From:	"Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk>
Subject:	Office Relocation
Date:	Thu, 18 Jul 1996 22:59:42 +0100

*****INTERNAL: SIGANet
>>>>>[TO: D J H Coppinger, Director
+++++begin trideo
The view is from a camera in the corner of a small office: the stamp in
the top corners show time and date, and a grid reference: D 45-3-193A.
The walls look recently painted in a pleasant shade of green, but the
floor is still mud-coloured industrial carpet tile, worn threadbare: you
wonder how many decades it took to do that.

The room is about four metres on a side, and holds three desks, a file
cabinet, and a corner table with a coffee machine and other
paraphernalia: it is crowded, no doubt about that. Though the ceiling
lights are bright and warm, there's no window: it's not much bigger than
a jail cell and much more cramped.

You have a few minutes to examine the room more carefully: all three
desks have terminals on them, and two of the walls are decorated with an
assortment of photographs, one wall mostly of people in or by aircraft.
A fair-size chunk of aircraft fuselage is one prominent decoration, with
eleven red stars visible on it, and a holopic of a Venom fighter in
front of a framed poem - John Gillespie McGee's "High Flight".

The other wall's pictures have fewer aircraft, more helicopters, and
more group shots: a foot-long length of rotor blade is marked with seven
white stars. There is also a framed certificate, the writing large
enough for you to read.

THE MISSION: ORDNANCE ON TARGET
1. Air superiority is what we do on the way to and from your target.
2. Offensive maneuvering combat is what we do when some fucker tries to
stop you reaching your target. It offends us when he gets in our way,
and we are even more offended when we have to waste time and fuel
killing him.
3. We win by killing the enemy by the hundreds on the ground, not one at
a time at 20,000 feet.
4. We can go shoot down the entire enemy air force, but if we land to
find gomers dug in on the golf course and their tanks parked outside
the O-Club, we done lost the war, Jack.

The door opens and two people walk in: a tall woman, exotically
beautiful with long dark-red hair, wearing a flight suit and A2 leather
jacket; and a lean, pale-skinned and dark-haired man in camouflage BDUs.
"...still don't believe they did this to us."
"We're going up in the world, Jason. Look at it that way." The woman
takes her peaked cap off, hangs it on the back of the door: the man
tosses his onto a desk and sits down, shaking out his long, black hair.
"Plus it means we don't tie up so much Link-21 and SIGANet when there's
a problem."
"Yeah, but still. An _office_. Next you know it'll be suits and ties."
"Not a hope. We're field personnel. And spooks, in the SIGA section.
That's why we're in working kit instead of dress blues, Coppinger just
ignores the memos of complaint."
"I don't mind parade dress, ours looks good. You're just upset because
Air Force dress blues make you look like a bus driver."
"Better a bus driver than a bellhop, Jason."
"Yeah, well, I'll hop any belle I see-"

The door opens again and a third man enters, a lieutenant (senior) in
Navy whites. He looks at the pair for a moment.
"Marine, don't you know how to salute a superior?" His tone is
humourously overdone, rather than hectoring. Lynch leaps to his feet and
comes to rigid attention.
"SIR! THE MARINE IS UNCOVERED! AND INDOORS! AND THEREFORE BY MARINE
REGULATIONS IS NOT CURRENTLY REQUIRED TO SALUTE THE LIEUTENANT, SIR!"
His delivery overloads the camera mike slightly, and the effect on the
sailor - at the point-blank range enforced by the small office - is
startling, as he falls backwards into a chair.
"Okay, okay, I get the idea. Uh, I know I kind of outrank you two, but
Mr Coppinger said that I wasn't to do anything about it. In fact, that
you two were in charge and hell with ranks."
"Good. In that case, first things first." Lilith holds out a mug.
"Black, five sugars."
"Uh. Okay. Lieutenant Robert Tarkington, UCAS Navy." The lieutenant
shrugs, takes the cup and fills it, adds the required amount of sugar,
passes it back to Lilith.

"Tarkington? _Toad_ Tarkington of VF-143? The Furry Fighting Feline's
very own Horny Toad?" Lilith offers a predatory smile.
"Oh, shit..." mumbles Tarkington, grinning sheepishly.
"The same Tarkington who was caught running over the Gap Bridge, wearing
his shorts - which were on fire - on his head, on his first ever run
ashore in Subic? The Tarkington who then threw himself into the river to
avoid arrest, and as a direct result spent three weeks in sickbay with
the worst diahorrea that Mad Jack the Navy Quack had ever seen?" Her
drawl is amused, her smirk barbed. "As well as a near-terminal case of
the gunge, and crabs an inch across?"
The lieutenant, embarrased, nods.

"Oh, boy, Jason, we are privileged beyond measure to share our office
with such a renowned party animal." Lilth lights a cigarette. "Well, I'm
First Lieutenant Liith DiAnnio, Air Force Reserve, and this is Second
Lieutenant Jason Running Wolf Lynch, Marine Corps Reserve. Or, since
some of us are pilots, he's Psychopath and I'm the Leopard Lady."
"He's the Psycho?"
"He is indeed."
"You're the Leopard Lady?"
"I certainly am."
"Wow. Still, it's not your fault you're only pilots. You now have a true
aviator to worship and emulate-"
"Ninety-three traps. Average grade three point seven." Lilith smirks
again. "Anything a naval aviator can do, a pilot can do better."
Lynch grins. "Don't let her rag on you too much, Toad. She's just trying
to forget that the Chair Force is outranked, outgunned and outmatched by
the might of the Corps."

Lilith is drawing breath to reply when Toad jumps in. "I was kind of
hoping you'd tell me what I was meant to be doing."
"I don't know, Toad, what are you meant to be doing?" asks Lilith.
"Apparently some sort of intelligence liaison work. I don't know for
sure, nobody had time to brief me."
"Oh. Well, if you don't know, you weren't meant to." replies Lynch,
deadpan.
"So what _do_ I do?"
"We don't know. We don't have clearance. We're just here to execute you
if you get it wrong." says Lilith, also deadpan.
"I'm screwed, aren't I?"
"Depends on your point of view. You must have talked to Coppinger."
"Only briefly." Toad sits down, experimentally checks his desk drawers,
finds a mug.. "Hey, who left the Furry Fighting Felines cup here?"
"We knew we had a VF-143 guy coming, thought it would make you feel
appreciated." Lynch takes it, fills it for Toad. "Didn't know we were
getting the ol'Horny Toad himself, though."

"Okay, here's the deal." Lilith lights two cigarettes, passes one to
Lynch. "Here, you work for SIGA. Officially the Agency isn't really an
agency, just a bunch of deckers and techno-wonks and analysts. They get
access to what CIA, NSA, Feds, you name it, pull in, and check it.
Sometimes, all the pieces are there but not in the right places,
capiche?"
"Gotcha. So we make sure nothing gets missed." Toad cadges a Marlboro
from Lynch.
Lynch snorts. "That's the plan."
"Problem is, I don't deck, I don't know dick about analysis, in fact all
I'm really good at is flying ." Toad looks rather helpless.

"Your CO on the _Constellation_ made you squadron logistics officer,
right?" Lynch enquires.
"Uh, yeah..."
"Because you have a knack for scrounging, using unorthodox channels, and
basically turning up the goods when everyone said it couldn't be done.
You're also very good at summarising large amounts of guff and getting
the kernel of useful information out of it. Lilith described our
official mission statement. Where do you think a couple of renegades
like us fit in? The Agency's real job is as a higher authority."
"A what?"

Lynch taps ash off his cigarette. "Story for our times. Nasty man in
corporate turf, comes out and does nasty things in the UCAS, goes home.
Corporate bozos won't extradite. We snatch him, get him out, shove him
in front of a grand jury. Nasty guy does twenty-five to life.
Corporation decides to behave better in future.
"Or more local shit. Bad guy doing bad things. Pays the cops to make
sure they don't stop him. FBI make a move, no evidence, the bought cops
make sure he walks. Bad guy thinks he's safe. Couple of the field agents
the Agency doesn't officially have, go kill him. Bad guy ain't laughing
no more."

"That's illegal." says Toad after a long pause.
"Yep."
"I can see why you'd do it, why it's necessary, but you can't do that
legally."
"We don't." Lynch sighs. "And I spent two months on the run from
InterPol, because we don't have any legal cover, any special protection.
Stops us being too gung-ho."
"You mean, if you get arrested...?"
"We talk fast, get a good lawyer, and pray. No men in suits arrive to
save us. Like I said, it keeps us in line. We have a lot of power here.
The government lets us abduct or kill. Pays us to, in fact. When you
have protection, you start being careless who you kill." Lynch looks
tired. "Sometimes, you put a real scumbag behind bars or underground,
you feel real good. Other times, it's like beating your head on the
wall. But it's got to be done."

"Isn't InterPol meant to deal with that?" Tarkington appears nonplussed
at the cynical laughter this provokes.
"Toad, the only efficient and honest part of InterPol is Special Branch,
and guess what? Its job is to hunt us. If the main body of InterPol did
its job, we could stick to flying and counterterrorism."
"So I get to be some sort of secret agent? I'm not sure I'm good at that
either..."

"Not quite." Lilith grins. "We're the secret agents, and most of the
time we'll be based out of Seattle: right now that's where the big
action is. Your job is to work here. You'll skim a lot of intel stuff -
the processed results, not usually the raw data - and extract what you
think we need, or anything we've asked for. You'll also be a librarian
and yank up archive stuff for us. And you'll play quartermaster when
we're off on a high-threat run and need two Alphas, a thousand rounds of
APDS and a gallon of Seven-Seven to go."
"Cool. I could like that." Toad perks up visibly. "Makes up for being
grounded."

"Grounded?" Lynch grins. "You're down for twenty hours a month in
Lightnings, with the 45th at Andrews. Wouldn't want you to miss out on
your flight pay, and you can have fun showing them how superior Navy
Aviation is to the Hair Farce. We fly in every Red Flag, and some of the
FleetEx and ForceEx when the scenarios need us. No reason you couldn't
come in on that, too. Lilith could use a wingman and they like variety
in the Red Force team."
"What about you, aren't you her wingie?"
"She's fighter. I'm attack, especially defence suppression. She makes
movies. I make history."
"Must be interesting in the O-club." Toad says, grinning. "Now me, I
always say that fighter pilots break new ground, flying into the wind,
but-"
"Funny, I heard they broke wind and flew into the ground." Lynch laughs.
"Slow, Toad. I can fly ACM with the best of them, she can bullseye a
tank with a Mark 82 fixed-reticule with no HUD. We're multitalented."
"It's the advantage of being so busy." suggest Lilith. "What stick time
we do get is seriously intensive training. So we get good and stay
good."

Toad grins boyishly. "So anyway, I'm an airborne Miss Moneypenny to your
007."
"Got it in one. Oh, you'll be doing evaluation work, too. We're seen as
being neutral but informed, so we're involved in a lot of procurement
and development decisions."
"Even better. Power. POWER!!!" The grin fades. "Do you mean it about the
nerve agent?"
Lynch nods. "If it comes to that, you'll have Coppinger backing you. But
it's only possible, not certain, we'd need something like that."

"Okay. One last thing, what's that camera there for?"
"So meetings, discussions, whatever, get recorded. Plus security,
naturally. You can take copies of the tapes for transcription, but you
can't edit the originals. Or so they say."
"Right. Do I get a cool timestamp?"
"No. Takes too long for the deckers to set up. Most of the deckers don't
bother, too much work. Speaking of deckers, you'll get access to
ShadowLand. Talk to Corporal Karlsbruhn, he's become our main Matrix
man." Lilith blows a perfect smoke ring.
+++++end trideo

Well, sir, I guess I owe you ten bucks. The Toad managed to fit in, and
it looks like they'll actually use the office. Toad talked to me, he's a
cool guy once you get past that pilot bullshit. Funny, L&L never
bothered me that way. Guess I'm not used to dealing with reality.

Lynch said something about some exercise against a merc unit. Can I go
on that? I could do with some physical combat expertise. I'm meant to be
a soldier, and I haven't even managed to qualify rifle for three
years.]<<<<<
-- Corporal J S Karlsbruhn <22:58:52/07-17-57>
Strategic Intelligence Gathering Agency