2102 UNPC Universal Calendar
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The package rode in B1's backpack, a streamlined 3 day assault pack with zippers sealed against dust ingress. A simple manilla envelope of information that had a level of secrecy above that of code words or electronic communication.
The two stroke engine of his bike, a Honda CR500R, screamed as he blitzed across the desert, sending up a rooster tail of dust. The fuel guage, which was added later, informed him he was past the point of no return, he'd have less than a tenth of a gallon left when he reached the installation.
If he dropped dead suddenly, a satellite would spot him – if it hadn't already, and the coalition would inform no one. Instead, they'd have a UAV fire a air to ground missile at him, and he'd go up in a information destroying explosion, rather than risking the secrecy of the documents by sending someone else out to pick them up and deliver them.
His armor's cooling fan shut off, five consecutive puffs of compressed air blew caked grit out of the intake port, and the fan turned back on again. His ECA helmet read an ambient temperature of 128 degrees, but his armor kept his body at 72 degrees.
The sprawling desert in front of him held no trails, forcing him to pick his route smartly. If he took too long and ran out of gasoline, he'd have to walk again. That was a journey he did not wish to repeat.
The camoflauged augment on a kahki colored dirt bike, matching the backdrop of the desert screamed towards the installation, which was theoretically in view. In reality, there was blown dust and heat haze blocking his vision. The sandstorm, which was just heavy enough to reduce visibility of the installation near entirely, was artificial.
More technology the coalition keeps to themselves.
As his visibility got worse, he kept the same course, maintaining a heading even as he couldn't see more than a hundred feet in any direction.
The air filter of his bike wasn't a paper implement that would clog, instead it was a cyclone like a vacuum cleaner that rid the air of most particles. The relatively clean air was then sent through a oil bath air cleaner, which pulled it through steel wool soaked in a dish of lightweight oil. The performance was comparable to a paper implement, but the longevity was far superior.
The storm cleared, and visibility improved, revealing the installation.
A massive sprawling complex of concrete bunkers that looked like ticks attached to the rolling dunes. Beneath the sand was an interweaving series of tunnels that connected them all, and led to a much larger underground facility.
He didn't slow down, instead he sped up, and moved along the side of the bunkers, counting them in his head. When he reached twenty four, he kicked it out of gear and applied the brakes, rolling up to twenty five.
He stopped, and got off of the bike, leaving it leaned against the gentile slope of the bunker, the bike laying nearly flat. There was nothing but soft sand beneath his boots, and the kickstand would just sink into the ground and leave it laying like that anyways.
He stepped over to a keypad with unmarked keys beneath a layer of thick rubber, and put in a 10 press sequence before stepping back.
A rumbling started beneath his feet, breaking the silence, the world quiet and windless after his trip through the sandstorm.
He stepped back over to his bike, and picked it up by a handlebar, and levered it till the weight was on both wheels. He hopped on, and kicked it to life as a entrance sprouted from beneath the sand. The opening was three meters high and three meters wide, a perfect square. The positive pressure system of the tunnel complex kicked sand up and out of the mouth, pushing the sand up the gentile grade and back into the atmosphere it came from.
He rolled down the roughly 50m long tunnel, and into a cooler, temperature controlled area. He hit a hump in the floor, which hinged the entire tunnel he'd just traveled down, and rolled around a corner, down a gentile grade, lit by LED lights recessed in the corners of the tunnel.
Behind him, the tunnel was coming back down, and hiding itself beneath the surface. He didn't even want to think about the logistics of moving that much sand, and doing it so reliably so it could serve as an entrance to a facility.
Around the corner, the ceiling sloped upwards, and the height increased to 10 meters. In front of him was an intimidating door, with rubber seals along the sides, the entire surface of the door that he could see glistening with thick grease in the harsh artificial light.
About 6' off the ground on the left wall of the room was a keypad. He left his bike running, and put the kickstand down before hopping off, and stepping over to it. He saw the ripples in the concrete where it was poured under an inch thick for the anti personnel and shaped anti armor charges chest and waist high respectively.
At the push of a button, or maybe if he just screwed up the code one too many times, he could be turned into extra chunky salsa.
He punched in a code, shorter than the one he'd used to open the egress point, and stepped back over to his bike as the door started to open. It was very slow at first, by the time he'd sat down and put the kickstand back up, the door had only moved three or so inches. It picked up speed, and started moving at about a foot per second.
When it was fully open, steel plates with a matte sandblasted steel color, and an almost rust pitted appearance slid up and took the place of the track the door rode on. Beyond the door was an airlock with fifteen meters to an identical door. The floor was steel grating, with a storm drain appearance beneath, although no water glimmered in the shadows of the grates with the LED lighting recessed into the ceiling.
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He had a sudden thought of the door slamming shut and cutting him in half as he rolled over the sandblasted panels and into the airlock. He smiled to himself at the absurdity of the thought. The grates beneath the wheels of his bike didn't clang or even squeak.
He put both of his feet down, and waited patiently again for the door to shut at the same speed it opened at, and for the door on the other side to do the same.
When the door opened, the sound of silence was broken by the clanger of work. The motor pool area ahead was full of mechanics in unadorned navy blue coveralls working. There were larger doors along all of the walls, and a elevator large enough to accept a semi truck & trailer combo sat in the middle of the room – the same steel grates that were in the airlock making up the floor of the wall-less elevator.
B1 pulled his bike forward, and the door behind him started to shut, nearly silently in the din of the motor pool. He turned to the right and snatched a tag off of a hook on the wall with his right hand in a smooth motion.
He found a parking spot, and filled the tag out after shutting his bike off. The engine clanked with the sound of cooling metal as he put his kickstand down, barely audible over the sound of someone in the large room using an angle grinder, and someone else using an impact wrench.
He hung the tag off of the left side of the handlebars, put the kickstand down, hopped off, and started walking.
It was what had to be twenty minutes before he reached the room he was looking for. Probably only two hundred meters traveled as the crow flies, but over a thousand steps thanks to the spaghetti bowl of tunnels, with blast doors sealing them from one another.
He entered the room, it had white walls, gray rubber wall bases, and a dark gray thin commercial glue down carpet that felt like it had concrete underneath. It greeted him coldly, with a single large meeting table in the middle, with Herman Miller chairs around it.
Three people sat at the table, all of them silent and waiting patiently. He mirrored their silence as he took his backpack off, and sat it atop the table, and opened it.
He handed the envelope off to Dr. Raine, who sat three chairs down the table, and returned to his backpack, zipping it up, and putting it back on. It left a handful of sand where he'd sat it, which he ignored as he went back through the heavy feeling but regular looking door.
"I love all of my children equally, but that one scares me the most." Dr. Raine chided as she broke the seal of the manilla envelope and spread the documents enclosed within across the table. There were over forty pages, all printed front and back.
"What she's saying, albeit far more gently, is that she sends that one when things need to be swept up." A comparably similar woman said, smiling at the augment that sat at the table with them.
Dr. Raine shot her a look, and she rolled her eyes. "Please, after this, she'll know far worse things about the coalition." She scoffed, gesturing across the table towards the augment.
Dr. Raine ignored her, and turned her focus to the augment sitting next to her. "Now, I'm sure Bravo Seven and you have just had a very long conversation about how the next hundred or so years of your service will proceed as a deniable asset, but this," She tapped a few of the papers. "This puts it in stone." Dr. Raine stated.
"Before you sign these papers, and fill out a bunch of other ones, right now, if you so choose, you can back out of this, and go back to doing what you were doing before." Dr. Raine laid out.
"And, might I add, there will be no repercussions from doing so." Dr. Raine's identical companion stated, making Dr. Raine nod.
"All of that being said. Do you want to proceed with this process?" Dr. Raine asked.
Sarah "B2" Webb nodded, exhaling shallowly. "Yes, I do." She stated clearly and directly.
"Good." Dr. Raine sounded genuinely happy. "That is all of the formalities out of the way."
---
Several hours later
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"If I might ask." Sarah paused, looking at the surface of the meeting table before continuing. "What is Muller's official title?" She asked.
"Well, he doesn't really have one." Dr. Raine said. "He hovers on the border of both deniable asset and an official member of the augment corps, and his skills are useful for both, so," she shrugged, "he stays that way." She explained.
"I see, that makes sense." Sarah nodded.
"And please, call him Eric." Dr. Raine's companion added as Dr. Raine filled out forums, finalizing Sarah's standing.
"What happens after I've stood out this contract?" Sarah asked, looking across the table at the United Nations Peace Coalition Investigative Division representative.
"You go back to being a regular augment, and the entire stint as a deniable asset will be covered up by unimportant operations and a history of menial tasks for the augment corps." She explained simply. "You'll just go back to doing what you were doing one year before now."
"I see." Sarah said, nodding. She couldn't believe how they could make such a blanket statement about a future cover up of over a hundred years of history.
"Okay, sign here." Dr. Raine tapped the document. "This is the very last one, I promise." She smiled.
Sarah nodded as she picked up the pen and signed her name, and laid the pen back down on top of the page.
"Okay, that finishes it." Dr. Raine smiled, standing as she slid the page into the envelope, made thicker now even though the same number of pages were enclosed as before it arrived. The UNPCID representative stood, and Sarah joined them.
Dr. Raine extended her hand, and shook Sarah's. "I wish you the best of luck." She told the augment.
"Thank you." Sarah replied, nodding.
"As do I." The UNPCID representative said as Sarah shook her hand. "I like the uniform, please keep wearing it." The representative smiled as she shook her hand, winking at the nude augment and making them laugh.
"I'll wear it whenever possible." Sarah nodded, dropping the representative's hand, the heavy door closing behind them.
"We've got a lot to do." A German accented voice said from behind Sarah, making her jump.
"You get used to it." The representative stated flatly, giving a knowing and reassuring nod, paired with a smile before walking past Sarah, and out the same door as Dr. Raine.
"Where are we going?" Sarah asked Eric as he stood motionless behind her in the meeting room.
"Logistics and the quartermaster's office, on the other side of the facility." Eric said.
Sarah sighed. "Let's stop two doors down, I need to put something on."
"No need, you're actually making the job of the security personnel a lot easier. Besides, it doesn't bother me." Eric shrugged.
"So I can walk around, like..." Sarah trailed off.
"Yeah, you heard the devil." Eric said, using the not at all affectionate nickname of the UNPCID representatives without hesitation. "Do as you please, it will most likely be one of the few rights you have from now on." Eric told her, the "few rights" line stung, but it was true, she knew.
Sarah nodded slowly, and Eric moved through the door, Sarah trailing behind him, his footsteps making no sound.
"When you said quartermaster's office, did you mean who I think you mean?" Sarah asked.
"Ja, Natalie Lyons, head quartermaster of the entire coalition." Eric said as they walked alone, down the long gently sloping and winding hallway.
"Why do you sneak up on people like that?" Sarah asked Eric.
He chuckled under his helmet. "Well, I like people's reactions, and it's a good test of my skills. Also relatively harmless."
"Harmless, but rude." Sarah added.
"So be it." Eric shrugged, "feel free to try and stop me."
I'm starting to like the ghost.