Chapter two

An American, a German and a Chinese lady were having a beer.

It sounded like a prelude to a borderline racist joke, but it was real life for Mick. He was slumped back in a musty old leather chair, feet propped up on the e-table that sometimes served as the tactical operations hub, but more often as a beer can and poker chip receptacle. Across the table Ling was having an animated argument with Claus, about what, Mick wasn't paying attention to. Instead he was nodding his head to the dull beats of the classic electro that his daughter had always made fun of him for liking. The steady beat coupled the countdown timer for the Mars shuttle, four minutes to touchdown.

Mick paused the track and sent a ping to Jack who was somewhere on the warehouse floor; "You coming back up?" read the message "Bring more beer" it finished. He switched back to the feed from the aerial reconnaissance drone (or "ARD" in the American military jargon/bullshit that had always irritated Ling), just to make sure the fridge in the office next door was definitely empty. Was that something lurking in the back corner? He took over control of one of the drone's manipulator claws, his arm and hand mimicking the action he wished the drone to perform. The feed showed the claw pulling back out of the fridge, the drone's spot light illuminating the magic words "cold filtered, 5.0%". Mike sniggered to himself, and commanded the drone to return.

Ling paused from making whatever point she was hammering home to the increasingly browbeaten Claus to look up at the drone as it re-entered the control centre. The ARD bared more than a passing resemblance to the sort of alloy wheel hub that adorned the modified cars of Mike's youth. However instead of spokes in the centre, it had counter rotating air blades to generate lift, which in turn surrounded two flaps which dictated its direction. Around the edge of the hub, itself a dull metallic grey, ran rails to which a range of attachments could be connected to. The choice of attachments was up to the operator and depended on what the ARD was being used for. Multiple cameras and other sensors were par for the course, but everything else varied depending on whatever it had been tasked to do. This could be something as mundane as monitoring parking violations right up to covert surveillance in a hostage situation. For the serving of beer, Mike had settled for a couple of cameras and the manipulator claw. His efforts to improvise a tray to carry multiple drinks and snacks had so for proved unsuccessful.

"Thought you said that we'd run out" Ling drawled in the smooth English accent she'd picked up after years in the diplomatic service. She arched an eyebrow as the drone dropped the can into Mike's outstretched hand

"I said _you'd_ run out. Jack should be back up with some more soon though" he accompanied this with another ping, this time copying in Ling

"Well he better hurry, it's touchdown soon, my nation's finest hour" this with a provocative smirk

"_Our_ nations' finest hour" Mike replied tersely, Claus shrinking back down in his seat; Mick began to suspect what the two of them had been so animatedly discussing before.

"If you could just hurry up with _your_ nation's finest beer, I'd be a happy lady" this also broadcast to Jack

"I'm coming, jeee-zuz!" Jack shot back "Got a funny reading or two down here, mind"

"What sort of reading?" Mike straightened in his chair

"Some of the em-oh-pees trying to come out of standby"

Ling rolled her eyes at yet more of the jargon. The MOP's or mobile operating platforms, were the mainstay of the Americans' armed forces. Ling had always been amused at how silly they looked in their basic form, essentially just a pair of mechanical legs connected to a powerful gyroscope and powerpack. However, she had a begrudging respect for what they were capable of. The legs were able to run at a speed twice as fast as any sprinter for three times as long as any marathoner. However, modelled on the human leg as they were, they could be used in any situation that a human could operate in; fight in the same tight spaces, climb the same stairs. This set them apart from the more traditional type of unmanned drones that they counted as their ancestors, but with all the same advantages; Americans (and the allies they sold them to or those who made their own versions of) were no longer dying in conflict. The MOP's operators needn't even be on the same continent. Of course this brought with it some minor human rights complaints from the usual hippies - that conflicts today were entered in to too lightly, or that the operators were too unaccountable for their actions on the battlefield in their anonymous MOPs - but Ling treated these concerns with the same contempt the American's appeared to do.

The legs were only half the story, powerful as they were. No, it was what was attached to the legs that really excited Ling. Weapon and monitoring systems could be individually customised to practically any battlefield on Earth. Ling had often ran a finger enviously over the racks of Gatling guns, pulse rifles and vector cannons that this anonymous Berlin warehouse contained. However, all the pleading in the world would not persuade Mike to hand over an access code, even for a minute or two on the firing range.

Mike stood up and walked over the the window which looked down in to the warehouse. Racks of MOPs and their associated equipment stood in neat rows. Most had not been brought out of storage, maintenance aside, for years. The US had had a military presence in Germany since the second world war, but its military operations these days were supplied from depots closer to the action in Africa and south Asia. Mike had joined the military in the days that they were actually taught to fight; these pipsqueaks today were nothing more than joystick jockeys in his eyes. However, such convictions were not "on message" as a colonel had once informed him, and so here he was now, not much more than a janitor. Still, at least this posting kept an ocean between him and his bitch of an ex-husband. Coupled with this was the fact that his daughter was studying in the UK, a close enough time-zone to make arranging contact easy enough (and a half hour scramjet shuttle away if ever he could persuade her that face to face contact was a good thing every now and then). All in all, it wasn't such a bad deal he figured.

"Out of standby? Where's the unit order come from?" Mike scratched his head, before calling up a scrolling list of planned unit-ops by the guys back at the Pentagon - nothing coming up for today's date

"Search me, origin location is blank, take a look" Jack pinged up the script-run from one of the MOPs. There was an order for the start up programme to run, but no point of origin.

"I don't like this" Mike muttered to himself, but Ling had come to stand at his shoulder

"Good old US tech?" she couldn't help the cynical smile that had emerged on her face.

"Wouldn't surprise me if this was your lot playing stupid buggers, _again_" Mike looked at her with a little disdain "I thought we were through with that, Ling?"

Mike and Ling had a long and not that glorious shared history. Ling had actually grown up in New York, her father an attaché to the Chinese UN representative. Mike's upbringing was geographically similar - he was a Brooklyn boy - but a world away from the expensive international school and circling in the upper echelons of the world's power brokers that was Ling's path through the earlier part of her life. Not that she had it easy, it takes a shrewd mover to negotiate their way through the Chinese political and diplomatic spheres. The Berlin post in the Chinese embassy as chief intelligence officer was a worthy reward for these efforts and should have been a steady platform on which to push even higher. But then she crossed paths with Mike.

"You know this isn't my style, not any more" she held Mike's gaze, her eyes unhindered by IR glasses, just that familiar diamond below her right eye that signalled cornea upgrade. Mike could only grunt in response.

"Any hope of a trace protocol on that Jack?" he turned away from Ling

"Already on it big guy"

Mike was running his own searches at the same time. He didn't really want to have to go to the seniors back home if he could avoid it, but if the MOP start up ran its course they'd be getting an automated message soon enough. He might not have the technical wizardry that Jack professed to possess, but this old dog knew a few tricks. Running a hand over his face, absent mindedly scratching at the stubble that seem to permanently adorn his fleshy jowls, Mike ran an intrusion search on the incoming traffic of the last half hour. Nothing jumped out, aside from a couple of high security pings to Ling from her embassy, but she'd sent nothing out in return, either back to the embassy or into the warehouse systems.

With a burst of static his display blinked out

"What the hell?" Ling was rubbing her eyes "My system's gone down"

"Kill switch" grunted Mike, he was already striding over to the door. Opening it he yelled down into the warehouse "Jack, who sent the kill order?"

"Give me a sec, man, my system's rebooting just the same as yours"

"Fuck" Mike said more to himself than anyone else. Whoever sent the kill order, he was in trouble. Under international law any armed system present in a signatory country had to have a kill switch installed. This allowed both the country where the unit was present, and the country that housed the unit's controllers, to quickly shut down any malfunctioning system. It was basically the only way countries like Germany were going to allow the US to remotely operate high advanced weapon systems capable of mass destruction. The kill command was sent via a totally different, and constantly changing, frequency to the ultranet on a super secure channel. It was impossible to fake or override. Either Mike's boss's in the US had learnt of the MOP intrusion, or he'd caused (another) diplomatic incident with his German hosts. It also meant his upcoming leave was screwed up - each and every MOP would have to have it kill switch physically reset, a job that would take days.

Mike slumped back down in his chair, first looking up to the ceiling as if for inspiration. The ARD continued to hover above; with no weapon system it was not fitted with a kill switch. No solutions there, he looked around the room. Ling's hand and fingers were dancing in front of her chest, presumably her fancy system rebooted quicker than his. His focus shifted to Claus

Who was looking distinctly sheepish

"Claus, please tell me this is nothing to do with you" Mike was on his feet and quickly standing over the now flustered looking German.

"Mike, er, please, I had no choice" he held his hands out in front of him palms up, as if paused mid shrug.

"Hey Mike, it was the damn Germans" Jack squawked in his ear

"We know" Mike replied, still staring at Claus.

"Mike, I had no choice" Claus repeated "If I didn't, my boss, they would be, how did you say?"

"_Pissed_?" Ling's attempt at Mike's accent was terrible, but it had amused her enough to provoke a smile

"No, the phrase he said to me last week, when I won at cards" Claus cleared his throat, Ling's impressionist skills were about to get a run for their money; "They would _rip off my head and shit down my throat_"

Mike's frown softened slightly. The slight German cowered in front of him presented a miserable sight. Claus was every inch the German bureaucrat, slightly soft round the middle (although Mike couldn't really talk there) with a suit that was just ill fitting enough to be distracting. A sort of grey pallor to his face, which tended to generally house a look of slight alarm. Wondering what trouble the pesky American was going to get him into this time. no doubt. However, Mike couldn't help but like him. He'd worked with a few German government envoys during his time here. They tended to range between the mind numbingly officious to the out right hostile. The ambitious ones were the worst, always at his shoulder, making sure he was doing exactly what he was supposed to be, quick to address even minor grievances to their seniors as if they were school kids desperate for teacher's attention.

Claus was different, it was like he couldn't quite believe he'd made it to where he was and didn't want to draw attention to himself (and by association, Mike) in case the mistake was realised and he was sent back to the obscure regional council he had started out at. He liked a beer, knew a few amusing stories and didn't make fun of Mike's taste in music. Mind you, as much as Mike had grown to like Claus, he could happily strangle the little shit when he invariably won their occasional poker nights.

"Well, now we've established once and for all that US tech is unreliable, and Claus is a massive, what is it you say? _Pussy_, maybe we can get back to watching the touchdown. Less than a minute to go" Ling had stolen Mike's leather chair, but he couldn't bring himself to start another argument and sat down opposite with a huff, his IR specs logging back into the feeds from China.

"Talk about unreliable tech, can't you guys provide a decent camera feed?" Mike flicked between the dead aerial camera drones tracking the shuttle, finally settling on the ground based camera.

Above thier heads the lights on the ARD blinked on and off, the machine gave a slight wobble before regaining stability.

Below, Ling leaned forward, the normally ice cool intelligence chief was abuzz with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Although she made light of the event in front of Mike, it was actually something of immense pride to her. It could have been the cornea IR reboot, but Mike was sure he could see tears in her eyes.

"What the..." her mouth dropped open

The shuttle impacted.

The ARD attacked Claus.