His office at DAG had remained fairly spartan, Jake the Snake being the kind of man who noticed everything in a tactical and strategic sense, but little to nothing in an aesthetic one. Unless, of course, it involved a proper military appearance at the proper time for same. In the field, he was, by turns, muddy, sweaty, and bloody or all of the above. Red, yellow, or orange blood, as the case might be. Like many of the hardest of the hard core, when he did dress up, DAG’s CO made a point of looking sharp.
His car, of course, was an object of affection that had occasionally bordered on obsession — or so he had been accused.
Loathing paperwork along with all the best of his kind, his office was a place of function, no more. His “I love me” wall was obligatory, but there was far more personality outside of his office than in it. In the rest of the building, the walls were lined with unit history, honors, the faces of past commanders. In the rare cases where DAG had made the news, the clippings of complimentary pieces had been printed and the holos saved, all carefully framed. The break room was adorned with the latest crayon artwork of the men’s children, those who had them. Such pieces held images of well wishes and admiration for Daddy, prompted by the inevitable cabal of military wives.
The color that entered Mosovich’s office was usually, as now, in the form of holo calls from his own commanding officer, as projected by his AID, standing about two feet tall on his desk. It took a certain knack to project authority from a live image that was two feet tall. The Gods of War had, as always, a perverse sense of humor. Said knack was something his CO did not possess.
“Mosovich here, sir.”
“Colonel, I have just forwarded your AID a detailed set of orders. Because of their unusual nature, I deemed it advisable to make myself available to answer any questions you might have,” he said. “I think it would be best if we meet in town for lunch. I’d like to discuss this, for clarity’s sake, in a situation where we won’t have to worry about interruptions.”
In other words, leave his fucking AID back at the office. It wasn’t that military personnel were worried about recorded information being accessible to their own chain of command. They weren’t. The tacit observation was that AIDs had proved to be unsecure on several occasions, and discussing that lack of security in the presence of AIDs had proved conspicuously unhealthy.
Initially, the Darhel had been able to keep a lid on their own accessing and manipulating of the AID data and behaviors by having any human who found out killed. That had worked throughout most of the Posleen war, even in the military.
The problems the Darhel faced with that strategy on a continuing basis were Darwinian in nature. The military culture had thousands of years of natural selection balancing the competing priorities of OpSec, the back channel, and the grapevine. Military culture likewise had the same forces of natural selection craft, in the survivors, a healthy distrust of upper level brass and higher command authority. It was a distrust that followed orders — with its eyes open.
As always, the upper level brass and higher command authority were not the real brain of the military, although many liked to believe they were. They directed the real brain of the military as to policy and mission, but they were not, themselves, that organ. Below the level where geopolitical strategy and politics built policy and mission, where the rubber of implementation strategy, application of logistics within given constraints, tactics, and doctrine met the hard road of military reality, lived the real brain driving the machine. The smarter of the top brass knew this, as did a few very smart political animals. Generally, those few survived in their positions by choosing not to remind their peers of inconvenient truths.
In a shorter time than the Darhel would have believed possible, their own heavy-handed actions had created, in reaction, an unofficial but highly effective combination of security-mindedness, back-channel, and grapevine — a postwar scar tissue. This barrier walled off the AIDs — and the Darhel — more and more from any information that the brains and teeth of the military tiger truly wanted to keep from them.
The Darhel were adept at dealing with human political animals. They were adept at dealing with human economic animals. They were adept at dealing with human lone predators. The brain and teeth of the surviving human military structures functioned like none of these creatures.
Two centuries earlier, Kipling had observed: “The strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf.”
Had the Darhel home world evolved a closer analog of that terrestrial animal, the aliens might have had a more natural metaphor for understanding the most dangerous branch of humanity. Unfortunately for them, as advanced, brilliant, and predatory as the Darhel were, they had incompletely applied the biggest truism of xenopsychology — that alien minds are alien.
Hence, they — and the political humans, the economic humans, and the lone human predators — were aware of the exclusion of the AIDs from some matters as a minor irritant, but totally ignorant as to its scope and depth.
Mosovich’s AID was quite put out with him when, reasoning that it would have to interrupt him if a communication came from a sufficiently high authority, and that he had been ordered by competent authority not to allow such interruptions, he left it behind in his desk. Jake’s AID had long since retreated, permanently, to whatever emulation of the human martyred wife lived in its programming.
The general waited for him at a table next to the indoor waterfall of a very discreet Szechuan restaurant. The reputed excellence of the food was a nice bonus. He rose as Colonel Mosovich arrived, directed by a wizened little old lady carrying a pair of menus.
“Good to see you, Jake. I see you’ve forgotten your poor AID?” he asked, returning his subordinate’s salute.
“Yes, sir. I’m afraid so.” He sat, only a second behind the general.
“Good.” His CO affirmed, nodding politely when the tiny woman offered their very good jasmine tea. “Jake, this mission has come down at the behest of the Joint Chiefs, but they don’t much like the smell of it and I don’t either.
“There is a corporation with a facility in your area that has, I am informed, had some intelligence indications of a terrorist threat. You will be providing that facility with a supplementary security detail immediately, for a duration to be determined. Because DAG must remain available for deployment in the event of attacks elsewhere, you are authorized to detach two squads to advise and supplement the corporation’s own security forces and the civilian authorities.” General Pennington looked like he had just swallowed a piece of broken glass.
“Jake, this is where the mission gets complicated. The Epetar Group, as you are probably aware,” he waited for the colonel’s nod before continuing, “had connections to the wrong side of a terrorist operation your people just had to clean up in Africa.” He grimaced.
“DAG’s mission is counterterror and antipiracy. We protect innocent civilians, and legitimate corporate property. We are not the Epetar Group’s water boy to end up, through some goddamn complex Darhel fuck-up, supporting terrorist activity instead of fighting it. Where this ties in is that we suspect, but can’t prove, that this facility, through a number of cutouts, is an Epetar Group operation. Among other things, one of their Darhel has been out there several times and the Darhel are too self-important, and too genuinely busy, to go places with no reason.
“No, we don’t routinely tail high level Darhel, much as we’d like to be able to. We just sometimes hear things. Never mind sources and methods.” He shrugged as the century-long specwar operator nodded.