The Harp Incident-09

We kept Carrano under while we went over the intelligence. The arrays, known in the fringe world as "HAARP", turned out to be a Squid operation. Before we turned him over, we hooked him up and scanned his brain using the backup technology otherwise reserved for Special Branch operatives; I'd later argue that this breach of protocol was justified- and get away with it. The reason? Once we finished running through his brainmeats as if he were a miniaturized Internet to himself, we got actionable intelligence about the very arrays in question.

The arrays were weather-control operations, coordinated by deep-cover Squid operatives networked throughout the U.S. Establishment, but not at all intended to be used against other populations. Instead, they were used to manipulate the U.S. itself- a loophole in the array of treaties that did address such things (but they thought it was about cloud-seeding and old crap like that). By keeping various parts of the nation in varying levels of environmental stress, the base players cashed in on insurance fraud at a scope and scale heretofore impossible while the Squids got to set up a global environmental threat through the melting of trapped methane gas in the poles- and they had a super-fast remedy ready to go as soon as they had de facto global power in their hands.

We handed off Carrano and then mapped out the full array of the operation, thanks to Carrano's memories telling us all we needed to know to act on it. As we realized that our jet intended to have us go over the Bohemian Club in California, we knew that this was by no means a subtle operation; this was a combat op from the get-go, and we were air-dropping into a forest. Not an easy thing at the best of times, and this was nothing of the sort. Our goal was simple: to nab a known and well-connected Squid during his visit to the club.

What we figured, but had not confirmed, was that this was a Squid front. Since everyone was a Squid, we were in a free-fire zone and we took that opportunity to cull the opposition significantly. We bagged our prey, and cut a bloodly swath through the rest of them to get a car and get away; we knew where the jet awaited us, so we were in the air once more by the time that Squid-controlled cops and Feds could get to the Club and make any effort to do anything about it.

Once we got back to the Oubliette, we already debriefed the prisoner; the weather manipulation information we got from Carrano got independently confirmed (which would back me up at the discipline hearing after the fact), and we got a better picture of what the Squids intended to do with their plan. Specifics--people, places, properties, etc.--filled in the holes that we had in the information to date made Control a happy enough man; the Agency went on Apocalypse Protocol as we moved against the Squid and moved for the long-awaited extinction of that enemy organization.

Getting everything into place took moving Heaven and Earth, but the Agency has the means and the people to do just that. Even so, we could not do a globally-simultaneous assault due to--of course--the weather ensuring that just enough time disruption occurred that some part of their network did get a heads-up. Some of our teams ran into unexpected resistance, which forced us to deploy our trump card early: Epyon, fully-certified and ready for action. He turned the tide single-handedly, as they could not counter him without countering themselves, and he could be--and was--rapidly deployed and redeployed to where we needed him.