Soul Bound

1          Soul Bound

1.2        Taking Control

1.2.5      An Idiosyncratic Interlude

1.2.5.10   Murky threats

They carried on chatting and managed to get Jasic relaxed again. Bahrudin switched back to game view and gave a particularly scathing commentary upon the B team’s lack of coordination and ineffective use of the team member’s particular strengths.

Bahrudin: “Jasic, time for you to swap back in. See if you can give Vedad some hints on what he should be doing in his role as team leader. The lad has to learn some time.”

The final line-up was Harun, Tarik and Muhamed versus Vedad, Jasic and David, leaving old Daris in the chairs with them to watch. This time the scenario had no fog of war. Instead, the overlay showed a raging battle below among the ground units, with three objectives highlighted in neon blue. The mission was to help the ground units take temporary control over at least 2 out of the 3, for a longer total duration than the other side managed. Each team was given a fixed number of build points, representing cost and weight of units, and could decide before the start how to distribute them between different aerial unit types.

Daris was in his 90s, the oldest resident in the village; he’d lived there all his life, and despite not being up to managing the role of village Elder, he was well liked and respected. His wife had passed on 20 years ago, and he spent his days passing along the village’s traditions to his numerous great great grandchildren, or whiling away the hours in Kafana Sabanagic.

He fell asleep within five minutes of sitting down.

Bahrudin: “Miss Sabanagic, you’ve been asking a lot of questions today. If you don’t mind my asking one, what’s really on your mind?”

Nadine: “Leadership.”

Bahrudin waited, giving her time to put her thoughts in order, to decide what she was prepared to share.

Nadine: “I’ve been asked to take on a leadership role. I don’t know if I’m the right choice, though there doesn’t seem to be anyone else. The stakes are high and I don’t know if I’m prepared to take on the responsibility, but someone needs to and right now anything would be better than no leadership at all. I don’t think I can turn it down. I don’t know if I have a coherent, compelling vision of where I want to lead, that will inspire others to follow, that will satisfy everybody.”

She paused, looking him straight in the eyes. “Oh, and I’m on a deadline. I need to make a decision by tomorrow evening at the latest.”

He stroked his moustache, waiting to see if she wanted to add anything further, then responded.

Bahrudin: “It sounds to me like you’ve already made a decision. Which is good. A leader needs to be able to be decisive when there’s a hard deadline. You usually don’t get the luxury of waiting for absolute certainty; you just do the best you can with the time and resources available. You will never completely satisfy everybody, but you can listen to them and show you value them. If they trust you, that’s usually enough.”

She’d already decided? When did that happen? She suppressed a feeling of panic, and re-examined the answer she’d given. Bahrudin was right, blast him. She had decided.

She remembered Bulgaria asking on one knee in front of her: “Lead, really take on leadership, not half-heartedly play at it, and I’m yours. I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth, through thick and thin, success and failure, death or glory.”

She’d promised him that, if she agreed, she wouldn’t just play at it: she’d take it seriously and try her hardest. Well damn. Now she was committed. No turning back, she had her work cut out for her. What now?

She took a deep breath, and drew her dignity to her.

Nadine: “Thank you, Elder Bahrudin, for helping me see clearly. I think you are correct, and that I now have a lot that I must do. May I rely upon you to provide me with advice?”

Bahrudin: “Always, Miss Sabanagic.”

Nadine: “What should I do first?”

Bahrudin: “If something is neither urgent nor important, ignore it.”

Bahrudin: “If something is urgent, but not important, delegate it.”

Bahrudin: “If something is not urgent, but it is important, schedule it.”

Bahrudin: “If something is both urgent and important, do it straight away.”

Nadine: “Really?”

Bahrudin: “Well, it isn’t ideal, but if you’re a busy general surrounded by half a dozen aides all demanding your attention, it serves as a first pass filter to avoid you getting snowed under by requests someone else should have handled and avoid you finding too late, at the bottom of a pile of papers, a critical memo you really ought to have dealt with.”

Nadine nodded and addressed the laptop: “Terah, take note. Set up a leadership tasks database and a display that lets me see the status of things at a glance.”

Hmm, let’s see. Listening to the other Wombles and winning their trust would have to wait, because they weren’t here. Thinking about what she wanted, the big picture, was important, but didn’t need doing right now. She should schedule that for tomorrow evening, after she’d had a chance to spend a day with Heather. What could she do right now, that was productive and couldn’t be done as well later?

She nodded to herself.

Nadine: “Ok, first decision then. Since you and Terah are both here, and we have time, could you please brief me on how DDF contingency planning is going. What more needs doing to minimise the risk to villagers and myself, and are there any decisions I need to take or preparations I need to be involved in?”

The laptop screen changed to show a chart:

Defence Readiness Condition

Name    Meaning

White   Unprepared

Yellow  Scanning for signs of potential threats

Orange  Alerted by signs of a specific incoming potential threat

Red     Threat verified and action in progress

Black   Overwhelmed

Bahrudin: “These conditions can apply on every scale, from individual mental states all the way up to national defence postures. Here we’re looking at this village, but in all cases you want to avoid Condition White or Condition Black.”

Nadine nodded, to show she was following it so far.

Bahrudin: “Brigid has set up a passive sensor network around Cottage, your kafana, and Enchanted Forest, the wider village defence zone, which puts us at Condition Yellow. When her network picks up a mirror or apple, that moves us to Condition Orange.”

Nadine: "Remind me. Apples and mirrors?"

Bahrudin: "'apple' is code for an unscheduled human visitor. Most visitors, like normal tourists, will be put in the "healthy apple" category, which is code for any visitor whose appearance, behaviour, identity and online history all seem innocent. Or, as Tarek put it, egotistic-entitled-myopic-cretinous-corpocratic-imperialist-performative-paperclip-pilfers-but-innocent-of-investigating-our-Snow-White."

Nadine: "Seem? That sounds a bit vague."

Bahrudin shrugged. "Wellington argued that if our suspicions about a visitor are sufficient to justify moving to Condition Red rather than back to Condition Yellow, and our planned actions are the same whether it's a visitor showing an abnormal amount of interest in local Soul Bound players or a visitor we spot planting Spiz-R-Uz brand surveillance bots, then we should use the same 'poison apple' code to refer to them. He's right. Terah has a collection of profiles for different types of tourists and what they are likely or unlikely to say and do while visiting similar tourist sites. He's working on adapting it for the Enchanted Forest, based upon some of my own encounters with visitors. Do you remember the traditional architecture enthusiast that paid everyone for photographs of ceilings and roofs?"

Nadine nodded. Omar had sold the man nearly three hundred photographs he'd taken from the internet.

Bahrudin continued: "No statistical profile, even one that every villager spent a year contributing memories to, could tell you for certain that no innocent tourist could be eccentric enough to ask weird and intrusive questions. In the military, do you know what they call a soldier who won't shoot at armed intruders until it is absolutely certain they are hostile?"

She couldn't place the emotion in his voice. There was a sense of loss and sadness but, though similar in some ways, it wasn't regret or physical fatigue. Not an immediate reaction but something older and now a part of him, like a scar your fingers have brushed across the rough edges of for so many years that now, if it were removed, you'd miss its familiar feel, despite its occasional aches being an unpleasant reminder of cruel cuts from hard edges held in hands that were even harder.

Nadine: "Principled?"

Bahrudin: "Dead."

The look on his face gave her the clue she needed. It was both knowing and wistful, like the one given by parents to a child who must soon learn that magic flying reindeer exist only in stories. The emotion she'd heard in his voice wasn't the result of a physical wound. Everyone knew that an increased risk of being wounded physically was one of the costs of being a soldier, but she'd learned from David that soldiers often faced situations and choices that affected their identity, values and choices, and their beliefs or knowledge of those things - changes and revelations that could sometimes take longer to heal from or adapt to than a bullet hole in the guts. Bahrudin had obviously not been one of those unable to risk shooting innocents; making the decision had affected him, but he'd accepted that cost and still believed his choice had been correct. The emotion was world-weariness; a regret that the world was the way it was, a regret over how many were forced to learn this lesson and a regret about what it would cost them.

Nadine felt almost trapped as they locked eyes, her thoughts reluctantly drawn deeper along an introspective path while her instincts insisted that to look away was to admit she might be the sort of person who saw innocent deaths as acceptable. She searched for alternatives but each of her silent prevarications wilted away under the daunting confidence in Bahrudin's steady gaze. Finally, she became so uncomfortable about where the path was leading that she broke the eye contact first, trying to minimise any admission by continuing the conversation in as light a tone as she could manage: "So that's apples - humans are too weird to make perfect predictions about, so we just have to settle for making the best guess we have time to make, and then basing our response on the assumption anyone who does enough suspicious stuff actually is a spy who we are right to act against. Does the same apply to mirrors?"

Bahrudin gracefully accepting the change of topic, and responded to her question with a judicious inclining of his neck to show the consideration he was giving it.

Bahrudin: "Not entirely. 'mirror' is code for all types of mechanical surveillance asset not under DDF control, whether bug, drone or satellite, but there's no equivalent of 'a healthy apple' - our default assumption is that any information a mirror is capable of gathering will be gathered, uploaded and then purchased by Wicked. Balancing that, a wider range actions become available when no human lives at risk. The main concerns are preventing DDF members being monitored without their knowledge, and not drawing suspicion by revealing how alert and prepared we are,"

Nadine: "How alert are we?"

Bahrudin: “'buzzing mirror' is code for a done. Each time we detect one entering the Enchanter Forest airspace, we change from Condition Yellow to Condition Orange. In most cases it will be a high altitude delivery drone and once Brigid's sensors confirm that it isn't circling us or flying low enough to let it read lips or pick up spoken sounds, we change from Condition Orange back to Condition Yellow. Alternative, if its relative altitude drops below 1000 meters or its movement stops matching expected patterns, we change from Condition Orange to Condition Red and the system alerts the DDF members on duty, who can then pick which plan for that contingency they want to activate, We return back to Condition Yellow once the drone leaves the area or is destroyed." He brushed his hands together in satisfaction.

Destroyed?

Nadine remembered some of Heather's previous bouts of over-enthusiasm, and tried not to sound as worried as she felt: "We already have a plan? That sounds like a thing a good leader should know about. If you would, please?"