File 016:
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."
-- Albert Einstein
Big Steve was all over international media. Countless well-designed viral graphics on the invincibility of these power suits were pushed to the internet at the same time. Rumors began to spread that Japan was supplying Turkey and that the United States was fully backing Turkey's right to defend itself against ISIS nuclear threat.
The Pentagon was in chaos.
Big Steve's appearance on the battlefield put Kiyomizu Technologies' allegiance into question.
"When the heavy mechanized infantry appeared on the front, the Intelligence Community believed only Kiyomizu Technologies had the capability to produce such weapon systems and we couldn't predict they would play both sides in this crisis", Mr. Cunningham recounted.
As a result, the Pentagon halted the plan to send two aircraft carriers to Crete Naval Base and opened an internal investigation. Arresting Kiyomizu workers and clearing all important naval assets near the warp gates were part of the precautionary measures as they knew how devastating an out-of-control wormhole collapse could be.
They didn't know at the time that Gladstone Security could also manufacture Big Steve.
Lance originally contracted Kiyomizu Technologies to develop the mecha warrior of his childhood dream. Needless to say, Kiyomizu delivered. The outcome exceeded his wildest expectations. He had only planned to use it as a forklift or a very fancy all-terrain vehicle. Instead, he got a combat-ready mecha warrior that could be mass-produced and deployed anywhere in the world.
"To add to the confusion, the British suddenly announced their support for OUR new proxy war in the Middle East."
Several articles were pushed by an "anonymous government official" to British media to further bolster the narrative that the United States was backing Turkey in this military action. London, apparently, bought into Turkish misinformation campaign hook, line, and sinker. They laundered bogus claims through their official intelligence channels and began to trickle into the U.S. intelligence community.
That must have been Abujamah's handiwork.
Japan publicly rejected any involvement in supplying Turkey with weapons to invade Syria. Inwardly, they were also in turmoil as government officials tried to contact Kiyomizu Technologies for clarification.
"Kiyomizu Technologies categorically denied the allegation and tried to warn us about Gladstone's double dealing, but they couldn't get through because their liaison to the United States was missing", he looked at Sasaki.
Well, excuse us for getting detained.
In any case, Kiyomizu contacted the embassy in Japan to clarify the situation, reportedly in a somewhat cryptic manner due to the "relatively" insecure nature of this communication. Lance also confirmed that Gladstone supplied Turkey with the power suits.
"Some of my colleagues condemn him. The majority thinks it is fine for him to pursue corporate interests in the Levant, as he has always done for the past decade."
"So, it's not okay for a Japanese to provide weapons to a genocidal authoritarian regime, but when a white British male does it, it's a-okay?"
"Han, that's racist…" Aiko protested.
"I won't deny there's an inherent bias in our society. But it is not the case here."
"Then what is the case?"
"He lobbied everyone to take his side. If Kiyomizu Technologies "donated" enough money to certain charities, it would get a free pass too."
Oh, bribery! So much better than racism.
"Whatever. And you are telling us this now because…"
I believed he was saying that he would release us soon, given that the misunderstanding had been resolved.
"That's only the chronology of events. To be honest, we don't trust Kiyomizu Technologies at all. There have been talks about the lab becoming like Taiwan and turning our addiction to its products into a chokehold. What happened this time shows how little faith we have. Your lab's insistence on monopolizing the know-how needed to maintain your things is eroding our trust."
Sasaki and I looked at each other. She discretely shook her head, signaling me not to speak aloud what had been obvious to both of us.
Mr. Cunningham was blaming the lack of cooperation and unwillingness from Kiyomizu's side to transfer the know-how for their failure. While a part of that blame might be legitimate, the bigger reason why I thought it wouldn't have worked was their human resources.
The people handpicked by Kiyomizu Technologies were not merely talented, they were monsters who defied common senses.
Telling them to teach anyone not at their level was a fool's errand. They wouldn't understand why people just couldn't learn a new language every six month. Same with the effort to bring microchip jobs back from Taiwan, it was all in vain. Too few people in the United States were motivated enough to keep up in these highly demanding sectors.
"How is this related to my question?" I moved the topic back on track, not at all interested in this blame game.
"The Joint Chiefs of Staff is going to start a program to take in former Kiyomizu Technologies employees so that they can continue to service and develop the related technologies, independent from Japan. These are the ones we will entrust the warp gate to. Commodore here will arrange their employment with the Greek navy, should they choose to stay here in Souda Bay. Sasaki, of course, can join the marine corps."
Mr. Cunningham turned to the marine colonel.
"If I ordered you to give up your position to her, where would you like to be transferred to?" he asked, pointing at Sasaki.
Order, he said.
"I would stay here and be her subordinate", the colonel dryly answered without missing a beat.
That sounded fake as heck. He spoke like he was reading off a script.
"Can you people ever recruit normally? If I had a shekel every time someone try to recruit me after they lock me up, I would have two shekels. Not much but weird that it happened twice."
"Funny. I was in Tel Aviv yesterday. Here, have two shekels on me", Mr. Cunningham gave me two nickel-plated steel coins, "Mahmud was there too, by the way. I'm only here today because he told me Sasaki was here. I knew right away why no one answered the phone."
"Your skin temperature and heart rate are rising", Sasaki gave the colonel as side glance, "Forget it! Just keep your post. I'm not joining."
How the heck could she tell that from just looking? Oh, it was just Sasaki being herself. Never mind.
"We respect that. But I heard your current employer doesn't care about consent", Cunningham brought up her past trauma, which was supposed to have been scrubbed clean off all records and known only by those involved. He was saying that he had people on the inside, likely someone in privilege positions, and he knew how to push her buttons.
I doubted he had people on the board of directors. Else, he wouldn't have to guess whether Kiyomizu sent the power suits or not. Either that or the directors themselves could mobilize the lab's assets without telling other directors.
Or Lance told him. That would be low even for Lance. I figured I shouldn't question the source in his face, but I definitely would look into this later.
Sasaki shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. This charade had gone on for long enough.
"Mr. Cunningham, correct me if I'm wrong but…you are not planning to recruit anyone and make enemies out of Kiyomizu backers. You are only telling her boss to be serious about the tech transfer. To that end, you threaten to poach all their employees, levy baseless accusations on them, and possibly cut them off, cut the entire Japan off as punishment for not toeing the line."
"Well, if you put it that way…I have nothing to add."
A bullseye huh?
"I'll pretend this conversation never happened. Know that I'm only here to protect the warp gate and our employees. Make sure people know, when you offer them the choice to jump ship, that I won't be responsible for anyone not on my ship. Oh, and Colonel, you will want better APS on your IFV."
Nice comeback, Sasaki. That would show him.
"Duly noted. Very well, is there anything else you want to ask?"
Of course, she had a question. She was the one who started this intel exchange after all.
"A while ago, I received an order from your side to…"
She paused and eyed the two military men in the room.
Understanding that she wanted them to be dismissed, the deputy director said to them: "Gentlemen…I have wasted enough of your time."
The two officers saluted and marched out. I stood up to leave too.
"Stay here. This concerns Gladstone too", she stopped me from leaving.
"Ah, then. I think I know what you want to ask. But do go ahead. Tell him what it is about."
Kiyomizu Technologies was ordered to drain oil from the Turkish oil wells managed by Gladstone Energy in the Black Sea.
I knew how important they were to Gladstone. Lance made a huge deal out of them a few years back. He worked like a zombie to prepare for the exploration and pulled several all-nighters back-to-back to make sure everything was in place when he struck oil.
It was a remarkable period of time when he, already a billionaire at the time, worked like he had nine kids to feed on his meager fabric factory worker's paycheck. That mental image hit too close to home. He was still a workaholic nowadays, but he had been more moderated ever since Gladstone Energy started churning out profits.
If something happened to those oil wells, I couldn't imagine how shocked he would be. They were practically his children at this point.
According to Sasaki, the order was rescinded last week, after the NATO secretary general met with Lance, on the sideline of his official meeting with the Turkish president in Ankara. It was good that everything was resolved then. She was only curious about the current alignment of every party involved: Turkey, Greece, the United States, Gladstone, and Kiyomizu.
Given that the deputy director just referred to Turkey spitefully as "a genocidal authoritarian regime", then, in the next moment, he claimed it was okay for Gladstone to support Turkey in the ongoing war, it was understandable that she would be confused.
"It will take a semester to cover foreign relations in this region. I didn't want to go into power politics but, now that you are asking for it, I will try to keep this simple…"
Mr. Cunningham rose from his seat and approached a navigation chart on the wall.
"Turkey, Greece, and this is Cyprus. All three are legitimate countries. The northern part of Cyprus was invaded by Turkey in 1974. All ethnic Greeks from the north went south. All the ethnic Turks from the south went north. Lots of people died and the island was split into two. For many years, neither Greece nor Turkey has tried to take over the whole island due to the balance of power between the two, militarily and economically. That balance is broken. Partly because of the debt crisis in Greece and also because of Gladstone Energy."
Now that Turkey had decisively become stronger than Greece, they planned to resolve the Cyprus question in their favor once and for all.
"So, the reason why the warp gate is here, is because America wants to bring the two sides back in balance, and prevent a war on that island?"
"Essentially."
"So, you are saying that because Kiyomizu helped Greece with the warp gate, if Kiyomizu also helped Turkey…then the balance would be, uhm…"
It was difficult to weigh how much force the warp gate and the power suits would put on a scale.
"Then the balance would still be in Turkey's favor. Gladstone Three is not Kiyomizu Technologies. It can only exert so much influence through the heavy mechanized infantry, which wouldn't be at all useful in a naval conflict anyway. We could fine tune the scale of our support to Greece in order to maintain the balance as long as only Gladstone was on the other side."
He was saying that Kiyomizu Technologies on the opposite side would tip the scale so much that the United States could not counterbalance. I felt a tinge of pain in my chest when he demoted Gladstone's influence in this international powerplay as an acceptable margin of error.
He wasn't wrong, though. Gladstone Security's paramilitary force could only handle goat herders in sandals with rudimentary light firearms, maybe a jeep with a machine gun or a couple of Soviet-era RPG. No way they could be a match for national military with heavy weapons using organized combat tactics, let alone the strongest military in the world.
I wondered if he knew or not, but Kiyomizu Technologies really had some nasty weapons up their sleeves. There was this "Blue Starlight" laser beam thing Sasaki dropped on us in Bermuda. It likely belonged to security clearance level 6 classification. I couldn't find anything about it in the cache on Lance's computer.
Lance didn't know the details either, he only heard rumors that Kiyomizu had attempted to recreate divine weapons from Hindu mythology, and they succeeded in creating four. Heaven knows what they would use those weapons for but…why did they use Hindu mythology? Did India commission them?
"They said if you heard a director started chanting a codename that had a primary color in it near you, you'd better not be the target of that weapon", Lance explained why he knew shit was about to hit the fan when he heard the announcement for "Blue Starlight". Apparently, that was how divine weapons in Hindu mythology worked: you must shout their name to summon them.
Based on what I had witnessed, one hit from Blue Starlight would heavily damage an aircraft carrier, if not sink it outright. I remember the recharge time was like what? A minute? And the throughput was only a quarter of full strength. Not to mention, this was five years ago. I could not imagine how insane Kiyomizu Technologies was nowadays.
"But a war did break out. So, what went wrong?" Sasaki inquired.
"Not between Turkey and Greece. Not on Cyprus. The war is between Turkey and Syria. Down here", the deputy director pointed at Syria, south of Turkey on the map.
"What's the story with Syria?" I asked.
"They have oil."
"Ah…"
He simply stated in a matter-of-fact tone, accompanied by a shrug as if saying: "They have oil, it can't be helped, they must be liberated from their oil."
"Thank you for the lesson, Mr. Cunningham. One final question. When can we get back to work?"
I stared at her in disbelief. Did she mean "when can we go home?" She wanted to work right away?
"You are free to go home after lunch. I insist, however, that you stick around until seven. You don't want to miss the carriers now, do you?"
"Oh neat! I would love to see that."
"Tame your excitement. We're leaving as soon as we get our gears back. We're very behind on the test, and I promised Haruko I would pick her up today."
This girl was such a party pooper.
Given that Taipei was five hours ahead of Crete, if we waited until after seven, Haruko would have to wait until the next day. Sasaki explained that it wouldn't be safe to use a portal device afterwards. A warp gate would collapse all but one wormhole in an area around it. Without this "dead space", disaster could happen when two or more warp gates tried to connect to the same destination.
A portal collision, in other word.
The transport of an aircraft carrier required a dead space twice the size of Crete and it would last an hour, which was how much time the crew would have to vacate the landing site.
On the flipside, Mr. Cunningham assured me that I could view the event from every angle on TV tomorrow. The White House had approved the reveal of portal technology to the world. This should send a very clear message to Ankara that Washington was tired of their bullshit.
"By the way, Sasaki. I vaguely recall reading a report that you are unable to take field missions this month due to medical reasons. What happened?"
"Nothing special, you see…"
This was where I learned why Abujamah couldn't predict Sasaki's active period. His method had been flawed from the start.
"Ah, and here I was wondering who or what on Earth could hurt you. Menstruation, huh?"
The fourteen-year-old Sasaki Aiko had a different blood donation cycle from when she was ten years old.
"Being a woman is pain, literally and figuratively. I can't believe they extended my rest time to three months now, and if I have a very bloody day, they push me back by a week or two. That's outrageous. Where's my gender equality?"
This nudged her active period away from Daisuke's active period, which had remained the same. To be more precise, the effect of menstruation on her availability was unpredictable and only her physicians could make the call when she was fit to take field missions. Little did she know that it was precisely because of this unpredictability that she had become a foil in numerous plots later.
Abujamah dreaded her like he dreaded the wrath of Allah.
Lucky for the Arab, Sasaki was the only uncontrollable joker in Kiyomizu as support agents followed a very different procedure.
"Haruko can just take field missions whenever a partner is up. She doesn't even have to draw blood. But darn, since Daisuke is busy being a fulltime emperor…forever, I can't even change my role assignment until we get more fresh blood. Should I go into a warzone and take home some kids who seem like they would make good fighters?"
"Aiko, that's kidnapping…"
"Hey, not if I give him the option to stay with the other kidnappers and he chooses not to", she leaned closer and mused with a mischievous grin.
Her face was too close. She smelled like gunpowder and rust, which tickled my noses and made me want to sneeze. I resisted the urge, though.
"Now, now, you must look at it positively. If you were a man, they would have shot you yesterday."
Knowing Sasaki, they wouldn't be able to hurt her with mere firearms, and they would probably end up with a bloodied nose instead.
Still, Mr. Cunningham made a very good point.
Back then, the soldiers must have been extremely stressed, having been shot at by an ATGM. As she said it herself, people made silly mistakes under stress. They only had a split second to glance at where an agreed upon identifying marker would be. Wearing the identifying marker in the wrong place could be fatal in such high-intensity situation.
She lacked pink necktie identifying a Kiyomizu employee. She lacked the bullet-proof vest and camo uniform identifying a marine. She should have been shot. But they didn't, likely realizing they were looking at a girl who, at worst, would be a civilian working in the base.
"Oh, you heard? Yeah, most likely. They are the marines. Male marines. You always have to keep the hem of your skirt down around them."
"Aiko, that's sexist…"
"Eh, if gender equality means they shoot everyone equally, then…I'm not sure I want that."
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