E-War had an entire floor of the Branch 35 complex to itself. Their operations room put the war room to shame. E-War’s ops room was the official remote command center for operations. Mobile command vehicles, M-coms, were always there for any real op but the big ones ... the ops that involved aircraft, four or more strike teams, dozens of support personnel, and fell under the highest priority missions ... those used Ops Command. Kira finally rated high enough to run her missions from Ops Command this time, if she wanted to that was. She was a street operative for a long time. The dirty, run-down streets of Arcadia’s backwater slums where gangs large and small squabbled over turf smaller than a single city block day in and day out were her stomping grounds. Kira was raised in the trenches. She wanted to be leading from the front, rifle in hand with the rest of the troops, but one of the drawbacks of commanding a large scale operation like this was a need to see the whole picture constantly. That meant being in Ops Command instead.
Someone was throwing up a bunch of chatter near the target, but their security was giving E-War a run for their money, which was an impressive feat to say the least. As one tech had put it, “no one layer is particularly difficult but there’s more layers here than an overgrown vidalia onion on steroids.”
E-War was apparently able to brute force it in about five minutes if they wanted to, but the silent approach required roughly 60 seconds per layer over 30 or more layers. The amateurish implementation was not helping them either. Fortunately they weren’t limited to that as their main method of tracking their target. E-War’s reach was seemingly infinite. It wasn’t clear if their mark had already vacated the premises but if she was still there then there would inevitably be a massive gunfight. 2B was not going to be taken down quietly.
The teams were mobilizing in V-72 Kaiju aircraft for fast response. Among the transport birds was also an AV-72F model, a VTOL gunship with enough firepower to level the building they were preparing to storm. All the birds were warmed up and ready to go, just pending positive ID on the target. The drone circling over north Gahjotia would make short work of that. The overhead feed of the dilapidated warehouse commandeered the largest region of Ops Command’s wall-to-wall display. “MSIP online, scanning.”
The multi-spectral imaging platform: an absolute miracle of modern optical tech. The suite equipped to the drone could tell them height, gender, approximate age, and the class of weapon drawn, all through the roof of the structure being surveilled. If their target, Baines, so much as stepped outside of that building, E-War would have positive identification in seconds. That though required her to step outside. By the drone’s live feed, that moment appeared to have passed. Every body detected within the building appeared very dead, and the live bodies were mostly in vehicles already. The few who were successfully identified were just meaningless grunts that could be tracked down and interrogated later.
“Shit, they’re already on the move!” Takeda swore, scrambling for a contingency, “can we retask more drones? We cannot lose any of these victors!”
“Negative boss not before we lose half of them,” came the disappointing status report.
“Then what satellites are overhead right now?”
Drones could provide better imaging in almost every case but tracking a lot of objects in a relatively large area was one realm that a satellite could in fact produce better results.
“None of our own,” again the E-War team making a disappointing report, “but uh, we have Drake Tech’s OnyxSat overhead for the next ninety minutes.”
“Steal that. We never did get along with Drake Tech anyway,” she gave her orders and then stepped towards the back of the room.
A moment to breathe was pleasant. They were too late to grab Baines, and if she slipped away now then all the effort put into tracking her was for nought. It was a frustrating thought that could cloud her judgement were she not careful. Her moment of peace truly was only a moment though before something else interfered. A new face had shown up bearing gifts ... or work. Manilla folders were enigmatic like that. “S.S.A. Takeda?”
That was her cue to go back to work. “Yes that’s my name, don’t wear it out kid.”
“Looks like Panopticon is trying to kiss our asses from earlier. They sent over contact info for over two dozen deep cover assets and recent intelligence reports. I’ve been going through them and I found something your boss told me to show you A.S.A.P.”
Kira took the folder from the messenger and flipped it open on an empty nearby workstation. “What’s your name kid?”
“Agent Sam Irwin ...ma’am.”
“I’ll accept Sir if it makes a woman outranking you easier Agent.”
“It's not that, its... are you really a Yakuza hitman?” he chomped on his foot, promptly backpedalling “I mean before you were Jian, of course ...”
“Almost six years. And before you ask, yes I am exactly as dangerous as everyone has led you to believe and this is good shit Agent,” Kira’s train of thought jumping the tracks part way through responding.
The junior agent just nodded, impressed at her reputation and thankful he had been useful. Kira flagged one of the E-War techs and started privately discussing the file. Irwin took a step to try and hear but before he could do any real eavesdropping, it was over. “Get a drone up over Lawrence Plaza, south tower. I don’t care what we need to retask. I want eyes there now!”
“Sir that’s all the way in Pleiades-”
“Source from Panopticon inside Bachman & Clench says Nazyashi is making a move from there. Bachman & Clench is on the 23rd floor of Lawrence Plaza number four tower, south. We’re looking for their courier. If Nazyashi is making a move then we’re intercepting their play and hijacking it for our own purposes.”
A switch had flipped in Takeda. Before all of Jian was gearing up to take on 2B, the Black Brethren. Now the op she was running had seemingly changed gears to hunt the package manually, and to screw over Nazyashi. “What are we looking for then?”
“We want their courier when they leave the tower. Remembering how the Consortium works, they will be poor, unkempt, and uncomfortable. They will likely appear out of place in Pleiades and under duress. Background will be low income, high susceptibility to blackmail. If they still prey on the same type I remember, expect a young female, 16 to 28 ... keep an eye out for hand injuries.”
Kira turned to leave Ops Command, “I’m gonna need my gear,” muttered under her breath.
“How’d you know all that? It wasn’t in the intel I found ...” Agent Sam asked as she passed by.
“Yakuza hitman, remember? Now Agent I need you to get in contact with that source. Panopticon must have given us a way to contact them. Find out everything you can about that courier and bring it to the guys here in Ops Command.”
Both of them left the room and went separate ways down the halls.
Agent Sam was back in not quite fifteen minutes with yet another ambiguous manilla folder in hand. The Panopticon asset inside Bachman & Clench had answered his phone and paved the way to El Dorado for them. He had a full face and clothing description for the E-War techs to apply to the tracking software. To make matters easier, the recording storage on the lobby cameras was poorly secured behind basic login and drive encryption. At his suggestion, they were able to run back the lobby cams to find her entering and make the tracking data that much more complete. Face identification would give them background info soon enough. Takeda was right it seemed that Nazyashi Consortium preferred young women. It should have surprised no one in Jian at this point, but the junior agent was not yet a grizzled pessimist. He feared for what that syndicate of criminals had planned for her.
‘S.S.A. Takeda,’ as he knew her, came back with her usual complement of bad guy harming tools, ready to dash out on a moment's notice. As if by providence, that moment came almost the instant she re-entered the room. “Target acquired! Courier just showed up in the lobby. Drone is ready to track.”
Without a word, Kira was gone, dashing down the hallway at a dead run. William Card had come to check on her around this time, hoping she was no longer interested in berating him, and was nearly put on the ground. “Kira where are you running!” he had to yell after her for she was stopping for no man.
“Found an asset!” was all she had the time to answer before reaching the stairwell doors and heading for the garage.
Card turned his head to see Sam Irwin staring dumbfounded outside Ops Command and went to pursue answers. “She should be on channel 5,” he muttered as he put in his earpiece, “Oh shit ... she’s mirroring.”
Agent Irwin was confused at whatever Card saw on the main display. “Sir?”
“She's thinking with her rage and not her head.”
