Far Eastern Frontline: A World on Fire Cinder

With Words ROSE the Curtain Part 1

Summary: A brief side foray into a cinder of shadows, the International Intelligence Agency.

Marvus Staelens Archangel was my name. Perhaps I was raised with it and every bit of it was true, that I had a good and spoiled life before happened upon this job and took this burden.

Maybe... Maybe I after so many years had to be reprogrammed and indoctrinated to be fully-committal to the vision of the Federation.

Mine's a body full of implants – neutered not for pretty, but for utility. This was to make sure I kept absolute focus to my surroundings and my peripheral vision.

Humanity always believed that its own free will could only be tolerated because it's a human body. But alas, we disproved ourselves, we...made ourselves well above that, at least some of us.

The privileged few are sometimes the cursed – shocker, but heh, we learn to deal with it. By blood am I bound to serving the Federation, since – I guess – being their finest agent, taking down subversive parties in splintered states during the Federation's baby steps days. Few scruples could be attached to it...but the alternative was letting us Feddies lounge on its ass helplessly watching as the others moved on without us and we rotted.

Hundreds of years of rediscovery and gradual advancement was a total blessing for us Pacs; we could pursue art, weapons, even technological grafts that virtually every other nation was incredibly behind on.

I just got vibrations from a lesser Flag Agent conducting ISR Romeos on the Peripheral state of Manchuria. Always had a thing with covert spies bringing down its public facilities...damn them.

My masters had been stressed out on this kind of job; all those coffee hours and staring at monitors and maps, that's gotta take a toll. Only so much pressure on a nation you can sustain, so much instability before shit comes to roost and spoil.

I said, "Continue the assembly, begin drone claw ops...and somebody get this man a lager of '26 Salvemini Scarlet."

Drone claw ops are just intellegencia speak for sending missiles and bullets down to those little holdouts. We like to get the sensationalist news media's criticism of us...and I admit we did sometimes, but nowhere near as frequent as what those tabloids come off on, stupid jerks. Our Deep Laws stop us from screwing with the press – because it's dictator-type shit – and instead enable us to manipulate the news to foxing the truth as best we could to our favor.

Let's just say the D/Vs have been expendable but can be thrown around a lot, especially useful for air raids. Those tail fuckers are ridiculed for their high loss rate, but they work wonders when you make weapons on them.

And the Salvemini pop?

My favorite, along with the name itself. If there's a thing we can still thank Cascadia on at a time like this, rather than curse and defecate and piss at them, it's their really top-quality wine. Sold a lot in Mongol land and our precious Steel 1 – or should I say the Khan – keeps a whole cabinet – hell, lorry stall – in his little castle, which is the envy of distilleries stuck with the brilliant-but-unpreferable Saki from Heijo.

Yet it can do...only little in assuaging my worries about the Alliance's Citadel Scutarius Service or some Peripheral asshole setting off some lost Arrow from an Empty Quiver, making us having to do Oceania on repeat.

I might have been given augments to keep my service going, to keep my spy experience and technique alive...but...what the Cabal did to Trinity Bay, the hellfire engulfing all in its wake...I still sweat at night just thinking of it.

All the power, all the strength...and yet I still feel like a servant and a chained one with so many limits as to make the eggheads frown in shame, think for a crucifying moment that all their efforts on me have been for nothing.