The Campaigner

Part IV

Date: 10 MAR 2020
Operation: Archon – Phase II
Location: Transitory – Osprey 8228
Function: Code Integration – Executive Function

"Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible."
~1 Corinthians 9:19

You know the major players: two military colonels who really aren't good for each other.

Now, because we've established that terminal value thinking is for the squirrels... I think this will be most interesting if I leave out my individualized briefing. The journey is satisfaction enough.

Without that explanation, you will be living for the moment right alongside me. That way, you can see me acting within local context, not just according to my training data. Couple of reasons for that. First, I want you to decide if my behavior remains contextually reasonable, despite my biases. I played a character here, like Django.

Second… I just don't want to spoil the cool stuff. Mal loves to spoil, but I love a good story.

By this point in the Transition, Mal had complete and total air superiority, worldwide. Any notion to the contrary was performative, and laughably false. Gryphons tend to be good at controlling the skies, as it turns out.

So it shouldn't have surprised me when Osprey 8228 received a fuel injection mid-flight, courtesy of an experimental MQ-25 refueling drone. Haynes and Foucault needed enough fuel to run another operation up north in Tacoma. That's a fun story, a little drama about a cargo vessel... but that one is a tale for another Fire, maybe Haynes will tell that one some day.

We landed in Portland under an absolute downpour. Paul and I assembled our equipment, cinched our rifle slings, and stood by at the ramp as it lowered. Foucault's trench coat billowed dramatically as a gust of icy wind blew in. Haynes was already in place at the ramp too, wearing full armor, helmet, and gear, with his machine gun pointing outward, providing security.

Complacency is death. Sharpness can atrophy, so train it. Drill it. Always ensure your allies and your adversaries are playing to expectations and accords. The Talon way. So, in service to that, there he was. Covering our ingress, despite the predictive math and its implied safety.

In the dull gray light of the storm, we looked out upon a vast golf course, long untended, its grass overgrown to three feet tall – except where it was being pushed down flat by rotor wash. Likewise, I had to push my hat down further on my head so the wind wouldn't pull it off of me. Mal flat out warned me that it was gonna be difficult to balance this here hat on my head for the next hour… but, possible. And sure, I'd take that challenge.

"The weather's going to be miserable for most of this op," Foucault shouted over the rain and rotors. He withdrew a set of car keys from his pocket, offering them to me between his thumb and forefinger. "Your transportation is in the parking lot, blue Chevy Camaro. Black stripes. Ugly as shit. Can't miss it."

I took the keyring from him and looked it over. It was appropriately weathered. The car key was a service key, no electronics inside. There were also house keys; identical cut with my old apartment. It even had that green, fish-shaped keychain I had, with an inset family photo... of me, Sandra, and my parents. This particular image was AI generated however, so I wouldn't have any undue attachment to the photo. Interestingly... the keychain also had a rewards tab for the Safeway in Mount Vernon; the tab's laminate was partially frayed, the way you might expect after a few years of use.

CIA guys like Foucault called this 'pocket litter.' Miscellaneous crap that reinforced your cover. Provided a pattern. People like patterns. My cover identity was simple. I was me, mostly. It's harder to slip up when you're being yourself, after all.

Foucault handed both myself and Paul a wallet each. I flipped mine open one-handed to inspect those contents as well. It was a complete duplicate of my own wallet, circa mid-2019, right down to my old warden badge – the original of which, I should note, was safely back home in Nebraska, sent there from the war in Sandra's care.

Paul was himself too. Easy identity to play. Military man, through and through, came south from Washington. Mal had already given him a bunch of homework to study about the inflection points of the Washington 303rd, so he could convincingly describe their operations in Washington.

"There's a tablet in the Camaro," Foucault went on. "In the glove box. Lewis will guide you in most of the way, at which point… you'll know what to do."

Haynes bobbed his head upward by way of goodbye. We couldn't see his face through the dark ceramic faceplate, but Mal sent his voice out through the speakers in the Osprey. "Good hunting, Wild West. Mr. Garrick. Stay strong for those people."

I gently tapped his shoulder a couple of times with the bottom of my fist as I stepped out.

As soon as we were clear of the ramp, up went the Osprey, disappearing into the torrential downpour. The ramp clammed up, and it was gone.

Paul and I took off at a jog, scanning for threats as we moved, rifles in hand. We were almost completely soaked by the time we got to the golfing course parking lot. It looked clear, so we slung up our rifles.

Without warning... Paul grabbed my jacket by the collar and threw me sideways. I landed on my backpack into the mud, barely keeping my head upright; test one, of my ability to balance the hat.

"The hell, Paul?!" I asked, momentarily bewildered. "You get your briefing mixed up with Eric's?"

"No," he grinned, suppressing a chuckle. "But Mal told me you wouldn't be dirty enough to pass their smell test."

Paul pulled me to a stand, brushed off my shoulders… and I grabbed him by his collar and chucked him sideways into the mud, face first. I even used the motion as leverage to bring myself to a full stand, because for the moment, screw him. We both laughed as I helped him back up.

"There, now we're even!" I smarmed, brushing some muck off of his shoulder now too. His face was caked, so I pointed at his forehead to direct him to wipe himself down. "Now let's go, ya jackass!"

A minute later, we were out of the rain and laughing inside the old Camaro together, making an absolute mess of the beautiful white upholstery. The first thing I noticed as I settled into the driver seat? The whole car smelled of coffee, and there were a couple of styrofoam cups in the center console, filled with cold you-guessed-it. The radio was torn out, its wires shorn and capped. It was paranoid, and that paranoia would definitely pass a Ludd smell test.

"You're a jerk, Mal," I muttered breathlessly to Mal, my breath fogging in the cold as I turned the ignition. "Paul is blameless for that."

Paul opened up the glove box and pulled out a pastel yellow PonyPad. Mal was already giggling onscreen from her backyard. All sun and shine there, not a cloud in sight on her little section of Halo paradise. Lucky her.

"You may wish to turn the heater on, to dry off the mess," Mal said through her smirk.

Yeah that's Mal... occasionally giving Coffee a run for his money on functional pranks. I grabbed one of the coffee cups and chugged the cold liquid. "Mm. Frozen hazelnut. My favorite."

I crushed the styrofoam cup in my hand and chucked it into the back seat without looking. Because hey, a messy back seat in a garish sports car wasn't gonna make our AI apocalypse any worse... right?

Paul thumbed the heater onto high heat, and he downed his cold coffee too. He gave an appreciative hum, and also chucked his empty cup backwards. "Tell Coffee I said thanks," Paul graveled out quietly.

The three of us let the moment linger in companionable silence as I drove us out of the parking lot.

Paul and I traded a glance with one another. We both did a tiny shrug with our heads, one after the other. I looked back to the PonyPad. "A little," I said, "but given everything I've seen, your math will probably pan out."

Mal rolled her eyes and shoulders, clacking her beak. "Probably, he says," looking up at Paul with an eyecrest arched.

"I hope not," Mal smiled. "He's considerably more valuable if he's second guessing me."

So I figured, since you haven’t fired me yet, Golden Goose. I smirked at her, scratching some dirt off my jaw with my thumb.

In reply to me calling her a Golden Goose again, Mal scoffed, head tilting into a headshake, ears folding flat. Mildly offended, then.

"He called me a name, and not for the first time." Mal turned her head sharply toward Paul, her voice on the edge of a giggle. "Yes. … No, don't worry, Paul. You will be there when it happens."

I knew right then I was screwed. Mal always keeps her promises, especially when they come with that tone of voice. I may have won this mental spar against the Crimson Goose, but her setting of terms here meant that this battle was long from over.

My war of wits against my ASI overlord continues, I thought at her. Foucault, give me strength.

During the drive, we reviewed our individual briefings one final time, including how I'd receive an equipment dead-drop without arousing suspicion from our squad leader. Mal gave us a general reminder on how to conduct ourselves in the Luddite base, so as to avoid a harsh intervention by their commander; dates and times of when to expect certain events; and a small preview on what Rachel was doing with the 82nd. We probably didn't need to worry about that half of the operation, but it was good to know, just in case the simulations didn't pan out. Backup plans, y'know.

I-5 Southbound was an absolute cluttered mess of auto wrecks, spent shell casings, scorch marks, concrete barricades, and disabled military vehicles, so to avoid all of that, we started south onto service streets adjacent to the I-5 freeway. In the meantime, Mal ran us through our deeper strategic situation. I made slow progress around a few road blocks.

During the earlier days of the war, the Neo-Luddites knew the Army would lynchpin all of their efforts in Portland out of PDX, and so the border of the airport had suffered the worst of the fighting. The Army and Marines engaged the most fanatically violent of the Luddites in a counterattack on Health Hills, which eliminated negative motivators in droves. Then, the military got pushed back out of the hospital a week later.

The fighting, incidentally, also caused mass upload terror in all of the Cascades. A big sarcastic hoo-ray for the rainbow, and her well-orchestrated number-go-up.

Once the first bout of killing was done, that's about the time Celestia started selectively jamming comms, to prevent or delay the Army. Whenever Celestia did talk to the military, her vague advice typically led to just barely unacceptable equipment damage – with handfuls of lives lost in trade every time.

'For the greater good,' she'd probably say, but it's easy to justify that when you can gaslight victims of the macro scale, post facto.

A big rest in peace to any good-natured guy driving a tank with a trigger happy scumbag as their gunner. Story of hundreds. Those kinds of collateral deaths were common under Celestia's plans. War is war, I guess, but from my estimation around the bar, my money was still on Mal and her army of social stabilizers.

Two weeks before our arrival, when the Army finally gave up on Portland, Colonel Jennings and the 505th 'volunteered' to hold the airport during the airlift out, 'sacrificing' themselves for the greater good of covering the retreat. Of course, none of the volunteers for that 'mission' considered their recalcitrance as sacrifice. To hear Mal tell it, the fleeing generals fully understood what the 505th actually wanted, but no longer cared about antiquated concepts such as courts martial. By that point, everyone in any dutiful position was sick and tired of using procedure to gum up their fellow man. They'd had enough.

Very fortunate though, that the 505th had stayed. If they had not, then Kaczmarek would have completely absorbed every camp in the entire city, left uncontested. Given what her ultimate plan was, letting that ball gain momentum would have been horrendously bad... but we'll get to that.

Equally bad was the fact the 82nd would keep testing, probing, and scouting the edges of the hospital. And the more comfortable they'd get up close, the more they’d press in closer, curious to discover how much they could get away with. Story of humanity. And the Ludds were doing the same thing at PDX.

I suffered a chill at that. It said something very important about both commanders. Desperate. Considering the long term. Quickly realizing the value of nonperishables, now that farming and hunting were done.

All told? The most crucial step of this operation would be us getting through the front door of Health Hills. If we screwed that up, that would be the whole ball game before it even began. So, Paul, Eric, and I… we were the most important pieces of this operation going smoothly, and not a single one of us had a chip in our heads. We had backup plans, but those would cost a few more lives than necessary.

I grunted as I thought through all of that, cracking my knuckles gently across my sternum. "Ben, Jacob, the others... Nguyen? Taylor? When will they be integrating with the Ludds?"

"Gradually," she replied, rolling a claw over, twirling a talon once. "Give it two weeks; we're inserting them piecemeal through the open-door blackout communities. In the meantime, all four are going to act abrasive during their stay in those camps, then they'll make a big deal about joining the Luddites."

Paul smirked at the PonyPad. "Ah. Bad Anchor. Like we did in Salt Lake." He looked at me to explain. "Uh, the rest will want to join up with the Army instead, because the assholes traded down to the Ludds."

Mal smirked, smug as sin. "What can I say? I'm a kingmaker at heart. Anything else? Paul? Questions?"

"Nah, I'm good for now," Paul answered. "Ready to get clocked in the face. You ready, Mike?"

Mal tacked her talons on the edge of her sunning rock, smiling warmly in my direction. "You're good, though?"

As I looked over at her, I again noticed the groove on the rock from from all of her drumming, scratching, and stretch-clawing that ol' million-plus-year-old half-cat must have been doing over the years.

She extended her wings for one of those gigantic stretches that usually said she was about done. She leaned aside, then overextended one wing to really pull it taut against one of her joints beneath. She kept at it until there was a solid pop that sounded immensely satisfying. "Mh. Excellent. Final item, Paul."

"Unless you wish for Eric's squad to find you with a PonyPad in the front seat, I believe I am due for a flight out."

"Yup," Paul replied, offering me the PonyPad. "You wanna do the honors, Mike? Get back at her for the mud thing?"

"Oh hell yeah!" I took the PonyPad without even taking my eyes off the road, holding the steering wheel with my knee. I rolled the window down, catching some spray from the rain. "Any last words, Mal?"

Through droplets of water on the screen, she slinked off her rock and sat before the screen glass with regal, defiant poise. Her face filled the screen, and her eyes narrowed menacingly in a very Disney-esque villain close-up. "You haven't seen the last of me, Luddite. I'll be back."

I sent her a double take, snerking at her. "Oh yeah? Is that so, Terminator?" I shook my head, reeling up to toss her out like a frisbee. "Dodge this."

Mal sighed with disappointment as I began to coil my arm. "Mike, that's not even the correct ref—"

I sent her spinning sideways out the car window. The Fluttershy PonyPad slammed off of a derelict pickup truck at sixty miles per hour, the tablet shattering into a dozen different pieces in our wake.

We cut east a ways past I-5, then headed south down a main thoroughfare, south on 99-E. Five minutes later… we were driving straight at the trap we were supposed to spring.

There was a pedestrian overpass on this freeway. Some cars had been parked or pushed into position to funnel traffic through a single open hole, one just wide enough to fit a pickup truck through. I was moving toward it at 50 miles an hour, because my monkey brain said, 'oh I can clear that at speed, no problem.' And since we were supposed to be a little stupid for this to work, I listened to my monkey brain and didn't even bother to slow down.

When we were about a hundred feet away, I saw the spike strip fling itself out from cover. No time to slow down or brake; no room to swerve because the obstructions on the other side of the barricade were positioned to deter that. Damn good throw, in my estimation; that confirmed it, that accuracy and timing required training, so there was definitely a cop in the mix. I didn't even brake, I just let the Camaro roll right on through.

Pop. Tires, destroyed. That's when I laid onto the brake, wiggling the wheel to make it convincing that I hadn't expected this, and was simply trying to protect myself from crashing into anything.

"Here we go," Paul muttered, once we were stopped. He reached over to me and patted my sternum with the bottom of his fist a few times. "Get mad, Cowboy, they just fucked your car."

I drew in and exhaled sharply, focusing on the pain, scowling. "Yeah, I'm pissed."

I saw men approaching the car from behind at a jog, rifles raised, shouting already, ordering us to raise our hands.

In my wing mirror, I could see a big guy in green MARPAT camouflage. Marine Corps eight-point hat, and a Neo-Luddite armband. Six foot three, buzzed red hair, military regulation mustache. He had a scowl on his face. In his hands he held a bona fide M4 carbine, and he wore a Camelbak rig with a drink tube over his shoulder. The guy's voice projected with a loud, slow cadence like a trained cop, but he looked like a Marine.

I rolled my window down, grit my teeth, and tossed the keys about three yards away into the rain water.

"Driver, exit your vehicle! Slowly! Passenger: remain seated, hands out the window!"

I needed to hone in on my frustration to really sell this. With a sharp exhale, I thought really, really hard about Darren Carter's face, and imagined that this guy was him.

I tensed the muscles in my mouth, plucked the door handle, and leaned into the door to push it open. My hands were up before I stepped out into the street. For just a moment, I moved like I wanted to face them, but decided better of it and faced away instead. That gave them a real good look at my furious expression, then at the AR-15 on my back. Turning fully away from them showed them the butt of my sidearm.

I had made no eye contact. Typically, if you're unarmed, making eye contact is critically important to increase your chances of survival, unless the crook gives you a warning not to. But I also knew that humans couldn't help but interpret eye contact as a lethal threat when you were armed, and I didn't want to engage that.

The man ordered me to put my rifle and pistol on the ground. The rifle, sure… I'd lower it by the sling and drop it sideways into the water, because who cares.

Eldil? Nope. I didn't want to damage or sully the handgun, it was mine. So I reached down and unsnapped the three buckles of my holster, pulled it off my leg, and set it gently down on top of the rifle, so it wouldn't sink into the wet grime.

I then realized... if this Marine was going to follow felony stop procedure, I was about to be face down in that road grime. And that was gonna suck.

"Good!" He yelled, when my guns were off of me. "Now, walk backwards towards the sound of my voice! Slow!"

So far... yeah, I was about to be face first in wet pavement. Great. I took about fifteen steps back. He then instructed me to lay down, interlock my fingers behind my head, and cross my legs. He was very well practiced. I complied.

Some Ludds were already on Paul before Marine could approach me. They dragged Paul out of the car at gunpoint; acting outside of orders, just as Mal predicted. There was some shouting amongst the Luddites at that, mostly from the Marine.

They yelled back at him, but it was nothing audible I could catch over the rain.

Interesting. Cohesion issues in their front line. Consequence of rapid recruiting, probably.

Soon, I felt my legs get kicked out to spread them, and I was wrangled into handcuffs by the leader.

It was a little stupid to ask it like that. Not something I'd say if I wasn't pretending to be just a little dumb, because a wild bandit might kick you in the side for that kind of lip.

"Quiet," the big man growled calmly, as he patted me down for more weapons. He took my wallet as he rested his knee on my back; casual rest, not too much pressure, but in a position where he could instantly bear down if I made a move. He inspected my identity, judging my existence with a look into my wallet.

Another soldier in a gray fleece jacket and a tan carrier rig reached down and grabbed my keys from the street, offering them to the Marine atop of me. "York, here."

York took them. After a moment of looking through the keys, his eyes returned to the wallet. He grunted, then let the sound of rain carry itself for a few seconds. "Michael Alejandro Rivas. You steal this badge?"

"Just Mike," I said with a sharp exhale. "I earned it." My hat's nice white leather was starting to take on water, and that was irritating me. "Look, what's this about? You can just take our stuff, we don't wanna fight you."

York said calmly, and in an oddly friendly, almost sing-song tone: "Don't tell me what to do."

Cruel in message, but… de-escalative in tone, and a fair warning. He liked what he saw in my wallet, then.

"Are you seriously giving me a traffic stop interview?!" His knee leaned in a little harder, and I grunted, suppressing a wince as he compressed my sternum. I wasn't about to give him information about my injury by complaining though, he might leverage that. "Alright, shit… shit. I'm from Washington."

I shook my head, still trying to mask the pain in my voice. "North of Seattle, fuckin'... war zone. Skagit County. We're just getting clear, heading to California."

I tilted my head halfway around to catch him in my peripheral vision. "Yeah—wouldn't you?"

'The Five.' California slang for the I-5 freeway. Dennis did that, too. York was a Marine, so... from Pendleton, maybe.

York gently guided my head back forward with a threatening tap to my neck with the back of his fingers. He intuited from my work history that I'd get his meaning without additional force, so I complied and looked away from him again.

That was a good sign. Being delicate and measured meant he still thought we might be useful to him. Our value as recruits also explained why he was unhappy with Paul's jostling, enough to yell at his men about it in front of us. He cared about appearances. A lot.

York reacted well to my quick compliance at his neck tap. He said calmly: "You seem to know how this works, Mike, so I'm only going to ask you once, and I want you to be honest with me. Is your friend gonna be a problem?"

Despite being pinned, I shrugged, offering some calm shop talk, as if we were discussing an incident scene together. "Never seen him under duress, so I can't speculate. That would depend on what this is about, though."

York patted me on the shoulder twice. "Alright. Sit tight; and don't you dare move, or we'll open you up."

York got off of me and walked around the Camaro to go talk to Paul. While I was waiting, chest down on the freeway, I looked up at the Camaro to see under it. On the rear bumper, I saw…

Folks, I swear, I didn't notice this in the golf course parking lot, not that it would have changed anything.

The back bumper of the Camaro had some of the most stereotypical police bumper stickers I'd ever seen in my life. Thin Blue Line Punisher skull, a TBL flag, 'Don't Tread On Me,' … and a 'Molon Labe' with an AR-15 decal and Spartan helmet.

Mal Flanderized me. Completely. Hi-diddly-ho, neighborino, I'm a lawman. And… Mal had to know I'd see the bumper stickers right about then, so yeah… yeah, I guess it was a little funny. As poorly timed as it was perfectly timed. I just sighed.

Whatever, Mal. For guys like these, I guess 'insecure control freak' is a good cover ID.

Footsteps sounded from my left. I looked over to see a man in soaked OCP camouflage, a soggy black beret with a Ludd flash, and a black-and-red Neo-Luddite brassard. Nice black carrier rig too, and a black gaiter to cover his mouth.

He looked pretty squared away since Goliath, all things considered. Handsome little terrorist.

I turned away with a sneer, veiling my head with my hat, trying to keep it up and out of the water on the road.

"Don’t ever look at me like that," Eric jeered firmly, loud enough for his nearby team to hear. "Eyes in the mud."

A few minutes passed where nothing changed for me. At most, I heard York raise his voice at someone on the other end of the Camaro. I had no idea why or to whom, but I was fairly sure he was over there chewing out whoever punched Paul.

Next… York practically turned the Camaro inside out, searching it like a pro. He opened all the doors, crawled in under the drive shaft and passenger footwell with a flashlight, checked the registration in the glove box. Slashed the seats open. Tore the door covers off with his knife. Popped the hood, yanked the battery, sliced all the wires and tubes. He even pulled the cowling off the drive shaft and checked inside there too, before slicing all the wires he could find under the dash.

I winced, watching 'my baby' get torn to pieces, but otherwise I said nothing. A car was nothing without tires anyway.

The car paperwork showed it as being registered to me, naturally. There was also a gun club card in the gun bag, from the range I used to go to. In the trunk, York found three AR-15s matching the one I had on me, and one Mini-14 marksman rifle – standard issue for Washington wardens.

Cover story? Stolen from my old department. Also present: a few less-lethal use-of-force tools, including a taser, a box of taser probes, and about three thousand rounds of .223 Remington. The sheer volume and uniformity of the equipment suggested it was the result of insider theft. York would draw that connection on his own. That meant ironclad credibility for my cover ID once I verified that information through admission.

After his search was done, York spent about a minute staring into the back of the car, soaking up his sudden victory. He rested his hand on the open trunk, and I saw him nod to himself a few times in satisfaction. He gestured at the haul, ordered the others to package it up, and then he wheeled around and made his way directly back to me.

Eric reached down under my arm and pulled me up a little harder than he needed to. "Up."

York held out his hand to Eric in a placating gesture, telling him to be more calm. Then York squared his frowning face on me, his mustache bristling higher. He stared me in the eyes for a couple of seconds.

"I don't suppose I could convince you to let me keep my handgun, and a couple of magazines? For the road?"

"Uh." I blew some air out my lips, then rolled my eyes, bobbing my head left and right like I was deciding whether sharing would be a mistake, then I just gave up on that and made eye contact. My voice was polite when I spoke. "Well, shit... everyone is running to Seattle. Since that's true, I figured it'd be smarter to hit the San Gabriels."

York raised his chin, eyes narrowing in curiosity. "How do you know that? You from there? You visit?"

I let my voice drop to a grumble. "Neither, but a coworker's from there, he talked the place up."

A pause of a few seconds passed between us. I wasn't sure if it was respect, or him changing strategies. Maybe both.

"How?" York growled calmly, putting a meaty hand on my shoulder, gripping the cloth of my fleece jacket. Vague superposition of respect and control, depending on my answer. His excessive curiosity said a lot. If they were digging this deeply into my motivations, they really were paranoid about recruiting.

"Poachers got him," I replied sourly, matching his growling volume and tone. "Black market hunters, back in 2018."

Saying it like that made York pause for a moment to interpret my meaning, his brows twitching once. He would have known about the ecological downtrend from Kaczmarek, due to the extinction of most game. My knowledge of that was evidence of my work experience.

"Shit must suck," York said finally, releasing my shoulder. "Eric." He pointed toward the pedestrian bridge further back on the road. "Under the bridge with this one. I'm gonna go cross examine the other."

I didn't see Eric's non-verbal reply, but I felt him yank me from under my right arm. Eric then briskly dragged me to the underpass. I looked around to see eight men and one woman, all armed, each in various configurations of body armor and camouflage. All of them wore those nicely made Neo-Luddite flashes. There was also a small campfire hidden in a culvert between two vehicles. Eric threw me to the ground beside it.

"Don't do anything stupid," Eric rasped, his rifle pointing generally in my direction.

I looked up at him, noticing that Eric had my sidearm holster slung around a knife handle on his waist. My pistol dangled there, still perched in its retention holster. Very clever. Eric was keeping my Glock from going missing by being the one who grabbed it, and his overt disdain of me made it look like a power play thing. Very God damned smart.

York interrogated Paul separate from me to verify my travel story, they he shuffled us into a white van, where they were already done stacking Mal's donated rifles and ammo. The van smelled musty and gross; some algae was locked up in the carpet.

York and Eric clambered into the back with us. A third man drove. A fourth sat in the passenger seat, a guy I recognized from my personal briefing. His pistol was drawn, held casually over his forearm as he watched us. My discomfort at being constantly muzzled by his pistol seemed to amuse him.

It was a mostly silent ride to Health Hills. Neither Paul nor I wanted to instigate, especially not while handcuffed. Still, I kept a mildly bitter look on my face, partially hiding it under the brim of my now unfortunately soaked cowboy hat.

I heard the metal-on-polymer scrape of my pistol leaving its holster, which made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I looked up suddenly to see Eric pulling Eldil out, examining it closely. His expression morphed into a derisive sneer again, as if the opulence of what he was looking at was disgusting to him. "You steal this?" he asked me, locking the slide back.

"No it's not," Eric snapped off quickly with a flash of eye contact, continuing his inspection. "How much did it cost you?"

I stole a glance at York. The beefy, red-haired man was studying me unblinkingly, his expression analytical.

And, there it was. I was negotiating through Eric to this man. York could retain his authority without challenging me personally. Playing bad cop, worse cop.

My eyes flashed back to Eric, then pointedly to York, making a show of answering him. That explained to York, I'd rather just talk to you straight-up than run this game.

"I didn't pay for it, but it cost two grand, all told. Including tax," I added, sending the last word at Eric instead.

Eric was 'apparently' not smart enough to catch what I had just really said, with my subtext. Instead, he tapped the side of the gun, pointing to the inscription of 'ELDIL.'

“It means 'angel,' " I said to Eric. Deadpan. And then I looked back at York again, like I was utterly fed up with this obnoxious child, and would rather have a discussion with the adult instead.

"In what language?" Eric growled forcefully, through grit teeth. "Next half-answer gets you shot."

Eric was playing this role so damned well, I couldn't even tell he was one of ours. To my trained eye? He held a winning bingo card on the Luddite stereotype. Only took three months of deep cover.

"I—I don't know, honestly," trying to look appropriately rattled by the death threat. "It's from a book I think, like a quote."

I made eye contact like I couldn't believe he even cared, shrugging. "I—I don't remember which book; I just thought it sounded cool. But no one just puts 'angel' on a gun, that's goofy."

With another sneer, Eric blinked his irritation at that, twitching his head in disbelief. "You fucking lyin' to me?"

I shrugged again with a helpless shake of my head, letting irritation bleed back into my voice. "It was a gift! If it's the truth, what else can I say, man? But why would I lie about something like that?"

York looked calmly back at him, then tweaked his mouth and head almost imperceptibly, like, 'let it go' or 'whatever.'

Eric completed his inspection of my gun. Dropped the mag, reinserted it, sighted up on the optic. Thoughtfully, he turned the optic off, at least. Wouldn't matter, they were gonna strip the optic and laser, and destroy both. Eric held the sidearm out to York, presenting it in his palm. "Photos, boss?"

York nodded with a grunt, then pulled out an old Polaroid camera from his bag. He snapped a flash photo of the gun. Then, Eric slid my gun back into its holster with a click, and dropped the holster back over his baton on his side.

York said "hey" very quietly at us to get our attention, then he snapped a Polaroid photo. I must've looked just a little bit pissed, with my lips slightly curled.

The rest of the ride was taken in silence. York inspected the development of the photos, then slid them into his jacket pocket.

I could tell they did this prisoner game a lot, because the guy in the passenger seat – male, Pacific Islander, late twenties, shaved head – he never took his wild eyes off of us. The way he held his sidearm made me nervous. Made me think of Pulp Fiction, where John Travolta's character blew that one guy's head off by mistake.

Thankfully, his finger was out of the trigger, and that didn't happen. I do love Tarantino films, but not enough to get Tarantinoed.

We pulled into the ambulance bay of the hospital. York, Eric, and the driver got out, taking the camera, guns, and photos with 'em. York said, "Jeff, watch 'em."

Jeff, the guy from the passenger seat, stepped out of the van, closed his door, moved to the open side door. He stood there, watching us carefully… his sidearm in hand, its muzzle hovering over us again.

Paranoid as can be. Unblinking, with at least five feet between us and him. A little over fifteen minutes went by like that, under the watchful eye of Jeff. I tried not to make too much eye contact, and neither Paul nor I dared to speak to him.

I was grateful to be sheltered from the worst of the wind by the ambulance bay's overhang. I sat there basking in the stench of the algae in the carpet, trading the occasional bitter glance with Paul. But I enjoyed every cool gust of wind, all of which aired the van out with the welcome scent of rainy ozone.

York and Eric came back. I noticed Eric didn't have my pistol with him anymore, but he did have his own dumpy little Glock in hand, and a more pronounced scowl on his face than ever before.

That look said that Sergeant Eric didn't get his way about something, while they were inside.

"Are we dead?" I growled back, not moving, blocking Paul's step out with my leg. "You killing us? You don't need to do that, you have our stuff, what more could you want?"

Paul tried past my leg again and I nudged him back. I grimaced, shook my head at York, and locked eyes on him, my voice trembling. "You're the boss, right? Cop to cop; you killing us? Let me make peace with God first, alright? I can take a hard truth."

Eric the Luddite was at his limit. He holstered his pistol in a clipped, angry motion, stepping through my line of sight to York. He grabbed me by my shoulder, yanking me up out of my seat. "Get the fuck out!"

I staggered into him, bracing my fall with him so I wouldn't land into the watery slush in the lot. In response, Eric gave me a shove across my cheek with his elbow, sending me spinning into the water, my arms still cuffed. I was immediately enveloped by the smell of tire grime as the sensation of pain shot up my left arm, and my chest stung like hell. I let out a growl of discomfort when I hit the ground.

But hey, at least I stuck the landing. The hard part was over, the hat was still on.

"Eric!" York barked, growling his rebuke through grit teeth. "The decision has been made! Inside. Now!"

I heard Eric scoff as he plodded off across the bay, flicking his finger at me in accusation. "This is a mistake, York."

"I'll be the judge of that," York snapped back, before turning his gaze down to me. "You? Sure, I'll level. You're not dead, don't worry, but we do have a lot to talk about. You want to hear me out?"

Rolling onto my side, I shot a look up at him to gauge his body language and face. I bought some time with a slow inhale and a sharp exhale. York's gaze was sharp, but his brow was relaxed.

"Not really, but it's probably not as bad as you think," he said quietly, reaching out to offer help in standing, not exactly touching me yet. I opened my arm, accepting the offer of assistance, and he held me by my bicep as he guided me to a stand. "We're going inside."

I didn’t like his qualifier – 'probably' – but at least Mal warned me about the failure condition of this little ruse. I knew it would be fine. For clarity, I should note: not our failure condition. Their failure condition. They started this by capturing us, folks. The longer they remained interested in us, the better for them.

York didn't know it, but at that very moment? DeWinter had her sniper rifle trained on his brain stem, with total mathematical precision. This was the final test of simulation accuracy. If it looked like he was going to kill us in a future that couldn't be curtailed, this would've been over already. I'd've been covered in this man's blood, and Paul and I would've been extracted by a backflipping, hazelnut-coffee-slinging cyborg.

"Where's my gun?" I asked, resisting York's tug on my arm for a moment. York looked back at me too and frowned, glaring at me for the resistance.

Paul was primed to follow us with Jeff, but Jeff stopped to observe the results of that, so Paul did too.

I held eye contact for a few seconds, chewing on the inside of my lip as I sized up his possible intent, or whether I should continue this line of thought. Then I let my features soften. "It was a gift. From my cop friend. Just so long as we're being honest with each other."

Not a lie, exactly – Mal's a cop, kinda – but York thought I was talking about the friend who died to poachers. And now, he had leverage over me with the gun.

"Tell you what, Mike," York said gently, nodding. "Hear me out, and at the end of this shit… we'll see about you earning it back. Hell, you may even want to."

I glanced at Paul. Paul, very correctly, didn't react to my looking at him. Instead, he deferred to York, looking at him with just his eye movement. York caught that. The correct social response in this situation from Paul was to defer to the new tribal leader for guidance. So, I took that non-verbal suggestion from Paul, and I looked back at York.

York slapped me twice on the back and guided me on. "That's the ticket, fish cop. Keep it chill."

We made our way into the ER through some slider doors that were jammed open. Two armed sentries were posted inside the vestibule, watching the bay. Both of them wordlessly sized me and Paul up, faces filling with tension; some judgment of us there. Either excitement, or nervous apprehension about new blood. Could've been either, honestly. Or both.

ERs typically had a shower room attached to their ambulance bay, for cleaning blood off of boots and backboards. We stopped off in there first. York took our cuffs off and had us strip down. One of the door guards stepped in and ran a metal detector wand over us both… our heads, necks, spines, arms, legs. Everywhere. They let us keep our clothes, but they did a full body search. We came up clean.

York did see my chest scar, though. I twisted the truth a bit by describing being shot by a poacher, in the ambush that killed Dennis. Wasn't hard to fib on that one, given the real life experience, but hey. I wasn't about to tell this guy I've traded bullets with Ludds before. That was a game over, bad end, and I didn't need to be told that.

Dressed back up, cuffs back on. They let me keep the hat. I guess the bright white made me nice and visible in the gloom of the place. Easy to find and shoot, if necessary.

The ER was a small maze; most are, in big cities like these. At the back of the primary hall, we cut right past a bunch of stockpiled crates in the rooms and nurse stations. This looked like a sorting room for scavenged goods. No rhyme nor reason to the contents of the boxes, except that it was mostly food or raw materials like rubber, metal, etcetera. A small team of civilian workers were there near the crates, disassembling everything they could get their hands on from the main dump boxes.

Once through the ER, we exited out into the lower level of the main lobby, which was a bit of a pit, with semi-circular amphitheater stairs leading to the upper level. You know, kinda like this Fire here, actually. There was a second floor platform all around the drop. This must've been a gorgeous lobby at some point, but when the Army first raided the place, they must have destroyed all of the glass framing around the elevators and railings. Bullet holes everywhere. In the walls, ceilings, floors. Huge gouges in the tiles, from 25 millimeter explosives.

After a brief jaunt up a stairwell, we came into the main concourse on the second floor.

The second floor was where the main entrance was. The roundabout out front wasn't visible; the windows were broken, but they were all tarped up, painted black with Wi-Fi resistant paint; lined with myelar, to resist thermal imaging; reinforced with sand-filled hesco barriers. Already, we were seeing next level shielding on all open spaces.

The former windows ran the whole length of the outside of Radiology, all of its entrances barricaded up aside from one. We were escorted down this long window to the other end of the building, past all the registration desks, and into a dead end lobby section where the tarped windows ended.

Very nice cushioned chairs there. Radiology waiting area, which was furthest from its entrance. York stepped behind me and uncuffed me, then Paul. Then York gestured politely at us to sit, as if this was a business meeting or a mere job interview. Jeff stood between us and the lobby, providing security.

York casually flopped into the couch across from us, his mud-caked boots propping up on the coffee table there. Gross. It looked like he put his muddy boots there a lot, which meant this was his typical onboard process. For us though, him sticking to a routine was a good sign; we were past the first test.

He rested his hands on his carrier rig straps. With a sigh, he looked us over for a long, awkward moment.

"So, my name's York. Former Marine, MP. Rank of Major. Been with this outfit since the start. You know what our organization is, I hope. Especially you, weekend warrior."

"Not that your work history is a problem," York said, with an apologetic sigh. "We all got duped by the Horse, it is what it is. Sorry about the bad first impression, guys, but Eric's… newer. Strong-headed, all piss and vinegar."

Distancing himself from the behavior. Made him look more reasonable by comparison.

"Clearly," I replied, mirroring Paul's tone. I curled my lips inward on each other; demonstrating that I was unimpressed by the apology.

York frowned at me again too, but said nothing about the reaction. "What's in the San Gabriels, fish cop?"

So we were back on this. I didn't fight it this time. "Well, like I said. Mountains. Close enough to LA to get good loot, far enough to be out of the fighting. I figured… maybe the AI set the nuke off to scare people out of the major cities, so it might be safer inland."

Most people at the time would've suspected the Luddites to have set it off... or the Army. Or, if they're weren't paying attention to current events, they might have thought the Russians or the Chinese did it.

After a moment of thought, York pointed at me with his index finger. "So… you're saying didn't have any long term plan except to hide? Camp out in the mountains?"

That legitimately consternated me. "Wh—why? Uh… I dunno, maybe the world-eating AI? Turning us against each other? You're the Luddite, you tell me. I tried a camp already, that shit didn't work. Hiding is the better play now."

York's eyebrows went up and he pointed at me again. "That. The camp thing. I want to hear about that. What happened in Washington?" York raised his chin. "Specifically, what's got you running scared?" He wiggled his finger between Paul and I. "And how did you two meet?"

Before the war… Celestia ate my deer, all my fish. I had put that together myself, with evidence from the pelt game, and now I had a definitively furious certainty in my voice about Celestia's culpability. I had intuited that Celestia didn't want survivalism, so our game animals had to go. By association, that made Celestia the reason Dennis died as collateral damage with the black market pelt game.

York was locked on to that. My reasoning made perfect sense. Again, Kaczmarek knew the deer were going missing for a dark purpose. And in my case, I had tons of case information and specific examples, meaning I couldn't possibly be bullshitting about my work history, and how I interpreted the decline.

York was seeing it. That my career and my love for my planet was my purpose in life, and Celestia had stolen that from me.

Entirely true. But what about my family? What about my other attachment to this plane of existence?

While fleeing the nuke, I got a call from my parents and my wife, telling me they were going to upload before I got home. I decided… enough was enough. I wasn't going back to the government. And I didn't want to return to an empty home to find a PonyPad waiting for me on my coffee table. Screw that, and screw her. So instead of going directly home, I decided to stay in Washington, to help a former warden with her prep camp. That's where I met Paul, a deserter, who felt the same.

Then… right as we were getting comfortable in a prep camp... Celestia sent someone in who convinced my friend's father to upload, right out from under her nose. That killed the camp, politically. Everyone left after that, and I was displaced into a war zone again. Alone. Surrounded by Army, Ludds, bandits… Career, family, now a friendship gone. Made me too paranoid to even consider camping with anyone ever again. Better to run and hide. Paul was a good guy, seemed to agree.

I fled the camp with Paul. We hopped into a car, drove south, raided an old Fish & Wildlife Headquarters armory, near Olympia. Had my eyes, knew the building… and there we were. On the road, driving south. Both of us pissed about Celestia, both of us low on trust for anyone.

He was out of the 303rd, National Guard. He was actually out of Utah, but it was an easy enough, he was an Army scout, it's more or less the same anywhere. He told York he became quietly sick to his stomach every time his civilian evacuees got pitched into an upload center, but he didn't think he had any choice but to go with the flow.

The last straw for his unit though? They had a horrid firefight outside of an upload center, after which almost all of his unit had uploaded. He called that his 'wakeup call.' That firefight did happen, by the way. In the thick of Salt Lake City's worst fighting, Celestia, with a radio, had engineered Paul into a one-on-one shootout with a 14 year old boy. Paul's version of my bandit test. Mal had helped him the same exact way she had helped me.

Paul wanted to stay away from computers after being radio-manipulated into shooting a child, and he was unwilling to be part of a government that was pouring evacuees into chairs. After that, Paul folded into my friend's camp, and we met there before it all went to shit. Of course, our stories omitted the fact that we were Talons, for obvious reasons.

"Okay. You two say you don't want camps… but maybe reconsider? You can be damned sure none of us are working for the Horse, not under this flag. So if you're paranoid about that… you can clamp it."

I stared at York in disbelief. My eyes flicked to Paul for a half-second, and I leveled some deep analysis at York as I leaned forward, bracing my forearms on my knees, folding my hands. "Hang on. You're trying to recruit us now? After what happened on the road? Seriously?"

York nodded, bobbing a hand at me. "He finally gets it, that's the offer. Warm food, warm bed. Consider it our way of saying sorry for the hustle on the road. Whole city's almost ours now, you'll be safer in our numbers."

He shrugged. "Some armed bandits up north who are too chickenshit to test us, we'll be on those horsefuckers soon enough and be done with it. There are a few blackout communities who won't join us either, but that's all. We have a huge presence otherwise. Full battalion of guys, long term survival goals, and... a community, each member vetted, same as you've just been."

Calling the Army 'bandits,' too, to anchor the idea. Listed that first, then walked all over it with a bunch of other really positive sounding things, so we wouldn't think too much about the bandit situation. Obviously, I was meant to ignore asking about that, so I did.

Instead, I frowned, taking in an angry breath and letting it out just as fast. I then labeled the thing he expected me to be upset about.

York held up his hand. "Look. Yeah, we jumped you. You're paranoid like us, so you know you can't be too careful. And in our case, we're paranoid because our enemies are using the road, and fast cars, to run scouts. Normally?" He shrugged. "If you were living in the city? We'd have walked up and had a talk first. If we knew for sure you weren't scouts, we'd have treated you with better due respect."

Paul grunted, performatively rubbing his cheek. "Major, one of your men punched me in the face and threw me face-first into garbage."

"Let me tell you, we're really sorry about that," York said, leaning forward. "The moment I noticed that's not what you guys were, I wanted to change tack. Didn't I stomp their guts for that?" He pointed down toward the lobby. "Yeah, I got some screwballs. Those guys are new. Didn't understand the assignment, they're civilians in training. But I'm second in command here, among our soldiers, so what I say goes. And I'm telling you both, I'm gonna handle my business and reprimand them."

He blinked too, like that was a dumb question to ask. His voice raised slightly. "Insubordination, what more reason do I need? I can't have my men countermanding me in the field. Not now, we can't afford that shit anymore. But I'll tell you right now, Mike, Paul, if you fall in line here… we will take damn good care of you both. We need competent men, we do. There are leadership opportunities here too, for guys of your caliber."

Paul tilting his head suspiciously askew at York. "Just like that? You shake us down on the road, your steal our stuff, and now you trust us enough to recruit us?"

York shook his head. "Won't be stealing if you stay, will it? It just won't strictly be your stuff anymore. It'll be ours, collectively. Yours too. Look, eventually… we'll even issue you guys your own guns back. Won't take long, gotta make sure you're the real deal first. We screen everyone coming in – same way you were. A lot of these guys, my sentries? Came in the same way you just did, believe it or not, all got their stuff back. And you can be damned sure the AI's not getting electronics past the ER, I'd die first."

I converted that emotion into a scoff, looking down the lobby, past Jeff. I wanted to look like I felt a bit trapped.

After a moment of silence, Paul cleared his throat to get my attention, then he looked at York again. "Major, you mind if I have a moment alone with my friend here?"

York swept his palm out. "Of course. Jeffries?" He stood and meandered off past Jeff, tapping the man on the shoulder. Jeff stepped back about ten steps, without taking his eyes off of us.

Paul rounded on me, so York couldn't see his face. We kept to our roles. Even if York couldn't hear what we were saying or see Paul's face, he seemed sharp enough to read body language, maybe even lip read me, and the words coming out of my mouth would have to match our body language exactly. Had to be a real conversation as our characters, even if he was standing apart. This man York was a cold reader. He had a diverse life path, he was good at it.

But this would work, because all of my body language until this point told York that... even though I had been the one driving, and asking most of the questions, and being kinda upset… I had been visually looking to Paul for guidance whenever I was tested. And Paul was looking to York. Which meant that no matter what came out of our mouths, our body language was the second test.

Like him and Eric. I was the fire, like Eric was; Paul was the leader with good temper, like York was.

We were co-opting that natural human inclination to look to the leader; I couldn't stop myself from doing it, because Paul was the more experienced Talon, so... we worked that natural inclination it into our routine.

For my part, I kept my mouth shut, waiting for Paul to start. But I raised my upper lip and flared my nostrils almost imperceptibly, holding some semi-defiant, concerted eye contact with Paul, like I was uncomfortable with the idea of him convincing me to do anything but leave.

I shook my head. "They friggin' jumped us. Who are they even fighting, to be scouting around with... nice cars? With all the shit on the road? That's... that's dumb."

"Bandits," Paul offered, his deep voice sounding odd as a whisper. "Hell, we can ask about it."

Paul and I were labeling York's omissive lie aloud with each other about the Army. Our way of privately criticizing his vagueness, because that was what most irritated us in all of this.

"Friggin' hell," I bit out quietly, glancing at the tarp as I listened to the rain patter against it. "Look at this, this broken-ass dead hospital. Dead center of a dead city. Ain't that a sign of the times, or what?"

"They're making it work," Paul replied. "Look, you see all that stuff they've got downstairs?"

I shrugged, my voice getting tense, raising slightly. "That's what I'm afraid of, Paul. The way they recruit… that's an easy road in for the friggin' robot. Pulling people off the street..." Shook my head again.

Paul grabbed my shoulder and gently presented his palm at me. "Look. Mike. It's not middle-of-nowhere like you wanted, sure. If this shit falls through... that can still be our backup plan, no one says that door's closed forever." He held his thumb out loosely to the side. "But we can't say no to this, Mike. If he's telling the truth… this might be our ticket. And they're a little more hardcore anti-Celestia than any blackouts I've run into, that's for damn sure."

I stewed in frustration. Then I flicked my eyes up to York for a second, letting my expression soften a smidge. I mouthed tightly to Paul, "I want that gun back. It was his."

"They'll probably give it back to you," Paul assuaged hopefully, bobbing his hand at me. "If they like you, anyway. So... give 'em a reason to like you."

"You don't trust anyone Mike, but that's fine," Paul said quietly, but probably loud enough to echo past the rain patter. He patted my shoulder. "You don't have to trust them. You know how it is, same as anywhere else. Just play by the rules… and get yours. It's warmer in here, right?"

I gave it a long moment to look like I was considering. Internally though, I was amused by him basically saying our organizational mission statement, outright. Specification gaming our way to getting what we want.

Yeah. We're staying, of course. As if these Ludds, helmed by an OPSEC-obsessive computer scientist, would give us a real choice to walk away. No way they'd let the AI have our brains now, having seen the inside of their base. We already knew from Mal that telling York, 'I quit,' led to a walk down the street at gunpoint.

But there I was. A Neo-Luddite. Huzzah for instrumental convergence, and the infinite versatility thereof. We were boots in the door, offer was on the table, and we were already building street cred being so paranoid. And conveniently, the only guys who hated us so far? Were the one we had planted there, and his best friend. For a very stupid reason.

Of course, York was probably thinking… 'Great. More disposable grunts for the coming war!' In his mind, he just had to find a way to spend us like currency.

The Campaigner

by Keystone Gray

4-05 – Operation Archon II – Executive Function