeter security, morale, adversarial politics with Simmons, and... not much else.

My body language and posture were... appropriately defeated, given the fact that I had just lost all of my Marine brothers. I remained seated with my hands on my knees, nervous at the fact that I was bare-faced, and displaying that freely by shying away. I remained professional, and I licked my lips and kept my mouth closed tight, breathing through my nose like I was afraid of breathing on any of them.

Any soldier of theirs would have been at attention when they entered, or at least presentable. Me? Nah. I'd been on the road for half a year, hadn't I? Any naive, prior grasp of military pomp and circumstance had been beaten out of me by anarchy. Couple this with the fact that these men were effectively strangers to me, and that I wasn't even Army. If I started up with the military honors crap, that would be very suspicious indeed, given the context.

Velasquez, apparently understanding this math as well, approached me like I was a civilian. He stuck out his hand. "I welcome you, son. My name is Colonel Carlos Velasquez, and this is my operation."

I hesitated only momentarily, again considering contact transfer with my hand, but I shook his hand tentatively. "Yessir, thank you… I'm… Lance Corporal Miguel Ramirez."

"I've been briefed on your situation," he said, "and I'm told you've been through the wringer. I wish I could say we had taken your boys in with us, but... this world has a way of taking good things from us, doesn't it?"

I was somewhat taken aback by that. Reminder, I hadn't drilled these conversations one-to-one in sims, simply reacting naturally, as I had in Portland. I had known Velasquez was... gentle, sure; high speed as of late from the stress, but… given the circumstance? I hadn't expected this level of defeated melancholy out of him. Certainly not a self-soothing smile like that. Tentatively, I completed the handshake with unblinking eye contact. I was in awe of that. To him, I must've looked shell shocked.

Normalizing carrying the gun. Simulating. Letting it be available, just in case an opportunity presented itself. I resisted an impulse to look at Simmons.

Velasquez put a hand on Simmons's shoulder, looking at him intently for a few seconds. "This is my executive officer, Major Kyle Simmons. Head of logistics, to put it generally."

Simmons stepped forward and grabbed my offered hand with a hard-clenching jab. "Corporal."

"And you've met Lieutenant Dresden," said Simmons, gesturing at the man as he unabashedly took control over the introductions. "He's our scavenge team lead."

I nodded respectfully at Dresden. He nodded back with a lift of his hand, then clasped both hands together before his waist.

Dresden then traded a glance with Simmons behind Velasquez's back. They sent a non-verbal message with their eyes, but I didn't know enough about their history to intuit what it was. There was only so much I could glean during training, given the time crunch.

I returned my gaze to the Colonel, smiling weakly back at him, letting my exhaustion show. "I want to say... Uh, thank you, for… running a service, for my brothers. I heard the 21-guns, real comfort in that. And thank you for the rescue, Lieutenant, and... the accommodations. This is a lot better than anything we had in the field."

All three men exchanged a glance this time. They had to be imagining what conditions were for me before this shithole, if I was humbly treating the One-Star like it was the Ritz.

"My uh... my staff here," Velasquez began delicately, "they have some questions, as you might imagine. The way I'm told it went, you were accosted by some sort of... character, out there?"

I swallowed dryly, letting my eyes fall into the middle distance beyond them, gazing at the wall. I closed my eyes. "It… was…"

A memory. I could smell the salt and the dust in the desert of Utah. But visually, and with my ears, in a visor, I was in that parking garage. On defense. About to watch the whole squad get torn to shreds by an unstoppable force.

Foucault advanced on us like a ghost. Sweeping from wall to wall, car to car, cover to cover, dancing a deadly ballet of bullets against Sergeant Hardt and his – our – my – merry band.

I was Miguel Ramirez, the leatherneck. Survived Portland. Been shot twice. Killed men. But I never had a clear shot on the Man in the Coat. Never saw an opportunity to pull the trigger in a meaningful way. The panic took me when the first few of our boys fell. Death was coming for me, clad in beige. Death seemed all-encompassing and single-minded. Driven and determined. Neither our guns nor our training could have prepared us for a foe so... darkly mercurial, in infinite shape.

One by one, my brothers fell. One down. The next. The wallop of the grenades. The sensory overload of flashbangs.

A bright star had burned itself into my retinas, detonating so close that the polarized lenses of my gas mask could not possibly filter the light. I could hear nothing but vile ringing. I felt terror that I would die in that overstimulation. Helpless.

Fade in. Hardt was bleeding out before me. Tourniquet on his thigh; he had put it there, he started it, but he didn't have the strength to finish it. Begging me to save him, clutching desperately to my vest. His face half-obscured by the churning star of retinal sear. He mouthed, in the silence: 'Rami, please.'

I really tried for him. I reached down. Dropped my rifle instantly, torqued that tourniquet hard. Harder than I should have.

The ghost rounded the truck, rifle in hand, impassive to my attempt. Death was here. The muzzle brake pressed to the soft section of Hardt's neck. I couldn't even hear the shot. Hardt merely twitched, then fell still.

The three men watched my body language shift and change in those three seconds, as I considered the hell that never was. A fictitious nightmare. Then, I scowled at the wall.

Not just broken, then. Pissed. Trying to keep my shit together and just barely not failing. Feeling terrible for the man I was pretending to be, and angry for him to have lived through such a horrible thing.

His psychology and communications education was showing. He did that to add time to the equation, as much as it was to simply have a place to sit. He positioned the chair facing away, then sat down facing toward me with his arms slung over the back. Being relatable. Personable. Open. But, also putting an object between us, which made me feel safer, despite being cornered.

Both of his hands bobbed out at me, inviting me to speak. "Anything you remember could be useful, Corporal. Just… tell it like you saw it, like it happened. Anything and everything. We have all night, so you can take as long as you need."

I looked up at Velasquez with my 50-50 mixture of hurt and rage. A few seconds passed like that. "That was no Ludd, sir. He had some…" I pointed at my ear. "A Bluetooth on, talking to someone. Swept in like a, a... I don't know." I flicked my hand at the open air, again looking away as I continued, gesturing with my hand to simulate the movements Foucault was making.

"Guy was never where we were aiming. Repositioned after every trigger pull. He—he came out of cover with his gun trained on one of us, every single time. He'd be behind a friggin' Toyota or something, all we'd see is... a muzzle flash, and down another one of us went. He kept throwing grenades, never missed with the grenades. And... what he did to Sarge..."

"Straight up executed him, sir. I had him, I was pulling that T-Q tight, I had him, and... No mercy, no... not a word. Right in front of me. The guy looked through me like... I wasn't even there. Like I was invisible, like me trying to save Ian was a joke. My hands… too bloody. Couldn't get my sidearm free if I tried. So I just froze. Hate that I froze."

Velasquez tilted his head, gazing at me analytically; I couldn't hear his respirations. He was holding his breath for a few seconds, trying to imagine what I was describing. "I'm very sorry, Corporal. Dresden tells me you considered these guys family?"

I nodded dismally, meeting his eyes, but saying nothing. It was true, in a way. Wasn't it? We were all family now, in the face of the inevitable.

"What did he want to talk to you about?" Velasquez asked, his voice monotone for its self control. "Why did he talk to you? What did he say?"

I shrugged, resisting the urge to curse. "It was crazy stuff. Like... like I told Lieutenant Dresden. He said we weren't… 'using free will correctly,' whatever the hell that means. I mean, we were just out there surviving, doing what we could, you know? Feeding ourselves. But he swung in on all this crap about agency, about... duty, and pride. Called us traitors to our species." I shrugged hard upward, hands flicking out. "Traitors, sir?! Just wanted to keep my people safe and fed, that shouldn't be a fuckin' crime out here!"

He bobbed a downturned hand at me, begging calm. My words, though. I saw a flash of something in his eyes when I looked back up at him. Hurt, at my sentiment, but... not defensive. More an agreement, for the tragedy of the truth.

I focused at the middle distance again. "Um... 'It's judgment day.'" I cleared my throat, shrugging. "And, 'I'm skipping to the end in Seattle.' And..."

I started to pant. Real stress, but for a different reason. This was going to suck. I hung my head. Couldn't help but feel like an ass for this, even if I knew it would save his life.

Fuck. Am I seriously about to cry in front of these guys? Just look angry. Look angry, that makes it okay.

A slight man, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, four hundred men to protect outside. A letter on a desk in a sanitation plant... delivered by courier to a place without light, carrying the worst news possible for someone to receive in a war zone. Addressed to him.

A drawer opening. A drawer closing. A breath blowing out a candle. Fresh darkness, for dark considerations. He crawled under his desk, where he didn't think anyone could see him. Far from electronics. Far from anyone or anything.

I sighed hard, squeezing my eyes shut. I held my hand out in front of me in a clenched fist. "He said he didn't have to kill me, said... 'The death of you, Corporal Ramirez, is..." I splayed my hands; the words were nearly impossible to force out, and I grit my teeth through them. "A bottle of... whiskey in one hand, and a Beretta in the other.' "

I covered my mouth, looking at Velasquez's boots, trembling. I couldn't bear to make eye contact, but I did it anyway, to see the damage I'd done. I looked up. I felt my lips tense as I cringed at how hurt he looked. I felt my chest throb with pain at the forced calm in his eyes, and I felt enraged that I even had to go this far in the first place, to save this man’s life.

"I'm not walking that road again, sir," I seethed into my palm, my hand falling away, anger pouring into my voice like fire as I shook my head in defiance, snarling my words. "Never again. I'm not breaking at the whim of a friggin' monster, not for him." I raised my voice in defiance of the very concept. "No sir, screw that quitter bullshit, I gotta do right by my boys, I still have business to conclude!"

And there it was. Velasquez slowly lifted his hand again, requesting my calm. But his eyes. The eyes always tell. His gears were turning, it lasted for a flicker. A deep, deep concern was there, one the other men could not see for their lack of a heart; Velasquez, meanwhile, had seen a ghost. I had just labeled something that no one could possibly have known. And then... it was hidden again, deep down, and his eyes went back to their professional calm.

Velasquez had to know that my survival at the hands of the Coat meant that this message was intended to reach him. Could he blame me for being the vector?

Based on what I had just said, and the circumstances, I was a victim too. I was, wasn't I?

Aren't you? Aren't we all, if we still have a heart, and care about what happened to these people?

Velasquez kept his voice in check, clearing his throat to test what he sounded like before he spoke. "We... we're going to find him, Ramirez. You have my promise on that. I can not abide what has happened to you today. We have common adversaries, I believe, and... I would hope you would stick around and help us to curtail these threats. We'll need all hands for the coming storm."

I nodded, watching him carefully. I wore unblinking determination in my wide eyes as I clenched my teeth.

"Very good." He nodded too, then turned to address the others. "Gentlemen? If you would?"

And now he wanted to retreat, to decompress from that nuclear bomb of a steganographic message, while his subordinates completed their interrogation about the local Luddites. I'm sorry, 'job interview.'

Simmons stepped forward, dug into a rubber documents pouch, and unfolded an area map, one of several I'd be inspecting. Dresden dragged an empty table over to my cot so I wouldn't have to get up. I watched Velasquez in my peripheral vision as he silently inhaled a very deep breath, then let it out slow. Again. And again. Wringing his game right hand behind his back. Squeezing it. His mind was still turning and churning as he stared at me, trying to figure out what this was.

Velasquez realized the math of what was happening. His entire dream had been falling down around him, in free fall, before today. The time to decide was now. Celestia was coming, it was always inevitable. So was the dream worth saving?

Option 1: Does he dig in his heels and defend the future of an independent humanity, no matter how badly the conditions deteriorate?

Option 2: Does he put a bullet in the back of Simmons’s head like he had been muscling up the courage for, in the hopes that what comes out the other end of the chaos is somehow better, long after he's gone?

Or… Option 3, the one choice he didn't have when he woke up this morning: Does he step aside, toss his golden crown before gilded hooves, and let an AI-sent secret agent save his men?

He couldn't stem this corruption himself. Couldn't be the one to end Simmons, not with another option available. Not without starting a war. Open war would kill so many of his boys, boys he wanted desperately to see as his own, for lack of his own daughter.

Was there hope here? Was there a better way to complete his one final duty on this dead world?

The things I wanted to say to him. The things I wish I could have said in that moment, to soothe his inner conflict, just knowing how hard the next few days of awakening would be for him. I hoped he would realize that life could have meaning again. And how. Same way I did, after I wrestled that ghost. Same conclusions I had made, to make me who I was then, and who I still am today.

I did what I could. I kept my attention on Dresden and Simmons, pointing at the map at all the places we'd 'seen' Ludds in the city. Their scout patrols were about to have a really bad three weeks out there, while I mind gamed the rest of this base from the inside out.

I was pissed, folks. More than just being pissed at Celestia, I was pissed at these bastards… for selfishly perverting this place so far beyond its original vision and purpose, and doing so gladly. Could've been another PDX, but no. Couldn't have that, couldn't have peace. Simmons had to go and reinvent banks, taxes, debt, and corruption, of all things.

Sucks to be anyone who got in their way, while they ran this stupid self-enrichment scheme, where the end would always be violence. But hey, that drained the city of food, right? Uploads went up city-wide, right? Just like Alabaster wanted from this shit sandwich.

No. We were gonna excise the rot, and I wasn't alone. I had an army of my fellow guardian angels at my back. We were gonna fix this place, and just like in Portland? We were gonna fix it good, God willing.

Folks? If you take only one thing from tonight, take this. No matter how bad a day might be... tomorrow could always be better. Buy yourself as many days as you can, because any one of them could change everything.

The Campaigner

by Keystone Gray

6-02 – Operation Athena's Grace II – Zero Day