Daria 3

by Martin E. Silenus

  My role in the build of this engineering marvel was one of laborer. I did the fetching carrying and construction, the grunt work. That was just fine with me and I am very good at trade work. To do the job accurately and carefully with pride in your work and the ability at the end of the day to be able to point and say “I built that” is very fulfilling for me.

  Frosty was the engineer/foreman and also grunt builder. We work well together and there is a harmony of motion and effort that serves us both well. And the very best part of the whole project is that we are building for ourselves. We are investing our time and money on a device that will pay huge dividends.

  Chapter 4: Bots

  Naturally Daria was the genius engineer, architect, scientist, conferring with Frosty. She also designed and had us build the construction bots fabricated to assist with the assembling of the ship. A lot of the bots work was performed under my watchful eye. D also was the master project manager with Frosty and the two of them sorted out the work flow process so we never had interruptions during the long build process.

  For the most part work went very well indeed. I was particularly impressed with the quality of work performed by the construction bots. They did an excellent job and of course worked twenty-four hours per day and seven days a week. Their productivity was amazing and we only had one team of two bots each.

  Once the actual construction of the ship was complete the construction bots would have additional programing installed in their AI systems to handle the on-going maintenance of the vessel. I named the construction bots Huey, and Dewey. Their names being the names of drones from the ancient Sci-Fi flic called “Silent Running”. It was a movie that had a profound effect on me, not the least of which was my love for the bots. I really enjoyed working with the construction bots, they were smart, careful, and worked steadily never seeming to hurry or grow tired and sloppy as humans tend to. Or show up drugged, hung over, late, sick, or generally fucked up and in a state that it was questionable if their quality of work was even worth their presence. I was so happy to have the consistency of quality of work the bots produced; I was and remain just delighted with them.

  We also created a very intelligent massive robot with multiple arms. This sucker is huge and will scare the wits out of you if you stumble over him as he lurches along a dark hallway in the ship. How big you say, well it’s easiest to visualize him as a four armed Tyrannosaurus Rex minus the huge tail. Of course his head is not the shape of a dinosaur, but it is large enough for a human to occupy the seat for control purposes to assist while assembling large heavy machinery. His four arms are not small dinosaur arms either, they are long, articulated, very powerful, and reach nearly to his feet. We call this four armed two legged monster Mongo. I’m sure you can guess where we got his name from. So while Huey and Dewey the maintenance bots can get into the smallest space to maintain the ship, their huge brother Mongo handles the extreme lifting that a crane would normally do. Like handling loading or unloading of bulky heavy cargo and that sort of thing. A delightful brother to have and just a delight to work with I might add, another of D’s resourceful creations. All bots have security programing in them. So if you plan on coming aboard unannounced you may be stunned into a heap or find yourself dangling upside down from one of Mongo’s arms.

  The ship is just a delight to travel in as we have our own separate areas and bedrooms complete with all our personal stuff. We can wander around the interior of the ship, work on this, putter on that, mess about with ideas in the fully equipped workshop, armory, pistol range and so on. The bridge is one of our favorite spots equipped with leather recliners to watch the countryside slide by. The ship has no windows, but has many surface mount CCD cameras setup, so any CCD array can be displayed on any of the sixty inch monitors, so the effect is almost like being outside silently sliding through the air. We even set up a platform at window level for Beast to lie on and be able to look at the scenery going by, he says he loves it.

  Another area we really enjoy is the roomy common area just off the generous and amply equipped kitchen. Lots of notional furniture to sprawl on and big sixty inch displays to keep us advised on what’s around us. It’s a great spot for discussions, relaxing, and general companionship and just hanging out.

  D had asked Frosty and I about the color coordinated decorating scheme for the ship. We both looked completely blank, finally Frost suggested Army green. I think I just said ‘huh’. At which point she just muttered in exasperation and said she would take care of it. I have to admit I’m fine with the interior decorating; of course I’m a guy with no decorating taste and can live happily in a cardboard box. But the quiet subdued predominantly soft pastel earth tones remind me of houses in Arizona. It’s quite calming and peaceful, although kind of ironic in a way considering what our occupations are. Or, perfectly in tune with the required relaxation downtime to achieve balance.

  The propulsion system is virtually quiet and I have no idea how fast it will allow the ship to move. We travel at a reasonable pace over unpopulated areas and often at night to avoid accidental detection. There is no question the ship is a very sweet ride. And yes, I repeatedly tell D how nice it is! No really, not just because I want to have sex, er... sleep with her.

  D and her sisters handled all of the design and engineering specs for the ship AI system. Frosty was involved in the discussion while I was off on more hands on activities. Now it was never specifically said, but I had the sensation that the ship is for all intent and purpose equipped to near the level of D herself. Complete with the highest levels of competence associated with air travel, space travel, ocean currents, and wind patterns etc. The ship AI understands us and our speech and will reply to us if queried or provide us with information. Oddly enough it spoke with a male voice. Perhaps D’s response to Frosty and I assuming the ship was female.

  One of the very special abilities we built into the ship is the Virtual Reality Simulation Deck. It allows us to create any environment and to walk through our mission, battles, fire fights, and situational actions to optimize our responses, strategies, and tactics. To be blunt I don’t know how the hell we got along without the VR Deck in the past, it’s that good.

  There was quite animated discussion around naming the ship. Frosty and I felt it was traditional a ship be christened with a name that matched her design intent. Oddly enough we both felt the ship was a she, a female. D looked at us both like we had taken leave of our senses, totally unimpressed this magnificent transportation vessel she had researched, designed, engineered should be treated, nay, affronted with traditional human naming values. Our discussion grew more animated and came dangerously close to bitching and nagging. Surprisingly enough it was Beast who in the middle of one of frequent whining sessions quietly spoke to us telepathically and asked if we might put that issue aside for future consideration. We were all stunned into silence, Beast just sitting there watching us, offering some particularly sage advice. To a man, woman, and sentient entity we acquiesced. The matter was set aside indefinitely.

  D went back to work with Frosty designing the ship’s latest and greatest artificial intelligence data center that she could move into. I went back to working with the bots on our always present “to do list”. And Beast in his infinite wisdom went on about handling the ship and surrounding area security with Mongo as the backup muscle.

  Chapter 5: Fireteam

  We have more than a passing expectation that this recent assignment is a government setup to eliminate us. Instead of us taking out this professional Fireteam, they have been assigned to take out us, a competing group doing wet-work, they literally know nothing about us other than some suspected jobs we did. They have nothing for intel on us. Oh yes, except for the shadowy figure of the Daesh that we have named Juthamah, translated loosely means nightmare. How deliciously appropriate is that?

  There is a burning question around who the hell is the enemy. It seems our own government, our employer, is as much the enemy as the Daesh are. One could w
onder how something so simple could get so tangled up. Only a compartmentalized bureaucratic government could create this gigantic clusterfuck. And a healthy and imaginative collection of gov’t spooks. Of course if you follow the political news you can begin to see how this is all possible. For a country of so many really bright people how is it that we wind up with the idiots and the crooks attempting to run the government? It sure doesn’t say much about what people think of the government and how most are content to hide from its reaches as much as possible.

  Our assignment is to take out a military trained fireteam. Not a group of novices either, a seasoned four soldier fireteam has been groomed to be a death squad. Groomed and used a lot. These guys are no joke; they were as proficient as any Seal Team I have seen. At one time they had various military alliances, not now, now they were full-fledged Mercenaries with all the latest and best technology money can buy.

  D has video training footage of the members and each of their psych profiles. When we found out the assignment D and her sisters hacked their way into all of the related military websites and high security databases to collect every scrap of info on these badasses. We needed every edge we could put together. Each one of them are very motivated, extremely disciplined, and particularly skilled. This was not going to be a walk in the park.

  Cooper, male, death squad leader, British military background, completely indifferent to the victims, proficient at close combat, long and short firearms, specializes in tech overview, planning, tactics, logistics, dataflow, security, combat battlefield overview. Demands absolute professionalism from his team, or he shoots them.

  Lopez, female, ex Mexican Army, scout, can track a cat over rocks, small, fast, brilliant at recon, animal sense instincts, specialist at hand to hand blade fighting, indispensable in heavy firefights. She is very aggressive.

  Mueller, male, sniper, ex German special forces, long range sniper armaments, firefight weapons and tactics, very precise, very patient, a ghost.

  Harris, male negro, heavy armaments, ex US Marine, specialist in demolitions, RPG’s, grenade launcher, remote robotic gun sentries, and the Dillon M134D mini-gun. He’s very aggressive and physically imposing.

  We discuss tactics and strategies on how we might approach defeating this type of target. This is new uncharted territory for us and speaks to the unpredictability of wet-work. What does it say when someone wants the wet-work team eliminated by another wet-work team? Are we conducting an arm’s length war with specialty teams? Or are we all utterly mad?

  Frosty points out immediately how difficult it will be to defeat the “team”. As a unit they will be next to impossible to kill. Our best tactic is to divide and conquer and deny each of the protagonists the very tools that they specialize in. This tactic denies them their advantage and provides for a more level playing field.

  D with her Artilect tech abilities can blank out all their comm, tech, computer, scanning capabilities. They will be rendered deaf, dumb, and blind. Cooper has to be the first hit as he is the leader. The remaining Fireteam members look to him to call the plays. Mueller will immediately look for a position where he can provide overview watch and protect his team while sniping. Lopez and the man monster Harris will wade right into the middle and be the center of any firefight. They will be difficult to split up to get an advantage.

  D will use the quad copter for surveillance, and electronic blocking and scrambling. In addition it will be equipped with a couple of hellfire missiles and small caliber machine gun.

  Beast and I will be on foot and invisible, as that is our greatest tactical strength. We debate about the best strategic place to attack the fireteam. Our intel tells us the fireteam will be used in a remote Columbian village to kill all the staff of a drug manufacturing plant. My preference is to hit the fireteam prior to them getting into the village. It will be tough enough to hit them without villagers running around and getting in the way.

  Christ on a stick, a fireteam in Columbia, that’s just so quaint, like trying to find a race car team at Daytona. I mean, what the hell else are you going to find in Columbia? There is no one there but employees in the cultivation, manufacture, distribution of the drug trade and fireteams to ensure nobody fucks with them. Besides it’s a really convenient place to have a ball’s out fire fight as they happen every couple of days and nobody gives a shit one way or another. That’s just life down there.

  While the logistics of our analysis were solid none of us were impressed with the simulation results. We programmed in all the data we had into the simulation VR deck in the ship and ran it, but it just didn’t feel right. The risks were too high, the fireteam too professional, even given our invisibility capabilities. There had to be a more effective way of handling these guys. We talked it through multiple more times before an effective solution began to present itself. If we could track these guys and get them all in one spot we could smack them like flies and not have to go head to head with them. So where would they all be in one spot. The fireteam had to get to the Columbian village same as we do. So how would they get there, truck, chopper, bus or what. If the answer was truck we could use hellfire missiles on them, same with a chopper. D noted that however we whacked the fireteam it had to be quick and very violent with no chance of escape for them. So we would need to be very close for hell fire missiles, no chance of evasion. D reminded us of the formation flying we did with a chopper in Belgium just outside the SHAPE Base. She said if we could get that close to the chopper the fireteam were on we could attach a lovely ball of C4 to a skid and use a remote detonator to blow the chopper and contents into dust. I really liked that idea. Well, not the getting that close to their chopper, but the C4 solution was fool proof. Nobody but nobody walked away or flew away from that kind of an explosion.

  “I’m pretty ok with the C4 on the chopper, if we know when or if they are flying. How do we determine that,” asks Frosty?

  “I’m a communication goddess,” smiles D, “I can hack in on their smartphones even when they are not using them to send or receive a call. I can record their conversations and by GPS I know exactly where they are.”

  “You can hack an iPhone without touching it, bypass security, read and copy the contents?” I clarify.

  “Yes, of course, it’s child’s play” replies D.

  “Apparently not to the FBI and assorted gov’t abbreviated groups,” says Frosty.

  “Don’t confuse attempting to intimidate and spank Apple for a secure device, with being unable to hack it themselves. Apple correctly told the FBI to go pound sand up their collective asses.” chuckles D.

  “Ha, I can see why the fruit company would take great delight in doing that,” I chuckle. “So therefore no matter how the fireteam moves we will know in advance and can prepare the hellfire missiles for our quad copter.”

  “We could use hell fire missiles, but let’s make it even more fool proof, if they travel by truck then you and your favorite RPG Mark 7 and a handful of rockets go for a ride under the quad copter and enjoy target practice,” replies D.

  “Now we are talking,” says Frosty. “Those RPG rounds are the shit!”

  “So, chopper and C4 is the primary option, truck and RPG is the secondary, and a ground attack head to head is the third option,” says D.

  “Hitting them in the air is superior, by truck there is a small chance if they are not immediately killed one or more could slip into the jungle and get away,” I ponder.

  “What else do we know about these guys,” asks Frosty?

  “From what I have monitored so far, they will fly into Bogota Airport, and then get briefed and equipped out and lifted by private helicopter East to the jungle village. In between the Bogota airport and the jungle village is the Chingaza National Park, which we should avoid, but once past that the buggers are fair game for us.” says D.

  “So let me get this as straight as possible, our assignment is to eliminate the fireteam, yet we are pretty sure that the US gov’t has likely told the fireteam that the
re may be resistance in the form of us folks. Therefore the US gov’t subcontractor is sacrificing a known fireteam to possibly get rid of an unknown fireteam in the form of us good guys. It really yanks their chain that they cannot get a line on who we are and how we do things doesn’t it? Moving on, if we go down in flames then the fireteam continues on and whacks the current staff of the cocaine plantation, that the US gov’t has a covert interest in. Have I got this convoluted assignment correct?” I ask.

  “That pretty much covers it as far as I can see,” says Frosty.

  “Yup, that’s the one,” says D.

  “Good christ on a stick, that’s so fucked up,” I mutter shaking my head.

  Chapter 6: Contact

  We are roughly one hundred miles from the Bogata Airport and past the east side of the Chingaza National Park. The landscape is rough mountainous and we are waiting in a pass through the mountains. It’s roughly a straight line from Bogata to the jungle village and we calculate that the Huey helicopter carrying the fireteam will want to be flying as direct as possible due to fuel constraints.

  D is monitoring “everything known to mankind” and assures us the helicopter carrying the fireteam will be along shortly. Frosty and I assembled two, three pound packages of C4 equipped with remote detonators. To ensure we get as much blast as possible passing up into the helicopter we have developed and molded the C4 into a directional shaped charge. When these puppies hanging on the skids of the Huey go bang there will literally not be anything left but dust and smoke.

  “Matt,”

  “Yeah D,”

  “I have contact,”

  The quad copter rises off the jungle floor and pauses; I walk over and connect into the harness.

  “I’m ready, connected, and good to go,”