"Commander, something's up in northern Russia.  Take a look at Platform Nine.  See it?"

The commander of G-Force looked at the monitor the ensign pointed him to.  It was barely five hours past zero Greenwich time, the middle of a dark Komi night, and the surveillance satellite was recording a series of explosions, massive clouds of fire erupting over what had once been an innocent looking industrial complex.  Four, five detonations, he counted.  The timing of each looked random, their proximity to one another not as much so.  An accident triggering a catastrophic chain reaction, to the uninitiated.  

Mareccu Dumeneau, half Marjillian Rigan, half human, saw its truth.  The explosions were timed to the beat of a war-cadence he last heard when he was young, still on Riga.  When sparring factions would taunt one other by spacing their guns and timing each shot in accordance to their signature pulse, deliberately to goad their enemy closer into range.  This instance, he understood, was meant to evoke a slightly different message.  Inwardly, he smiled.  The timing, in another sense, couldn't be better. 

"Should we send a team to investigate?" the ensign asked.

Marc motioned negatively.  "Just keep an eye on it for now."

Going outside of earshot of the command and control staff, he hailed his second.  "Two, Actual."

It was a brief sleep-breaking moment before he answered.  "Go."

"Queue up Sat Nine, timestamp five minutes back.  And remember what I told you years ago about the Trabejel, Marjillian cannon-timing."

His second sounded weary and pain-killer sluggish.  "Why?"

This time, Marc did outwardly smile.  "Someone's sent a present."

Two levels down, tucked away in the intensive care unit of the infirmary, Jay Randall slowly reached for his laptop computer from the bedside table.  Moving was still difficult, multiple sutures pulling painfully if he wasn't careful.  He linked to the satellite's feed and ran the stream back to the timeline his commander noted.  This one, he knew, was dedicated to the monitoring of northern Europe from the Ukraine to the arctic pole, where Gallactor stabled at least six known Blackbird factions, and God knew whatever else the syndicate was building.  

His breath caught a little at the visual.  "Oh."  The link from his newly minted communicator was still open; he knew Marc could hear.  "Hello there."

"Uh-huh," his commander agreed, sounding very pleased.  

Marc calling it a present had not been in jest.  In the two weeks since leaving Tangermünde, Jay had been profoundly worried, to the point of being thrown into depression, over the status and location of the Devil Star.  If this was meant to be her announcement of both, the simplicity and uniqueness of its delivery was not only wondrous, it was heartening.  There were gifts, delights wrapped in elegant paper and tinsel, and then there were the greater mercies: approbation, assistance, life.  This one brought relief.  Sweet, blessed, and calming.  

Concerned at his silence, Marc called back: "You okay?"

"Yeah."  Jay replayed the sequence, watching every fiery plume ascend into the midnight sky and leave blankets of flames below.  A fresh daylight scan from the satellite would later reveal what he suspected now: a fuel storage facility going up, taking several more outbuildings with it.  He was confident that the Devil Star was watching the fruits of this sabotage as he was: safely from afar, and contentedly so.  He watched it one more time, then closed the computer and laid it back on the table.

On her way back to Italy, the Devil Star stopped at the Zagreb safehouse to access Gallactor's databases for progress reports and to clean her clothes.  She immediately wished she hadn't.

It was easy to convince him to leave for Italy in the early morning hours before sunrise, when there would be few patrols out on the road.  

That night, she donned heavy thermal undergarments under her clothing, and exchanged the spare sets in her backpack for GoreTex jacket and pants, two pairs of woolen socks, and collapsible snowshoes.  A quick peek in the garage confirmed the presence and protection of his Mercedes CLS.  The weather forecast promised heavy snowfall.  Studying the route, she noted a long lonely stretch between Dmovo and Dolga.  It would be relatively easy to just reach over and jerk the steering wheel, sending the car fish-tailing driver's-side first into some trees.  If the impact didn't break his neck, she would see to that part herself.  

Cleaning house, she'd claim if Nona asked.  Knowing too the commander's unstable mindset, the warlord would completely understand.

"I'm thinking about reopening the bar," Jun lowly confessed, despite the grief and guilt that maintained as she said it. Only a few months had passed since they'd lost business partner and friend Kelley Takahashi, mistaken for Jun by a Gallactor assassin in a week-long span of horrors she wished she could altogether forget. Still, her nightclub's true purpose was to cover for an extremely important ancillary use: the loft. It was one of a precious few places in the world where the team could collectively escape into solitude to relax, vent, or even rage where no one else would interrupt, trespass or judge. She sensed that Jay would be needing such a place very soon.

She and Mareccu were in Matt Martinez's office, graciously offered by the surgeon as a place where they could confer in the interim without being overheard by passing staff, recorded, or filmed by the hundreds of closed-circuit security cameras suffused throughout the Crescent Coral installation.

"Because of today?" Marc acidly asked.

"Yeah."

Earlier they'd both learned from an equally furious Matt that an EDC psychiatrist had tried to run a post-traumatic stress survey on Jay. The second of G-Force, still in ICU, still under a battery of high-octane opiate analgesics as his gunshot trauma healed, luckily had enough presence of mind to send him away. What made the situation all the more infuriating to Marc was that whoever had assigned the psychiatrist to the task had done so without first consulting either himself, Matt or David Anderson. Whoever in the chain of command had made the decision should have known better, that the nature and sensitivity of their work precluded them from rote post-mission counseling, that they wouldn't—couldn't—open up to just anybody. Not when mission details could get inadvertently leaked afterward, not when horrors they'd been witness to or orchestrated themselves would terrify even the most seasoned military analyst. 

Such was why Jun had built the loft. For them, by them, and for no one else but a carefully select few. Kelley had been one of those few. One drawn into their circle, deeply loved, and now intensely missed, by Key.

Irritated, Jun had to work at keeping her tone conversationally low. "It was probably meant in good faith but to try to run it under David's radar, to just show up with no warning? I'm surprised someone's head wasn't taken off. But at some point he—all of us—are going to need that, and there's nowhere around here to go without someone noticing or overhearing. There's no privacy at all in medical. We're going to need the loft. Maybe not now, not while he's still hooked up to ICU, but you know he's going to start pushing himself to get out of there, pretty soon."

Jun waved her hands in exasperation. "So where does that leave us…go find another building? I could, but the city's codes are so crazy, it'd take months to get permits. How do I—"

She had to take a breath before going on. "How do I tell Key, that in order to help Jay heal his wounds, we have to reopen his?"

Marc sighed, understanding the dilemma. "Yeah. It'll be hard for both of them at the beginning…hard for a long time, even. Talk to Key first. See how he'd feel about it. For all we know, he might agree with you."

"It's not fair," Jun fumed. "We wouldn't even need to rush this if it wasn't for whoever sent that shrink. Someone needs a slap upside the head." 

"You worry about the loft," Marc told her. "I'll worry about making sure no one tries it again." He got up to leave. "On Jay, or any of us."

***** 

Under the guise of an early afternoon dinner party, the top echelon officers and emissaries of Gallactor met at the Tuscany estate to report directly to the syndicate's new warlord, Nona. One by one they gave status updates on the various tasks of rebuilding, objectives that remained outstanding, and issues that demanded attention. No one had much appetite as they spoke. They knew their progress had been slow, and correctly surmised that Nona was not at all pleased with any of them.

"Many of the rank and file have gone AWOL," a Tallinn faction general was speaking. "They are for the most part being found drifting back to their home territories. Once they are caught up, they are given a choice: be reassigned to their last grade or be terminated."

"How many have chosen discharge?" Nona asked. 

"A majority, I'm afraid to say. I expect, though, that as word gets out about that option, the rate of retention will increase exponentially. We should see most returning in the next few days, actively seeking reassignment."

"Thank you, General," Nona said. "See that it is so."

The General bowed his head. "Yes, ma-am."

No one at the table took any personal notes of the discussion, nor was there any dictation for the record; the subjects at hand were spoken only and orders were committed to memory. There would be no lasting evidence of the meeting, save for the deep sense of uneasiness that each agent would leave it with. 

An emissary spoke next. "We have a new situation with the Prime Minister of Caucasistan. Citing an increase in EDC focus on his regime, he is pressing for increased compensation and materials. I have tried to convince him that his concerns are being adequately addressed, but to no avail. He is being quite insistent."

"No doubt using our access to his airfields as collateral for our cooperation," Nona reckoned. 

"Unfortunately, yes."

She thought for a moment. "His youngest son is studying chemistry at MIT, is he not?"

"Yes, ma-am," the agent replied.

"Perhaps there is a potential for cross-collateral there."

The agent tensed. "Yes, ma-am."

Sitting to Nona's right, the Devil Star listened silently and inwardly applauded the level of pressure that Nona was placing on the command. She could see in them all the onset of stress at the ramifications of not meeting the warlord's demands, and out of such stress would inevitably come frustration, which in turn would predicate errors in judgement and oversight. Minute yet important details would be overlooked, mistakes committed unknowingly, until later when they would become critically relevant, even disastrous. 

The Devil Star surveyed the situation with staid contentment. All was well.

-----

RAIN

February 2014 by Katharine (KFM, Disturbed in NorCal)

The moment the warship Phoenix went down at Cross Karocolm, the Earth Defense Command's Advanced Development Team had leaped into action with their vehicle replacement plan. It was a process that had been crafted with the inception of G-Force, and was well-honed by successive missions where outcomes returned the Phoenix and her vehicles bearing extensive damage to their care and craft.

This was different, however. Never before had they been tasked with an objective so massive for a need so urgent. The Phoenix's development had taken nearly a decade; their initial estimate was that replacement would require half that, at best. Do it in one, David Anderson had flatly ordered. It was not a challenge; this was G-Force's expectation. The framework was already in place from past reconstruction, and the operation was counted upon to be swift. In the process, improvements would be made, G-Force's wish-lists for technological betterment explored and granted. Advancements to navigations, weapons, individual vehicles and combat leathers would be tested and implemented. As Commander Mareccu Dumenau's team recovered and rebuilt from Cross Karocolm's wounds, so too would the ADT rebuild their armaments. Once again from the pyre of their facility in the furnace of the Nevada desert would the Phoenix rise.

Marc left the first progress briefing feeling optimistic, even vindictively satisfied. Soon, his warship would scream her supremacy against the Gallactor Syndicate. She would bring her fire and send it exploding through their war machines in the air, incinerating their forces on the ground. And in her wake she would scatter the wreckage of their mechas like searing rain upon their strongholds below.