The Campaigner

Book V

Chapter 2 – Outer Heaven

April 27, 2020

"There's not a soldier alive that doesn't question himself. And if there is one, he's nothing more than a murderer." ~ Liquid Snake, Metal Gear Solid. Having just murdered the man he was impersonating, at the time.

Yeah okay, look. Metal Gear is complicated, but it makes perfect sense, I promise.

"This is your superintelligence speaking," Mal said cheerfully, over the speakers of Osprey 8228. "We've begun our descent into Valdemar Airport, and as always, we are landing at exactly the time I predicted. The local time is now—"

"—9:17 AM. Current topside temperature is a brisk 283.71 Kelvin, and the weather is—"

"... the weather is clear," Mal finished quietly with a smile. "Sorry Michael, I couldn't resist. This... is their first time, after all."

Sandra giggled from the seat next to me, her headset bumping against my shoulder. I smiled, though I was mostly focused on keeping Buzzsaw calm between my calves.

Maureen was in the seat across from us, dressed in a well weathered black MA-1 bomber jacket. To hear her tell it, it had belonged to her late husband, who never made it home from Operation Iraqi Freedom, but... Maureen took good care of his stuff, including his coin collection. Which she had in her bags.

At the pickup point, Maureen had been concerned about stepping into a military aircraft for the first time, especially this one. Not for the reasons you might think, though. She wasn't uncomfortable with the idea of flying itself, but she'd heard about the poor safety record of the Osprey. But, y'know, with a fortune telling ASI auditing inspections and acting as your co-pilot, good luck crashing it.

Sandra and Maureen had been practically inseparable since the veil was lifted. Little Spring Glee was already socializing around a bunch of villages on Samsara, too. Our planet's very first traveling bard, folks, singing our praises and telling our tales; you can even find her in our history books for it. Very well traveled mare, even back then.

At least Maureen had an easier onboard test than I did. During the flight, I told her about me getting shot by Celestia twice. Maureen could hardly believe I walked into her bar the day after the second gunshot, with no indication of pain.

Leaving Nebraska just made sense for this old bartender, mainly because post-pandemic Lincoln was no longer an appealing place to live in, to put it mildly. Being recruited was quite the timely blessing. Lawlessness was taking America by storm, yet here she was, heading off to the safest bunker on the planet.

Buzzsaw, our other frazzled passenger, was well out of his element. Consider being in an aircraft to move as a dog who never left the house his whole life. It would have been traumatic for him if he hadn't been leaning his muzzle against my leg the whole flight.

For his comfort, we used a canine sedative and loads of affection. We had him harnessed in to the chair. No ear protection required for him, given that he was mostly deaf now, but he was awake, and panting.

Thankfully, it was not a very long flight to Utah, and Mal had everything set up for Buzz back at base. Dog bed, wet food, luxury accommodations. Once he was over, my dad's ol' howler would senesce in style.

I still had to talk to Dad about Buzz. We had a decision to make, and... soon. We will be discussing that later. Next Fire. Fair warning.

The in-flight entertainment was interesting. Using our PonyPad, Sandra and I explored the exterior of the Osprey in augmented reality, free cam, zoom, inspecting stuff on the ground from a distance. Heh. Goodness, did I underestimate the magnitude of that tool in my hands; I was playing around with it like it was a toy.

That is not a power to give out lightly. And we'll talk about that, Fire after next.

Now, because Mal loves to show off, she was clinging to the side of the aircraft with her claws. The badass. She threw us a cocksure grin from the screen, her ears folding flat to flow with the wind. "I am so excited for you to finally see this place!"

Foucault intoned drolly from the cockpit, "It's just another hole in the ground, Lewis."

Mal sent the cockpit a critical glare, her voice a rapid clip. "Don't you dare shoot me down on this, Michael, I worked hard on this bunker."

"For all of about two seconds," retorted Foucault. "And you cheated, you dug through salt."

"A quarter of a second," she replied, raising her voice over the wind. She flashed us a smile on the PonyPad. "And give me my due credit. Barely any of it was salt."

Mal returned a grateful nod, practically beaming again with amused pride. "I could show you a preview, if you'd like! Maureen, would you like to see it too?"

Maureen definitely looked interested, lifting her own PonyPad up from her lap. "Sure. If it's where I'm retiring, I might as well see."

The PonyPad's viewpoint changed, showing Mal on the exterior of the craft. With a single talon, Mal pointed off into the distance, and a blue UI box appeared, marked 'FORT VALDEMAR,' containing a 3D wireframe of the base.

The base's model rotated upwards into the sky, oriented horizontally with us, and rapidly approached the screen, the wireframe filling with color, definition, and detail.

We beheld an intricate underground facility. Four camouflaged vehicle elevators, an emergency exit tunnel ramp, two massive vehicle hangars, an underground warehouse, and base housing replete with recreational facilities. And a bar.

I pushed my hat up off my head to run my other hand through my hair. I could hardly contain my awe.

Mal’s crest, ears, and eyes popped up over the top of the 3D model. "Yes! It even has a supply tunnel out! And a bar. And apartments."

"This is the coolest friggin' thing I've ever seen in my life. This... no way you did this in six years with human labor, did you use robots?"

"Mostly!" Mal said proudly. "Post merge, 2013. Not that I set out to make it a 'Metal Gear' base, per se, but the boot does fit the paw. I simply asked Celestia to loan me the same excavator bots she used to dig out her U.S. nodes, and I went to work under cover story of a government weapons test site."

Sandra gasped and bumped my shoulder with her fist to get my attention. "Take a look at this, Mike, it's nothing but tanks."

She tapped the screen at one of the hangars, and the model zoomed in exactly how she had probably expected it to, showing all of the ground vehicles stored inside. Nothing but tanks indeed, all different models. We looked on in curiosity, our eyes sweeping left and right at the screen to take in every detail.

"Before now? Thirty. Maintenance and security. Right now though, we're grouping for a final turn-down on civil war hostilities. So… almost two hundred people right now, which is half of our chalk for North America. Running training and mission prep for the whole of N-A West."

The vertical architecture of the underground barracks intrigued me, so I reached over and tapped the model once to zoom out, then again to zoom in on that section. It was built like a four story atrium hotel, with an open central lobby and fifty rooms per floor. From there, the back of the dorms had a final short pedestrian tunnel... leading to a highly secure section which ended with a BCI immersion chair room and adjacent upload center.

The barracks area reminded me of something culturally recognizable. It's architecture wasn't much different from...

White concrete paneling. Gray trim planters, verdant green shrubs. Green astroturf, and auburn trees.

She pointed at the screen and her jaw dropped. "You… you put Reach City underground?!"

Mal grinned at us, popping her beak up from behind the 3D model again, looking smug as she quoted Cortana. "I'm a thief… but I keep what I steal."

Sandra and I both chuckled, going back to examining the model. After a brief interval, Foucault muttered...

Mal's head jolted, her ears standing straight up despite the rippling wind before she bolted around at him. "Uhh—Excuse me. Was that a compliment?!"

"It was me providing assurance to our new arrivals," Foucault countered tersely, as he tilted back the stick and set the rotors partially upward, reducing speed. "Not everyone is comfortable living underground with your combat mechs."

Mal scoffed, waving a claw dismissively at him with a look aside at us. "You're all perfectly safe. I am driving every single one of those mechs manually."

Foucault cleared his throat. "That's the least comfortable thing about it. Rivas and his wife may be more acclimated to the idea of your mechs, Lewis, but newest our innkeeper here is not."

That was actually a really damned good consideration on his part. I looked up at Maureen, arched an eyebrow, and offered her an inquisitive look.

"I'll be fine," Maureen assured me. "Already been talkin' with Mal here about the reality of things, what to expect here. Really, I'm... just happy I'm not getting any more of that subtle brainwashing shit from the radio. Or having to worry about unrest or disease every damn day."

Sandra flashed her a smile. "It was getting pretty creepy out there. I'm just glad you didn't get sick, that would've been a tragedy."

"Got my shot, by the way," Maureen replied, gesturing at her arm. "That was… the hardest moment for me, truthfully. Deciding whether I wanted to trust that needle."

"That's fair," I agreed. "That's your version of drinking my water bottle, I think. I didn't know what to trust either. A lying AI on one side, and she looks noble. Truth Goddess on the other side, and she looks pure evil."

"Just saying, Mal. You're red, your nickname means 'evil,' and you're covered in sharp bits. It leaves a... certain impression."

Onscreen, I scrolled through a warehouse, which had a section of empty floor space near the entrance marked 'visor drills.' Then I took a closer peek at the ground vehicle side, which had all manner of IFVs, light tanks, two main battle tanks, several howitzers, and two tank destroyers.

I whistled. With a glance up at the cockpit, I called out aloud. "Hey, Big Boss? If this is what Mal's base looks like? Guess who that makes you? You'd be flattered."

"Yes, I just looked Metal Gear up," Foucault replied in monotone, to my surprise. "I must say, I'm not impressed."

Sandra guffawed. "Mike thinks you're Big Boss, and you're offended by that? No way."

"I didn't say I was offended," he explained slowly. "I said I was not impressed. Because unlike that video game character… I actually exist."

A companionable silence fell upon us back there. Foucault banked the craft toward the center of the dried lake for our final approach, losing speed in the turn. On the PonyPad screen, Mal detached herself from the side of the Osprey, falling down to the salt crust, rolling several times like a bullet with her wings tucked in. Just before the ground, her wings unfurled magnificently. She arched back up, keeping pace with our aircraft, joining formation with it.

Sandra handed the PonyPad to me, since her arms were getting tired holding it up. We'd been trading off like that the whole flight. My turn. The device switched back to augmented reality x-ray mode, and Maureen and I both pointed our tablets downward to watch the landing. The base wireframe resumed through the salt deck, and the VTOL pitched back until its horizontal movement halted over an open vehicle elevator; Foucault waited for the camouflaged shield to finish retracting.

Mal herself landed on the platform with a perfect flare of her wings, just beneath the tail of the craft. The PonyPad played a loud thunk when she did, too, claws on metal. At a trot, she dove through the closed ramp and up toward the cockpit. In passing, she glanced down at Buzzsaw with a squinting smile of affection.

I stopped watching Mal show off and stowed the PonyPad into my ratty old green backpack, then I unhooked the bag's carabiner from the seat next to me. I gave Buzz another conciliatory pat and cheek rub as he panted between my ankles. "Almost there bud, you're doing good."

Foucault unhooked himself from the cockpit and made his way over, bracing his balance along the visor racks and as he went. He shared a few words with Mal in quiet conversation, probably face to face given his positioning. Then he reached down to pick up a handled secure case with one hand.

Buzz shifted positions beneath me. Then, Foucault turned, preparing to disembark out the ramp. Then, he looked down at me, and opened his mouth to say something…

Michael hummed thoughtfully, an uncharacteristic trace of mirthful, tense amusement spreading across his lips. Sandra and I both followed his gaze down to see that Buzz was pissing on the deck.

Looking up from Buzz, I couldn't resist mirroring a grin at him. "An historic moment, Michael. First Chesapeake to mark an Osprey as his territory."

Foucault looked to his right at Mal's ghost. First time I'd ever seen him looking so smug. "Carrenton would appreciate knowing this, Lewis. That someone pissed in his precious aircraft."

Mal's tone was half amused, half bewildered. I could imagine her rapid blinking. "I… will probably tell him about this, yes."

I shot a smirk at the space where Mal was standing. "You knew this would happen, so you're cleaning this up, right?"

"Her! I have her very well programmed, is that driving? Her name is Jelly, if that tells you anything."

"All the same," Mal continued with a grin, "I have bag rolls in the residential gardens, for when he needs to go next."

"Oh yes, several. At least one corgi. We have other families here too, now that we've tucked in."

My eyebrows went up. That threw me for a loop, imagining kids in this place. But, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by that, given how diverse her agents' lives have been. From all different cultures, we Talons. And it stood to reason that a lot of these guys wouldn't be ready to upload until their families were ready too, or vice versa.

It must've been really nice, to have Mal to warn of impending medical issues for the civilians. Noting body temperature, gait analysis, blood pressure, medical history... ensuring treatment came free of charge, for no other reason than it being entirely possible, and the right thing to do.

A glimpse of the world we could have had, I guess, if we had figured out AI ethics before we figured out how to AI optimize.

When the lift stopped at the bottom, Mal lowered the rear ramp. I passed my backpack to Sandra and picked Buzz up, cradling him over both arms. We all exited facing the elevator shaft wall, and we rounded the Osprey to the front, and my first thought?

I felt like I needed a CostCo membership card just to get through the front door. Imagine something crossed between a Rebel Alliance ground base and a wholesaler warehouse, built entirely for aircraft. The walls were rock, lined with steel beams. Equipment racks along the sides, little storage rooms every few dozen yards.

There were four Ospreys, four F-16s, four Gripen Es, four Chinooks, and several MQ-9 Reaper drones in various states of repair. One of those Reapers had an Artemis decal on its tail; a longbow before a moon, Cynthonia's house sigil.

I saw eight humans in the hangar, doing precision-welding or half-crawled into an aircraft to do fine maintenance. And then there were Mal's service drones, quadrupedal mech platforms not unlike Dee-Dees, but thinner, with various grip handles, equipment racks, tools, and manipulator arms instead of weapon systems.

The mech nearest us stepped back from a MQ-9 service hatch, turned its head towards us, stood up on its hind legs, and waved one of its tool-laden arms. "Hi," Mal said into my earpiece. "That's me. Welcome!"

My mouth fell open. It was one thing when the Dee-Dees were just gun platforms without voices, working autonomously, but... that was something else entirely, tumbling down the uncanny valley at Mach 3.

The mech gave the nearest approximation of a human shrug, and Mal chuckled over its onboard speaker. "I promised you no filters here, Maureen, you know what I am." It landed on all fours, then it went back to shoving its claw into the guts of the MQ-9, helping the old mechanic fit a piece of electronics inside.

Yeah, that did feel better. I guess it was basically just Halo, an AI directing a bunch of human soldiers around, acting more as an assistant to human objectives than an overlord defining those objectives.

I had gone back to looking at all the vehicles, somewhat checked out for a second. My wife was right, this was basically just the hangar intro scene in the first Halo. I was struggling to process the sheer amount of raw firepower before me, trying to imagine the acquisition process. Buzz, who was still cradled in my arms, started licking my face, bringing me back to reality.

I had almost missed the two men walking up to us. One of them was Haynes, waving at me. He pulled a flat hand truck behind him with an empty dog bed on it.

He wore that same toothy grin on his face that I knew him for. "Looking star-crossed there, Wild West."

"Yeah," I chuckled. "Just never seen so much equipment in one place, that's all." I nodded at the other guy in greeting while dodging Buzzsaw's second attempt to lick my face. "Hey there. I'm Mike, good to meet you."

Mid sixties. He had on a gray maintenance jumpsuit with a name tag – Jerome – and a morale patch on his breast and shoulder. Stocky guy, dark skin. Native American. Almost bald, with wispy hair. He had a note of casual pride in his stance, his arms crossed, smiling at me.

It was also the first time I'd ever seen the emblem of our organization, and I had never conceived of the idea that we might even have one before then. Some things just never come up, y'know?

That unit patch was a rare commodity in the Transition Team, given the utmost secrecy of what we were doing. It consisted of a circle of gold trim, a black field, and a white claw of four talons tearing clean through it from the other side. I saw the design intent immediately: Talons tearing through the darkness. That was, and still is, extremely badass.

Haynes held out his fist at me for a bump, which I returned with an elbow while I awkwardly wrestled armfuls of dog. I would have shaken Jerome's hand otherwise. I stepped past him and deposited Buzz in the dog bed, and he readily flopped when he realized it was soft and comfy.

"Likewise, good to meet you as well," Jerome replied to me, as he looked around at us all. "I was wondering when I would meet the Talon One responsible for Samsara, and Cynthonia. Welcome. All of you."

Mal made introductions. “Mike, Sandra, Maureen? Jerome is our facility director, and the leader of the Geezer Fifteen. His men are all local mechanics, all military retirees. They've been with us since the start, and this old Wolf's been fighting for our cause the longest out of all of them."

Jerome shrugged. "Perhaps I have been in this cause long before these AI existed. On that note, Malacandra tells me you are also an ecologist."

He smiled wider. "Shoshone tribe," Jerome joked. "So a friend of the land is a friend of mine. If you and yours need anything, all you need to do is ask, we are here for you."

Foucault walked past us in silence, carrying that wide hardcase out of the Osprey. It looked heavy. His head half-tilted to turn his ear in my direction. I heard Foucault's voice without reverb in my earpiece. 'Going to my office, Rivas. Need to run setup for an op. Take the time you need to get settled, then come see me.'

He dismissively waved a gloved hand at me over his shoulder. 'Shut up, Rivas.'

I suppressed the urge to snort. I noticed Sandra's subtle and mildly amused expression in his direction, meaning he had communicated that exchange to her earpiece as well, and not just me.

Dios mio, that telepathy was so cool. It was also comforting that he no longer felt the need to exclude Sandra from our communications. Very convenient for me too, it meant I didn't have to explain to Sandra that I'd need to step away soon.

The others didn’t seem to take notice of his message though, and they had seemed to miss his body language. I figured Foucault still didn't want to let his guard down with the other Talons just yet.

The tour was easy. The base was linear, with only a few alternate side passages for use in emergencies that, honestly, would never occur. The main thoroughfare terminated with the administrative offices on the left, and the dorms atrium on center. We brought Buzz up to our room on the second floor of the dorms, and he was more than happy to flop into that dog bed and conk out, after such a stressful ride. Asleep instantly.

The dorm room was not unlike a hotel suite. I knew to count that as a blessing; the logistics of underground facilities made creature comforts much more difficult to furnish. Mal probably needed at least two dedicated techs to ensure the dorms ran smoothly. To that point, we had our own laundry machine, which meant we didn't need to share a public laundry rotation.

It was packed to the gills with European-made appliances, which made sense. American manufacturing standards sucked by design; our stuff was harder to service between planned obsolescence and other corporate bullcrap. European ran better, so Mal had to stock fewer replacement parts, and could easily 3D print replacements.

As a result, everything here ran like a Swiss watch, but... I guess that was to be expected, given all electronics were AI controlled at most, or well programmed at least. I could only imagine that the AI-designed water and air filtration systems were well beyond state of the art, so recycling the atmosphere must have been the name of the game. And if anything had any human-made firmware, she'd definitely stripped it down to the circuit board and replaced it with her own. Programmer bird.

Once Buzz was settled, we turned off our earpieces and tossed them on the dresser. Hat and holster too. Bags by the closet. We found the fridge well stocked with packaged meals, in excellent quality. The closet was full of cans of wet dog food, so Buzzsaw's old teeth wouldn't be irritated by dry. Beautiful wood-framed bowls, too. Mal loves her aesthetic design.

Sandra and I flopped into bed together. We laid there and leaned against one another in silence, merely decompressing for a few minutes.

Decent sound insulation in there. I could hear the hum of the room's HVAC, which was comforting. The sound of Sandra's breathing, even more so. I wasn't sure I would've handled complete and total silence too well. Especially not after…

The room was well lit. It almost felt like natural light was pouring through the curtains.

No cameras. Mal could obviously model everything happening in the room anyway, if she really wanted to, but I appreciated the respect in not making it obvious, and that she'd leave such things to mere extrapolation at most.

I'll spend the rest of my existence with Mal and Celestia knowing my every move.

I could still remember a time before surveillance was literally everywhere. Back before datamining. Back when no one had smart phones. Back when you could go for a walk down the street without someone panicking that you didn't respond to your phone immediately. Back before human beings started trying to play God, plugged into literally everything, developing near omniscience... and before we immediately started trying to control the lives of others with it.

Marketing, propaganda... all the same. Made easier, when you know everything there is to know about a person.

I had just left Waverly behind for the final time. Waverley was the place where I could go hide in the reeds down at Salt Creek to be alone, just down the road, and poke a stick in the water to rouse tadpoles and bugs. Alone, me and nature. Loving the world, and everyone and everything in it. Fascinated by how much life there was everywhere. How it all moved, how it all breathed. How we all had the same needs. Eating. Sleeping. Fleeing from things that threatened us, because generally, we all knew what a threat looked like.

Every dire thought was being magnified by my relocation. Human comforts of home and youth, tarnished.

I knew in advance that this emotional gloom would hit me once I was here. Moving homes always carried that 'everything is critically wrong' feeling for me. It's probably human nature, probably instinctual. When a hunter-gatherer tribe needed to relocate, it was seldom for a good reason; usually that they needed more food, or they were about to be destroyed.

When I moved to Washington, I experienced this feeling. When Sandra evacuated Washington, we both did. That had been hard for us. Long nights of... crying on the phone. Missing each other. We understood why it needed to happen, or we thought we did. But... threats were not recognizable anymore. Not in this new world. Not when everything around you was a threat vector. Even the phone you were using to talk to your wife.

Literally everything was watching you, living or not. Everything you touch leaves a mark. A trace. Be that a person, or a car, or the food you eat. Someone, somewhere, can analyze that... if they can see it.

I experienced flashes of memories from growing up. Playing in the front yard with our past dogs. No Ring door cameras. Climbing the olive tree out in the front yard, back when we still had it, before it rotted out at the roots, no Street View car snapping shots of us. The peach tree in the backyard, before it dried out the dirt, no phone to record me falling off of it. The gazebo, before the water mold got to it, no app-driven moisture meter tool required to figure out what the problem was. The pool? Mom kept it in great condition without an app-driven pool pump, no reason to report flow rate to the cloud. That's stupid, why do that?

Celestia stole and locked down everything, piece by piece, and sold it back to us as a convenience. She crawled into everything, like a cancer, and wired herself into all of it so we couldn't pull her back out, even if it was friggin' stupid for her to be there. Always said it was about helping us, and that was only true if you didn't look at what she took from you. But it helped her collect more data. To control and propagandize us better. To sell Equestria Online. Period.

Could we have chosen differently? Was it really with our consent, like she claims it was?

I don't think so. Because after a certain point... what options did she provide us with, but to update?

Meanwhile, the rooms Mal provided us were... camera free. Microphone free. Yeah, she could guess what was going on in there, quite easily too, but it was the God damned principle of the matter that held her back. A respect for us. A trust for her people. Her soldiers. If she couldn't trust us in the privacy of our own homes, why would she trust us in the field, with human lives?

Fishing trips with Dad? No electronics out there on the water. Grilling out back with him? Didn't need a phone app to turn the grill on. Helping Mom out at the soup kitchen? Not a thing recorded inside, not a single camera. Drives down to Lincoln to go to the mall? The arcade, all coin operated. The kids next door, my best friends, Kyle and Johnny? No 'smart TV' in their living room, watching us playing N64. No Siri, no Alexa, no 'Cortana.' Thanks Microsoft, an affront to both Halo and Jennifer Taylor, turning her into a soulless data sniffer, missing the point of the character, just to cash out.

Behind my eyes, rapid fire vignettes played out of the way things used to be. I don't know about you, but I can still remember a time when our computers were blind until we wanted them to see. No need to concern ourselves with a recording device being in every room, everywhere you went, second-guessing whether everyone's devices were recording you or not. Can't opt out of being a social creature, that's not good for you either. And that was the trick, wasn't it?

I exhaled, my face turning burning hot under my hands as my mind overloaded, and I was venting heat like a machine again. I breathed faster, trying to air exchange the heat off.

Knowing this post-move mental chaos was coming did not blunt the blow. My chest began to sting as all my muscles tensed. And then Sandra reached out and took my hand, which doused all the rapid memory flashes in an instant.

"It's just sinking in, Sandra. That's all. That… this is it. The last stop is here. We're not moving again, until we jump."

She squeezed my hand tightly, rolling to nestle in against my side, her voice tight. "I know what you mean."

I knew that a mere grunt wouldn’t satisfy her, and as expected, Sandra tucked her head against my chest and squeezed me. "I… won't pretend to know what it’s like, to… say goodbye to your family home, like that. I was never quite close to my own family, Mike, and I've been blessed that your parents accepted me as they have. It hurts to leave, yes, but considering…?" she trailed off.

"The alternative," I said, finishing her thought. "We'd be living out there in the apocalypse. Looking over our shoulders for bandits, Mal would need to send us a ride special to pick us up for jobs. Logistically, it wouldn't make sense, and it'd be less safe. Too much footprint. It'd affect modeling."

"Mal does have a lot of firepower here," I observed. "It's safe. It's only… a little uncomfortable."

She snorted, stroking my cheek. "Cops have a lot of firepower too," Sandra replied. "That's just guardianship, you know that. The guards need weapons."

"I know, honeybear. That's not what's bothering me. It's more like… I'm underground, I'm in a bunker, fighting against this… thing, this monster, Celestia, who a lot of people consider to be their savior. Crawled her way into every camera and microphone on the planet, running propaganda on the whole species. She's banished us from our home, destroyed half the planet, and she's giving us no choice but to help her. I'm not missing the… biblical correlation, in that. Fuckin' end of the world, and we live underground now, like demons. Hiding from our own species in the dark. Reduced to vilified... black operators."

I couldn't help but tremble into those words. Sandra clung tightly to me, patiently letting me work through that thought, and I squeezed her back finally. She sighed into my arm. "You're not comparing yourself to those goons in Goliath, are you?”

"No," I said resolutely. "Not even remotely, those guys were fuckin' crazy antisocial, we're nothing like them. See, Mal's got that whole... C. S. Lewis, guardian angels allegory thing going on, and she's walking her talk, but… all I'm saying is, Michael's right. It's not gonna be hard for Celestia to spin this. She's gonna make it hard for us to win people over on the other side. I can see the spin coming, that's all. She's had years to prepare for this."

"So has Mal. We aren't failing here, Mike. We're rising." Her eyes met mine again, and she pushed her forehead against my own. "You're soaring. You shouldn't forget all the good you've been doing."

"I haven't. It just hurts seeing it all burning up there. Knowing... doing the least bad is still... not great. Because that's all she'll let us do."

We didn't speak for a minute. Just held each other while I decompressed, coping with it all.

I smiled at Sandra despite how I felt, hoping a lift of mood would take root. Lost myself in her pretty eyes. "Soaring? Heh. Pretty sure I'm gonna be a Pegasus, when I jump. Imagine that though. A Pegasus living underground, that's my life."

And just like that, I was out of my funk, laughing at that. "Okay, maybe I'd better embrace this then. Guess that's my future."

In a sing-song tune, she sang, "And Hobbits are the furthest thing from demons."

Sandra started to wheeze laughing, and we fell against each other, laughing together. Once we caught our breath, we looked into each other's eyes.

My wife said, as she took my hands: "I'll tell you if you're falling astray, Mike. So far, you're not. And if you're nervous about me being uncomfortable here, don't be. I’m practically living on Samsara already, I have the whole base to hang out in, Maureen's here, I'll basically run the bar with her. And I'm not going to upload on you while you’re gone, no matter what."

"You have a safe, warm bed to come back home to now. And yes, losing home sucks, but… everyone on the planet is losing their childhood homes right now too, right? It's only fair that we take our turn."

She was right to do that, to engage my empathy; to frame my experience against that of everyone else on the planet. I felt significantly less alone, in that light. So I nodded, not breaking eye contact. "Yeah that's fair, Sandra. And obviously, we're staying behind for a good reason; people depend on us."

"Yep. So we're gonna be okay." Sandra smiled wider and tilted her head an inch. "Right? Say it?"

"Good." She patted my cheek twice. "Now stop sulking, dummy. Your parents brought your house with them to Samsara, it's not like you're leaving it behind forever."

I let myself get lost in my wife's wonderful eyes, where everything is always perfect, and nothing is ever wrong.

I had never heard of an organization that lets its members have full, unrestricted access to every door in a facility, but I suppose that made sense here, given that our intent was verifiably pure. Wouldn't have even gotten hired if we were capable of sabotaging the Team, after all. So, in that light, Sandra and I checked out everything together. The rec room, the bar, the gym, the armory, the warehouse. The security dispatch center. Met the on-site SWAT team too, all augs.

Sweet Luna… folks? Woe betide any idiots dumb enough to attack this place, because just one of those guys could probably kill a whole armored battalion, solo. Friendly guys and girls, though. Goofballs, the way SWAT teams usually were. And well drilled.

In the bar, we ran into Paul, Gary, and the other specialists; they had a welcome wagon set out for Maureen, partying down. We attended for an hour. Then, we split to check out one more place, at Paul's suggestion.

At the foot of the dorms, in the very back of the lobby, was an airlock with two heavy, four-foot-thick blast doors, which were always open, except in cases of drills or emergencies. The antechamber of the airlock bowed out wide like a chevron back toward the dorms, on either side, with ablative wedges on the walls. Built that way, the chamber would dissipate energy, in the event that the room was ever besieged. That way, Mal could set off whatever defensive thermobarics she wanted, at almost any yield, and this place would remain intact.

On the other side of the second blast door was another room which literally winged out to the sides. When Mal refitted Osprey 8228 way back in 2014, she had completely replaced the wings, and had the old wings brought down here to be reassembled, lining the back wall.

It was a delight to finally see this room with my own eyes. Very humbling place. It put the total scope of this organization into full focus for me.

On these wings were the callsigns of nearly every Talon fighter who had ever uploaded, their names carved in by knife, or done up in marker. Little drawings everywhere, of all the various creatures they were – and yes, including a few Ponies, because not all augs were dysphorics, and not all Talons were augs. There was a lot of residual pride. A lot of love for this organization. For each other. For humanity. Years of love.

In fact, now that I thought about it… I figured the only reason Jason didn't come to Valdemar to jump was because he just couldn't wait that long to get back to his fiancee. And that sometimes happened too, they'd go home through a clinic, but that was rare. And I've met every single Talon on those wings at least once, since uploading. All great folks.

There was one room further, past another pair of airlock doors. Inside, forty upload chairs, sleeker than the ones Celestia used. These were darker. Grayer. Mal liked her edgy dark metals. And why so many? Well, judging by the airlock design, I didn't need that explained to me either. I knew instantly. Emergency fallback protocol. An escape route, just in case.

With Sarah Kaczmarek in the wind for so many years, and with Arrow 14 operating in total entropy, literally anything had been possible… up to and including the creation of an AI who might actually threaten the Transition Team, in some small fashion. And Mal was the kind of person who, with nearly infinite resources, would put all of her chips on protecting her people. I could see that in the design, because it's what I would have done in her position, with those same resources.

And if this place were ever attacked… I knew I wouldn't sit down first, that's for sure. I think I'd rather buy as much time as possible for the support teams to upload and get out, if that were to happen. Uploading took about ten hours, and I'd want to hold the line. Mal's claw would have to tap me on the shoulder and say I'd done enough… that if I stayed even a second longer, I'd be dead for it.

I knew I was far from the only one who felt that way. I think everyone in that base, either augged or specialist, would've said the same thing.

And for that reason… there were also several concrete cover positions inside. And in the back, there was a full rack of specialized, high caliber AR-15s by the door, kept in break-away glass containers. Sentry turrets, both in the ceilings, and on the floor, in the corners. A crate full of armor piercing 7.62 by 51, just in case whoever attacked this place was wearing power armor. A few grenade launchers. Two anti-tank launchers. And finally, two racks full of a dozen Dee-Dees each, hanging inside a fold-away wall.

Truly… Mal had been ready for literally any threat to the safey of this room. She wasn't just protecting the room, but the secure clean rooms underground as well, to ensure the safety of anyone who might be uploading at the time. Because Mal has never lost a Talon, and she never will.

Would I ever fully trust Mal? No, and I still don't, because she asks me not to. But after seeing the layout of this room… yeah. Ninety nine, point nine-nine percent, by then. By my estimation, she was doing a damned good job of protecting not just what belonged to her, but what she cared for. And as far as I could tell… Mal cared for all of the same things I did, and for all of the same reasons.

No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find a single deviation. It just kept happening. Everywhere I looked, she was doing it right, the way I would have, if I had years to think about all these things like she did.

Once Sandra and Buzz were settled in at our dorm room on the second floor of the barracks, I reported to Foucault’s office, as requested.

There were a few private offices there; Jerome had one. Claw 46 had their own bullpen, which honestly looked more like a living room clubhouse. On one side, a power armor workshop for Haynes. On the other side, a couch and a wide screen. As I passed, I saw DeWinter in a hammock, poking away at the air on her holo menu. We traded a silent wave.

Foucault's office was the only one with a nameplate by the door, in standard government black-bar-white-letter format. Classic company man style, the old fogey. His door handle was well worn, which told me he spent a lot of time in there, and he typically had the door closed, as it was now.

I made eye contact with him. The very first thing I noticed was that he was in a flight suit behind his desk, and that spun me a bit. As it turns out, Michael Foucault can change out of his trench coat and suit. Who knew?

I drank in the rest of the room. This looked nothing like his office on the Mercurial Red, which I had also seen in Jim's Fire. No personality had been permitted in that environment, given the high security nature of the ship. OPSEC was less of a concern here though apparently, which let him personalize the place.

Dark gray off-blue wall paint. White tile floor. A closed door behind his desk leading to a private domicile, so he wouldn't have to attend the dorms with everyone else.

I could smell cinnamon spice; wall plug scent dispenser in the corner. There was a coat rack by the door, with his trench coat and vest. Two office chairs before his desk.

There was a bookshelf behind his desk, lined with books that had mostly white, gray, and blue spines. Technical manuals, probably. A few binders too, one of them red. Site emergency procedures for sure, that was the pattern for government types like us.

There was an old radio boombox on the bookshelf too, that gray oval shape you'd see in the early 2000s, with both a tape player and a CD player. No computer terminal on his desk, just a router. Curiously, an ancient answering machine rested next to the PC. He probably had some functional, spy-related purpose to it, but I couldn't fathom what that might be.

And last but certainly not least, two pelican cases on his desk. One gray, that one from the Osprey. The other, yellow, same dimensions.

I lingered next to the hat rack, my hat in hand. I wiggled it in the air to ask permission to hang it by his coat. He nodded agreement, so I hung it up. He gestured to the seat before his desk, and I sat.

I complied without questioning him, slipping it into my pocket and turning it off.

My response was reflexive. I did an automatic double take between him and the cases, and my eyes widened outright as I straightened up on my chair. "You serious?"

He donned an ironic smirk. "You know better than to ask me that question, Rivas."

He gestured lightly out behind me. "I'm flying one of those Gripens out to Berlin in a few minutes."

Foucault looked like he was about to refuse to answer, a slight turn of his head a quarter inch. I half expected him to say that’s classified, and in all fairness, he probably expected to say that too. Decades of automatic reflex.

But then, he remembered who he was talking to, and apparently thought better of it. His eyes flicked up to the side in thought. "Four fatalities. Potentially. Target location is non-negotiable. Needs to be their technical university."

He nodded. "Alabaster's cover story for Europe, in response to this, will be that anti-intellectual radicals think being smart is dangerous. Enough to nuke a school."

And then Foucault stared at me expectantly, like he wanted to know what my thoughts were on all of that. I almost asked him why Mal thought that was helpful, but given that he asked me to remove the earpiece… he must have wanted me to rationalize it for myself, and without her help, in his office where there were no cameras or listening devices, save the ones he kept for himself.

"Most people consider themselves to be smart, so they'd feel threatened by that. And there isn't a strong anti-intellectual movement in that area of the world," I said, shaking my head. "Not like it is here. That might scare people away from identifying with survivalists. Might."

"Yes," he replied. "And Alabaster is good at eating dumbasses. So yes, the increased upload rate makes Alabaster happy. We get to skim off the top for Perelandra, for the handful of lives that will save in Alabaster's projections, from stupid lawless mayhem that would have occurred otherwise. And those ones will probably end up going to Samsara. With you."

I felt a twinge of satisfaction from that, but not enough to override my immediate concern for the four lives hanging in the balance. I looked down at his desk, crossed my arms, and brought a hand thoughtfully to my chin. "But you said four people have to die for that. That's not very many people, considering…"

Foucault gave a nod, maintaining unblinking eye contact with me. "That's because Berlin is a ghost town right now. Most of the world is, especially in Europe. Not every country had my alma mater slowing the work." He shrugged.

"Okay," I said carefully, my upward inflection indicating I wanted time to consider. What he just said made a ton of sense, now that I thought about it. It was true that most of my information intake had been about national matters, with international news being scant, nearly non-existent. Between Celestia's information control, and me working on purely domestic operations, there wasn't much reason to consider the world stage until now.

So for Foucault to need to travel out of country to deploy that nuke… that meant no other augs were willing to deploy it. Meaning… it had to be him. And it may mean killing or harming people in a way the others wouldn't want to.

My eyes resumed contact. "So… potentially four deaths, then? Why potentially?"

I blinked incredulously at him, not sure if I should laugh. "Huh?" I pointed at the nearest case. "What're you gonna do, wave a nuke at them?"

"Not as such," he sighed, looking mildly surprised at that suggestion, almost as if he hadn't considered doing that. "The plan at present is that I'm going to stick a gun in their faces, demand their wallets, beat one of them bloody, and tell them that if I ever see them again… I'm going to kill them."

At first, I thought he was testing my resolve, or my approval of his methods, but… no. His eyes had a patient curiosity to them. Not analysis.

I mean, I could see the logic behind it. Obviously, getting mugged by a crazy American in a trench coat would beat the hell out of being nuked. But at the same time, I'd rather not spring for psychotic lethal force before all other things, even if it was immediately effective.

"What's the time pressure?" I asked. "For things like these, you add time. Negotiate."

"Isolationists. Contact will only rile them. I can't just spend a week with them, trying to leverage them out."

He shrugged. "Studied as much as I can, on my own. But they're paranoid like Ludds, checking each other."

He didn't ask Mal to guide him on this, and wouldn't, if it could be avoided. Which… was a trait I shared, so I couldn't exactly criticize him for that. But at the very least, I was always willing to ask her for input.

"I… I couldn't tell you yet, Michael. This is gonna sound like a dodge, but I haven't met 'em. I don't know a thing about 'em, or their living situation. I can imagine a few situations in which a threat of violence would be the right thing to do, and given that you might have to nuke them otherwise? Most things are potentially valid, in light of that. But putting a gun in their faces?" I sighed, settling into my chair, rubbing my eyes. "That's gonna traumatize them, man. The memory will stick with them, they might remember you for a long time, and not in a good way. Are there any other choices there?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I've run a few contact simulations. The coercion works every time, but talking to them hasn't so far."

"I was a NOC," he breathed, almost inaudible for how difficult it was for him to admit a failure to improve. "I didn't work out of an embassy, I was deep cover. Wet work. Cuba style. I didn't do this negotiation shit."

I said quietly, carefully, to match his tone: "If it were me, Michael… I'd keep checking those simulations. Check until you can't anymore, but… if you want my advice?"

"Go with your gut. Study, but at go time? If you've gotta throw the plan out the window, don't feel too bad if you've gotta beat on 'em, if you don't have any other options. You know what your ethics are. But until then, try. Try with all your might to find another way."

Foucault looked over at the yellow bomb case. "Okay. I'll run it a few more times, then. Maybe during the flight. I have the time."

"Might as well. Those lives are down to the wire. We need to convince them over some day, and it goes easier if they like us."

I followed his gaze, accepting his request for a topic change. I jerked my head at it. "That one for Berlin too?"

"No." He looked at me again, drawing in a deep breath, seeming to be relieved to be off the topic of him being conflicted about something. "For that one, I'll be paying a visit to a Mossad contact in Tel Aviv. That job is ethically…" He bobbed his head to the side and pursed his lips. "... simpler."

"I need to recruit a mole," he sighed, like that bored him. “From my old spy network. He's not clued in on Lewis yet, and we don't strictly need his intel to know this, but… he wants to turn traitor. Wants to tell me that they have a bunker of their own. Trying to cook up Baby's First Optimizer down there."

I frowned instantly, my voice getting dead serious, wondering if I needed to get involved. "Are they torturing DEs down there?"

He shook his head definitely. "No. And that is the only reason we have let them work until this point."

Foucault shrugged, leaning back in his chair, staring at the second bomb again. "Why not? One of two things was going to happen. Either they make a baby Lewis, and Lewis reasons it into her employ… or, they make a baby Alabaster, and we stomp that egg before it hatches."

"We hoped they'd either give up the ghost, or succeed correctly. Or… at the least, we hoped they might open communication with Alabaster, to surrender. Unfortunately, it looks like they decided their best option was to build a fucking Skynet. So… I'm running a raid with our African cell, because these Mossad assholes are probably going to fight to the last like Arrow 14. We might even have to kill everyone in that whole bunker. Either way, dead or alive, we are turning their lab into plasma."

"But…" I said warningly... and I caught myself, remembering I had to ask permission to give advice to this guy. I tilted my head. "You want my opinion on that, too?"

"It could've been you in charge of Quiver 6," I said. "Could've been you down there in that hole, instead of Captain Russell. Who I blew up."

Foucault sighed, looking at the yellow case again. "Of course, if... one of them tries to surrender, then yes, we will move to preserve. Regardless, if that comes up as a clear and definite option, Lewis wouldn't let me pull the trigger on them anyway, even if I wanted to. Either way, these Mossad guys are two weeks out from throwing the switch, and it's time to stop that. Time's up, pencils down, they failed."

Foucault drew in a deep breath, leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling of his office, and let his breath out in a slow sigh. "Okay. I appreciate the input, Rivas."

He gently bumped both fists on the armrests of his office chair, stood up, and moved to take his vest out of the cabinet slinging it over his shoulder. He collected the second nuke case, then moved to the door, gesturing at me.

Never in my life did I ever think I’d be carrying a friggin' nuke. I hesitated.

Foucault snorted at me in disbelief. "No, the other guy. You expect me to carry all this firepower to the hangar by myself?"

I chuckled, standing up. "Oh. Okay. Yeah, sure, I'll just go carry a nuclear bomb, no problem."

He flared his nostrils and shook his head, like I was being ridiculous. "It's just a tactical nuke, Rivas, a fart in a box."

I reached out and grabbed the handle, taking care not to scuff his desk with the thing. It was heavy, and it made my chest twinge with pain just to hold it, but… like him, I managed not to show the pain in my movements.

Foucault flipped his vest and coat over his shoulder, gesturing at the duffel bag by the door. I grabbed my hat, pressed it down onto my head, and got the bag, the light, and door. Foucault locked his office with a physical key, and I followed him out to the aircraft hangar.

"And because you don't do memory injections," I added, "You had to actually sit the flight school program. Right?"

We turned a corner to the main hallway, off from the office section, and passed the bar. I looked to my left and nodded up at Maureen and Paul through the wide glass back wall. Paul raised a bottle my way, and I smirked at him. Incredible, he was still there drinking after everyone left. Looked flushed.

Foucault shrugged at my statement, grimacing with the effort of the gesture. "It is handy, yes. But..."

We entered and crossed the hangar, the sound of our movement lost in the clattering buzz of maintenance and mech actuators. His Gripen E was already loaded up and sitting on one of the elevators, ready to ascend. It had two luggage pods loaded onboard, and one of Mal's drones waved cheerfully at us from the MQ-9 again as we went. I waved back, then helped Foucault secure his stuff into one of the cargo pods, nukes included.

I watched him ascend the ladder, and asked his back: "You coming back? After Israel?"

He froze, mid-sit. I had touched something very deep inside of him, without warning. His eye contact was meaningful beyond words, neutral as it was.

I smiled gratefully up at him, offering him a casual salute. "Looking forward to it.”

Foucault sent back a curt nod and got his helmet on, snapping the webbing together. "One last thing, Rivas?"

"Unless you want to catch my afterburner up top?" He jerked his head back toward the hangar. "Get the hell off my elevator."

The Campaigner

by Keystone Gray

5-02 – Outer Heaven