Origen
06-14-2007, 11:04 PM
"Hello? Can anybody hear me?" the young girl said.
The uniformed men sitting around the table watched on the black and white screen as the girl pounded on the door in the small room. One of them lifted a remote control, and muted the sound. John Smith stood up in front of the men. Most smoked cigarettes; another couple of them smoked cigars. At the back of the room stood a thin man wearing dark glasses and a trenchcoat. Military aides stood faithfully by, sometimes refilling coffee or taking secure cellphone calls. As ashtrays overflowed, the aides emptied without a word. He prepared for the barrage of questions:
"How many undead entities were found?"
"Fifty-eight spread over a radius of one mile," John replied. "All were level three and four threats. Eight were located and put down outside the cemetary."
"Was this an arcane or biochemical outbreak?"
"We believe it was arcane in nature. Tissue and blood samples revealed no traces of biochemical agents. As well, we found evidence of a ritual at ground zero, and have detained the young woman you see on the screen. Based on her testimony, we are now searching two remote sites for possible artifacts, especially scrolls and codices. We have witches and psychics on the ground doing scans at both sites."
Some of the men in the room shifted uncomfortably in their chairs when John said that.
"I trust you're keeping them on a short leash," one of them murmured. John ignored him.
"Do we have plausible deniability about the girl?"
"Presently, our cover story is that she is among the dead on site," John said, "and her body has not yet been recovered. If she can be released, someone will find her several miles away wandering and bloody, unable to remember what happened."
"The short answer, please?"
"Short answer: yes. Plausible deniability is firmly in place, as are contingency plans."
The men in the room nodded. John coughed slightly as the smoke rose around him.
"How many casualties?"
"Twenty-five," John said. "Nine military, sixteen civilian. Our cover story was a natural gas leak, with the explanation that the civilians were in the funeral home. Two of the soldiers had to be shot by their own fire teams."
"I'm surprised that 'natural gas leak' story still works," commented one of the generals sitting at the table. John ignored him.
"All in all, the operation was a success. We were able to test the newly developing units against a containable threat. There were casualties, but leaders are also emerging amongst the teams. The gear we outfitted them with included radios with backchannels so that we could monitor them in real time. It gave us the jump on getting advanced teams out to the farmhouse owned by a family where a cache of codices and scrolls were located late this morning. One of the operators onsite interrogated the girl we now have in custody, and communications forwarded that information to intelligence as the conversation took place in realtime. Some aspects were less successful. Our command units tested chemical weapons and a few arcane devices which were unsuccessful. At this time, it appears that conventional weapons are still the best for dealing with these threats. Chemical compounds were administered to two infected soldiers to see if some sort of control could be established over them in their undead forms, and these were also ineffective. The water-cooled ghillie suits showed that the theories about infrared vision or some sort of 'life sense' in the undead were a red herring."
John tapped his notes in a neat pile, and laid them on the table.
"Any other questions? No? Then I'll hand out these DVDs which will give you video of the operation captured by a stealth helicopter that hovered over the operation, and recorded the whole event."
The uniformed men sitting around the table watched on the black and white screen as the girl pounded on the door in the small room. One of them lifted a remote control, and muted the sound. John Smith stood up in front of the men. Most smoked cigarettes; another couple of them smoked cigars. At the back of the room stood a thin man wearing dark glasses and a trenchcoat. Military aides stood faithfully by, sometimes refilling coffee or taking secure cellphone calls. As ashtrays overflowed, the aides emptied without a word. He prepared for the barrage of questions:
"How many undead entities were found?"
"Fifty-eight spread over a radius of one mile," John replied. "All were level three and four threats. Eight were located and put down outside the cemetary."
"Was this an arcane or biochemical outbreak?"
"We believe it was arcane in nature. Tissue and blood samples revealed no traces of biochemical agents. As well, we found evidence of a ritual at ground zero, and have detained the young woman you see on the screen. Based on her testimony, we are now searching two remote sites for possible artifacts, especially scrolls and codices. We have witches and psychics on the ground doing scans at both sites."
Some of the men in the room shifted uncomfortably in their chairs when John said that.
"I trust you're keeping them on a short leash," one of them murmured. John ignored him.
"Do we have plausible deniability about the girl?"
"Presently, our cover story is that she is among the dead on site," John said, "and her body has not yet been recovered. If she can be released, someone will find her several miles away wandering and bloody, unable to remember what happened."
"The short answer, please?"
"Short answer: yes. Plausible deniability is firmly in place, as are contingency plans."
The men in the room nodded. John coughed slightly as the smoke rose around him.
"How many casualties?"
"Twenty-five," John said. "Nine military, sixteen civilian. Our cover story was a natural gas leak, with the explanation that the civilians were in the funeral home. Two of the soldiers had to be shot by their own fire teams."
"I'm surprised that 'natural gas leak' story still works," commented one of the generals sitting at the table. John ignored him.
"All in all, the operation was a success. We were able to test the newly developing units against a containable threat. There were casualties, but leaders are also emerging amongst the teams. The gear we outfitted them with included radios with backchannels so that we could monitor them in real time. It gave us the jump on getting advanced teams out to the farmhouse owned by a family where a cache of codices and scrolls were located late this morning. One of the operators onsite interrogated the girl we now have in custody, and communications forwarded that information to intelligence as the conversation took place in realtime. Some aspects were less successful. Our command units tested chemical weapons and a few arcane devices which were unsuccessful. At this time, it appears that conventional weapons are still the best for dealing with these threats. Chemical compounds were administered to two infected soldiers to see if some sort of control could be established over them in their undead forms, and these were also ineffective. The water-cooled ghillie suits showed that the theories about infrared vision or some sort of 'life sense' in the undead were a red herring."
John tapped his notes in a neat pile, and laid them on the table.
"Any other questions? No? Then I'll hand out these DVDs which will give you video of the operation captured by a stealth helicopter that hovered over the operation, and recorded the whole event."