Steelhead
June 19th, 1995. 15:25, San Diego, California
The jet touched down at Lindberg field as planned and the warning from Lana as she left Texas was that she might be coming in hot. The Company thus sent a team over to receive Lana and to clean up if necessary. Marson exited and gave the signals that all was ok and not to engage yet. Lana was still asleep and Asche had already departed the plane unnoticed. He was inspecting Marson and discovered that none of the neural programming took. None of the implanted memories remained intact nor did any recollection of any of the odd goings on during the flight. Lana had to be awakened by one of the Combat Ops who entered the plane for inspection and she was not happy to be awoken so early. Her Cerebellum had not yet assimilated all of the raw data causing her to be very incoherent and resistive. Asche made sure to be close by Lana in case she should show sign of thought rejection. In this case the brain begins to reject all thought, involuntary and voluntary. The repercussions were obvious.
She was led off the plane and into a Grey Limo that drove up and parked along side the jet. Asche summoned his vehicle, it appeared invisibly on the opposite side of the jet, and he proceeded to follow the team.
The journey to SteelHead, while riddled with traffic congestion and the usual bustle of a city nearing evening, held an air of mystery. The secret tunnel was a marvel, hidden from public knowledge, facilitating swift, discreet movement between crucial points in the city. The technological prowess that built such a tunnel was commendable, but what followed it in Asche’s pursuit was even more astonishing.
While the world adhered to its known laws of physics and tangibility, Asche’s vehicle defied those very concepts. The dimension-phasing tech allowed his vehicle to seamlessly integrate with the surrounding environment, essentially becoming a ghost on the road, unseen, unfelt, but very much present. The concept was baffling – existing within a space, yet outside the constraints of its physical reality.
The Rho field generator was an even more intricate piece of technology. It provided Asche with the luxury to pick and choose which aspects of reality his vehicle adhered to, effectively making him a master of the world around him. With a car that could bypass solid objects yet remained grounded by choice, Asche had an advantage that few, if any, could comprehend, let alone challenge.
Navigating the tunnel and the dense traffic became a trivial task for him. While others were bound by lanes, signals, and the tangible presence of other vehicles, Asche was free from such limitations, his path unobstructed, his pursuit unwavering. The game of cat and mouse continued, but with technology like this, the mouse didn’t stand much of a chance.
SteelHead rivaled the nearby Seal training facility only in functionality. It was a typical looking gray steel dock warehouse occupying the northwestern shore of the island of Coronado. Besides looking like a giant storage facility surrounded by wooden crates and other assorted eyesores, the interior went below ground ten stories and out into the bay nearly a quarter of a mile. It boasted the largest single gathering spot for the Company’s arsenal. Most Combat Ops who entered in and were allowed to select a weapon, which was only bestowed upon select individuals, had to be dragged out against their will and some even sobbed unmercifully as they were escorted out. If Combat Ops were suspected of worshiping their weapons and SteelHead was their Valhalla. It also housed a state of the art training facility to keep the best of the Company in their best form.
Three rather large agents escorted Lana and Marson, all over 6 foot in height and bulging with muscles, obviously Combat Operatives. Asche was close by and was now certain that the procedure had kept in Lana’s mind. With the right questions asked, she would become a fountain of knowledge, knowledge of the things he had ‘taught’ her a few short hours ago. No one had yet even suspected his presence and still Marson had no recollection of the flight, or at least not of Asche. He had left his car out of phase invisibly parked next to the Limo. Now he was walking behind the five humans admiring all of the intricacies of the architecture and thinking what a feat of engineering this place was. It must have been quite a project to build all of the internal structure of this impervious building without drawing the attention of the populace or the media. He finally began to feel like he had chosen correctly in coming to this Earth, so many years in his past, and trying to help the right people for a change.
“Its about time we get another member of The Death’s Hand in our humble abode.” A tall black man barked out at Lana and cast an estranged look at Marson. “Why has it been so long?”
“Sorry Lance, I been busy wit dis embezzlement job da last few months.”
Lana spoke calmly and rather sloppily. She was obviously under the affect of some drug.
“What the hell? Get her into the infirmary now! Marson. What went on up there and on the trip over? Did she get tagged or something? Why….”
Marson cut him off.
“Excuse me Lance but I report to someone other than you. If you want me to answer some questions, you will lower your voice and be calm. I have no Idea what happened to her. Maybe she took something that did not agree with the altitude.”
It was common for some operatives to miscalculate the dose of the drug used for anti-motion sickness; the altitude was never a sure thing and this caused many a hang over.
Lance was obviously angered at this response but it was logical.
“If this is something that your negligence caused Marson, I will have your head!” He said as he picked Lana up and rushed her on the rest of trip down the hall to the infirmary.
After a brief diagnosis and Asche covertly Redacting Lana’s Nervous system and ‘recalibrating’ it with the absorbed data, Lana was normally aware and coherent. Asche was unnerved to see that she had not totally accepted the mindover. She still held all the data but it had disrupted her neural pathways and she was going to need more attention later; he had to come into physical contact to do it right. He was not going to risk getting bumped into and have his stealth blown at this point. He would just have to wait and do it with her one on one later.
“What happened back in Texas Lana and what happened to you just now?” Lance asked before the medic could even think of it.
“The mission went as planned. Perfect execution. I had a few loose ends to cut off before I left and even those went well, no witnesses, no survivors.” She paused a second. Rubbing her head she continued, “There was this man on the plane. I mean besides Marson. He met me in the suite and…And I suspected he was a Mage.”
“A Mage. For Christ’s sake Marson, did you not set up the liminal field for such things?” Lance interrupted Lana.
Marson was not happy at the implied forgetfulness Lance conveyed to him. ”You Twit Lance. I take every precautionary step necessary as a standard to maintain the Conspiracy. Of course I set it up!”
“Excuse me you two testosterone filled lumps, I wasn’t finished” Lana continued. “He was not offering any danger of any kind and the last thing I remember was Marson, myself and this man sitting at the table and talking about what he wanted to do.” She was visually in pain now and sat down. “He wanted to meet with our ‘Lords’ as he put it. But he mentioned a member of ARGUS by name, one of the two I know for certain from an escort mission a few years back.”
“That does it. This man knows a member of ARGUS and he trespasses into a Company plane; He’s dead. Where did he go Lana? Was he still in the plane when you got out?” Lance asked.
“Wait a minute, I remember nothing of that man Lana mentioned. She is having a hallucination.” Marson interjected.
As they continued to argue about what happened and what did not happen, Asche realized this was going nowhere and decided that it was best done his way. He picked through the minds of the agents present and looked for who would be the most trusted one to be convinced of the truth. Some of them had rather impressive mind blocks available but he did not even make it known he was there; no one ever knew to try to concentrate on a mind block. Besides Lana, a Sec Op, there was only Lance Rechtor who actually had it in good with one of the higher ups. Lance became the next target of Coercion and Farsensing implantations.
The argument suddenly stopped as Lance took a 180-degree turn in the conversation and said “We need to get Lana to Dalton. Maybe he can get a message to the Society and we can get this settled.”
No one seemed to want to argue that idea; besides, Lance was nearly out of the room before anyone had time to think about it. The meeting was being set up for tonight.
Sometime between then and now.
The meeting was eventually made. ARGUS was notified and Asche eventually made his presence known to all to support the rants of Lana and Lance. Once convinced that Asche was here for the advancement of The Company, ARGUS set the time and places for the meeting. The individual departments were skeptical of anything that originated with Security and more so from Lana Tsuru.
Why couldn’t the Alien have contacted the Intelligence Department or even Science? No. Security had to have the first contact, this way they had the most influence over the outcome.
But why Lana? How did she manage to be at the right place at the right time?
Did she have this man Asche under her thumb as she had put so many others?
Was he really an Alien? All these questions and more were to be answered during the meeting with ARGUS.
ARGUS was assembled in its entirety for this meeting. All members were flown in from where ever they called home at the current time. There were multi-billionaires, Doctors, Oil Producers, Senators, Foreign Ambassadors, and more. It was like a who’s – who of the worlds power mongers. All had vested interests in the welfare of the world so they supported The Company. Today they met with another ambassador or rather a President or Lord as he called himself.
After a rather convincing discussion, Asche used Coercion on the whole assembly of Argus and the Security Personnel, it was voted unanimously to inculcate the advancements of House Analon into the Company. Of course, all of the advancements were to be delivered via a device and not Asche; he was not going to stick around the Company and hold their hands when he was needed for other work to be done. He gave them a very advanced form of computer, a little bigger than most laptop systems, which would display technical data and blueprints for some time to come. From this device would emanate the future of the Company. He also gave them rights to the Citadel.
The Citadel was a 101-story skyscraper in New York City, just inside of Manhattan. This tower occupied four city blocks and the land was listed as a public park. As far as the state and local authorities were concerned, there had never been a building there and the park never had any crime or violence in or around it. In reality there were several ‘Phase Doors’ in place that allowed one to enter into the Citadel’s courtyard and its environs. The whole site was spatially displaced and never had anyone suspected that a multi dimensional fortress sat right in the middle of Manhattan.
Between the Citadel and the advancements given by the Black Box, as The Company began to call the Computer given them, The Company leapt forward in technology more than 100 years by most conservative estimates. As far as why Asche had given these gifts so freely well, the only answer anyone ever received was that, he was helping them to arm themselves for an impending conflict with another far superior race. ARGUS never took warnings like this lightly so they decided since there were no strings attached to jump in with both feet. They were losing a slow war in which they were on one side and all of the other weirdness and madness was on the other. Any assistance was nice, especially from another apparently non-hostile race. This began a new age for The Company, an age where they were now going to start getting a firm foothold in this ongoing conflict with the stuff that tainted the purity of humanity. They were entering into an era where they were going to kick ass, as they never knew they could.