At least the army is organized, Dan thought as he watched the lines of well-built men and women file into the auditorium. Unlike the Thoth Foundation recruits, the soldiers settled in without fuss or conversation. A man walked up to the podium where Dan and Sam stood, a silver leaf on the collar of his smartly-pressed uniform, and extended his hand to Dan.
“Daniel Thrush, I presume?” He asked in a pleasant tenor. After Dan nodded his acknowledgement he continued speaking. “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Hans Bowman. I report directly to General Finch, and I’ll be in charge of the military half of this operation.”
“Nice to meet you Colonel,” Dan responded, taking his hand. “Hopefully you’re had a chance to look over my lesson plan. If you have any suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them. I think I’ve figured out most of this ‘magic’ stuff, but I’m hardly an expert on actually teaching people.”
“The Thoth Foundation sent us a summary report of your little journey through the looking glass, and I have to say, it raised some eyebrows back at the Department of Defense.” The man’s voice was clipped and professional as he looked him up and down. “I still don’t know what in the report was true and what was… professional liberties, but my understanding is that you’re to be our instructor on all matters arcane.”
“That’s right, Mr. Bowman.” Dan almost missed the officer’s flinch when he forgot his rank. It had been years since his time working with the army, but he should have known better. Not addressing an officer by their rank was the easiest way to land ‘coffee fetching duty’ for a civilian contractor. Still, there was something about the name Finch that rang a bell, although it wasn’t coming clearly to him at the moment. “I apologize, Colonel Bowman. I don’t really know what Henry said to you, but it was pretty harrowing on Twilight. Magic can be powerful, but at the same time, the same can be said for a rifle.
“Personally?” Dan shrugged helplessly. “I really only feel like I’m beginning to scratch the surface of what magic is capable of. I can do a lot of things that others can’t, and I can probably take most elves in a one-on-one, but I still have a long way to go.”
“If we can get the rest of this lot up to the point where they can fight the aliens one-on-one, it would be considered a huge success for Project Starshield.” Bowman motioned expansively at the troops behind him. “Right now, the aliens fight like groups of individuals trying to one up each other. Half the time, they compete against each other to see how many human soldiers they can kill in a fight, rather than actually focusing on winning.”
“If we even get close to parity, we’ll be able to pick them apart with superior small squad tactics.” The Colonel nodded imperiously, already convinced of the outcome. “So, how is this going to happen. Do we have them all file up one by one and put a hat on that will tell them what house they’ll end up in?”
“Closer to the truth than I’d like to admit Colonel,” Dan replied with a chuckle. “Once everyone is settled, I’ll give an introductory speech. Then, we’ll be testing each of the soldiers. Not everyone has an affinity for magic, but for those who do, I will be helping them form a spirit sphere. It’s like a power generator that will produce the mana they will need to use spells and operate magical equipment. The second part of the process will be Doctor Weathers fitting them with a technological aid developed by the Thoth Foundation to help them use their new magic.”
Bowman chewed his lip while glancing at Sam. She was busy fiddling with a tablet and largely not paying attention to the interaction between Dan and the military attaché. Finally, after a couple pensive seconds, he spoke.
“Is the technological aid this ‘System’ that the Thoth Foundation developed for you?” After Dan nodded, Bowman frowned and continued. “I’m not sure how comfortable I feel having that fitted to our soldiers.”
Dan opened his mouth to reply, but the officer waved a hand, silencing him.
“I know you’ve put up with it for years,” the man mused aloud, “but it seems awfully invasive. Plus, I have no idea how we would maintain operational security with a whole bunch of robots reading the minds of our special forces. I don’t have anything against your boss, but the people in this room have a lot of Uncle Sam’s secrets locked away in their noggins. We would need some sort of assurance that Mr. Ibis isn’t mining their dreams for information or something like that before we can proceed.”
“That sounds like a question for Sam and the Director rather than me,” Dan replied apologetically. “The only alternative to the System isn’t great. We can give a soldier a tattoo that will let them use limited abilities, but those are only in the design phase right now. The original model we are adapting was purposefully flawed and designed to melt down and kill the user if they got too powerful. We think we have a solution in the works on that front, but I can’t assure you that it will actually, you know… not immediately kill its user.”
“I’ll have to talk to the General before we can proceed further,” Bowman grumbled, mostly to himself. “We can deal with risky, but I don’t want their combat abilities or operational security compromised. He’ll be the one making the final call.”
“Fine by me,” Dan replied, smiling at the Colonel. “I’m just here for the magic side of things. Once we have your troops trained on basic spell theory, and we have their runes inscribed, this is all someone else’s problems, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Oh,” Bowman snapped his fingers looking up and making eye contact with Dan. “We aren’t going to be doing meditation through the Thoth Foundation. The unit has a psychologist and a chaplain attached to it if any of the soldiers feel the need to talk about things.”
“I’ve read your reports on mana addiction.” Bowman shook his head. “And we will be monitoring our own soldiers. If something goes wrong, I will handle it, but the United States Military isn’t going to put the health and well-being of its soldiers into the hands of a bunch of unaccountable civilian contractors.”
“Plus,” the Colonel shrugged, voice slightly conciliatory but not conceding an inch. “We have a team of veterans here. No offense, but this won’t be the first time any of them has killed someone. They’re not going to get riled up into some sort of uncontrollable bloodlust. Everyone here has already passed comprehensive psychological screening, and we will be monitoring them closely. It shouldn’t be an issue.”
“I don’t think you understand, Colonel,” Dan responded. “Meditation is absolutely necessary. Mana addiction has nothing to do with bloodlust or PTSD. It’s not something you can screen for in advance or treat with traditional methods. Without meditation to center yourself, you end up in an eternal test of willpower to avoid killing just to get another fix. Even if you’re generally a collected person and in control of yourself, it’s really only a function of time and severity. It’s like morphine or any other addiction. You will slip. It’s just a matter of catching yourself in time.”
“You mean that you have slipped, son,” Bowman replied frostily. “Look, I’m not here to judge you. You’ve seen combat after a fashion, so I’m assuming you get it. Awful things happen when you’re at war, and men will do terrible things to survive.”
“Daniel,” the officer clasped his hands behind his back, unable to completely conceal the condescending tone from his voice, “I’m going to be honest with you here. You went into a warzone green and unprepared, and you did things that haunt you. If I were in your chain of command, your commanding officer already would have been drummed out of the service for putting you on the spot like that.”
“I’ve served with enough men that suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to see the symptoms in you.” Dan thought he caught the hint of sneer on the soldier’s face. “That violence in your report? That’s PTSD, not some sort of magic mumbo jumbo. You’re relying on the diagnosis of a pre-technological drunken hermit. The fact that he can cast a couple spells hardly gives him a doctorate in psychology. I don’t know if Mr. Ibis has made a therapist available to you, but I’d suggest starting with them rather than some sort of ancient elven remedy.”
“Colonel-” Dan tried to speak only for Bowman to interrupt him once more.
“Daniel, it’s decided,” the Lieutenant Colonel shook his head. “We will take care of our own. If it turns out we’re wrong and one of our troops turns into some sort of killing machine, we will bring them in and get them the therapy they need to get their heads straight. Simple as that. The Department of Defense is already a bit uncomfortable with the amount of power the Thoth Foundation has over this entire endeavor. They’re not going to let you feed our troops some load of pseudo-religious babble.”
Before Dan could reply, Colonel Bowman made a dismissive gesture and turned his back on him, taking a seat in the front row of the auditorium. Dan’s lips drew into a tight line. It had been a while, but he hadn’t missed the military’s stubborn arrogance. He could only hope that the Colonel was right and that a staff therapist would be sufficient. If not, the entire military half of Project Starshield would be a timebomb. Maybe he should just pair them off with the stubborn e-sports celebrities. At least then the two problems might resolve themselves.
Dan shook his head to clear it of extraneous thoughts and gave his introductory speech. The soldiers were polite and listened to him, but he could tell that, like their commanding officer, they didn’t put much weight on his words. The entire lot was convinced that they were right, and no references to his last two years of experience would convince them otherwise.
The rest of the initiation process went off without many problems. Sixty-one of the soldiers, including Lieutenant Colonel Bowman, had an affinity and were able to coalesce a spirit ball with Dan’s assistance. After almost a full day of silence, word came in from Washington that the soldiers who could use mana would be fitted with the System.
As soon as the injections were done, Dan tried to start a joint training program between the soldiers and the Foundation candidates, but Bowman shot him down immediately. According to the Colonel, the army had their own training plans, and outside of the daily formal magic theory classes that Dan taught to both groups, he barely even saw the soldiers.
About a week later, the military tried to send another sixty or so soldiers to test for further affinities, but Ibis shut them down. Officially, he said that the base was being put into lockdown to prevent any leaks while the teams were engaged in intensive training, but unofficially, the director was fuming over the army’s heavy-handed response to Project Starshield.
Instead of a partnership to protect Earth, the military treated all proposals from the Thoth Foundation with an intense paranoia and instead primarily kept their own counsel. Although the rank and file soldiers were fairly friendly whenever Dan encountered them in the hallways, they always found excuses to not sit down with everyone else for lunch.
Really, outside of magical theory lessons and when they used the gym for their own training, the only times anyone from the Foundation saw the military detachment was when they engaged in what Ibis angrily referred to as “baldfaced industrial espionage.”
At first, Dan thought that the Director was exaggerating things. Henry Ibis seemed to have almost as much territorial distaste for the army “tromping all over his facility” as the officers seemed to have for him.
Then he came upon a ranger captain, one of Bowman’s senior aides, cornering Sam and trying to badger the inner workings of the System and some of the more sophisticated equipment used by the Thoth Foundation out of her. The man brushed both Sam and Dan off as they tried to politely extricate her from the situation, and eventually Dan had to use Shocking Fist to “convince” him to drop the issue.
It was honestly a near thing. Dan’s fights on Twilight didn’t really prepare him for another human that actually knew what he was doing, and even with his enhancements, he walked away from the encounter with a black eye. Luckily, the ranger had tried to grapple him, giving Dan the grasp on the man’s arm he needed to run enough electricity through him to dissuade him from continuing the fight.
After that incident, tensions became much frostier between the Foundation and the military detachment. Apparently, the man had issued a formal complaint regarding Dan’s behavior, never mind that Sam had told him to let her leave at least four times before Dan stepped in. Ibis ignored the complaint, but from that moment on, none of the officers in the military contingent would even speak to him anymore.
Well, other than Colonel Bowman. The day after the incident, the Colonel burst into his office and started screaming at Dan. A litany of threats ensued about how he was going to have Dan thrown in jail for assault, and at one point he used the word “treason.” Dan just stared blankly at the fuming Colonel and told him to close the door on his way out before returning to his paperwork.
Maybe there was a more diplomatic way of handling the incident, but Dan was sick of Bowman trying to talk down to him. The Colonel represented every bit of inertia that held the armed forces back. He would keep developing tools to fight the last war until someone pried him from his post, still blissfully unaware that the tactics that worked on human guerillas were meaningless when fighting the Tellask.
As tensions between the two camps accelerated toward a breaking point, Dan began to wonder if he’d made a mistake in not compromising with Bowman. The official itinerary for the joint training called for another five months before the two teams were to be deployed to Brazil, but Dan knew enough about human nature to read the glares the soldiers threw at him in the hallways.
There wasn’t going to be cooperation. He was stuck working with civilians, half of whom thought the war was just an excuse to get a new brand endorsement, and security forces that didn’t respect him.
Even if he was assigned to work with an army or security unit, the odds that they would follow his instructions were just about nil. When the time came, he was either going to be stuck babysitting or on his own.
Dan sighed. With minimal help available, It seemed like he’d have to prioritize developing his own spellshield if he wanted to survive what was to come.
