The Sovereigns Conference Room
Chief General of Commands, Bundaris Stras, dressed in his previously mentioned grey suit, tie, and immaculately combed hair, arrives alone in a room with Her Eminence Goaldinhoe in her personal Conference room. The room wasn’t anything spectacular, but served its purpose well enough with a circular table in the center of the room, a large display monitor covering one wall, and a kitchenette occupying one corner, which was where the Chief Bundaris headed first to fetch himself some food and drink.
“Would you like a coffee, tea, perhaps mind trashing beverage to chase away your troubles?” He asked, while taking a can of soda and a Chocolate Éclair from the fridge.
“No, thank you, Bundy.” The Sovereign, Faith, replied with a slightly amused smile, seated on the table with feet up on a chair, and dressed in the same black attire she’d been donned with since her favorite little commoner, Camilla, ripped off the head of her best medic. The Sovereign and Chief no longer stood on ceremony when alone together. They’d known each other personally for a good number of years, and were basically on casual nickname terms with each other.
Bundaris pulled up on the table beside her - feet up on a chair as well - cracked open the beverage and took a long chug before belching and nodding to the éclair on the table between them. “Help yourself,” He said, “Prolly not best I finish that tasty bastard, since I’m trying to watch my weight of late.”
Faith laughed light-heartedly, since the Chief was probably the fittest man she knew. His 6 feet 7 inch, hefty build consisted mostly of muscle. His chest was truly a barrel of power, matching his deep baritone voice to a T. Knowing he was only joking about the need to watch his weight, she went on to bring up the matter at hand.
“So how many dead?” She asked, ending the question with a little sigh as she prepared herself for the worst.
“It’s not so bad, Faithy.” He replied, leaning in to give her a nudge with his elbow, “Only about two hundred and fifty thousand presumed dead at this stage.”
She furrowed her brow, bemused. “I didn’t think the Yathon population even consisted of that many individuals?”
“Then I suppose you can consider them all dead.” He told her, and took the first bite from the Éclair before setting it back down on the plate. Waiting till after he swallowed, he wiped a bit of chocolate from the corner of his mouth with his thumb, adding; “Really quite the mess as well. The virus really made them lose control of their bowels. Must have been quite an uncomfortable way to go. The whole damn place reeks of feces and death.”
“I really don’t need to hear those sorts of details,” She said, and took her own bite of the éclair.
He chuckled; “In any case, I’ve dispatched a fleet of vessels and air crew to quarantine the Island and surrounding effected land masses. Once the areas been purified, I’m supposing we’ll have a new area to build on.”
“Aright then.” She placed what was left of the pastry on the plate. “Perhaps we could allocate those islands for military and scientific experiments of our own in the future.”
“Perhaps we could, yes.”
“That’s not going to limit our resources in regards to our Badlands, I hope.” She said, sounding a little concerned. “Sending those ships and aircraft over there?”
“Not at all!” He assured her, “We still have more than enough vessels and soldiers to work with. Construction of more military vessels are currently underway as well.”
Faith puckered her lips to one side thoughtfully for a moment, then asked; “Any word on what caused the virus?”
“Uh, yeah, sort of.” He told her. “Turns out the Yathon were dabbling in a few adverse cloning techniques. They must have screwed up at some point, creating said virus in the process. Their own science killed them.”
“Clones?” She screwed up her face inquisitively.
“Yeah, heh!” He laughed at the memory of it. “Those clones they made; weirdest bunch of freaks I’ve ever seen. No real facial features at all. Every dead drone we found was wearing a white mask to cover up their lack of features. I guess they felt a little self-conscious.”
“Be sure to take records of their cloning techniques. Maybe we can improve on them.” She said, and stole a sip from his can of soft drink.
“Already done.” He confirmed.
(The following map displays the former nation of Yathon, and the surrounding islands seized by the Zandor Empire, all quarantined to prevent spread of the deadly virus to the rest of the planet. This land is now owned by the Zandor Empire.)
“Mmm, cherry soda,” Faith said, handing the can back to him. “And how about the Badlands project? Everything running as planned?”
“Well, just a few little hiccups – but ah! That reminds me.” Bundaris replied, reaching back to grab a remote from the table behind him. “Check this out, Faithy.” Pointing the remote control at the view screen on the wall in front of them, the Chief pressed a button. The screen came alive with a quick flicker before displaying a detailed image of the Badlands in its entirety. Only one of the many dimensional video images taken by Detec 1.
“What is all that?” She said, leaning her head curiously to analyse the details.
“That there, my little Faithy,” He said in no modest way, and placing one big arm around her shoulders, “Is the underbelly of the Kradam Domain!”
Faith stared in stricken awe at the image before her; a vast and intricate subterranean network of cities and passages spanning the entirety of the Vos Nation (The Badlands).
The Chief sat smiling broad, pleased with the achievement of his military in finally developing a means to look into the world of their neighbouring nation.
“But I don’t understand – I mean I know Transespial Imagery was developed to see what our other imagery technology’s aren’t able to see….” She said, shaking her head at the view in front of her; “But how did the Kradam actually manage to hide this from us? What we have here is… not even believable. How in God’s name did they manage to deceive us for so long? Some sort of illusionary technology?”
“Actually, that’s our best guess at the moment!” The Chief said. He raised the control again at the view screen and pressed another button. The image changed to a surface shot of the Badlands, revealing four structures near the center of the land. He zoomed in on the four structures as he continued to say; “Those four objects, as you said, we also believe to be responsible for the illusion. They must be some variety of mass illusion generators designed to display their land and everything they built beneath it as nothing more than wasteland and rock. Quite advanced technology, as you can very well imagine, Faithy.”
Faith closed her mouth, shaking her head to regain composure. “So what are we dealing with, Bundy? What’s the plan?”
“We’re going in.” He told her straight. “Using these images as maps, we are at the moment devising a plan of infiltration. We’re going to go in, do some up-close and personal research, find out where our missing people are, and bring them all home safely, that is, of course, if there’s any of our people still alive. If there’s no one left to save, however….” He finished with a heavy sigh, “Then I suppose our next plan will of a different nature.”
“Do it.” She said, turning her wide eyes at him. “Do anything you need to do. Any time you need to. It’s your call.”
“That’s all I needed to hear!” He said, leaning in to give her a kiss to the nose. “I’m planning on sending our first wave of troops in at dawn.”
“Be careful.” She said.
“You know me!” He chuckled, placing the controller to the side. “Careful as care can be. Always!”
“I mean it!” She said, half smiling with admiration of her young Chief. “Don’t do anything stupid. I don’t want to lose more people if It can be helped.”
“You have my word, Faithy.”
“Thank you. Now go and bring my children home!” She placed her hand on his leg and gave it a squeeze.
“There is just one other thing before I go!” He said, with his most charming of smiles. “You up for a little play time with your favorite stud?”
She smiled, rubbing his thigh with her hand. “I could actually really do with a good hammering right about now.”
“Then consider me your hammer!” He said, jumping to his feet.
“Over the table then, like last time?”
“Works for me!”
((I have nation plot reasons for including the latter activity. Wasn't just there for diviant reasons.))
One and a half years ago, Her Eminence Goaldinhoe’s sanctioning of the movement to find her missing people by any means possible, gave birth to a great number of revolutionary developments. The following is an example of one such technology.
Third Instalment of Visual and Sensory
Transespial Imagery
Transespial Image Technology, Was devised by the leading Zandor Military surveillance scientist, in a desperate attempt to do what standard radio waves, microwaves, infrared, light, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma rays weren’t able to do in finding what lies beneath the Badlands. Transespial rays works on the principle of passing mass quantities of highly accelerated monatomic anions through subatomic levels of matter by way of artificially made micro singularities, ultimately bypassing types of elusion/negative based matter and concentrating solely on positive matter responses in order to formulate an image construct of the targeted area.
Side note: I’m obviously not a scientist.
