Edward saluted as he entered the room. “Sir.”

General Edgar Curry, the Chief of Army Staff, gestured to a chair. “Sit, Windsor. She’ll be here in a minute.”

“She’s here already,” a voice spoke behind Windsor.

The air shimmered, and a tall grey-haired woman stepped out of the shadows. She wore a business suit instead of a uniform, but there was no mistaking her military bearing.

“Evans,” Curry intoned. “I thought I told you to stop doing that.”

Evans shrugged, even as she saluted. “Old habits, sir.”

“Both of you, sit.” Curry switched off his monitor and turned to face his two subordinates. “Christine. I read your report. And your agent’s report. Good work.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“There are a few questions that I want cleared up, though. For the last decade, armies across the world have ‘known’ that Agni targets militaries which are too close to ultras. You’re saying that for the last decade, we’ve all been wrong?”

Evans nodded. “All of us. Including, I must admit, MI6. We saw the patterns and assumed it was an open-and-shut case.”

“As I recall, it was the CIA that made the assessment, right?”

“We at MI6 also bought into it. Probably the only ones who didn’t were the RAW – and we suspected them to be a bit biased.”

“Not an unreasonable suspicion.” Curry glanced at Windsor. “What do you think, Edward?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t get the report, sir.”

“Christine, if you would summarize?”

“Certainly.” Evans turned to face Windsor. “Agni has three major attacks she’s known for – Rawalpindi, Sudan and Medellin. In each case there was a military or militia organization working with ultras – or forcing them to work, in the case of Pakistan – and the CIA inferred this was what drove her antipathy. Especially in Sudan, where General Ulvar led a double life as Zaka. However, Agni didn’t decide the first target – at Rawalpindi, it was King Shah calling the shots.”

“That’s true.”

“We believe she went after Rawalpindi for other reasons. Possibly King Shah had some leverage on her – or a personal relationship, we don’t know. Either way, if we exclude Rawalpindi from the list of her targets – that leaves Sudan and Medellin. Which have a few things in common apart from the military link.”

“Such as?”

“Medellin was a centre for the human flesh trade.” A flicker of distaste passed across Evans’ face. “And Zaka had a number of women in captivity – mind-controlled, as it were, and forced to serve him.”

“That’s not common knowledge.”

“Considering his track record, it’s one of his lesser crimes. While that’s not the only common thread, once we started investigating, we looked at all possibilities with a fresh eye.”

“Did you find anything?”

“In the last ten years, sixty-seven men accused of – or suspected of – involvement in human trafficking have died in fires.”

“… That many?”

“This is spread across eighteen countries and ten years. Eleven of them were found to be ultras – after the fact. Twenty-seven were police personnel. We’re trying to correlate this against the entry or exit of individuals from the countries in question, but we haven’t found any links so far.”

“That’s quite the body count…” A moment later, Windsor’s brain caught up with his words. “… never mind.”

Evans’ mouth crinkled in a smile. “For anyone except Agni, it would be. We haven’t confirmed that all of them were her work – there are other fire-based ultras capable of murder, after all. Some of them may even be official heroes.”

“So you believe the trigger that calls her to action isn’t a military link – but involvement in sexual violence.”

“Yes. And that has significant implications for us – and for other militaries around the world.”

“That’s an understatement,” Curry growled. “We’ve spent the better part of a decade maintaining a distance between the military and ultras. A decade where each group of individuals did their own thing – where we’ve had to hide the few ultras in military service under banners of utmost secrecy. All because a bunch of politicians panicked – and about the wrong thing, at that.”

“Indeed,” agreed Evans. “Any chance of getting that reversed?”

Curry grinned. “Want your old job back, Captain Evans?”

“It would be nice for the UK to have ultras in uniform again. Sir.”

“We would all love to have ultras openly serve,” replied Curry, “but despite our best efforts, that’s at least a few years away. Assuming the politicians don’t panic again, and the usual trolls don’t start drawing comparisons to the Chinese. In the meantime, I want you to write up a note on Agni’s actual motivations. Something we can share with our intel and military allies across the world.”

“I’ll have a draft on your desk today, sir.”

“Windsor. At Liverpool, you let Belessar work out the tactics for the offensive – and sculpted our tactics around his plan. Can you walk me through your thinking?”

Windsor took a deep breath. “Turkmenistan.”

“Explain?”

“At Turkmenistan, General Sayyid – who was leading the forces on the ground – simply issued orders to the ultras, expecting he would be obeyed. More than half of them refused; they said the orders were dangerous, or stupid. There were open arguments within the council. Finally, the majority of the ultras split into three groups, each with the own strategy, and each going after completely different objectives.”

“I recall that. You were on-ground as an observer, weren’t you?”

“It drove home a few lessons. Ultras aren’t soldiers, or even poorly trained mercenaries – they’re civilians who’ve been handed the equivalent of a dedicated, very powerful weapon. They believe, at their heart, in democracy, in consultative decision-making, and in being represented.”

“Agreed. They also tend to be terrible tacticians.”

“Largely, yes. And they tend to favour the plans presented by the most charismatic amongst them – which need not necessarily be the best. We all believe that ultras would have better survival rates if they were competently led – but that brings us to the leaderboard paradox.”

“Any sufficiently capable ultra will rise fast in the leaderboards, and get called up by Skyguard.”

“That has been the single biggest problem. Ultras tend to follow those they respect – which aligns with leaderboard ranking. Or those with a reputation outside of the leaderboards, which usually aligns with either extremely strong powers, or supervillainy. If you issue them orders, they’ll find reasons why those won’t work – and persuading them otherwise, cramming years of tactical education and battlefield experience into a half-hour conversation, isn’t workable.”

“So you let them come up with plans themselves.”

“Actually, I expected them to argue amongst themselves for about fifteen minutes, and fail to gain a consensus.”

Curry’s eyebrows went up. “Really.”

“There were two possibilities. Either they would propose a half-dozen badly thought-out plans, which each of the other ultras would shoot down – and then I’d step in with our plan. Pick up ideas from the ultras’ plans, weave them into ours, and pitch it to them as a consensus solution – get everyone aligned.”

“And the other possibility?”

“Was that Chikaradzuyoi would propose – or approve of – a plan. We know he served in the JSDF for a while – before he got his powers – and that he has a steady head on his shoulders.”

“And Chikaradzuyoi approved of Belessar’s plan?”

“Everyone approved of Belessar’s plan. All of the ultras, and within minutes. He was – very charismatic.”

“They approved of being chucked at alien energy shields from trebuchets.”

“He asked for volunteers who could take it.”

“So it was a ‘are you man enough’ kind of thing?”

“Exactly. Herculeans tend to pride themselves on their invincibility. And when Chikaradzuyoi said he was going, well, two more volunteers weren’t hard to find.”

“And the rest of it?”

“The SAS knows how to perform a glider assault, we had the choppers, and invisible ultras carrying rocket launchers aren’t that difficult. I made it a point to slide in a question about redundancy – which he picked up on, and that’s how we ended up with a multi-wave attack plan. The rest of it, well – when I looked at his plan, the biggest question that came to my mind was ‘Why not?’”

“In short, he came up with a plan that could work.”

“And sold it to a bunch of disorganized, prideful ultras in fifteen minutes. That part was harder than the actual assault.”

Curry snorted. “I agree. As things stand, what’s your opinion of Belessar?”

“He has the personality and the temperament to actually lead. Most of the ultras I spoke to indicated favourable opinions of him, although the ones from his hometown tend to the opposite view. A fact that I was not made aware of until afterwards, unfortunately.”

“How long do you think we have before he gets snatched up by Skyguard?”

“At the rate he’s going – three years, maybe four. But that’s not the point.”

Curry frowned. “Explain.”

“Belessar can indeed lead a force of ultras. But the real asset is Nanocloud.”

“His sister? I agree that her battlefield awareness is a force multiplier, but how much better than, say, a drone network?”

“The battlefield awareness is secondary. The real prize is that when Belessar wants to send a message to someone, he uses Nanocloud to communicate. Signals, massive letters in the air, that sort of thing. So while Belessar might be giving an order, they’re actually being relayed by Nanocloud.”

Curry was quick on the uptake. “Ultras will get used to taking her orders.”

“And she’s support, not frontline. Assume Belessar builds a stable base of ultras willing to take orders from him over the next three years. At some point, she’ll start issuing orders on her own. And when those orders are obeyed – as they will be, since she’s seen as an extension of him – ultras get used to following her commands.”

“And when Belessar gets called up to Skyguard – she stays behind.” Curry drummed his fingers on the desk. “An ultra who has the legitimacy of being related to a Skyguard hero, with absolute battlefield awareness, and the confidence of issuing orders in combat, seeing them obeyed, and knowing the results.”

“Who will never be called up to Skyguard. Someone who can actually accumulate ten, fifteen, or more years of experience as an ultra, fighting the aliens and managing others in doing so. The first ever ultrahuman general.”

“Ambitious,” murmured Curry. “If we can pull it off, she’s going to need training. And mentoring.”

“We can’t officially pull her into Sandhurst – there’s no predicting how Belessar might react to that. We can, however, work towards getting her there.”

“All this assumes she has the temperament,” Evans put in. “What if she lacks the necessary courage? Or willpower? What if the moment Belessar’s called up, she steps back?”

“Which is why we need to assess her properly,” Curry replied. “Windsor. Given the revelations about Agni – we can plan a more aggressive approach to the defence of London. More ultras, closer coordination.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“We are scheduling a conference in a few weeks. A meeting of field grade officers across our allies and select Commonwealth nations – to judge how many resources each can contribute to the defence of the city. Admiral Scharnhost is working on how to integrate ultras with the field forces. I want you to connect with him and work your ideas into the plan. And in parallel… work out how you can get Belessar – and Nanocloud – a proper education.”