God's Dogs Book 2

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.

Michael Porter

The trip home was uneventful. No Super A.I. berating them for causing a political crisis. Even when they met with Master Lu, he indicated the Congress expressed no complaints.

That was puzzling, and Quinn voiced it in Lu’s office. “One of the representatives was antagonistic.”

“I read that in your report,” Lu said. “My thinking is the outcome exceeded their expectations, and that representative was allowed to file his concerns as part of a minority report, and the case was closed.”

“The guy couldn’t take a joke,” Moss muttered.

Lu rejoined, “Fear of the numinous has a dampening effect on humor.”

“I guess,” Moss shrugged. “I thought it was a great solution. I didn’t know Quinn’s Higher Self could be so tricky.”

Lu rejoined, “It has the normal elegance we associate with channeled solutions, even to providing more evidence that humankind should not be in the patronage network.”

“Okay.” Quinn was ready to move on. “What’s next?”

“A problem with one of the former empire worlds. A regional headquarters for their clandestine services, both the internal secret police and their off-world operatives, trained at facilities on this world.

“We didn’t fully root them out during the war, and now they are contesting with the planetary government for control. There’s enough support in the citizenry for them to do so through the election process, but they know the League will intervene once they violate the ‘force and fraud’ clauses in their charter.

“They want some kind of dictatorship in place, which is fine on the face of it, but their plan is to withdraw from the League once they gain power. Our information is the majority of the citizenry is opposed to this course of action, and the interim government requested help.”

Moss sighed. “What a mess.”

“It is,” Lu concurred. “Jolene and Rand are already there with their teams, but it’s not enough. You’ll leave to reinforce them in two days.”

“I like Jolene,” River said as they stood to leave. "We were in the same candidate class."

Moss snorted at that and River grinned at him.

“Welcome to Dresden,” Rand told them when they exited the shuttle. It wasn’t a very enthusiastic greeting as Rand was a reserved, dark-skinned, lean man, older than Quinn. He did possess a sharp wit, which Moss was the target of long ago.

Dresden was a cool world with ice caps reaching past the arctic and antarctic circles. Half water, half large continents, its axial tilt was minimal, which flattened out the seasons. The single moon was large, and that contributed to active seas and busy plate tectonics. The terraforming blended the local flora with Earth derivatives, and the fauna now competed with the imported livestock.

Even so, it was not an agricultural world. There were, instead, large cities below looming space stations. Since it was a regional hub for the empire in its heyday, there were also large military bases. All of those were occupied by League militia garrisons now, and the space stations held marine forces and marshals.

Quinn’s team breathed in the crisp air of the planet after they landed at one of the military bases. Rand’s team greeted them with hugs and offered to carry their bags.

“Hey, Quinn,” came a shout as they headed off the tarmac toward the officer barracks, and they all turned to see Staff Sergeant Dayo Blessing trotting up to them.

The team broke into smiles and hugged the limber black woman and introduced her to Rand’s team.

Blessing told them, “Yakooni is here, too, but the rest of the squad caught other billets. Are we going to see some action with you guys?”

Quinn looked toward Rand who shrugged. Quinn answered, “I don’t know. We just got here.”

Rand sighed. “It’s highly likely. We’ll need to work out a strategy first.”

“OK,” Blessing said. “We’re in Bravo Company. Just so you know.”

She turned to trot off with, “Good to see you guys.”

As she left, Rand told them, “We’ve got Penglai militia here because the bad guys like to suborn the troops.”

“Good luck with that,” Moss chuckled. Penglai militia were noted for their integrity and resilience against bribery.

“It’s tapered off to nothing,” Rand agreed, “but Penglai militia has only been here a month. There was a lot a damage before that.”

They reached the barracks and dropped off their gear to reconvene with Rand’s team at a rather plush conference room. Leather, high-backed chairs, teak wood, long oval table, state-of-the-art holo-gear, side tables with snacks and drinks. The walls were bare, and River figured the pictures that used to hang there glorified the empire.

Rand punched the controls for the holo-projector, and the city by the base bloomed into three dimensions in the center of the conference table.

“This is New Bohn,” he began. “It’s a major stronghold for the Dresden Nationalist Party – the former empire’s people, both civilian and government. Jolene’s team is dealing with the two satellite headquarters on the other major continent. This one is our nut to crack. It’s their main base.

“New Bohn is a city of ten million people, and over half of them are sympathetic or directly working for the DNP. That includes about 5,000 trained operatives of either the secret police or the off-world espionage organization FAST.”

Quinn cut in, “Any kind of frontal assault is out. Any kind of cutting off the snake’s head is problematic. That leaves limited surgical strikes with the probability of compromised intel screwing it up.”

“My read as well,” Rand said “Hence, your team. They undoubtedly know you’re here, but not for what purpose.”

Quinn nodded. “We infiltrate, find their leadership, and call you in.”

“I think so,” Rand equivocated, “but I suspect they are clever enough to set up layers of defenses.”

“Use their own leaders as bait?” Moss queried.

“Possibly. That could give you a false trail and you’d capture the wrong people, or their evac procedures are good enough so that you’d only get a dry hole.”

Quinn said, “Or we become the bait and the militia closes the trap.”

Rand sat back in the plush chair. “It’s what I was thinking, but it feels off. I’m missing something.”

Then he looked at his team for input. They were C-Sharp, an intense-looking Asian woman, Micki, a strong-featured Latina, and Saul, a smooth-skinned, wiry man of Berber descent.

“Of course, there’s something off,” Saul said. “They’ve had generations to prepare, and the population is either collaborating with the DNP, or they’re intimidated by them.”

Micki added, “We do have our network of former resistance fighters. When the war was still on, they mounted an effective campaign against the regime. They keep us informed as best they can.”

“It’s spotty, though,” C-Sharp noted. “They’ve been adversaries for so long that they know each other well. OpSec is good on both sides.”

Moss interjected, “So we kick over the anthill and see what happens.”

Micki countered, “The brute squad would react in a predictable way to that, but not the operatives.”

Quinn asked, “Do we know their immediate objective?”

“Politically,” Rand replied, “they are trying to form a coalition with the other factions that’s going nowhere. Most of the other factions don’t trust the DNP. They know it’s a smokescreen for something else. The probable long-term objective is to own the water processing infrastructure. This isn’t a water-rich planet. Whoever owns the water pretty much owns the world.”

“Who owns the water now?” River asked.

“The transition government – basically the League,” Rand answered. “The security isn’t very tight, but so far there hasn’t been an attempt to take it over.”

Pax responded, “Would they use it to introduce water-borne viruses?”

“That’s our biggest fear,” C-Sharp said. “And there are too many places where they could drop in their bio-weapons, if they have any.”

Quinn remarked, “That should be a last stand tactic. I’m sure they have a plan for it, but they want something else.”

Rand agreed. “Yeah. That’s what I’m missing.”

That comment prompted a pause, and they relaxed back from the table. River and Micki refilled their coffee cups at the side table. Quinn sat back and closed his eyes. The others chatted among themselves.

The implant A.I.s shared data on their network, ran probability routines, but didn’t come to a consensus on what the DNP’s immediate objective might be.

Eventually, Moss announced, “It’s us. They want to kill a Coyote team. The propaganda value alone would be worth it. The damage to League morale would be worth it. And it would create an opportunity to attack when the militia was on its heels.”

Quinn’s eyes popped open. “Then we give them what they want.”