The Deck Const: Shadows & Rumors: The Deck Const Series, #1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the people who stood by me during the time I was writing this novel. It took a number of years to write, and I am very thankful for all of their insights, comments and cajoling they utilized to keep the story moving forward.

About The Deck Const: Shadows and Rumors

The book runs about 481 pages in book form and consists of 145,000 words. It was originally published in parts as:

Rumors of War

The Charge of the Lost Brigade

Where Soldiers Fear to Tread

The Sisters Karamazov

Shadows & Rumors is the first part of a series that takes The Soldier across a dystopian future of America from San Francisco to its conclusion in Washington, D.C. The second full length novel should be available in the Winter of 2016.

About The Deck Const

The Deck Const is a universe copyrighted by Duane Gundrum, the author. For permission to use any elements of the Deck Const universe, please contact the author.

OTHER BOOKS BY Duane Gundrum

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

Leader of the Losers

Destiny

Absent Without Leave

Deadly Deceptions: A Steve Darwood Army Counterintelligence Novel

Thompson’s Bounty: A Ship Out of Time

The Ameriad: The Untold Founding of America by the Survivors of Troy

The Teddy Bear Conspiracy

A Season of Kings: A Tales of Reagul Novel

Darkened Passages: A Collection of Dark Fantasy

THE DECK CONST

SHADOWS & RUMORS

PROLOGUES

THE WORLD AS WE KNEW IT

Prologue 1

Video Record Dispatch from San Francisco Police Headquarters

Duty Log: Lieutenant Erick Halpern, Mission District

December 2nd: 1400 hours

I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this up.  I’ve lost half my men, and those remaining are on the brink of going over to the other side.  Things have never been this bad.

Detective Sharp.  Linda.  She was the first to go.  At least by her own choice.  We were playing Monopoly, and she landed on Park Place.  Rick had four houses on it.  Said pay up.  She forked over her money, excused herself to go to the bathroom, then sucked on her service revolver and pulled the trigger.  Stupid Rick still thinks it’s because he made her pay up.  I really need to smack him around more than I do.

That banging sound you might hear on the video recorder is the others trying to get in.  They’ve been trying to get in ever since we gave up on the streets.  I mean, there were just too many of them.  We tried to maintain order, but there was no way.  Thousands of them, and a few hundred of us.  In this precinct alone, we’re down to ninety-seven; some cops thought it would be easier to join our enemies than to fight them.  Intel says there are a couple of police gangs now competing with the bad guys on the streets.  I can’t believe it’s come down to this.

Rick, aside from being a tool, has been pretty brave through all of this.  If there’s ever a logistical connection to the real world again, I’m putting him in for a commendation, or at least a promotion.  While I wouldn’t want to see him running a precinct, he’s a great asset to anyone who might have to.  But I’m getting way ahead of myself.  We’ll be lucky if we survive the night, a miracle if we make it through the weekend.

Oh crap, they’ve breached the perimeter again.  There are too many holes in this place.  We’re never going to hold them off.

I have to respond to the alarm.  If I don’t return, it means they won.  If so, God help us all.

Prologue 2

Satellite Download File

VNC Video Records: Robert Mitchell Reporting in San Francisco

December 4th: 1735 hours

This is Robert Mitchell of VNC Global News, and I’m here in San Francisco reporting on the battle that has been waging between the local police department and the gangs on the streets.  To be honest, I don’t think we’ve seen anything this intense since we saw entire cities of people take to the streets to protest the stealing of the presidential election.  And those riots brought down the entire U.S. government, leading to the fragmented nations that now make-up the loose confederation of states that exist today.

But up until now, San Francisco has been left somewhat unscathed by the power plays that erupted between the successors to the old, yet once powerful nation that used to exist in these lands.  Recently, both the Oregonians and Coloradoans have claimed ownership of the Northern California territories, and this has led to wars of scale not seen since the civil wars of the 1800s.  As the Nevada Hegemony continues to switch sides between both powers, the California territories have managed to escape much of the bloodshed that seems to be dished out in their name.  Unfortunately, this state of peace was not meant to last.

The gangs of San Francisco appear to have completely destabilized the city and its surrounding territories.  Former national troops, who had been sent to this area to quell earlier riots, never left the area, and are now seen to be adding to the chaos that exists in this cesspool of conflict and violence.  Most other reporters have left the area because of the danger.  Only yesterday, local police gangs approached and killed reporters who were attempting to cover the battles that were taking place.  Their bodies were left hanging in the area once referred to as Civic Center, the name represented on signs adorning what used to be a subway complex in the area, warnings that any reporters found in the area are subject to the same sort of treatment.

It is too dangerous to continue to report from here.  Therefore, this is my final report from the area.  I believe the city is undergoing a power vacuum, as more and more police officers have succumbed to the allure of gang violence.  A reporter, who was one of the victims, reported that there are hundreds of people dying each day, many from suicides as people decide they are better off dead than in the hands of violent hoodlums and thugs.

This is Robert Mitchell, reporting for the last time from San Francisco for VNC Global News.

Prologue 3

Situation Report: Counterintelligence Agent Steven Darwood, U. S. Army

US Army Catalogued Records: Classified Top Secret

January 1st: 0115 hours

Following the procedures of AR 716-5(b), I was required to escort two special operations rangers to San Francisco.  I was informed that my part of the mission was to oversee intelligence matters, specifically that the mission was completed without complications.  The two spec ops officers were assigned to bring a sealed cargo container through the sealed border and to drop it off at a specific location as per our orders.  The mission briefing did not reveal the contents of the container to me.

Our transportation was a silent, modified Cobra that had enough cargo space to carry the three of us and our cargo.  Upon arrival in San Francisco, we secured the LZ and proceeded to travel through the wooded area to the building that had been targeted for this exchange.  Unfortunately, upon our arrival to the building, we discovered that the target location was not secure, and one of the spec ops officers was immediately killed.  The other spec ops officer and I returned fire, and we managed to regain control of the targeted location.

During the exchange, the second spec ops officer was hit in the chest with a rifle round.  He was stable enough to help me bring the cargo container into the complex, and then once inside, he could not go any further.  Realizing he was going to be unable to complete our mission, he took his own life to avoid being interrogated by any of our enemies who might still be lingering in the area.

I managed to drag the container into the vault that was located in the complex.  The combination worked according to the SIT brief we received before starting the mission.  After securing the container, I resealed the vault and replaced the façade over the vault to hide it from anyone’s view.  From what I could tell, the vault had not been opened or exposed since its original creation.  I had been chosen for this mission because I was part of the initial team that installed the vault two decades ago; therefore, I was the best agent for determining how secure the facility and the vault would be.  Our mission appeared to be unobserved by anyone else.

Upon completion of my mission, I then made my way to the safe house to deliver this SIT Report.  As per my orders, I will now attempt to disappear into the population until needed again.  I do understand that future orders may never come as the government of the country for which I am serving has been unresponsive for several months now.  There may no longer be a government from which I am awaiting further instructions.

Prologue 4

Excerpt from one the last known published books: The End of Time (author unknown)

Found in a private library of an executed member of Francisco Resistance

Published in February, year unknown (appears scratched out by someone)

If ever there was a battle that transcended time, it would have been the Battle of the Mission District.  The police made their last stand there, realizing that if they did not hold off the gangs at this time and place, they would never have a chance again.  The gangs were becoming more and more popular as fewer people had jobs, and the supplies were starting to dwindle away.  The gangs were turning out to be the only thing people had left.  Unfortunately, the police were just another obstacle.

Tear gas was a joke.  The gangs had been hit by that stuff so many times that they practically breathed tear gas on a regular basis.  When this didn’t work, the police changed to rubber bullets, and that was the mistake that changed the riots into a full blown civil war.  Unfortunately, rubber bullets were useless when the protesters started carrying guns of their own.  And when those same gangs and protesters managed to subdue the National Guard soldiers who were still roaming the streets, they upgraded their weapons and those weapons became even more deadly in the wrong hands.

It was surprising the tide turned as it did.  The first few skirmishes between police and gangs resulted in the police taking the upper hand almost every time.  While they may not have had the firepower they needed to completely overwhelm their enemy, at least they had superior training and experience in such confrontations.  And then everything changed.  Instead of protest on the streets, the protesters brought the skirmishes to the police stations themselves.

Protesters showed up with machines guns and small anti-tank weapons (SAWs), and before the police could arrive and coordinate their strategy of riot control, those weapon-carrying protesters started firing at police officers.  Quickly, rioters turned the tide against the police, and then eventually the police became the victims rather than the controllers of such encounters.

Everything changed when the gang members started targeting police headquarters buildings, killing officers in their own realms of protection.  Then they either burned the places to the ground, or they took over the complexes themselves, using those headquarters to launch even more attacks against the police.

In a few months, the police officers became the hunted, rather than the hunters.  Months after that, police officers stopped reporting for work, and eventually entire squads of police became vigilante units, using their weapons to go after their enemies without relying on the rules of state to reign in their tactics.  No one really knows when it all happened, but at some point the rogue police officers became the enemy of loyal police officers, and the battles just continued to become more deadly.

It was close to six months after everything fell apart that the Battle of the Mission District took place.  It was the last stand of the San Francisco Police Department.  They had erected a police headquarters in the old subway system, using the train tracks as their logistical connection to the other points of the city.  The trains acted as armored transports.  But they realized that in order to maintain any control over the city, they had to keep the train station under their protection.

And that’s when the gangs attacked.  It was probably the first and most coordinated attack that had ever taken place.  The police gangs, realizing they could never overwhelm the loyal police contingent, joined up with the old army gangs and the factions of the free gangs that had been operating in the city.  Entire gangs came over from other sections of the city, realizing that once this police entity was destroyed, the city would be ripe for picking by all of them.

The attack came at night, as two-thirds of the police officers were resting.  The guards at the station were quickly overwhelmed, and in minutes, the gangs were rushing into the subway complex.  The few police officers who were able to get up in time were able to run into the subway tunnel for protection, but hundreds of other police officers were cut off and gunned down in a five hour battle for control.

The police officers who ran into the subway tunnels were quickly cut off by gangs that had entered the subway tunnels from the opposite stations after taking over those mainly unguarded locations.  Due to such coordination, the police officers had never seen it coming.  The last ones to survive were trapped in between two stations, with nowhere to hide or escape to.  They put up a valiant fight, even asking to surrender, but the gangs would have none of it.  In the end, every last police officer was killed.  The gangs had lost a record number of soldiers of their own, but at least they were still around to fight another day.  The loyal police officers were practically wiped out, never to be seen again.

Surprisingly, there was no response from local National Guard troops patrolling the area.  The police were essentially left to fend for themselves.  Attempts to ascertain why the National Guard held back any support have been one of the controversial issues to historians attempting to chronicle the events of this assault.  It appears no two historians agree on what really happened.  What happened to the National Guard after this incident is one of those mysteries in history; all information concerning such units disappears immediately after the assault took place.  Some conjecture that they left the area and became rogue soldier units while others have suggested that these soldiers may have participated in the assault on the final police location.  Still, others postulate that the few National Guard troops in the area may have been part of the final stand-off, dying alongside the few police officers who remained loyal to the city to the very end.

The gangs, however, once achieving their communal goal in taking police headquarters, immediately took up arms against each other again, fighting for criminal control of the city.  It was a battle begun that may still be waging today.

BOOK 1

ORDER SEVEN, HOLD THE MAYOR

Chapter 1

Where should I start?  Well, they say that every story has a beginning somewhere.  So I guess my story began in what used to be called Old Francisco.  I'm not really proud of what I did back then, but it was a job, and as they say, somebody's got to do it.

Corporal Vincent bit off a piece of jerky and laughed as he spoke.  Do you think there’s anything left for us to do here?  I mean, haven’t they already killed each other?

I stared out at the debris that used to be a major highway; there was a charred sign hanging from an old, destroyed overpass.  The sign had the number 80 on it.  Although most of its color was faded, it appeared to have once been colored red and blue with white, stenciled numbers.  There was a taste of asphalt and burning flesh in the air.  Intel says they’re still killing each other, Corporal.

What our intelligence reports also indicated was that the riots were completely out of control.  There was no order in the city; people were killing each other indiscriminately; even the police were rioting and looting.  To sum it up, it was not a pretty picture.

I couldn’t tell Corporal Vincent this, but one of our intelligence units infiltrated the city before we blocked off the bridges with our armor units.  This unit’s mission was to determine where control of the gangs was located so mop-up operations could be initiated.  To our surprise, the intelligence unit reported there was absolutely no city control.  None whatsoever.  People were joining gangs just as fast as old ones were destroyed.  In the beginning, the Old San Francisco Police Department attempted to respond, but then the police were absorbed by the gangs.  That was when everything went crazy.  Much of the intelligence we received changed by the hour, indicating that no one really knew what was going on.

There were five police gangs in the beginning, as well as a skeleton crew of the original force that kept begging the regional governor for assistance.  Those pleas went unanswered because the regional governor was surrounded in his San Rafael mansion by forces loyal to the Oregonians.  Even when the governor's mansion was firebombed, the Old Franciscan police force held out hope that troops were going to respond.  They couldn't have been further from the truth. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the kind of intel we had.  Maybe that was a good thing.  If they had known the truth, they probably would have killed themselves rather than face what was in store for them in the future.

When the police force fell apart completely, with stolen National Guard tanks attacking the police headquarters building, and then sporadic battles between the surviving police against overwhelming odds, our spies realized there was nothing further that could be done for the city.  There was no salvaging it. 

Even our spies weren’t safe.  When one of the police gangs got wind of one of our agent units, most likely from a satellite tracker, they sent in a couple of police tanks to where they were hiding out.  We never heard from them again.

The sector governor was the one who recalled my unit from the Oregonian border and ordered us to maintain position at the foot of the Bay Bridge, to make sure that nothing made it across the span into Freedom Sector, the periphery of our government’s territory.  Tanks and anti-aircraft units were also located near the Oregonian border to keep anything from making it into free territory.  Of course, our radar failed from time to time, but our soldiers did their best.  Sometimes, that was all one could hope for.

Freedom Sector's governor believed that secrets were stored in Old Francisco that could prove to be crucial to the success of our war efforts.  Unfortunately, the exact nature of these secrets was never relayed to the rest of us, which meant we were supposed to look for anything odd.  I’m sure that my superiors had more information, but information is power, and rarely were they willing to surrender any of their power just because it might help us do our jobs better.

But my unit was a special operations command, so it was odd that we were called from one front to move into Old Francisco.  This makes me think that someone thought something important was there, something that leader was hoping we might run across before the heavy artillery leveled the rest of the place to ash and cinders.  Unfortunately, they never shared with us exactly what that item might be, as I have had more time to think about it, I think I always secretly realized what it was I was looking for, even if I never knew it by name.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

It is my understanding that this city once served as the Golden Gate to the rest of the world.  Even though it is only a legend, it is believed that much of the world used to be in direct communication with us, that we had often traveled to those other mystical places.  Of course, that had to be before the first of the cleansing wars began.  Our history is a bit spotty after that, but my understanding is that something big happened that got in the way of communication and travel.  Even our listening stations report little more than faint signals from small ham radios that appear to be operating over there.  But nothing has ever been verified.

The assault began with our tanks being the first to move across the bridge.  We didn’t expect any resistance, and then there it was.

At first, I thought I was hearing things.  The tank commander stopped the whole procession and then popped out of the top hatch and looked around.  Sure enough, there were men at the halfway point of the span, at a place where a large sign, hanging from one wire on a pole, stated TREASURE ISLAND.  They were armed with rifles, and they were firing at the lead tank.

The commander just stared at them in disbelief.  A rifle was not going to penetrate one of his tanks.  He wasn’t sure whether to order his gunners to open fire or to just ignore them.

And then the men with rifles noticed him, exposed outside of his hatch, and they started firing at him.  Two of the rounds ricocheted off the metal hatch cylinder, so the commander dived back down into the tank and then relayed his order.

A second later, the two machine gunners in the tank opened fire on the men with rifles.  The men with rifles were dead a second after that.

This then required my squad to mop up the survivors.  My squad leader motioned at me, so I led A team forward so I could see what might have been worth defending at this particular location.

The machine gunners had done a great job with their assault.  There had been four men originally, and two of them were quite dead.  A third one was seriously injured, and one of my soldiers happened to spot the fourth one, trying to sneak away towards the charred debris of what used to be a freeway off ramp.  Sergeant? said the man who spotted the runner.

Eliminate, I said. So he did.

The seriously injured man was lying before me.  I was about to question him when the tank commander appeared next to me.  What are you waiting for, Sergeant?

I was going to question him, sir, I replied.

He just shook his head, pulled out his service revolver and then fired four shots into the dying man’s chest, killing him instantly.  We don’t have time to question people right now.  We’re in the middle of an invasion.

Understood, sir, I said as I motioned for my soldiers to head back to our vehicle, realizing that there was still much work ahead of us.

They met very little further resistance on the bridge other than a stray gunner here or there.  Our tanks didn’t even stop, but just had the gunners fire and continue moving forward.  Near the entrance to the city, one of our spotters observed movement on the sides of the bridge, so they called for snipers.  Our sniper units quickly cut down a team of city engineers that was attempting to blow up the bridge.  After that, our tanks moved into the city and began clean-up operations.

The financial district, or what used to be the financial district, was the first hit by our tanks.  As our mobile units moved through, we were shocked by what we saw.  Men and women in business suits were hung by the neck from streetlights.  Some wore signs drawn in their own blood, signs that condemned these people for feeding off the poverty of the masses, and similar stuff like that. 

Although we knew little of these people and what purposes they had served in the past, it was apparent that they weren't very well respected by any of the gangs in the city.

The unit I was supporting was responsible for halting enemy units that were believed to be coming in from the Oregonian border.  To do this, we were required to destroy the large red bridge that stretched from the northern part of the city to what, according to a folded up map I found on the ground, used to be called Marin County.  We encountered a little bit of resistance from rag­tag military units located on the Presidio, but our tanks moved in and fired their big guns, devastating everything in their path.

The bridge was beautiful.  I don’t think I’d ever seen anything like it.  I wanted to just stare at it for hours.  Instead, I ordered an engineer from my squad to set a plasma explosive and then watched as the bridge exploded.  First, it was a nice serene scene, then it exploded in a fireball of energy, and then the red metal monstrosity fell into the water below.  Our mission was a success.  Large spans of the bridge still stood erect on opposite sides of the bay, but there was a large gap in between them.  Nothing would travel across it again.

The mop-up operations of the city were easier than we expected them to be.  The gangs put up token resistance in the beginning, but eventually they ran for cover and then came back out into the open to surrender.  Our superior firepower proved to be the turning point again in such conflicts.

One great moment of battle came when our tanks finally met up with the stolen National Guard tanks the gangs had been using to maintain control of the city.  It was rare to see these great mechanical beasts used for what they do well, and that’s fighting other tanks.  They fired, drove into better position, and then fired again, often taking damage as they inflicted damage and casualties.  The gang vehicles did not do much moving, having had little training in the actual processes of combat with armored vehicles.  When a tank does not fire while moving, it is completely vulnerable to a tank commander who knows how to fire while his own tank is moving.  In almost every encounter, our tanks prevailed in the end, and more gangs were eliminated from the battlefield.  Our losses were minimal.

My unit was assigned to the civic center location of the city to investigate the sector governor's belief that important information was located there.  We were a platoon, and I was a sergeant team leader for one of the four squads.  Our platoon leader, Lieutenant Roger Ashton kept close to our squad because Corporal Vincent carried the splatter rifle, and with gangs in the area, it was always a good thing to have close control of such a weapon.

This place used to be a major metropolis, said Staff Sergeant Steven Peres, my squad leader and only true friend in the Sector Army.  I hear there used to be people here from all over the world.

That was before they started killing each other, I said.  I knew a little of the city's history, and I was always shocked to read of the race killings that ripped through the city only a decade ago.  They had to send in the national troops back then.  The local ones wouldn't even respond.

Peres smiled.  The locals were a little on the disobedient side back then.  Even the local government refused to follow national policy.

Of course, that was before the national government fell, I said.

Peres nodded, the smile going away from his face.  We'll never have that again.

What do you mean? I said.  I was in my early twenties.  The national government fell nearly six decades before I was born.  Peres, however, was in his thirties, a career soldier, and he was around when the old government existed.  By the old government, I mean one of the many governments that emerged after the national government fell.  To be honest, it’s still sort of confusing, and I try not to think much about it.  It’s not like I’m a historian.  As a matter of fact, it’s pretty hard to come by a historian these days; Sector Government keeps killing them off.  But Peres was talking about one of the previous governments.  I thought the old government was corrupt.

Peres looked around to insure no one else was listening.  That's what the Sector Government wants everyone to believe.  Back then, things were rough, and there was a lot of corruption, but I still think it was superior to what we have now.

You're kidding, right?

He shook his head no.  Back then, there was a lot more freedom.

But that was the problem, if I remember correctly.  The people were so free, they were able to kill each other indiscriminately.  It was only after the revolution that order was achieved in our cities.

Peres smiled again.  That order was carried out by moving troops into city centers and opening fire.

I've never heard that, I said.  The Sector Government would never do that.

It wasn't the Sector Government that did it, he said.  Before the Sector Government was formed, small divisional governments arose to fill in the gaps caused by the loss of our national government.  Some of these governments were elective ones that promised to clean up our streets.  The way they accomplished that was usually by sending troops in and killing people.  That was when the division wars started, and everything's been hell ever since.

I knew the history of our Sector Government, but I also knew the Sector Government had only been around for ten years.  We were told of the various government changes that came almost weekly, and there were so many of them that history was often quite confusing.  This situation wasn't helped any by the fact that most of our teachers weren't really sure of what was going on back then.  When so many governments keep popping up and are then immediately destroyed, it is very difficult to keep history accurate; after all, the victor usually influences the way the history books are written; sometimes, the victor writes the history books, and that can often taint the evidence more than expected.  It was not unusual to be taught from one history book that was replaced in the middle of the semester with a new one that offered a completely different explanation of events.

You know the Sector Government doesn't take too kindly to people who question its history, I said.

He stared at me for a long time before he spoke again.  As a member of my squad, and as one of my team leaders, I feel I can trust you enough to keep our conversations specifically between us.

I forced a smile.  Of course.  I just thought I would remind you in case someone else overheard you.  Not everyone else is someone you can trust.

That's why I'm not talking to everyone else, he said, bitterly.  He checked over his shoulder once more.  I don't know if most people realize this, but the Sector Government isn't doing very well.

What do you mean? I said.  From what I understood, the council leaders of the Sector Government were under round the clock protection by soldiers loyal to them.  No one can get to them.

That's what everyone would like you to believe, he said.  I had an opportunity to visit Old Boulder recently.

You visited the capital?  I thought soldiers were off limits there.

I was on special business there, he said.  No one was supposed to know I was there.

I stared at him suspiciously.  What were you doing in the capital?

There is a special lining of the government that believes we are in danger of being overthrown.  I was recruited by this lining to see if I could discover any problems in the capital.  You'd be surprised at the dissent going on there.  It wouldn't take much for normally loyal soldiers to rise up and kill the people they are assigned to protect.

You're kidding, right?  Without the council leaders, we'd be in anarchy again.  What would we do?

I only told you this because I think you should know.  If something happens, I don't want you to do anything rash.

What are you talking about?  I'm a loyal soldier.  You know that.

That's not what I mean.  Loyalty means many things when a revolution or civil war is being fought.  You could be loyal to one person, but then discover that person is now fighting against everything you believe in.  He stared at me and recognized the surprised expression on my face.  I wasn't used to hearing him speak like this.  It can happen.  Believe me.  It has happened many times before.  It only takes a tiny spark to set off a major fire.

If something happens, what side would you be on? I said.  I couldn't imagine anything happening, but suddenly I had to know.

He shook his head.  That is a question that can’t be answered until the situation happens.  History is built on the decisions men make during such situations. You must remember to be flexible at all times.

That’s what I loved about Peres.  He always had a nice way of putting things, even if it was something you didn’t really want to hear.

Chapter 2

I had this really strange dream the night before we went into battle.  I really wanted to tell someone about it, but I knew if I did they’d probably flag me as a risk case and have me doing all sorts of mental tests before they demoted me and sent me to the front lines near the Nevada radiation fields.  So I said nothing.  But that dream was so vivid.  It seemed so real.

I was leading a group of soldiers, except these weren’t members of my usual squad.  No, I kept getting the impression that was in charge of a lot more than a dozen infantry soldiers.  I think I was leading the entire army.

Anyway, so this dream is so different than previous dreams because we’re not fighting a battle or a war.  The battle seems over, and we’re walking over the bodies of the dead who fell before us.  We keep walking towards this tower that appears to be miles ahead in the distance.

After what seems like forever, we reach this tower, and we find it completely abandoned.  The main door has been blown off with what looks to be the debris caused by a couple of plasma claymores, and we step inside.

I’ve never seen anything like this place.  It’s almost as if the inside is larger than the outside makes it appear to be.  I’m not sure that’s really possible, but the inside of the place keeps opening up into larger halls that can’t physically exist, yet they do.  The rooms are filled with elegance and appear to be of a time that is from far back into the planet’s past, when gold was used as decoration, not as a unit for barter.  The colors are astounding, and almost blinding to the naked eye.

We come upon a final room, and there it is.  It is a chest that is glowing bright white and yellow, almost making the chest impossible to see.  As I move closer, I keep feeling the sense that something is pushing me back, keeping me from reaching it.  But I keep moving forward, convinced this is what I need to find.

I realize this must be the item the government sent us here to find in Old Francisco.

As I reach the halfway point of trying to get across the room, I realize I am close enough that I might reach out and touch it.  Then a voice goes off in my head.  The voice belongs to someone familiar, yet I cannot quite put my finger on who that person is.  The voice says: You are not ready yet, Soldier.  But soon you shall be.

And then I see the dark figure in the doorway behind me.  It is not the one who spoke, but it stands there, staring.  I realize then and there that this is my enemy, and even though I cannot see much more of him than the shadows he projects, I realize that one day he and I will meet.

I also realize this is not the first time I’ve seen him.

Then I wake up.

The mop-up of Old Francisco went smoothly until we moved downtown.  The police force gangs of this area were considered amongst the toughest in the city.  When we first hit them, they offered serious resistance and actually succeeded in routing one of our infantry companies.  However, a quick regroup followed by a thrust forward from one of our armor battalions wiped out the major force of the resistance.  What few survivors of the enemy that were left fled from the scene and were then chased down by our helicopter recon patrols.

Several days were spent exploring and liberating the buildings that were once downtown hotels.  These buildings were the logical operations points for the gang armies, and we knew we had to insure these groups didn't remain and also didn't return.  From time to time, we were forced to hunt down individual rebels, but they were usually very green and easy to defeat.  However, when we were done, my team of six soldiers was down to four.  A leather-clad biker who refused to surrender his operations office in the Mark Hopkins Hotel gunned down Charles and was immediately gunned down by two of my soldiers.  Later that day, a young disheveled woman who was hiding behind the main desk of the Hilton Hotel jumped out of her hiding spot with a knife in her hands and stuck it into Adam’s neck.  She continued pulling the knife out and plunging it back into his body over and over until Victor pointed the splatter gun in her direction and pulled the trigger, figuring Adam was already a lost cause.  Both bodies erupted in flames and then dissipated into air.  In a few short hours, I was down two members of my team.

Sergeant, said Nick Mann, my assistant team leader and radio operator.  Sergeant Peres is on location and wants to see you at the hotel entrance.

We were still finishing up our mopping-up job of the Hilton, even though it appeared we were done, as there was no resistance here.  Hell, the place had forty-six floors, and it wasn't an easy task for four soldiers and one team leader to explore and secure.  Roger that. Tell him I'll meet him there.

I walked over to the entrance and found Peres standing with two soldiers from B Team.  What's up? I said.

Peres shook his head slowly.  We had an incident at the BART station.

What’s a BART station?

That's the name of the subway system that links this city with the rest of the bay area.  At least, that's what it used to be before terrorists destroyed the tunnel that ran under the Bay Bridge.  Intel says there was then some kind of battle, but the information is sketchy.  I understand nearly two hundred innocent people were killed. 

No one's innocent in war, I said, quoting Sector doctrine.  You know that.

This was before the war, he said.  This was near when the national government fell.

Well, what's this incident you're talking about?

He bowed his head.  Team B was exploring one of the tunnels where they detected some type of motion off of one of the sensors.  When they entered the tunnel, a localized seismic weapon went off and caved in the tunnel.  He motioned to the two privates standing to his side.  Wagner and Howell were the only two to escape alive.  We lost five men.

My eyes opened wide.  Damn!  What do we do now?

I've requested more soldiers from headquarters, but they tell me that we're tapped out, so we'll have to make do with what we have.

But we can't break up my team of only four men.  We'd have firing teams of three each.  There's no way to do anything significant with so few people.  With four, I was pretty tapped out myself.

We're not going to split up teams again, he said.  We're going to go with Team A as the only team.  Only, I'm taking command.  You'll operate as my assistant.

I understand, I said.  Although, it is a shame to lose my team leader status.

You'll get it back eventually, he said.  This is going to be a long war.  What's important is that we survive this mess and get back to Sector territory safely.

I thought Old Francisco was now Sector territory.  Didn't we annex it when we came across the bridge?

He put his arm over my shoulder and moved me away from the two soldiers.  Sector Headquarters believes Old Francisco is too dangerous for us to maintain.  They initiated Order Seven.

Order Seven? I said.  But there are hundreds of thousands of civilians still in this city.  We can't just go through and neutralize each and every one of them.

That's what Sector Headquarters wants, he said.  We don't really have a choice.

I took a deep breath and then let it out.  How do they want it done?

We're to go through and find the civilian leadership of each section of the city.  We're to convince them to move their people across the bridge where military police units will be waiting to move them to prison camps until a final decision is made.

Final decision?  That sounds really ominous.

We're soldiers, said Peres.  We don't question orders.  We do as we're told.

What if they resist?

He just stared at me.  Order Seven gives us authorization to use any force necessary.

They won't go.  You know that.  We'll end up killing hundreds of thousands in their own homes.  How can the System Government justify that?

The System Government gives us our orders.  They don't have to justify them.  That's why they’re the government.

The civilians here could easily defeat us if we try to go through with this.  You know that.  The System Government won't send us reinforcements when this goes bad.  And you know it will.

Peres shook his head.  There are soldiers amongst us who may refuse this order.  The System Government has ordered our leaders to condone immediate justice measures if orders are not carried out.  You know what that means.

I stared at my leader and friend.  We were being ordered to kill lots of people and possibly our own soldiers.  Can you live with this order?  Will you point a splatter rifle at a family and pull the trigger?  I knew this guy for years.  I couldn’t imagine him doing any such thing.  Do you really think you can do that?

He shook his head slowly.  Of course not.  But I don't have a choice.  And neither do you.  To refuse an Order Seven is mutiny.  The penalty is death.  There is also no trial.  But you know that.

I didn't say anything for a long time.  "I trust you as a friend, and