"Sergeant Taylor, Colonel Campbell will see you know." Staff Sergeant Moses "T" Taylor stood to his full, semi-imposing height, and flashed the young, attractive PFC a white-toothed smile. He did his best not to show the nervousness he felt as he walked towards the Colonel 's door. One hand reached for the door, while the other did a rapid readjust - tie, lapel, jacket, to make sure everything was in regulation - he was a ground pounder, he hadn't been in service dress in over a year.
T strode through the door and his dark steel, blue-grey eyes were immediately drawn to the sea-green eyes of the Colonel. Not to the office, though his battle intuition already told him where everything in the room was located, and where he could take cover or make the quickest exit should he need it. Not to the woman herself, though again he intuitively knew her to be a trim, young-to-middle-aged woman, just under 180cm with dirty blonde hair pulled back into a tight pony-tail, and a sidearm strapped to her leg. Instead, he saw her sea-green eyes, and they watched his every movement and calculated and assessed. T closed the door and repressed a shudder, things had gone from bad to worse - she was EC, and if she wasn't he'd eat Delgado's boots.
"Staff Sergeant Taylor, reporting as ordered," he barked as he saluted perfectly.
Colonel Campbell returned his salute as smartly. "You may relax, Sergeant." Her voice was smooth, almost soothing. T stood at rest, and the Colonel also relaxed, but her eyes didn't. He did a quick scan of the office, found everything where he expected it to be, and then turned his attention back to the officer before him. She wore the dress uniform, though she didn't have on the jacket, the silver oak leaves evident on her epaulettes. She was more attractive than he had first assessed, but the rest fit his initial assessment too, including the Avenger pistol strapped to her thigh. The gun's presence bothered T.
"You went through one of the HERos, didn't you?" T blinked at the question, it was hard not to demonstrate shock. The fact that the NAU had a black ops Human Enhancement Routine - that they were selectively experimenting with the populace to create even more superior super-soldiers - was considered an urban myth.
He had grown up in the Pinnacle Training Academy, yes. And yes, he had undergone the treatments, the training, and the routines of Combative Training, Gamma. T didn't know if every child at the Academy had gotten the same treatment, but he doubted it now. He was ordered then to never speak about it, and when he graduated that that aspect of his life was decreed highly classified. Perhaps he was a living urban legend, but that wasn't for his pay grade to consider or discuss.
"I'm sorry, Colonel - I don't know to what you are referring."
She offered him a slight smile. "Hmmm, of course not. I could look it up, but we both know what I'd find. I went through interesting classes at my Academy as well - different classes probably, but still very interesting." She paused for a second as if to let what she said sink in. "So, now that we both know what we know, and understand what that means, we can go back to being dutiful solders. Do you know why you're here Sergeant?"
T's head was swimming - definitely EC, no one else could be so weird, but still so proper. "No, Colonel the order and my CO gave no reason."
"Your CO told you that I have all the necessary clearances, correct?"
"Yes, Colonel."
"Please, enough with the excessive formalities." She smiled again, but it didn't touch her eyes. "I would like you to guess why you're here."
T sighed. He had been called from the field to see an EC officer, a Lieutenant Colonel no less, and she was playing games. This was why he liked the field. He wished she would just give him his reassignment to some remote hell-hole. "It has everything to do with my last mission, and you're EC." The woman laughed.
"And how does that make you feel?"
"Well, considering that I'm still trying to deal with the loss of five good soldiers from that mission, and I'm looking at a reassignment to some lost flyspeck outpost, I'm not doing so well." T relaxed his hands; he had balled them into fists as he spoke.
The Colonel's eyes flicked from his hands back to his face. "What is External Circumstances to you besides spooks and boogiemen?"
"A special division - part special forces, part mad scientist's lab - you deal with everything External. You handle the Flux, the weird orange tears that lead to other worlds and everything that comes through them." T paused, he had no idea how much he should say, but he was in deep already. "You also have a habit of reassigning people who get too close to Externals."
"Essentially correct on all counts. Earth is already strange and dangerous place after the Event. We don't need External threats making our job of surviving and rebuilding any tougher. Don't you agree?" T nodded. He did agree that there was a lot of crazy stuff that was pretty hostile out there. However, a creature, a being called a L'na he deduced later, had saved his life once out on a patrol, so he didn't know if everything External was a threat.
The Colonel continued: "We exist to study, analyze, and thereby learn from External threats in order to combat them better."
"Know thy self, know thy enemy..." T began. "A thousand battles, a thousand victories," they finished together.
"Excellent," she said with a smile. "You expected to have an encounter with EC, and you believe in its purpose, now you simply have to understand why you are here."
"That doesn't make me feel any better," he quipped.
She frowned for a moment. "Oh, it shouldn't. You're squad had a run in with an External, and the outcome was a dubious victory, at best."
"Colonel, no offense, but you're not telling me anything I don't know." He clamped his mouth shut, a line of tension twisted along his jaw. He'd continue, he had nothing to lose, but he would keep his temper - being exiled and court-martialed were two different things. "We blasted a bunch of giant slugs, and five soldiers died on that patrol. For what?"
"For the NAU. For the safety and security of our families and what we believe in." Her hand moved to her hip, centimeters from her Avenger. "You should know...your men aren't dead."
T shook his head. "They may as well be. In a coma with an External slug sucking you dry is no way to live!"
"All of them have woken up, Sergeant."
"What?" Now he really was reeling. Four men and one woman had been "stung" by the slugs and gone down. They pulled the slug from Wilson and he had died immediately, so the left the others on. Once they got back to base the docs couldn't do anything for the others - the slugs had spread tendrils throughout their bodies. An EC team came in a few hours later and then everyone was gone.
"The slugs, as you called them, fell off within a few hours - empty husks. They woke up within a few more hours. From slug-food to alive and well in under 24-hours."
T shook his head. "They're not well, or you don't think they're well. You haven't cut them loose."
Colonel Campbell nodded. "They appear to be 100% recovered, but they still have tendrils running throughout their body. It is like a secondary nervous system. And when we put them through an EEG scan, the results were unnatural - it appeared as if there were two thought patterns."
"Like the slug's inside of them? Like its controlling them?" A shiver ran down his spine. "So that the reason for the Avenger? Do you think I have a slug in me?"
"We don't know what the External's purpose is, but as long as they are infected, we can't release them. And yes, that is why we picked you up - the same with all of your squad."
T ran a hand over the stubble of his shaved head. "Orders - a funny way of getting us here. You could have just picked us up, like you did the others." He looked into the Colonel's eyes and nodded in agreement, but there was something more there. "It's just another EC experiment - isn't it? If we're infected, you get to see how we react."
The Colonel arched an eyebrow. "Correct again."
"It was a waste of your time."
"That has yet to be proven," she replied with a shrug. "Your squad was out for over 48 hours - more than enough time for all of you to be infected, and recover."
He shook his head. "No one else got hit by the slugs. I was there. I saw it all go down."
"Have you considered that your memories may have been altered?" She asked and her eyes searched his. "It's not unlikely for an External that can fuse with your nervous system."
T shrugged. "I'll do what you ask Colonel, but I'm telling you - you're taking EC paranoia to a higher level."
"I hope you're right, but PFC Delgado has gone AWOL." He blinked at this and what going to ask for more information, but she didn't give him a chance. "There are two MPs at the door - they'll escort you to where you need to go."