OPERATION KURGAN - Fiction #1

All that follows is subject to change, but is an early sight of the work I'm doing to create the story behind Operation Kurgan.

'This whole situation is just a complete shit show.'

Leon had to agree with the Colonel. What had started out as a straightforward rescue mission with some equally straightforward ulterior motives to secure advanced technology and local specialists hadn't stopped coming unraveled since the moment they had touched down at the Malaca spaceport.

The only saving grace seemed to be that the Venusians were even more messed up than MASC and the latest intel seemed to confirm that some kind of serious philosophical split had occurred within their leadership or, possibly, it had always been there.  The intel wasn’t clear.

‘At least, now the dust has settled, we have the site,’ said Leon. ‘I mean, this place is definitely what we had in mind when we were thinking about bleeding-edge Terran science.’

‘That’s exactly what worries me,’ replied Gryre, turning away from the empty space he had been contemplating, gesturing to the dark void. ‘They left us the facility. They left us everything it contained. Hardly a room won’t advance our capabilities by at least a decade. But this…’

‘This is what they took.’

‘This is all they took,’ emphasized Gryre. ‘And we have no idea what it was. They gave up the whole place and everything in it to take the contents of this one room.’

‘You’re worried.’

‘No, Captain,’ Gryre corrected him, ‘I’m terrified. But the power-that-be back on Mars and his gloriousness, Emissary Vinter, our esteemed Head of Mission… they are merely worried. As a result, my desire to prioritize this over all other matters has been rejected out of hand. My plan to capture and interrogate the Venusian leadership in Nairobi has likewise been rejected.

‘And maybe it should’ve been, because our little cold war here doesn’t need to turn any hotter.  But, thank God, they’ve agreed to assemble a dedicated operational group to this affair.’

Ah, thought Captain Leon Cortez, that explained why he had been so unceremoniously swept up from his bunk in Malaca and dragged halfway around the world to this meeting.

‘You want my team on this?’

Gryre chuckled and patted him on the arm.

‘Oh, Leon, you’re so cute when you’re modest,’ he laughed as he walked away, trailing the now-confused Leon in his wake. ‘No, Vinter has the sense to commit a bit more than a single team to this affair. We’re putting together a full operational command under the codename KURGAN. It will have a civilian oversight board, a hybrid coordination group and no fewer than six Executive Teams. I need someone to lead the coordination group - someone who knows what the work of an X Team looks like; but with the command chops to tell the Board how it is. And you may have married Finn, but you were born Exek.’

‘Command?’

‘And promotion,’ confirmed Gryre, gesturing around them.  ‘Congratulations, Major. Welcome to your new headquarters.’

*

Command, Leon decided, was overrated.

‘Is there any part of our instruction that you found unclear, Major Cortez?’ asked ZEUS.

‘Ah, no sir,’ he admitted, ‘your instruction was perfectly clear.’

‘But you disagree with it?’

ZEUS had arrived at Kurgan Zero just two days ago, with the rest of the Oversight Board arriving close behind him. Leon had no idea who ZEUS was, his identity - along with that of the other Board members - being concealed behind his codename. It sounded vainglorious to have the codename ZEUS until you remembered that he had been appointed by the Exek Council on Olympus Mons. And he looked the part, too. ZEUS was a big, fit-looking man in his early seventies, with piercing blue eyes staring out from a halo of long, silver-white hair and an impressive beard. He was obviously a man who understood image, which was important in this context.

‘I… understand your rationale, sir,’ he replied. ‘My job here is to implement the instructions of the Board, not to challenge them.’

‘And yet,’ sighed ZEUS, ‘if you and I don’t work this through now, I fear you will hamper and obstruct our desires at every step until I am forced to dismiss you. And that would be frustrating.’

‘Sir, I would never -’

‘Oh, you might not intentionally obstruct us, Major,’ conceded ZEUS with a wave of his hand, as he sat down in one of the strange, compliant, self-shaping chairs they had found in the Namib facility. ‘But you will do what you think will protect your people. And if that means making it harder for our media teams to observe them at work, then that’s what you’ll do. So let me be clear with you.

‘The Board has no desire to compromise the security of this operation. But it is the opinion of the Exek Council that KURGAN’s work has the potential to be extremely embarrassing. They therefore want to make sure that, as far as possible, every facet of the operation is independently observed, recorded and commented upon.’

‘But the Oversight Board -’

‘Will perforce be implicated in anything and everything your Executive Teams do that exceeds their terms of engagement,’ ZEUS interrupted him. ‘And therefore motivated to assist in any cover-up. No, Major. The involvement of the press is non-negotiable. Everything you do from tomorrow forwards will be subject to the scrutiny of a hand-picked team of independent journalists who will have full access to the operation and you will enable, facilitate and actively assist their involvement with enthusiasm or I will have Colonel Gryre find us someone for our Chief Executive who will.

‘KURGAN has nothing to hide.’