This was originally planned as a six-man operation. Well, actually, it was
only going to be five men, but they lucked into finding Mateo, and decided
that he would be a good sacrifice. It’s going to be a dangerous mission, but
if Mateo doesn’t help, the rogue veterans say that they’ll out him as a fake
Dominus. So Leona, Ramses, and Heath agreed to participate as well, so he
wouldn’t have to do it alone. The military guys were hesitant, because they
don’t understand that this is not at all the first mission they’ve been on.
It’s just the first one they can talk about with these people. Heath is the
least experienced, though, so he was assigned to stay with The Olimpia to
provide air support, along with Captain Tarboda Hobson. They have lucked
into having a fancy flying carboat submarine too. Perhaps it is the
once-immortal time travelers who should be leading this superhero team-up
adventure. Ah, yes, that’s the new plan.
Here’s the mission. A cargo ship is headed for the states, carrying
perfectly normal goods, and also a bunch of innocent women and children to
be sold into sex slavery. This is the consequence the country faces when it
comes to religious freedoms. Slavery is not legal, but there are ways around
getting caught by declaring privacy, exploiting loopholes, and executing
well-coordinated timing. If they travel from the right port, and arrive at
the right port, at the right time, they’ll be able to unload the trafficked
people, and erase all evidence that they were there. The rogue vets intend
to intercept this ship in international waters. This will be illegal,
because it’s considered a form of privacy, and there’s no explaining that
away. It’s this whole thing. That’s why they’re doing it, because if teams
like them don’t, no one will.
The superempathy that Ramses built into their new bodies—which is still, for
whatever reason, strongest in Mateo—allows them to sense each other’s
feelings. That’s what it was designed to do, so they can at least
communicate as much amongst the team members without anyone else noticing or
knowing about it. To a certain degree, this also gives them a heightened
sense of general empathy, which works on anyone they meet who happens to
have a soul. It’s not perfect, but it gives them a pretty good idea when
someone is lying. According to Mateo’s readings, the rogues are telling the
truth about the mission, and their convictions. They’re not saints, but they
believe that what they’re doing is right, and Mateo does not believe that
the people running the ship don’t deserve what’s coming to them.
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.
Here’s the plan as they drew it up after three more people signed on. Seven
of the nine members of the taskforce are meant to sneak onto the ship from
below, and break off into two teams. Technically, three of the soldiers are
on one team, and two of the travelers are on another, but they’ll be moving
throughout the vessel together. While Mateo and Ebraim go up to commandeer
the bridge, the rescue team will head for the shipping containers of
abductees. The strike team, lead by Goran, will protect both the rescuers,
and the refugees that they find. Any help they might need from the outside
will be provided by Heath and Tarboda on the fourth team.
It’s not safe, and it’s not guaranteed they’ll win, but the biggest issue
with this plan is that people will most likely die. It might not be any of them, or even
any of the refugees, but Team Matic is not fully okay with that. For various
reasons, they’ve had to kill occasionally, but it’s never been something
they’ve planned. Well, there was that one time Leona conscripted an
alternate version of Reaver to stab Ulinthra with a dagger that erases her
from time. And when she murdered Erlendr Preston in the afterlife
simulation, it was pretty premeditated. But other than that, killing has
been a last resort. This is so calculated, so intentional, and therefore
so...wrong. So that’s not what they’re going to do. Instead, the time
travelers manage to lock all of the soldiers in the galley, and steer their
boat as far away from the intercept point as possible. They get free, but
Ramses teleports away at the last second. When he arrives back on the
Olimpia, the real mission begins.
They do sneak onto the cargo ship, and they do rescue the refugees, but they
don’t kill anyone, and they don’t make a mess of things. They escort them
all onto a lifeboat, drop it into the water, and distract all the guards and
whatnot with a small explosion in the engine room, using explosives they
stole from the rogues. The secret plan goes off without a hitch, and no one
is the wiser.
The rogues are pissed when they break down the door, and make it back to the
location of The Olimpia, having missed out on all the action. But they’ll
get over it, and besides, it’s not like there’s no more work for them to do.
It will be their responsibility to tow the lifeboat to safety. Do they have
to go back to Santo Domingo? Will the U.S. take them in for asylum? Will
another country? These are questions that Team Matic can’t answer, but there
is one question that they can respond to quite swiftly.
“You will get those people to safety, wherever that might be. You will not
return to the cargo ship to kill all those criminals, or harm them in any
way. They are dead in the water, so you will contact the authorities
anonymously, and let them do whatever it is they do. You will not tell
anyone about what you know of Mateo’s situation, or even that you met any of
us at all. If this is not clear, then I will kindly point out that we
managed to achieve everything you wanted on our own, without any of them
seeing our faces, or being able to tell you how we did it. I don’t know what
you’ll take from that, but if I were you, I would start to think that I
underestimated us at first. There is no telling what else we can do when
properly motivated. Is any of this not making sense?” Leona Matic
understands astrophysics and technology. She knows main sequence film
history through the year 2028. But goddammit if delivering threats isn’t her
best feature. The men all nod silently, now sufficiently afraid to do
anything to anger her. This is where they leave it.
While the soldiers drive off to finish the mission without further
supervision, the Olimpia heads farther out, to the exact center of the
mysterious Bermuda Triangle. They were dubious that they would find anything
out here, which is why Mateo and Leona chose to check it off the list of
special temporal locations while getting a short vacation out of it. The
fact that they can teleport in this region, just as they could near the site
of The Constant, is interesting to say the least.
No comments :
Post a Comment