A subtle agency omnibus, p.77
A Subtle Agency Omnibus, page 77
part #1 of The Metaframe War Series
Jay prayed that he would be in time, and Juliette could work her surgical ‘magic.’
His heart wrenched. His eye’s moistened. He could lose Yvette.
He loved her.
He drove like a man possessed.
His heart felt like it had expanded to fill his throat, robbing him of the ability to speak.
The rendezvous point was clear on the SUV’s GPS. The device reported he had two more minutes to get there at the regulation speed limits.
He vowed to arrive in under sixty seconds.
The Range Rovers sped along the streets.
Chapter Twenty Three
Section 2.2.9 False Narratives in Common Media
Summary: Operation of False Narratives
[1] The purpose of this method is to satisfy and exhaust the target populations ability to inquire, with false narratives. Begin by establishing at least two opposed, mutually exclusive, false narratives aligned with the belief systems of separate opposed social cohorts.
[2] Leverage social division between the social cohorts to entrench the narratives as intrinsic to the tribal identity of the targets. Once established as intrinsic to the identity formation of the target population, the narrative will be beyond question and disbelief in the narrative will signify lack of social belonging.
[3] Publish media reports that support the adopted narratives from authoritative members of the social cohorts.
[4] Publish media reports that deny the opposing narrative from authoritative members of the social cohorts.
[5] Provide ‘neither confirm nor deny,’ statements from senior Government sources.
[6] Provide separate anonymously leaked statements from Government sources that support all false narratives in play.
Detail: Definitions and worked examples
The details of this tactic with worked examples is described below.
[REDACTED]
- Excerpt of Section 2, Methods of Obfuscation, Shadowstone Covert PSYOPS Manual
* * *
Coningsby, Lincolnshire, August 22nd, 12:14
The dark-blue Jaguar sedan pulled to a stop forty yards short of the entrance to the RAF airbase at Coningsby. Two MRAPs filled with Shadowstone troopers in full body armor halted behind it.
Gordon Heathmont looked through his car’s front windscreen and surveyed the airbase. Dark-gray smoke sat in a thick pall over the whole site. Sirens wailed, cutting through the base’s klaxons as emergency workers strove to contain the fires. The wreckage of a pair of armored personnel carriers burned a hundred yards beyond the gate. They’d been torn open like cans of tuna given to a chainsaw. Someone had used one of the new anti-air guns on them. Nothing was flying, all the blackwidow’s were gone. The one major asset left was a fully armed Commander tank patrolling the middle of the base.
Gordon consulted his laptop. The Commander tank’s sensor arrays were clear of threats. The Order of Thoth had vanished like ghosts. The temporary hazing of the Panopticon had passed. The online resources used to effect by the Order had been neutralized by Shadowstone cyberwarfare units operating out of Beijing, Saint Petersburg and Seattle.
The Order of Thoth team had successfully broken contact. It was a temporary setback; he consulted his laptop again, the latest flight path for the Order’s Embraer jet had been to a private airfield near Goathland in the Yorkshire Moors, about ten miles from Whitby. The location had to be critical to the Order team’s mission; they would return to Yorkshire.
There were two angles of attack to reacquire the Mirovar force team. He would lock up the approaches to their target in Yorkshire, and pursue them from Coningsby. The first was a straightforward objective, the second would require detective work. The force team must have used vehicles to escape the airbase. Staying on foot, or nearby would be grossly stupid, and they were clearly not stupid, possibly mad, but not stupid.
They would have vehicles, something that would blend in, but with the streets cleared under standard protocols for an airbase disaster. People would respond to the sirens by retreating into their homes. People who could be curious enough to stare out their windows at what was happening. Perhaps someone had seen something, like a vehicle speeding away from the airbase.
Half of Squadron F had been sent west on a wild goose chase. He’d been tricked by false information provided over the Order earbuds taken from the red-headed Order operative. Those Shadowstone forces were already flying back to the ruins of the Facility. Fortunately, the hangars at the Facility were still operational. His forces would have to refuel before they could head north. It was a terrible delay, but couldn’t be avoided.
A single Order of Thoth team member had captured a Commander tank, nearly destroying the Facility and a RAF airbase. The casualty list at the Facility was still to be tallied, but ten to fifteen percent of the base’s working population were in the path of the rogue Commander tank. Casualties in the affected buildings would be high. He had also lost four blackwidow gunships and more than sixty Day Guard phase IV troopers. There were a couple of billion pounds worth of damage that would take more than a year to rebuild and replace. These losses would be noticed at the highest levels and would need to be explained.
The original plan to capture and question an Order of Thoth operative was now consigned to the dustbin. The mission had evolved - every last member of the Mirovar force team would need to be killed before the day was out.
It was the only result that could justify his losses. Any and all forces would be used to fulfill this new plan. Any losses or collateral damage was acceptable to reach the new objective.
Gordon briefly considered redirecting the local police force to lock up the northern roads out of Coningsby, but without the rest of Squadron F to back them up, they would be cut to pieces. James Haley’s words regarding the Mirovar force team, ‘don’t underestimate them,’ came back to haunt him. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, recent events forced an obvious conclusion - he’d underestimated the Order of Thoth operatives.
That would stop now. He would change his tactics. He would position his forces for rapid deployment in Yorkshire and await his enemy to come to him. He would rely on what he had that the Mirovar force team did not - massive firepower.
He reached for his quantum encrypted smartphone. He needed to inform Major Quiver of the change of priorities and the need to tightly monitor the approaches to Yorkshire. He would also send his personal security detail to investigate any breaches in the RAF airbase’s perimeter fence and to question the locals living nearby. By the time his remaining Day Guard forces were in place, a mouse couldn’t cross into Yorkshire without him knowing about it, and there was a good chance he would know what vehicles he should be looking for.
The net was tightening, and soon the Mirovar force team would have nowhere to run to.
* * *
The rendezvous point was a rundown house on the northern outskirts of Coningsby. Its one redeeming feature was a large four car garage.
A gray and black striped blanket had been laid out on the garage floor. Yvette lay face up in the center of the blanket, a rag between her teeth. Her blood-drenched shirt and bra had been cut away to expose the ragged exit wound above her left breast. She was fully awake while Juliette’s hands blurred over her chest. Tears squeezed from her eyes as she clenched her teeth on the rag, a soft moan escaping from deep within her body.
Juliette had begun work without the administration of anesthetic. Yvette was doing it ‘raw,’ relying on her system zero genetics to allow her to cope with the agony of being operated on while awake.
The severed artery had already been clamped. Juliette had her medical satchel with her, and it was filled with her usual combat surgical equipment. Yvette resisted stilling her mind, ramping would only make the experience seem like it was lasting forever. Her mind kept going to what was happening to her, it was impossible to step away from reality.
“Needle,” Juliette requested.
Chiara passed a stainless-steel needle above Yvette’s face.
“Thread.”
That also passed over her face.
Juliette’s face stilled as she dropped into silence, ramping hard. Metal flashed beneath the overhead fluorescent lights. Her hands blurred, needle and thread moving with machine-like speed and precision. Forty-eight seconds later, the artery had been tightly stitched back together. Juliette applied an adhesive, biodegradable gauze netting to reinforce the blood vessel. Then she took up a preloaded syringe and applied anesthetic to the wound sites, front and back. She then stitched up the entry and exit wounds, applied dressings, strappings, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, and then rocked back on her heels and stood up.
“I need some blood donors, any volunteers?” Juliette asked the room in calm tones.
Everyone volunteered.
“Not you Jay, you’ve already lost some with your arm. I’ll stitch you up next. Okay, Anton and Li,” she indicated spots to the left and right of Yvette, “take a seat. Chiara will hook you up. Peter, find the jar of herbal balm, Anton, and you need it on your faces, and Anton - you’re a mess. But given your recent actions, you can’t be too badly hurt, I’ll tend to you last.”
Anton nodded, and moved with Li to kneel on either side of Yvette. Chiara inserted clear lines between Li and Anton’s arms, and Yvette’s left and right arms. Blood filled the lines flowing into Yvette’s depleted veins.
She turned her head to the right, her gaze locking with Jay’s. Juliette was stitching up a number of rips in Jay’s arm received when a grenade exploded too close to the top of the MRU trailer. A normal man’s arm would have been shredded to the bone or taken off entirely. Yvette thanked God for the Ramp, and for the genetics that underpinned it. Without it, the Order would not have been possible, and the vampires would rule unopposed.
Jay was still whole because he was made of skin that was hard to tear, bones that resisted breaking, nerves that operated multiples faster than normal, and muscles that could exert forces five times more powerful than normal on a pound for pound basis.
She clenched her left fist, power still flowed through her damaged shoulder and arm. She was compromised, but not defeated. She would heal in the next hour what would take ten hours for a normal human being. By nightfall, she would have experienced the equivalent of nearly four days of healing.
Yvette clenched her left fist again. Anton’s and Li’s blood was flowing through her veins. Another gift of the system zero genetics - universal donor/receiver. She was feeling stronger already.
Soon she would be ready to fight again.
* * *
The Range Rovers were leaving the town of Coningsby behind. Anton sat behind Juliette in the lead SUV, with Li next to him, Peter on the far side of Li, and Francis driving. Luther was driving the second Range Rover, with Jay, Yvette, and Chiara.
“Where are the local police?” Anton asked. “A major RAF airbase is in ruins, and there are no roadblocks.”
“It’s a good question Anton,” Juliette observed.
“Did they run out of resources?” Li asked. “First, they’re blocking side roads on the other side of town, and now perhaps, they’re helping out with the airbase disaster.”
Peter’s lip curled. “C’mon, surely they would want to lock the town down and prevent anyone escaping. We just spent an hour in a safe house patching everyone up. They could have brought in resources from neighboring towns.”
Francis frowned and remarked, “And yet they didn’t.”
Juliette sighed. “They’re letting us go for now.”
Anton gazed into the distance and offered, “They don’t have the forces to follow us - we gutted their main strength.”
“If they fell for our ruse,” Francis said, “they would have divided their forces. That other force, it will be returning by now from the west country. Perhaps it is even refueling back at the Squadron F base as we speak.”
“We should assume that Shadowstone will send a second force against us,” Juliette recommended.
“Yes,” Francis agreed, “and they will update their tactics. They’ve been adapting the whole time we’ve been fighting them.”
“They’re stronger and faster than normal,” Peter observed.
“Yeah, noticed that,” Anton agreed.
Li suggested, “It’s like they can do a partial Ramp.”
Juliette advised, “Ramped or not. We can expect them to hit us hard if they get another chance at us.”
The cabin of the car became silent for a long moment.
“Stealth to avoid Shadowstone or speed to reach Armitage? We can’t have both,” Francis observed, “but we need to make haste. It’s already quarter past one. We’ve lost an hour. I know we had wounded to attend to, but we could ill afford the time.”
He looked across at Juliette. “What have you got left to shield us with?”
“It appears Shadowstone do not know we have these Range Rovers. I can run a signal from my laptop with a one-mile radius of effect that will airbrush our cars out of any cameras we pass.”
“Cool,” Li enthused from the back seat.
“Can’t trick eyeballs,” Peter remarked, arching an eyebrow.
“You’re right Peter,” Juliette conceded. “If Shadowstone knows what we are driving, then we’re exposed to anyone physically watching for us, or by high flying drones and satellites.”
Francis explained, “We don’t want to be assaulting the dungeon Kain is being kept in after nightfall. We don’t know what reinforcements Armitage may have access to. The longer we take, the stronger her position grows and the more information she will get from Kain.”
“Are we assuming that Kain will talk?” Li asked.
“He’ll squeal like a pig,” Anton remarked.
“Anton!” Juliette said. “Manners - he is still the Head of the Order.”
“And demonstrably corrupt,” Li noted.
“Li has a point,” Francis conceded, frowning. “The issue is not the man, but the information he holds. We have to assume he has broken and is talking. The longer we delay his rescue, the more damage is done.”
Juliette nodded. “Of course, it must be so. If we stay on the main roads, we can reach the manor house by quarter past four. That gives us four hours before sunset.”
Francis and Juliette glanced at each other. The arbitrage between speed and stealth was made, the decision was taken. Francis focused forward, the Range Rover smoothly eating up the miles on the northbound road.
Anton glanced out the window. A sign whipped past. It read, ‘Welcome to Horncastle.’ In another three hours, they would be on the threshold of confronting Chloe Armitage in her own home. She’d come into Anton’s home and taken his parents away from him. She’d ripped his life apart, and now he would be able to extract payment for the debt that was owed.
Anton took a deep breath and let it out slowly. All the months of training, the blood and the pain, had led to this day. To this opportunity to finally confront Armitage with the consequences of her actions. The need burned deep within him. To see the Blue Dragon flashing in the light. To beat past Armitage’s blade. To separate her head from her body and lift it aloft in vengeful triumph.
How his heart would sing.
And then, with the instrument destroyed, he would turn his attention to her master - Cornelius Crane.
The need was so strong he could taste it.
* * *
The humble residents of the town of Coningsby had been fruitful with information.
Gordon Heathmont’s men had discovered a pair of coal or dark-gray colored, late-model Range Rovers had sped north out of town. The prize had been an elderly woman who had witnessed them come and go from a house nearly opposite her own. A house without inhabitants and possessed of a large garage. She’d noticed the SUVs because normally no one, apart from a monthly gardener, ever visited the place.
His sedan rested in the driveway of the abandoned house while his men forced up a pair of roller doors on the garage. He stepped out of his car, he wanted to see for himself what signs the Mirovar force team had left for him.
The air inside the garage was still laced with the faint smell of exhaust fumes. They’d left recently, less than fifteen or twenty minutes before Gordon had arrived. He shivered with delight; he was close behind them. They were fleeing before him, and he would pursue them all the way to hell.
“Sir, you’ll want to see this,” one of his men remarked, holding up a darkly splattered, gray and black striped blanket.
Gordon peered at the stains. It was blood, mostly dry, but there was a lot of it. At least one of the Mirovar force team had bled badly. They hadn’t got off Scott free during the recent engagements, but there was no body.
He scowled, his mood turning dark. The enhancements of the Phase IV Day Guard program hadn’t made any difference so far. He silently hoped the new Phase V Day Guard program would deliver a better result. Cornelius Crane had hinted much without offering confirmation of how effective the new program would be.
For the fifth time today, he attempted to contact Crane’s personal line. The signal came back null, empty, void - communications with the head of Shadowstone were still down.
Gordon’s laptop started pinging, multiple messages arriving at the same time. He returned to his sedan and sat in the back. He opened his laptop; scanning the new messages. No bodies had been recovered from the wreckage of the Mirovar force team’s Embraer jet. He’d been skeptical that the Order operatives had evacuated the aircraft before it landed. He shook his head once, the evidence was compelling, they’d done precisely that.
How they evaded detection was a mystery that would have to wait for a quiet moment to solve. It was another riddle to add to the growing list of questions he had about the Mirovar force team.
