GDI OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS (OPA)
London, United Kingdom
09:30 GMT
The conference room was a monument to stress. It was soundproofed, lined with mahogany, and filled with the smell of stale coffee and panic sweat. This was the engine room of the GDI's public image, the place where the messy reality of an interplanetary war was sanitized for mass consumption.
Director Elena Sallow, the Head of Global Communications, slammed a tablet onto the table. The screen cracked.
"They are running it," Sallow hissed, her voice trembling with suppressed rage. "CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera. They are all running the 'anonymous source.' It's trending on every platform. #FreeTheQueen. #StopTheTorture."
Deputy Director Liam Kincaid, a man whose job was to put out fires, looked like he had been standing in an inferno for a week. He rubbed his face, looking at the holographic projection of a social media feed.
"The narrative is perfectly constructed, Elena," Kincaid said, his voice weary. "They aren't denying she's an enemy combatant. They're pivoting to human rights. The allegation isn't just that we captured her. It's that the soldiers at FOB Bedrock—specifically the 'unnamed special assets'—are sexually assaulting her. They're claiming 'enhanced interrogation' has crossed into sadism."
"It's a lie!" Sallow shouted, pacing the room. "A grotesque, manufactured lie! The Queen decimated a convoy of fifty soldiers. Her daughter burned eleven men alive on live television! And now the world is weeping for her because some 'source' says we're the monsters?"
"The source is the problem," Kincaid said, pulling up a dossier. "It's cited as 'Official GDI Correspondence.' It's a forgery, obviously, but a high-quality one. It uses the correct encryption headers. Whoever leaked this knows our internal tagging system."
"Vanguard," Sallow spat the name. "It has to be the private sector. They're trying to delegitimize GDI so they can push their own PMCs as the 'ethical alternative.'"
"We are stuck in a pincer, Elena," Kincaid warned. "If we stay silent, the silence is interpreted as guilt. The riots in Berlin will double by tonight. But if we deny it... if we release proof of life..."
"Then we show the world a broken, shackled woman in a high-security cell," Sallow finished for him. "We show them the 'Magic-Dampening Cuffs.' We show them the bruises she got from fighting Harris Brown. And the public won't see a defeated warlord. They'll see a victim. They'll see exactly what the allegation claims."
The intercom on the table buzzed. It was the priority line. The Red Line.
Sallow stared at it. Only five people had that number.
She pressed the button. "Director Sallow."
"Elena," the voice of Sir Malcolm Hayes was smooth, calm, and utterly detached from the panic in the room. "I trust you are enjoying the morning headlines."
"Sir Malcolm," Sallow said, straightening up instinctively. "We are... formulating a response. The allegations are damaging. We are considering a partial declassification of the Queen's combat capabilities to contextualize her confinement."
"Don't bother," Hayes said. "You are playing checkers, Elena. The enemy is playing poker. The allegations are a smokescreen. They don't care about the Queen. They care about distraction."
"Distraction from what?" Kincaid asked.
"While you were worrying about hashtags," Hayes said, his voice hardening, "a private entity—Shadow Company, funded by Vanguard Resources—stole two commercial SSTVs from Nevada and launched an unauthorized mission to Omega. They are currently landing in Sector 7."
Sallow's eyes went wide. "They... they launched? Without GDI authorization?"
"Precisely," Hayes said. "They broke international law, violated the Alliance Treaty, and stole military-grade hardware. That is your story, Elena. You want to kill the Queen rumor? Don't defend us. Attack them."
Hayes paused, letting the implication sink in.
"Leak the theft," Hayes ordered. "Tell the world that while GDI fights to protect Earth from extinction, the private sector is stealing resources to loot the planet. Paint them as pirates. Paint them as traitors. Change the villain of the story."
Sallow looked at Kincaid. A slow, predatory smile spread across her face. It was the first time she had smiled in forty-eight hours.
"Yes, Sir Malcolm," she said. "We can work with that. We can work with that very well."
"Good," Hayes said. "Bury them."
The line clicked dead.
OMEGA, SECTOR 7 (THE VOLCANIC CALDERA)
SITE OMICRON
06:00 LOCAL TIME
The air didn't smell like air. It smelled like matches struck inside a coffin.
The Vanguard Resources 'Starlite' SSTVIcarus sat on a flat shelf of rock, its landing struts groaning as they settled into the cooling magma crust. The ship was surrounded by a landscape that defied earthly geology.
This was Sector 7. The Valley of Ash.
The ground was a patchwork of black obsidian glass and grey, powdery ash that drifted in knee-deep dunes. Veins of glowing orange lava pulsed beneath the surface like the blood vessels of a feverish god. The sky above was choked with sulfur clouds, turning the sunlight into a bruised, sickly yellow haze.
Captain Mercer stood at the bottom of the ramp, his boot crunching into the ash. He checked the seal on his helmet. The atmospheric analyzer on his HUD was flashing yellow warnings: HIGH SULFUR. TOXIC PARTICULATES. EXTREME TEMPERATURE.
"Welcome to the gold mine, boys," Mercer said over the comms. "Visors down. Filters max. If you breathe this air, your lungs turn to soup in ten minutes."
The twelve men of Shadow Company fanned out. They moved with the cautious, greedy optimism of men who believed they were about to become kings.
"Scanning for the vein," the team's geologist, a mercenary named 'Tex', called out. He was holding a heavy, handheld spectrometer, waving it over the rock face. "Readings are... insane, Cap. The background radiation is weird, but the mineral density? It's off the charts. That wall over there? It's thirty percent Thaumic-Gold by volume."
Mercer looked at the cliff face Tex was pointing to. It glittered. Not with the yellow of terrestrial gold, but with a shifting, prismatic iridescence. It hummed, a low vibration that Mercer could feel in his teeth.
"Deploy the mining drones," Mercer ordered. "Get the perimeter sensors up. I want a 360-degree kill zone. We hold this rock for forty-eight hours."
The spider-like mining bots scuttled out of the cargo hold, their diamond drills spinning up. They attacked the cliff face, chewing into the priceless ore.
Tex wandered further down the ridge, his spectrometer beeping. "I'm getting a massive spike," he muttered. "Deeper in. Just past that steam vent."
"Stay in sight, Tex," Mercer warned. "We don't know the fauna."
"Yeah, yeah," Tex waved a hand. "I'm just checking the signal. It's huge. Might be a core deposit."
Tex walked into the steam. The thick, white geothermal plume swallowed him.
Mercer turned back to the drones. "Check the perimeter feeds. Anything moving?"
"Negative, Cap. Thermal is useless here—everything is hot. But motion sensors are flat. It's a dead zone. Nothing lives in this heat."
Five minutes passed.
The drones whirred. The wind howled.
Mercer checked his HUD. "Tex. Report."
Static.
"Tex, this is Actual. Report."
Nothing. Just the hiss of the sulfur wind.
Mercer felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. He remembered the reports. The Odyssey mission. The invisible elves.
"Team One, on me," Mercer barked, raising his SIG Spear. "Tex is dark. Standard search formation. Watch your corners."
The four men moved toward the steam vent, weapons raised. The silence of the valley suddenly felt heavy, watching them.
"Did you hear that?" one mercenary whispered.
"Hear what?"
"Like... clicking. Wet clicking."
Mercer raised a fist. The team froze.
They stood at the edge of the steam cloud. Visibility was zero.
"Tex!" Mercer yelled. "Sound off or I open fire!"
A shadow moved in the mist.
The mercenaries tensed, fingers taking up the slack on their triggers.
The shadow stumbled forward.
It was Tex.
He walked out of the steam, his spectrometer dangling from his hand. He looked... fine. His armor was intact. His visor was uncracked.
"Whoa, whoa!" Tex said, raising his hands. "Easy, Cap! My comms shorted out. The interference in there is crazy. Magnetic fields or something."
Mercer lowered his rifle, letting out a breath he didn't know he held. "You idiot. You broke protocol. You go dark again, and I leave you here."
"Sorry, Cap," Tex said, patting his helmet. "Won't happen again. But you should see the vein back there. It's pure. We're gonna need a bigger boat."
The team laughed, the tension breaking. It was just a glitch. Just the spooky environment playing tricks on them.
"Alright, get back to the line," Mercer ordered. "Let's get this gold and get out."
Tex nodded and jogged back toward the mining site.
As he turned, Mercer glanced at his back.
Attached to the rear of Tex's shoulder plate, right near the neck seal, was a small object.
It looked like a rock. A piece of volcanic debris that had fallen on him. It was dark gray, roughly the size of a fist, and looked like a cluster of hardened ash.
Mercer frowned, almost calling out. Hey, you got something on you.
But then he looked at the mining drones filling the first crate with iridescent ore. The gold distracted him. The greed took over.
"Focus," Mercer told himself. "Focus on the payout."
He turned away.
He didn't see the "rock" on Tex's shoulder move.
He didn't see the tiny, needle-thin silica legs unfold from the underside of the stone.
He didn't see the proboscis, thin as a hair and glowing with molten heat, extend and silently bore through the hermetic seal of Tex's suit, sliding painlessly into the mercenary's neck.
Tex didn't feel a thing. He just kept walking, humming a tune, while the passenger settled in for the ride.