“And that was that... That is how it ended, General?”

  The conference room lights were back up and the three men, two in semi-formal ‘Class B’ military uniforms and the other in a civilian suit, topped up on coffee.

  “The vulcanologist Ronald Thorpe died two weeks ago, before the team could evacuate and call for extraction,” said Major General William Fox, settling opposite Sly at the table. “Sam Peck’s station caretaker team operates between August and the start of the Austral summer research season in November. September isn’t a good time for travel – frankly it’s hell – but Peck and the two remaining researchers hit a lucky break in the weather and escaped without incident, taking Thorpe’s body with them.”

  “Thorpe was struck by an arrow and died? That’s true?”

  Fox took a photo from his pocket and slid it over to Sly.

  “A wooden shaft,” Fox said, measuring a gap with his hands about twenty inches, “confirmed as a crossbow bolt. Shorter than an arrow, with stiffer vanes. I’d have brought it with me, but forensics has it. It’s a murder weapon after all.”

  Sly put the photo down, then gestured to the room’s big screen.

  “This is one ominous home movie, Blair Witch Project for cavers. Why show it to me?”

  General Fox was a staff officer from the Pentagon, a man in his early forties who looked to have fallen out of a recruitment poster. A square jaw dragged his features to the hetero-side of handsome, while a kink in his short ash-blond hair hinted at curls, given a longer cut. Sly had disliked him on sight.

  A staff officer designed by AI, ten years’ my junior with a full head of hair.

  Longer acquaintance hadn’t improved his opinion. Fox’s presentation was stage-managed, tidily choreographed, and he sourly suspected the effort was entirely for his benefit. The General was laying it on thick, deliberately presenting creepy pictures of an underground facility like it was the Heaven’s Gate mansion. To Sly it felt like a personal dig. He’d known Fox for just an hour or two, but slick, stage-managed manipulation already seemed like his style.

  Likely the man had a fat file on Sly on his office desk, next to his annotated copy of ‘Dark Influence: The Hidden Tactics of Persuasion and Psychological Warfare’, he thought sourly.

  “I have no idea what Blair Witch Project was,” Fox said, holding Sly’s gaze with authority and a hint of humour. “Before my time. But you, Colonel Harris, are the director of Project Peacock, and you have a standing request for a shake-down to test, I quote, ‘non-standard military equipment’. Fourteen Green Beret volunteers are seconded to your team from the Tenth, based right here at Fort Clayson. In numbers that’s an A-Team when an uncommitted ODA is hard to find. That’s my interest in you right there, you have the manpower I need. But the Tenth is also known for its extreme winter capability, and that’s fundamental to the operation I have in mind.”

  Sly was glad he’d fixed his best diplomatic half-smile on with toupee-tape. It hadn’t slipped yet, but Fox was yanking it hard.

  “An operation, General?” he echoed. “What’s the mission and RoE?”

  Fox paused. He glanced over to the third at the conference room table, a man in his mid-thirties, impeccable in a black suit and grey tie and a St Christopher signet ring on his pinkie. When giving out introductions, Fox called him Intelligence Officer Maxwell Jarvis, CIA, and Jarvis had said, ‘how do you do’, shaking Sly’s hand.

  Since then, he’d said nothing much.

  “You’re right in calling this out as weird,” Fox conceded, eyes back on Sly. “You now know where Area 71 is, and why we have geologists there. If the US Army still believed in a flat earth, the Area 71 facility would be right on the edge, toppling off. And yet CIA analysts think it possible the caves remain occupied by hostiles. We need to check the facility from top to bottom, clear out anyone who’s staked a claim.”

  Jarvis didn’t say a word.

  Sly knew he shouldn’t say it but did anyway. “Who in the hell would bother?”

  “Right now,” Fox said, raising his hands, “we guess a state actor, given the resources needed to get to Area 71. If the Chinese are there, they came in as a spying expedition, probably unaware the facility is manned all year around. There’s no advantage in them remaining there, they’re probably gone now.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs and maybes, General Fox.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said, showing his perfect pearly whites. “Sinophobia to one side, an extremist environmental group seeking publicity is a real possibility. Area 71 is a high-profile and expensive site in a sensitive area, an opportunity for audacious, well-funded agitators to make a news splash. You asked about Rules of Engagement?”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  The way Fox said it, the term had crisp, pressed edges and starched capitals.

  “Yes. Given the location, I’d guess you want us there in a deniable capacity?”

  “You’d be armed, though not openly,” Fox agreed. “You’d take appropriate measures. Defend yourselves. Negotiate the Chinese out of there with minimum loss of life. Baton-round the environmentalists. Crap out before the site fully reopens in November.”

  Wincing inwardly at the phrasing, Sly pointed at the screen.

  “This looks like the attackers were a small group and not heavily armed. Isn’t a Special Forces detachment overkill?”

  The response wasn’t from the expected quarter.

  “Aside from the fact we already have one fatality?”

  Jarvis added to the briefing for the first time, with a faint, unamused smile.

  “Actually, I agree. If Area 71 were in the US, we’d send in patrol officers with night sticks, job done. But just the logistics of getting to the site requires great competence. And if the China Navy’s Dragon commandos are waiting, whoever goes in needs to be armed.”

  Sly sat back, content to have provoked any kind of response from Jarvis.

  Now what? Not going was not an option. Not now Fox yanked my tail.

  “Then I’m interested,” he heard himself say. “An opportunity I wouldn’t miss.”

  Fox’s eyebrows rose.

  “You’d go yourself? No offence… you’re better known as a planner working directly for the Army Oversight Investment Board. Personal supervision from an administrator of your seniority and capabilities would be… appreciated.”

  Appreciated. And surprising, obviously. Sly resented the implication that the most he usually risked was a papercut.

  “Given the nature of our equipment tests, it’s necessary.”

  “Let’s explore that for a moment,” said Fox, relaxing back, diplomatic and friendly but with the hint of an edge. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan. I’ve followed your career. Peacekeeping in the Balkans, then the Middle East, a move to the 10th Special Forces. Nine-eleven, Afghanistan and Iraq, a Bronze Star. You dropped off my radar for a while you were teaching. Then you come back working for Oversight and build Project Argos from the ground up, a multi-million dollar investment. Tell me about that.”

  Sly considered Fox for a long second, then dropped his eyes to think.

  “My first tech project,” he said finally, “was a tactical artificial intelligence system for small teams. Argos took video from bodycams, mobile phones, drones and satellites and created a shared, device-independent, three-dimensional digital twin of the war landscape, updated in near-real time.”

  “Argos made maps,” Jarvis said, mouth well hidden behind a hand.

  “Argos made damn good maps,” Sly grinned, not minding the gibe. “Argos mapped a room, a building or a town, recognized and inventoried objects and hostiles, spotted changes, and briefed SF commanders on what to expect when they entered an area.”

  Think me proud of Argos. I don’t care, I am.

  He continued, “Architecturally, Argos was an encrypted, peer-to-peer system, with an AI interface,” – Fox’s face remained carefully blank – “meaning Argos was secure, wasn’t vulnerable to a single system going down, but could answer questions posed in English, like a chatbot. Individual Argos nodes scaled infinitely and independently, co-opting spare computing power from mobile phones, desktops or mainframes – anything in the field with a processor and connectivity.”

  “Argos was a botnet,” Jarvis said flatly, “as advertized by hackers and criminals. Argos took idle processing capacity without consent. That’s theft.”

  “All’s fair in love and war,” Sly said easily. He’d had plenty of practice protecting Argos’ methods. “Botnets are no more illegal in times of conflict than bullets or bombs. These days your average smartwatch has more computing power than put men on the moon, computing power rarely used to the full. Argos only used spare NATO resources. No one noticed, no harm, no foul.”

  “Nice pitch,” said Jarvis, without irony. “How did Argos end?”

  “Argos?” He dropped the half-smile. “Oversight sold Argos to a defence software contractor four years ago. For the ‘next step in its commercial evolution’.”

  “That sounds like a phrase from a non-disclosure agreement,” Jarvis smirked.

  “I couldn’t possibly comment,” which naturally meant ‘yes’. “I can say that the AI providing your video’s subtitles is, oh, probably Argos’s third cousin.”

  “Discussing Argos is clearly... legally difficult,” said Fox, rotating a finger to move them on. “Tell me about Peacock. A strange name for a military project.”

  “The peacock is associated with acute vision and vigilance,” he said, glad to leave the topic of the legal agreement he was forced to sign. “Our project uses cutting edge sensor tech to map the health, resilience and physical skills of individual soldiers. As Argos mapped the battlefield, Peacock maps team capabilities, to help commanders find and field the right team on the fly.”

  “And now you want to test Peacock in hostile environments?”

  “For most values of ‘hostile’,” he looked at Jarvis, “yes.”

  Sly saw Fox’s eyes flicker, frown, focus above Sly’s eyes.

  “A recent accident?”

  Sly ran a hand over the scar over his left eye, running from the orbit to under the hairline. The depth of the canyon in his forehead even now shocked his fingers.

  “A couple of years ago, I had an accident while skiing with the unit. Banged over by an avalanche.”

  I caught a rock with my face and was hospitalized... but then you know that.

  “Unfortunate perhaps, but now I’m better than new.”

  “Get checked out,” Fox dismissed it. “If the medics agree, you’re good to go.”

  Sly watched as Jarvis shuffled his papers, signalling the end of the meeting. That was enough to confirm the CIA officer as a fraud – Sly hadn’t used a printer since 2020. He focused past Jarvis to the big screen and the last frozen image from the bodycam montage. A closeup of Adrian Allen’s face.

  Reflected as a tiny, distorted image in Allen’s wide eyes, Ronald Thorpe’s warped, tortured face stared out.