What was she doing here? Where to next? There was something wonderfully tranquil about this place. Something had settled over her here, something she hadn't expected, a calm, an acceptance.
It brought with it no answers, though. Nor would it deter an ERD attack squad.
Sam needed to leave. She needed to keep moving. And, if by chance she evaded capture and death, she needed something to do with her life. She needed a purpose.
She'd embraced the ERD with a passion at a young age. They'd been the ones that fought evil, the ones who would stop the men who'd do what had been done to her and her sister and her parents. But now…
Mai is dead because of me. A little girl.
It was too late to change that.
Her job now was to stay alive. She'd need a new identity, a new face, new prints, everything that came with that.
And then? Sam wondered. What do I do with my life?
She kept thinking of Mai, of her sister Ana, of the young Sam that she'd been.
I want to protect them, Sam thought to herself. Above all. I want to keep them safe.
She turned and faced south. Out there, somewhere near a village called Mae Dong, there were more children like Mai.
"Samantha?" It was Vipada, the young nun who'd been assigned to Sam. "It's time for meditation."
Sam turned, suddenly aware of what she looked like with her nearly bald head and her white robes – a Buddhist nun. It brought a smile to her lips. She brought her hands together in a wai to Vipada.
"Thank you, Vipada," she answered in Thai. "Please lead the way."
She headed into the hall, to meditate with the nuns, to feel their minds in the practice called vipassana, the observation of self, in the meditation called metta, the state of loving-kindness, of compassion towards the self and others. They would meditate, and they would become one.
She couldn't remember ever having experienced anything so beautiful in her life. The touch of another's mind in that deep serene state, the touch Nexus enabled… How could it be wrong? How could she have fought so hard to stop it?
Who am I becoming?
At 2249 hours, under a dark, cloudy night sky thirty kilometers off the coast of Thailand, a portion of the radar and sonar absorbent upper shell of the Boca Raton began to open. Fissures appeared on the rounded foredeck of the submersible covertoperations ship. The fissures defined previously invisible panels. The panels became depressions as the ship drew them in. They slid slowly, silently to the side, opening to reveal a combat deck below. As the stealth hull retracted, rounded launchers on the combat deck canted up, tilting from their horizontal resting positions up to an angle thirty degrees above the horizon, pointed north towards the Thai mainland.
For a moment, all was still. The dark ship bobbed silently in the tropical swells of the Gulf of Thailand. Then the first launcher fired. A dark elongated shape streaked out and into the night sky. Seven hundred and eighty milliseconds later, the second launcher fired, then another, then another. In under ten seconds, the Boca Raton put twelve Viper class UAVs into the air. The recon/combat drones opened their stealthed, downturned wings one second into flight, activated their own jet engines, eased into level subsonic flight ten meters above the waves, and scattered.
As each Viper streaked into the night, its attendant launcher began to tilt back towards horizontal. Within seconds of the last launch, the radar and sonar absorbent panels of the stealth hull began to slowly slide back into place, obscuring the combat hull. Secrecy must be maintained.
In the air above the waters of the Gulf of Thailand, the AI in control of Viper 6 got its bearings and compared them to the plan. The drone banked its wings, turned to head north by north-east, angling around Bangkok's crowded airspace and traffic control radar and towards Saraburi and the mountains to the north-east. It had payloads to deliver.
[ EXCERPT FROM TRANSCRIPT:
Face America with David Ames, Saturday 4/21/2040 ]
Host: …and welcome back everyone to Face America. We're here this morning with National Security Advisor Dr Carolyn Pryce. Dr Pryce, thank you again for being here.
Pryce: It's a pleasure, David.
Host: Dr Pryce, let's move on to the situation in Thailand. A fire and multiple shootings in Bangkok yesterday reportedly left more than thirty people dead in a location connected to distribution of the street drug Nexus. The Thai government alleges that US forces were involved. What can you tell us about this?
Pryce: David, our hearts go out to the families who lost loved ones in that fire. Of course, the US was in no way involved in this. Thailand is a close ally and an important partner in regional issues, and we hope that as emotions cool the Thai authorities will realize that they're mistaken.
Host: What do you make of these reports of heavy gunfire in the area?
Pryce: Well as you say, David, this building was apparently being used to distribute illicit drugs. We've seen drug-related violence in Mexico, in Afghanistan, in Columbia. Quite possibly this was a turf war between rival syndicates. These well-armed crime syndicates are part of the reason that President Stockton has made cracking down on the drug trade one of his top foreign policy priorities.
Host: The Thai authorities are saying the DNA evidence has identified an American at the scene, a man named Michael Lee, who they assert was an undercover American agent.
Pryce: Well, David, while Mr Lee lived in the US for a number of years, he's actually a child of Chinese immigrants to Thailand. So to use his presence to allege that the US was involved, when the same evidence provides a tighter link to China just to the north, is a bit odd. I hope the Thai authorities are asking Beijing some hard questions.
Host: So this man was not a US operative?
Pryce: Absolutely not.
Host: And there were no US operatives there?
Pryce: None whatsoever.
Host: I'm going to play you a clip here, from a press conference this morning in Bangkok, where Thai authorities showed off evidence found at the scene of the fire, which they say conclusively links the US military to the event. Roll film.
<Man speaking in Thai. Camera pans across table. Objects on table appear to be firearms and knives, warped and melted by extreme heat. Man continues speaking in Thai. Subtitle: "… American made covert-operations weapons… More than twenty items recovered… only obvious explanation…">
Host: What do you make of that?
Pryce: David, I think that film speaks for itself. Those guns are so warped and melted, it's difficult to even tell what models they are. And unfortunately, it's far too easy to acquire weapons of all sorts, from any country, on the black market today. That's why President Stockton has made combating the international arms trade, especially of the newest, most high-tech weapons, one of his highest priorities.