43 Deus Occidere - Part III

15th March

Old Settlement, Artemis, Freehold territory

My conversation with Alexander was, I suppose, bittersweet. Of course, it would've been great if he had agreed to work with me to change the world, but to hear him talk so passionately about trying to change it in a different way, wasn't so bad either. I get the feeling that the next time we see each other will be many years away from now.

When I arrive at the headquarters, I see Kyle standing outside, waiting for me. I guess that means the provisional government's meeting is over already. If I had to take a guess at what happened in that meeting, recognising that it was stacked in my favour, Chee Soon Mei and the Justice Association probably left in protest.

"How did it go?" I ask Kyle, as I approach him.

"As expected," Kyle responds, a slight smile on his face. It looks like he has something else on his mind, however. He was like that when we talked before I went to see Alexander as well.

"The constitution was accepted. And it was agreed that the elections for the new parliament will be held in three months' time."

"Good. Anything else?"

"No, well... no there was nothing noteworthy. Everything went according to plan," Kyle says, in a way that is anything but convincing. Is Kyle, of all people, hiding something from me? No, that can't be it. He wouldn't even think to lie to me. Well, I can find out what really happened during the meeting later anyway. I was planning to ask Kyle to come with me for what I'm going to do next, but I don't feel like it anymore. Just in case there really is something he's hiding from me.

"Then that problem is cleared," I say, "I have another matter to attend to now. We can discuss this in more detail later."

I usually only see a very small part of the DELOS headquarters daily. The lobby, my office, and the route I take to get between the two. Today, however, I'm not headed for my office. Far down in the lower sections of the building, there's access to a basement level that not even many of the employees know about. And although I say basement, it isn't actually underground exactly. It's located in a pocket in the cavern floor, about twenty metres wide and ten metres deep that was built over rather than filled in. The pocket was used by us for food storage in the old days. DELOS headquarters was built over top of it, however, when it no longer became necessary. Since then, the basement was hardly touched until about a month ago.

On my way through the lobby, I catch sight of someone familiar. That's normal of course, as I see a lot of the staff who work here every day, but this is different. I only caught a glimpse of her, but it was enough for me to place her. Sawano Nozomi, former JAXA astronaut and member of the first twenty. If I remember correctly, she works for Huesong nowadays. Hue-Song Jun loaned me some staff, since mine were overloaded, with all the work and planning for the future that has been needed over the last week. I guess Nozomi came with them. I'll have to say hello to her tomorrow. My arm tinges in pain, causing me to grimace. It's been doing that quite often. Well, it's my fault so I shouldn't complain. I haven't rested to let it heal properly. If it wasn't for the exoskeleton, I probably wouldn't be able to raise it above my waist. I don't think my confrontation with Alexander helped either. When he pushed me into the door, it flared up again from my forearm to my shoulder.

The basement has changed drastically since I last saw it. When I was last here, it was an abandoned poorly lit hole in the ground, but now it has been transformed into a fully-fledged situation room. It's manned by thirty undocumented employees of Artemis Energy. Seine Montague's people. All of them have been stationed at the Farside complex for at least two years. They're another reason that I need assurance from the US President that Tycho would remain open. I needed them to be able to make it all the way up here by train. Otherwise there's no way that they could've got here fast enough. This group, led by Seine's second-in-command, Rosia de Marcos, have been working on developing an incredibly strong weapon to use against our Earth-bound enemies.

By adapting Interplanetary Missiles that we bought off the Israelis, this team was able to create a new missile developed for a single purpose. The problem with the Interplanetary Missile is that if we were to use them in their original state for what we wanted, it would cause a large quantity of space debris. That could be problematic, as in a large enough amount, space debris could isolate us from the Earth.

The alterations that the Farside team made, means the missiles don't destroy the satellites on impact, but rather push them out of orbit then destroy them by remote or pre-set timer. Some of the satellites may still be destroyed on impact, but the changes we've made will keep the amount of space debris below dangerous levels.

One of the team members approaches me and introduces herself as Rosia de Marcos. I've never actually met her in person before. In fact the only person from the Farside team I've met is Seine Montague, and she isn't here right now.

"Is it looking like it's going to work?" I ask.

"Yes, we've calculated for all 3,562 targets to the best of our ability. Our planned launch window is still 1500 to 1525. So... the operation will commence in twenty minutes' time. Then it's all up to your allies."

Yes, our allies. The attack that we are about to put into motion, is going to start a war. Ever since my declaration, a number of countries have been building up military especially in contentious areas, and recent conflict hotspots. The Sinai Peninsula, Kashmir, the Taiwan strait, and the Colombian highlands, are among the areas that this operation will likely bring war to.

My enemies showed themselves first, however. My would-be assassins from the attack in the warehouse, were employees of Jianyang but considering that Mr Jianmin and most other leading Jianyang figures and all the firm's assets had been seized by me, their orders had to have come from elsewhere. Although they denied it, China is who I suspect. Jianyang has strong ties to the government in China, and the super-state that they lead, APEC. The Asia-Pacific Economic Coalition is one of the largest but most-loosely aligned super-states. APEC members can be found on almost every continent in the world, however the core of the military and political part of the alliance is led by China and Pakistan.

The plan today will hopefully break those two nations' being forced to surrender within a matter of weeks. My allies on the ground, namely India, Vietnam, and Taiwan, will lead invasions into the enemies' territory. Chief among these will be an Indian spearhead into the Kashmir region. This will serve to cut off China and Pakistan from each other, and keep them isolated.

The satellites that we're taking out today, mostly belong to China and Pakistan, and are mostly non-military satellites. The goal of our attack, is to cripple communications within China and Pakistan. We'll force them to rely on technology that is a hundred years out of date for communication. That should leave the chain of command in disarray.

Following that, China and its' allies will find themselves quickly running out of energy. China is 90% reliant on Helium-3 imports, and Pakistan is 80% reliant. If we cut supply, within a matter of weeks, APEC will be forced to surrender. After all, Helium-3 is difficult to contain, so no nation on Earth has a large stockpile of it, and the moon is the only supplier. Once their supply runs out, the military of our enemies will be crippled, forced to rely on outdated weaponry, not to mention the economies of APEC countries will be in tatters. Without power, there will be no ability to work, and production will come to a standstill. And with such a resounding defeat, few nations in the world would be willing to challenge the Freehold again. Therefore, this is another important step towards my goal of changing the world. Making it into a nicer and more peaceful place. So just watch Alexander. I'll show you that my methods can change the world. Yes, people will surely die because of what I'm about to do, but it's necessary. There's no other way around it. This is the only way to change the world. No matter how much death and destruction I cause. No matter how deeply red my hands become stained.