Blood Lily Company - Afghanistan, year 1

XLIV

The next evening, the whole Company was there for dinner, so we had the Cassandra special briefing.

Kitty, wrist in a splint, arm in a sling, told her story, her kidnapping, her orders and why she had obeyed. She was unable, as before, to explain why the Blood Lily was being targeted.

- We can assume, Lin said, that if we take away their raison d'etre, which is the warlords, the terrorists, they will no longer be able to justify their existence, will no longer have a reason to live, to get up in the morning. After all, according to my source, these people have lost everything. But, still, we are not the only ones here...

Her voice died out slowly, she seemed to be thinking. As she remained lost in thought, Kris stood up, his tablet in hand.
- This time, guys, we're rescuing a hostage. A six year-old girl. So, among the volunteers, we'll choose only the calmest, the most experienced. It's out of the question to fuck it up because one of you has a sensitive trigger finger.

He sent the satellite image of the German base onto the white wall. It was a photo taken in broad daylight, for us to get familiar with the place. Then he projected an infrared image from the night before and we saw the thermal images of the guys sleeping, keeping watch or guarding two places: a room above the kitchen where a smaller figure marked where a six-year old girl with blue eyes and blond hair was sleeping; and a loose perimeter close enough to their hideout, actually. Perhaps we could breach the old base limits without having to get rid of the sentries.

I had spent the day recreating the base on the holographic table, we had found the blueprints of the place and I was able to make a 3D map of the building which picture was on the wall.

So. I have to confess something to you. I was a computer-savvy kid. Pretty good. Good enough to hack, at 16, the Balard servers, the French Pentagon, on a maintenance day. I got caught, of course. But the way I had used one of the maintenance tools to get in made them realize their systems were not safe from a determined hacker.

My parents were mortified by that trick of mine and in a bit of bind vis-à-vis the French state, Dad being a former soldier, so you can imagine the shame of having a son who... Anyway, I was made to work in the IT department of Balard for as long as it took me to fix my bullshit and show the technician how I got in. Then forced incorporation to avoid prison. No judgment, no criminal record. It was out of the question for it to be known that Balard had been hacked by a wet-eared teenage boy, with milk still coming out of his nose when wrung.

No glamorous unit for me, just the 1st of Infantry in Sarrebourg, in Eastern France. For me, used to having the sea within walking distance, it was very hard. When I was offered to go and make myself disappear in Afghanistan, I jumped on the occasion. And six years ago, our base was hit and many of us were killed. To be honest, the base was razed and almost all of the units were decimated. I was lucky, I survived. I took what I found for arms, ammo, rations and equipment and, with Poll and Stig, we sought shelter. We found this Company of mercenaries with a blue and white flag.

I had been through a kind of hell because of that bullshit of mine, before the Blood Lily and her lieutenants arrived, and I had sworn to myself to never touch a computer keyboard anymore. And then Lin put this magnificent holographic table on one of the mess tables and I used it to create my role-playing maps. Technically, it's not a computer, so I haven't broken that promise to myself.

As a good computer techie guy, I had also created avatars of our role-playing characters, storing their sheets in the memory of the holotable.

All this to tell you I had a pretty good command of the holotable, so I had spent the day recreating the German base and creating empty avatars, ready to wear a label. There was one, smaller than the others, that already had his. C6: Cassandra, 6 years old. It was yellow.