Kildare's Good Turn in Gorovaan

Wishart’s Lodge,

Da Marh,

Parhoon

 

Private Correspondence

 

My dear Kildare,

If all has gone to plan, you should now be reading this note safely ensconced in Gorovaan. I hope the stewards at the Cricket Club have replaced the soda - that last batch was quite simply, rancid vinegar. 

The mission you have undertaken is of the utmost importance not just to the Syrtis Major Trading Company, but indeed to Her Majesty and Her Majesty’s Government itself.

 

As we are all aware, Britain is now at war with the Empire of Oenotria, and I have to tell you that we are in for a hard time of it. We have barely enough forces here on Mars to look after things as it is, so Lord Folkestone will be heading our Martian Legion to bolster the Regular boys here around Syrtis. What we don’t need is another player on the pitch, and that old boy is where you come in to this great game.

We have reason to believe that a German couple, Herr and Frau Zenner, are actively engaged in matters very anti-British in and around Gorovaan. It’s quite possible that you may already have had a frosty reception from the Gorovaanese, if the spooks from Office 20, here in Syrtis, have got their intelligence and spying all ship shape.

 

Quite simply, we need to speak to the Zenners about what they have been getting up too, so we need them to be ‘persuaded’ by your self and your accompanying party to relocate their Trade Legation enquiries to Parhoon. We need to know their contacts, their supports and what they have achieved there, and on their intentions for the future. All manner of rumours abound as to who’s been dropping carbines into the Oenotrians laps, but the Office 20 boys have a sneak tip that the Germans are behind all of this. Whatever, we need the Zenners alive and able to answer questions and we need them back in Parhoon at the soonest opportunity.

Sorry to have kept you in the dark my good man, but the Zenners will be expecting you and your entourage to be doing glad-handing and back-slapping here in Gorovaan now there’s a war on. Had to maintain the façade for a quite a few of our ‘allies’ to see.

 

Good luck, and a speedy return, and if you need anything, your man Bough has a few of the 'Company' chitties.

 

Wishart

 

 

Storyline: 7-Alpha-6 - Point: 9

The car went into a sideways slide, as rain soaked tarmac does that for you, especially when the driver is no longer looking out the windscreen and is using the dashboard for cover. I preferred that to the full facial of splintered glass and bullet fragments that suddenly ventilated my vehicle. Unfortunately, the kerb failed to stop the slide, and the car mounted the pavement with a double jolt and it and I became an addition to a shop front. Thankfully, at half past midnight, there was no need to worry about squishing late night shoppers and upsetting the business owner. At least not straight away – he’ll find out soon enough I guess.

+ React: Now: React: Unknown targets: Evade: React +

The carcass I was in was a fit and agile one. A soldier, one of our own – a true volunteer ‘skin’. Reaction times were better, muscle memory gave me the edge, good reflexes. With the car now stationary and covered in debris, I kicked open the driver’s door, rolled out, gun drawn and trusting to my soldier skin’s training.

Angel prompted me too, lightning fast threat assessments flash-burned straight into my cortex, milli-seconds of advantage, that’s almost instantly instinctive. Almost – as the close proximity of incoming rounds, plucking at my coat, helpfully remind me that this borrowed carcass deserves to be returned unscathed – hopefully.

+ Diminished threat: No immediate targets: React +

OK Angel, I can guess I’m safer now, I heard the fools running off into the darkness. And I can follow them with ease. But that’s not the mission objective – the Task to be done.

My car wasn’t going anywhere, neither was theirs, my recent opponents. Luckily the final destination was a half-klick jog further on. Notwithstanding the rainwater everywhere, it was time to press on.

This capable skin pounded the pavements and alleys with ease until the target building came into view. And even without Angel’s warning prompt, I knew something was wrong.

Sixth sense, or déjà vu? Sensory uploads or hard-wired nano-circuitry? Whatever the edge, it was my advantage, my latent ability coupled with Angel as my Grid interface that allowed me to grab any initiative, and defeat anyone who gets in my way. The only trouble is, there’s very little that I can do in a physical form that can defeat the concussive blast wave from a sizeable explosive detonation.

I had no idea who detonated the bomb, or where exactly the bomb had been planted, but night time suddenly became day time momentarily with the ignition flash and the following fireball, but by then the shockwave had picked me up and put me into the wall behind me. That hurt, quite a bit, and I lost the ability to listen to Angel. She was still there, I just found it all a bit scrambled.

I tried to stay conscious, but the approaching blackness just looked too good to resist.

Blackness. No Grid. No voices in my head. Just darkness.

Dalliances with Danger - The Saxmundham Viking Treasure II

The SIAS officers, now reinforced by more volunteers, some of them armed, send out a patrol to establish just what has been going on in the countryside between them and the sea, while Judge Cooper and Mr Geach the Mayor put the town into a state of readiness. All set their hearts and minds to the task ahead and then grave news is announced – the Telegraph lines have been cut!

The two Police Constables finally make it back to town with their new ‘friend’. Hopefully, Old Jock Trubshaw is reasonably sober to have told of his midnight encounters “wiv some nasty ‘Uns..”

But now more information is needed – as to how many, and where they are, and what’s their intentions in coming here? Who leads them in this odd ‘invasion’ of East Anglia – surely this isn’t some scheme dreamed up by the Kaiser? Is the ‘Teutonic Twit’ really that hair-brained? Or can it really be the Arch-fiend himself?

The Light Railway has already proven to be a valuable link to Leiston and the coast, and the Station staff and signallers have worked hard with the Enginemen in getting the light engines and carriages made ready for another venture out. With the sun slowly rising over the North Sea, time is crucial, and the enemy must be found and observed.

The SIAS party and their growing band of volunteer forces must now defend the centre of the town of Saxmundham from these raiders, prevent them from looting and carrying off any spoils, and capture any of them to interrogate and find out why they are here.

The Judge and the Mayor have done a fine job in preparing the town against these foreign agents, and lookouts have been posted, a dressing station has been set up for any wounded, and gallons of hot tea and piles of bacon sandwiches are available for the gallant defenders of East Suffolk.

Now it’s known the enemy are coming straight for the town, but many rumours abound as to why. Some are saying it’s a deliberate attempt on the capital, seize the railway and ride into London, others say that Colchester is the real target, again using the railway. But most have now heard from Old Jock that the raiders are after some sort of Viking item that’s here in the town – and yet no-one knows what or where it is. The Mayor has ordered a few trusted seniors to investigate further, but a scour around the Bell Inn, and the small Museum by the Market Hall have found nothing and now the town elders are pouring through the town records.

So all the defenders can do now is await the assault and to see where the attackers aim for – and hope to stop them in their tracks before they can plunder the town and escape.

Dalliances with Danger - The Saxmundham Viking Treasure - I

That ‘Man of Blood’ is loose again in the world. After his deprivations in Imperial China – taking advantage of the feuding Governors and Warlords – he’s now believed to be running opium again back into Western Europe. It’s also believed that Von Ludecke is still with him – Beck is reputed to be somewhere in North America & D’Allange is said to be in the Middle-East.

Deveraux has been gathering his forces of anarchy and mayhem, and the Imperial Powers have managed to set aside their differences and recognise his threat to all their regimes.

His many acts of outrage – the raiding and sinking of French steamships in the Gulf of Lyons, the bombing of the Hotel Excelsior in Sarajevo, the abduction and subsequent ransom of Princess Elenia of Moldavia, and the derailment of the Ottoman Army’s Smyrna Military Train – are just the latest in a long line of sinister events all perpetrated by Deveraux and his minions, the Les Enfants Perdu. Their exploits blaze across the front pages of the Western Press, and all clamour for direct action against the Arch-fiend.

Now, strange sightings og lights afloat in the darkness off the East Anglian coast has prompted Horseguards to send some officers to Saxmundham to investigate. Before they are able to arrive however, the train journey is interrupted.

The northward train has been stopped just south of Saxmundham by unknown hijackers, who have removed the engine and tender, leaving the passenger carriages stranded. The party of officers have then resorted to walking up the line, in the dead of night, to the station and there they meet the Station-master and two Police Constables.  On the Platform stand Detective Inspector Symonds and Judge Cooper, who address the assembled throng of servicemen in the Passenger Waiting Room. The London-bound Express has also lost its engine and tender, blocking the line coming south from Norwich.

Peculiar happenings have also been occurring in this area, in the dead of night, close to the shoreline, and two Police Constables managed to signal earlier using Morse Code with their patrol lanterns, that they have under guard a valuable yet delusional witness. Gun flashes and then a considerable noise of gunfire were observed and heard from their direction, and Symonds now needs assistance in finding and bringing back his two Constables and their valuable witness.

To that extent, Judge Cooper has just proclaimed the Local Emergency Powers Act in the town’s marketplace, and a small band of volunteers have been gathered, armed with shotguns, to assist. What’s desperately needed though, is leadership and military training and that’s why the Judge and Symonds are glad of the officers arrival.

The town is buzzing with unusual night-time activity, the gaslights are burning brightly tonight, and the townspeople move about the shadows with a determined purpose – what mystery waits out there in the darkness. Some of the apprentice boys have been dispatched Westwards, on bicycles, to pass on news of the situation, and to seek more assistance.

 

Storyline: 7-Alpha-6 - Point: 8

“Why won’t you relax, sit so we can chat?”

“Thanks, but I don’t plan on staying long.” I hated these quarterly psych-sessions.

“I can understand that, but you might be pleasantly surprised, I can speed things along when I have to.”

I slump in the chair, coat still on, coffee cup in hand. It only has some dregs left in it but that means I have an excuse to bail out of here when I want, when I need to refill it.

One of the medical staff, one of the new doctors, sits opposite flicking through the sheets in my manila folder. It never fails to amuse me that – a board file, a folder full of paper on little old me, and all the antics I get up too. A stupid out-dated contradiction, the desire to maintain a paper trail on my ‘deniable’ activities in the virtual domain. I would say ironic, but I heard one of the other operatives shot Irony in the head last week.

“You still taking all the meds we prescribe?”

“Aye.”

“No side effects?”

“No.”

“Are they effective at controlling your – episodes?” It’s actually one of the first times he glances up from the pages to look at me.

You mean, am I dosed up enough to warrant relaxing the extra measures you have in place to control me? Probably not.

Am I now trusted to live off-site again instead of lodging in a converted store cupboard on a camp bed? Probably not.

Or am I capable of mixing with normal people again, without being a potential security risk and royal pain in the arse once I’ve had a drink or five? Probably not.

“I think the drugs are helping me cope, Doc.”

After all, that’s really what he wants to hear.

“OK, well I think you have made excellent progress. Certainly the last half-dozen debriefs indicate a better recovery and better stabilization. I think I can make some recommendations. Would you be happy with that?”

Delighted, possibly even euphoric. Just how enthusiastic am I supposed to be? Do I get a free sweetie?

“Aye.” And I add a smile, the best I can manage, as a free bonus for his efforts.

“Good, we’ll mark today down as ‘progressing’ then.”

I add a second smile, and a little too eagerly, shuffle forward to climb out of the chair. Too eagerly because he stops shuffling pages back into my manila folder and looks me straight in the eyes.

“After all, Operative – you wouldn’t want an RTU would you?” The menace is deliberate in those words.

RTU. ‘Return To Unit’. A ‘sorry you failed son’ award that in normal circumstances would see you bounced back from whence you came. But where I’ve been these past ten years, you don’t leave by RTU. I wasn’t even sure my old unit even still existed after all the cutbacks.

RTU for the likes of me really meant one thing.

Disposal. Quick, sudden and final.

Not exactly the exit I want if I’m honest.

“See you in three months time, Doc.”

Storyline: 7-Alpha-6 - Point: 7

When the time comes to hack into someone, to hijack and take over their corpse for a while, I tend to think of it like a long blink. Where some kind soul has also tattooed the inside of your eyelids with white dashes and dots on a lovely vivid blue background. Well, I see blue – others apparently see black, but I’m glad I have blue.

The ‘wake-up’ is always the first test, and can be the first surprise. Its that moment when you establish complete ultimate control over the new vessel, the new host that will help you on your Task. I like the usual standard wake-ups – nodding yourself awake on a train or airliner, sitting up in your seat in a darkened theatre or cinema. I like those best. Less traumatic for everyone.

The ‘crash wake-ups’ are a lot worse, hurried takeovers in emergency situations or inappropriate moments. I’m not that much of a fan, despite the enhanced reflexes, and Angel chattering out instructions, and the hyper-surge you get from the Grid. Is there such a thing as virtual kinetic force? Certainly feels like it sometimes. Anyway – taking over from someone driving a car, or falling or diving, or mid delecto humper time – its just not good for the karma.

You think you would get used to the surge, the drop from comfy time idling on the Grid absorbing new files and data, before you pile into some stranger’s cortex. You think that after doing hundreds of these, sometimes several in one day, you’d get blasé. Believe me, there’s nothing easy about it. Bollocks to anyone who says otherwise.

You wrench yourself away from everything you’ve ever actually been, to end up, often uninvited, in amidst something you’ve never known, all for a set time, to complete a phase or a Task, before the elastic hurls you back to where you started. No wonder perhaps that I do bother with the after-care I guess. And that I take the meds as Doctor orders.

Hacking back out is easy, Angel calls it, you agree it, then it’s another blink and another wake-up, but this time you’re back to being you. I always hesitate, always check my own tell-tales, just to make sure.

It still flips your heart, catches your breath, makes you wince or brings on a cold sweat. That bit never leaves you, because what we do, the whole hack-in and hack-out, well it can never be described as natural. There is no natural equivalent action. Just before your first time you ever do this, the scientists and the tech people tell you it’s unique with a big monkey smile. Nothing can prepare you for what happens, nothing they say can pre-warn you.

After my first time, I puked, used more swear words than I thought I knew, and wanted to punch out anyone who came near me. I was alright once I had a short spell of recovery time. Well, OK – short – took me about two days to come down off the ceiling.

It was scary, alien, unnatural, insane and bewilderingly confusing. And I loved it. And guess I still do.

Storyline: 7-Alpha-6 - Point: 6

I still recall the day the ‘normal’ life all came unglued, for once and for all. I remember fine details, mostly irrelevant, but I’m a little hazy on all the important stuff. What ‘normal’ people would consider important anyway.

I’d just completed a triple-phase Task, that had lasted a marathon 68-hours, where I’d hacked into five different people to complete it all. Complex, twisting case and nothing like the initial briefing, and at the end of it my mind was almost broken.

I awoke, or at least regained my composure, sitting in a straight-backed chair in a bedroom in daylight, an upended suitcase next to me with clothes strewn around the floor. I wasn’t too sure at first so I had to check, and asked Angel to state my location.

+ Current Location: Home: Registered address: Electoral Register 2014: 21 West...+

Stop, Angel, that’s enough, just knowing I’m home is fine. Thank you.

I looked down at myself, slumped there, and rotated my right hand, thumb moving away and little finger coming into view, and noted I still had the standard issue Browning automatic pistol clenched in my right hand. I wasn’t bothered about that, although there was a nagging doubt I should have been. No, I was looking for something else and it was there, the faint scar line on the edge of my right hand, my tell-tale first check that I’m back in my own body, returned into my own carcass.

So – home and really home.

I then looked up and saw myself, my reflection in the bedroom mirror. I wasn’t that surprised – 68 hours straight, no sleep and no mental rest, and even if your physical form is fresh meat, you can still see it, the drawn exhausted state is given away by the staring eyes. Well, I think so – and that’s what I saw. Dishevelled clothes and unshaven, but the red eyes looking like a long-haul airline traveller – that made me grimace at myself.

I caught sight of a flutter of movement at the right hand edge of my vision and glanced over to see the slow billowing flow of the net curtain caught in the breeze. I was fixated with its gracefulness, as if watching its gentle folds would bring me some degree of inner peace. Instead my eyes were summoned left, towards the doorway into the room. Half a face and a clenched hand on the doorframe meant I was being watched. I could see one eye, streaming tears, and a downturned mouth, a nightdress and a frail feminine figure, part-hiding from me, very scared.

I didn’t say a word, just stood up, and stepped over the debris on the floor, pocketing the pistol into it’s hidden place inside my long coat with a well-practiced familiar ease. The young woman shied away from me, stepping backwards across the landing as I approached the door frame.

Am I supposed to know you? Why didn’t Angel prompt me?

We stood facing each other on the landing, she crying and shaking, I slightly bemused and very detached. She moved her right hand away from her mouth and pawed at the air in front of me. Was I meant to take her hand and comfort her? Or to hold her close to me, grasp her shoulders and hug her? I had no idea – I just felt pity for her, but at the same time, a faint creep of revulsion too.

She asked me what were we going to do. We? I’d just spent three days preserving her lifestyle and her simple existence. We? I didn’t recall her being there when I’d finally put a bullet in that madman’s forehead. I suddenly felt tired, overwhelmed, unable to tell her – whoever she was – what I wanted too. She whimpered at me again, what was I planning to do?

“Going out”, I said in one exhalation.

I turned and slowly descended the stairs, hearing her slump to the carpet sobbing loudly. I went out through the front door, only then putting the cigarette to my lips to light it. ‘Never smoke in the home’. I don’t recollect where that come from, it was just a rule from someone.

Outside in the road, there were car-washers, promising footballers, juvenile cyclists and idle gossips strewn throughout the neighbourhood, who all stopped to watch me depart. That was my last time in that neighbourhood, the last time any of them ever saw me. And I never saw that lovely but vulnerable woman again.