Revolution 2.3

Redmond, WA, USA
7 June, 2030 0900 UTC-7

	“So how do we deal with the increased security presence at target Lima?” I asked, then looked at the junior man in the troop “Easy?”
	Easy had bounced back pretty well, he was still prone to fits of melancholy, but the events of 2 June weren’t eating him alive anymore.  If only all of life’s problems could be solved by good sex and a few hours of hypnotherapy.  Hell, even Easy’s problems hadn’t been solved, just coffer-dammed.  Eventually he’d need REAL therapy or the hypnotic suggestions that Rae had used to keep him on task would slip and he’d crash even harder than before.
	“Can’t lead with fire, too noisy and too likely to result in collateral damage.” He said.
	“Right.”
	“Go long and quiet?” he asked “Snipers to do for the exterior security and provide overwatch?”
	I nodded “Not a bad idea, but that puts one sniper team servicing four targets by themselves and leaves us with only six to run the party.  If you can see four airmen on security outside, that means every swinging dick inside is under arms as well.  Six with subguns against eight or ten with rifles is no joke. Even with the element of surprise on our side.  Sam, you wanna weigh in here?”
	Sam sucked on his teeth for a moment looking at the floorplan sketch and the mockup of the neighborhood around the USAF recruiting station in Tacoma.
	“Trojan Horse.” He said laconically in that Okie drawl of his.
	“Hmm...Station the troop inside before the ball drops you mean?  Jumping off at knife-fighting range would give us something of an edge, but you saw the security setup, how do we get weapons past a nitro-sniffer and a magnetometer?”
	“HDPE and Ceramics.” this from Fred.
	Fred is a DIY nutjob who’s taught himself everything from throwing pottery to Arduino programming to 3D printer design.  The 5th gen 3D printers we’d brought with us allowd for micrometer-sized design specs and will eat anything from old shopping bags to skateboard wheels and raw hemp to create HDPE and everything from aluminum scrap to raw silver to etch circuit board designs.  With a little ceramic for the cylinders, combustion chambers and exhaust manifolds, Jake could turn trash into a functioning internal combustion engine in about two weeks.
	“That gets us through the magnetometer, what about the nitro-sniffer?”  I asked.
	The Nitro-sniffer (which had a long and distinguished proper name I really didn’t give a shit about) was third-gen tech that detected airborne nitrate particles (the chemicals in explosives that actually explodes) in parts-per-million and anything over a certain amount caused lights, sirens and a literal avalanche of security responses from whoever was operating it.  It was theoretically capable of detecting C4 that had been hidden inside a human body and would surely detect the nitro-powder in the twelve-hundred or so .460 Rowland cartridges that made up our basic combat load and would absolutely hit on the bursting charges in the fecal-bombs we used as a last hurrah.
	“Nitro ain’t the only propellant that’ll push a bullet.  At that range all we need is compressed air smoothbores.” he replied. “Steal the action design from some old Airsoft systems we can get off the Llolth-web and use brass and HDPE quick connects for the gas and we’re in business, Boss.”
	I rocked back on my heels and thought for a moment. Compressed air in aluminum cylinders would get through the sensors and we could use ceramic barrels with printed HDPE liners to give us a tight enough seal to achieve the pressures required to push a lead slug fast enough to kill a man at ten meters or less...yeah, that could work.”
	“OK, so that takes care of security and the infil, how do we generate the surprise?” I asked, looking at Jake.
	The man was legendary for scaring the shit out of the command structure by turning up where he was supposed to be incapable of being, usually naked and armed with an assortment of sex toys to “drive the point home” so to speak.  The crazy bastard caught himself a lot of shit for it in the beginning (and by himself, I mean me), but he was also single-handedly responsible for tightening security on the FOBs along The Zone tight enough that it caught a CAG insertion team.  As a result, he’d become a much sought-after security resource.  Wealth and fame were showered upon him, but Jake didn’t care about the bonuses or the stock-options or the other perqs that came with being an expert in a terrifyingly difficult field, he just wanted to go home and work his farm and the fishwheel that had been in his family for four generations.  The only way he saw to be able to do that in peace, was to make Uncle Sugar too reluctant to cross The Zone.  Which is why he’d threatened to resign in order to get General Hunter to put him back on active ops.
	“Title 10 USH code § 9999.4(e)” Jake grinned as he spoke, his shuffling Yupik accent making the legal code a hash in my ears “Pershons sheeking to enlisht in the armed forshes shall not be barred bashed on their gender, shexuality, shpeshies or appearansh, yeh?”
	We all stared at him.  I don’t know who said it, or if it was limited to just one person, but someone said “Wut?”  Maybe it was a collective wut.
	“Well, der’re not going to expect much in the way of violensh from a bunch of furriesh, yeh?”
	Quiet pandemonium reigned for a minute.
	“And, we can build the party bombs into the suits themselves.” chimed in Fred.
	OK, maybe not so quiet.
	“And we have enough Carbsilk and Dragonscales to armor the suits too.” this came from Mick, who was looking madly thoughtful and slightly evil, his drooping van-dyke making him look kind of like a demented Jamie Hyneman without a neck.
	“If we swipe and detail a van, we could make it look like some sort of mass enlistment of weirdos.” Said Bob Partridge, getting into the act.
	In real life Bob was a graphic artist, advertising director and wrote advertising copy out of a loft in midtown Anchorage.  After his wife was murdered by federal troops during the opening days of secession, back in 2020, he’d stacked up a bunch of fat propaganda contracts for the firm, retired, and left his kids and their aunt in charge of the business.  He’d signed up with us at the unheard of age of forty and was the mastermind behind some of the nastier tactics we used.
	The death cards he’d swiped from the Vietnam war and the golden hearts were a great counterbalance to them.   The shit-bombs were his idea also.  Apparently they created a hazmat zone that both impeded investigation and resulted in a befoulment that could never really be covered up, so either the expense of completely ripping out and refinishing the interior was covered by the feds (if you can’t wipe out their army, wipe out their treasury) or the recruiters and recruits had to sit in rooms that had the faint reek of well-ripened feces and stare at an immutable ring of shit-stain that showed up through however many layers of paint you slapped on top of it, all the way around the room at chest height.  Demoralizing to say the least.
	“Let me get this straight, you want to up-armor a bunch of fursuits, so we can sneak into a secured building full of armed soldiers so we can kill them with three-hundred year old tech while impersonating a discotheque, all under the aegis of an under-strength sniper section to cover our rear?” I asked.
	Silence filled the room. Then, from Tobe “Well, yeah.”
	“Well, OK then.  I just have one question to ask you lads.”  I spoke slowly, my eyes locked on the diorama depicting the few city blocks around the recruiting station.  “What’s on the playlist for the party?”