OPERATION: SALT THE EARTH - Log 11
Mar. 8th, 2018 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_changeling posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsDoctor Orekhov reveals the stolen materials from Frost Industries and his plans for it.
As a young man, Vladimir Orekhov had been a model of the Soviet ‘New Man’. He was a brilliant doctor, an avid skier and climbing, almost on par with his country’s Olympic representatives. His chiseled jaw, handsome features and dark hair had made him an attractive representative of the Soviet science community.
However, three decades of failure and disgrace had worn through his features. The formally handsome face bourn the years of heavy drinking, with his ruddy jowls and blotchy features. His dull grey hair was clipped close and whatever penetrating stare he may have had in the past was lost to dull eyes surrounded by pallid, wrinkled flesh.
Still, there was a shade of his old flesh, dredged up from some forgotten well of his soul, as he squared his shoulders at the podium behind which he stood. Around the room were many of the powerful men of the New Russia; military generals, business leaders, state officials and their usual travelling school of advisors, assistants and flunkies. All were here to see Orekhov’s discovery and to pitch for the right to fund and develop it. While the old Soviet regime would have simply acquired it and assigned Orekhov and his team to a program, the flood of new investment money and power meant that there was more value to be gained letting third parties vie for the responsibility, albeit under the tight and heavy oversight of the Russian government and military. Things never truly change that much.
“War is referred to as the continuation of diplomacy through other means. Too often, we have relied on the view that war is to destroy your enemy’s ability to continue to conduct it. Symmetrically, we have our tanks and our bombs and our soldiers, who win when they have brought the opponents to their knees to sue for peace. Asymmetrically, it has been to make the cost of war escalate higher and higher, until it is impossible to justify continuing it. With bioweapons, we thought of it as a third way; to destroy the means to support a defense in the first place and ensure they cannot recuperate. Chemical weapons, focused plagues, contaminated supplies; they can topple a nation before a single bullet is fired, ending a war before they knew it was being fought.” Orekhov gestured to the large screen behind him.
“I present Project: CHERNOBOG.” The screen showed a quarter acre of land, carefully enclosed in a concrete skirt and shrouded in plastic. The signs and notations were in English, and the odd corporate logo of the shell company doing research for Frost’s was available. The land had been plowed, cultivating a wide swath of waist high corn, as well as a blend of shrubbery, grass and flowers. A man in a full hazard suit stepped into the frame with a watering can and poured out a few cups of water into the field before ducking back behind the plastic and resealing the quarantine.
After a few minutes, grey started to spread from the epicenter where the water was poured. Before their eyes, the plants started to crumple into dust, coming apart into dull flakes. The rich brown of the exposed loam was similarly bleached of colour. In minutes, the quarter acre was as grey and lifeless as a spot on the Moon. The video jumped to a close-up of a microscope placed in the loam, and a slow motion film of a group of squirming bacteria that simply destroyed everything in front of them as it flowed past the camera.
“We estimate that 250ml of the matrix will render up to a hundred acres sterile, unable to support life for decades, if not centuries. Properly weaponized, we think that we can increase its potency a thousand fold.”
He allowed himself a slight smile. “At the end of the Third Punic wars, the Romans insured there would not be a fourth by pulling down the walls of Carthage and salting the fertile earth around it. They could rebuild their walls. They could replace their lost sons. But they could not grow the food to sustain the city and their civilization quickly fell. What happens if this were to happen to the farmlands of Russia’s rivals? What happens when those powerful militaries find themselves unable to feed the men they need to bring a war to bear?”
The buzz around the room grew. It was a powerful threat to go along with a devastating potential weapon and this was a group that could understand the considerable advantages it could bring. Orekhov smiled again. After years of failure and humiliation, he was once again the prize mind to be fought over.
Wanda leaned back in her seat as the woman to her right chattered excitedly at her in Russian. She answered, seemingly just as excited, her cover, well, covering for the way her stomach dropped. She had known it was bad from the briefing Emma had given them back in New York but seeing the presentation, seeing how the crowd reacted, chilled her. But she played her part, excitedly jotting down notes and questions they'd expect her to ask.
Kevin had lost count of how many presentations regarding 'super weapons' he'd seen over the decades. Neutron bombs, EMPs, nanite swarms... every sci-fi concept that you could think of, some defense contractor had tried to turn into the next game changer in the geopolitical balance of power. Even so, watching CHERNOBOG, he couldn't help but be struck with a sense of dread. This wasn't something that you tested safely in some remote atoll which a slim chance of effecting a few remote native Pacific Islanders and the local wildlife. This had all the nightmare fuel of a planet killer running rampant. Even Frost's projections lacked the impact of seeing it now.
No one was looking at the lowly assistants in all the excitement, and Dom was glad for that because it meant no one would notice the white-knuckled grip on her stylus or that flex of her cheek as she clenched her jaw tightly. All around here were people patting themselves on the back for having figured out an even more vicious way to kill people - not only that, but to prevent them from ever getting back on their feet. Somehow this felt like a perfect distillation of everything that was wrong with the human race.
There were times when Emma was quite glad she didn’t currently have access to her telepathic powers. This was one of them – she did not want to feel the kind of vicious glee that seemed to surround her. People, she thought once more, were so short-sighted. This kind of technology never stayed in its box, no matter what Orekhov thought. Fortunately, her cover allowed her to think such longer term thoughts and she allowed the skin beneath her brows to wrinkle in concern, the end of her stylus tapping against the table.
As her political superior in name only, North's cover was not expected to make any real decisions and he could safely lean back and take in the attendees' varying reactions. With his phone in his lap, he tapped out a message to their counterparts at the FSB house who were doubtlessly watching in.
Meeting Emma's gaze as she glanced to the side, North flashed a sharp grin at her and put away his phone. "What horrifyingly advanced times we live in, no?"
It was more imperative than ever that they deny the bad guys their plans and he was going to take great satisfaction in shutting down Orekhov's smug mug. Preferably with a fist to his nose to begin.
As a young man, Vladimir Orekhov had been a model of the Soviet ‘New Man’. He was a brilliant doctor, an avid skier and climbing, almost on par with his country’s Olympic representatives. His chiseled jaw, handsome features and dark hair had made him an attractive representative of the Soviet science community.
However, three decades of failure and disgrace had worn through his features. The formally handsome face bourn the years of heavy drinking, with his ruddy jowls and blotchy features. His dull grey hair was clipped close and whatever penetrating stare he may have had in the past was lost to dull eyes surrounded by pallid, wrinkled flesh.
Still, there was a shade of his old flesh, dredged up from some forgotten well of his soul, as he squared his shoulders at the podium behind which he stood. Around the room were many of the powerful men of the New Russia; military generals, business leaders, state officials and their usual travelling school of advisors, assistants and flunkies. All were here to see Orekhov’s discovery and to pitch for the right to fund and develop it. While the old Soviet regime would have simply acquired it and assigned Orekhov and his team to a program, the flood of new investment money and power meant that there was more value to be gained letting third parties vie for the responsibility, albeit under the tight and heavy oversight of the Russian government and military. Things never truly change that much.
“War is referred to as the continuation of diplomacy through other means. Too often, we have relied on the view that war is to destroy your enemy’s ability to continue to conduct it. Symmetrically, we have our tanks and our bombs and our soldiers, who win when they have brought the opponents to their knees to sue for peace. Asymmetrically, it has been to make the cost of war escalate higher and higher, until it is impossible to justify continuing it. With bioweapons, we thought of it as a third way; to destroy the means to support a defense in the first place and ensure they cannot recuperate. Chemical weapons, focused plagues, contaminated supplies; they can topple a nation before a single bullet is fired, ending a war before they knew it was being fought.” Orekhov gestured to the large screen behind him.
“I present Project: CHERNOBOG.” The screen showed a quarter acre of land, carefully enclosed in a concrete skirt and shrouded in plastic. The signs and notations were in English, and the odd corporate logo of the shell company doing research for Frost’s was available. The land had been plowed, cultivating a wide swath of waist high corn, as well as a blend of shrubbery, grass and flowers. A man in a full hazard suit stepped into the frame with a watering can and poured out a few cups of water into the field before ducking back behind the plastic and resealing the quarantine.
After a few minutes, grey started to spread from the epicenter where the water was poured. Before their eyes, the plants started to crumple into dust, coming apart into dull flakes. The rich brown of the exposed loam was similarly bleached of colour. In minutes, the quarter acre was as grey and lifeless as a spot on the Moon. The video jumped to a close-up of a microscope placed in the loam, and a slow motion film of a group of squirming bacteria that simply destroyed everything in front of them as it flowed past the camera.
“We estimate that 250ml of the matrix will render up to a hundred acres sterile, unable to support life for decades, if not centuries. Properly weaponized, we think that we can increase its potency a thousand fold.”
He allowed himself a slight smile. “At the end of the Third Punic wars, the Romans insured there would not be a fourth by pulling down the walls of Carthage and salting the fertile earth around it. They could rebuild their walls. They could replace their lost sons. But they could not grow the food to sustain the city and their civilization quickly fell. What happens if this were to happen to the farmlands of Russia’s rivals? What happens when those powerful militaries find themselves unable to feed the men they need to bring a war to bear?”
The buzz around the room grew. It was a powerful threat to go along with a devastating potential weapon and this was a group that could understand the considerable advantages it could bring. Orekhov smiled again. After years of failure and humiliation, he was once again the prize mind to be fought over.
Wanda leaned back in her seat as the woman to her right chattered excitedly at her in Russian. She answered, seemingly just as excited, her cover, well, covering for the way her stomach dropped. She had known it was bad from the briefing Emma had given them back in New York but seeing the presentation, seeing how the crowd reacted, chilled her. But she played her part, excitedly jotting down notes and questions they'd expect her to ask.
Kevin had lost count of how many presentations regarding 'super weapons' he'd seen over the decades. Neutron bombs, EMPs, nanite swarms... every sci-fi concept that you could think of, some defense contractor had tried to turn into the next game changer in the geopolitical balance of power. Even so, watching CHERNOBOG, he couldn't help but be struck with a sense of dread. This wasn't something that you tested safely in some remote atoll which a slim chance of effecting a few remote native Pacific Islanders and the local wildlife. This had all the nightmare fuel of a planet killer running rampant. Even Frost's projections lacked the impact of seeing it now.
No one was looking at the lowly assistants in all the excitement, and Dom was glad for that because it meant no one would notice the white-knuckled grip on her stylus or that flex of her cheek as she clenched her jaw tightly. All around here were people patting themselves on the back for having figured out an even more vicious way to kill people - not only that, but to prevent them from ever getting back on their feet. Somehow this felt like a perfect distillation of everything that was wrong with the human race.
There were times when Emma was quite glad she didn’t currently have access to her telepathic powers. This was one of them – she did not want to feel the kind of vicious glee that seemed to surround her. People, she thought once more, were so short-sighted. This kind of technology never stayed in its box, no matter what Orekhov thought. Fortunately, her cover allowed her to think such longer term thoughts and she allowed the skin beneath her brows to wrinkle in concern, the end of her stylus tapping against the table.
As her political superior in name only, North's cover was not expected to make any real decisions and he could safely lean back and take in the attendees' varying reactions. With his phone in his lap, he tapped out a message to their counterparts at the FSB house who were doubtlessly watching in.
Meeting Emma's gaze as she glanced to the side, North flashed a sharp grin at her and put away his phone. "What horrifyingly advanced times we live in, no?"
It was more imperative than ever that they deny the bad guys their plans and he was going to take great satisfaction in shutting down Orekhov's smug mug. Preferably with a fist to his nose to begin.
