Chapter 11: After Action Report: Project 250 Million

The first thing upon returning from a mission is getting casualties to Sick Bay and the second is getting ready for immediate redeployment for a mission. The third is an after action report—what went right, what can be improved. Then it’s time to finish “recoil” and return to ordinary duties. There are award citations to write, sometimes there’s “military justice” to mete out.

Aboard Arc Dios the AAR takes only a few minutes. Usually. The after action report for Project 250 Million was a big event. Fortunately it was going to be a teleconference. The Qua was meeting in Conference Room Nine this time.

“Some days I regret being a social primate,” I muttered.

“You’re just complaining because the conference will take time that you’d otherwise spend with our family,” Debra observed.

“Yes, ma’am,” I admitted. “I resent that they won’t have bothered to read the AAR and will ask questions that were already covered in that report. I resent that someone will try to bring new issues into the conference.”

“You resent having to wear clothes, too,” Debra commiserated. “And for this conference you have to leave your fur family behind. No snakes, either. No birds. Only humans. There’s going to be eleven humans in Conference Room Nine—the Qua, me, another serving wench, and two representatives from Selena Medical Complex.”

What Debra omitted was that only three of the humans in Conference Room Nine were clothed. Oh, we were all in uniform. Female birthday suits were the proper administrative duty uniform and there were advantages—bare skin made interaction with Arc Dios more efficient. Marc Shepard, the Fleet Auxiliary officer on the Arc Dios, had been promoted to ensign. Major Tony Williams. Confederacy Marines, and I were the other two males. The Arc Dios females were Lilith, Mary, Georgia, Tess, Debra and Bettie—the latter two were serving wenches and eye candy. The two Selena Medical Center representatives were Annette and Glenda.

And then there were Walt and Ricardo Corleone—Walt was a ghost in avatar form and Ricardo was an AI in a physical body for smoother interaction with humans. Unseen was Ramses, Arc Dios’ main Artificial Intelligence.

I read the After Action Report summary—five minutes that began with “Operation 250 Million is completed. Yes, there are still millions who believe in MMD’s vision. The active operators have been neutralized.”

There were questions and answers following my summary. They were mercifully few.

“When will the hostages be returned to the United Nations compound?” a UN official asked.

“I can answer that,” Annette said. “Where do you want them delivered?”

“Where are they now?” “On the moon,” Glenda replied. “Selena Medical Complex.”

“Why?”

“Standard hostage rescue procedure,” Georgia butted in. “Johnny Dorman could have infected them with a virus.”

“He did,” Annette said. “It was a very nasty little bug. Did you know that viruses rewrite DNA? Host DNA? We removed it successfully and undid the damage that Mr. Dorman’s virus inflicted.”

Even when dead, Johnny Dorman and the MMD were still killing. Made me think about the Sa’arm and the forever war we humans signed on for. Situation normal, all—we humans have been fighting long before our recorded history began. It’s in our DNA.

“The Confederacy has prohibited genetic engineering,” I said, “and MMD has been attempting genetic engineering for centuries.”

“What proof do you have?” This was Mike, the director for the Selena Evacuation Center.

“Eugenics. The Spanish Flu--”

“You can’t prove that,” Mike objected.

“Mike—I didn’t know you were a Holocaust denier. Germany tried to purge the world of Jews—and Christians were next, along with anybody else that wasn’t pure Aryan.”

“That is--” Mike stopped. “I didn’t mean that! We just recently managed to image a virus. A century ago we didn’t know what a virus was.”

“Selective breeding produced the modern horse,” I countered. “Then there were all the plants produced the old fashioned way. Corn, as you know it, can’t exist in the wild. Most grains have been enhanced. Want to talk apples? They’re forms of genetic engineering.”

“Gene splicing is banned,” Ricardo informed me. “Tampering with DNA is very dangerous. We can’t allow that because in the past the results have been disaster.”

“We humans may have resulted from genetic engineering,” I added. “Evolution is a slow process. Why did humans evolve so rapidly?”