“You think it’s a one sided battle, Admiral?” A fully armoured Paladin of Hylia stepped forward, “Demons are vulnerable to holy power… Blessed weapons. Nullifier tech will only nullify the weaponry, not the demons themselves.”
“Holy weapons are being made, and the Paladins are being distributed to battalions as commanders.” Wolf said, “Furthermore, a lot of the Scorpion’s Hand Soldiers are undead, and so are also vulnerable to holy weapons. We also have been sharing silver ammunition with our men for dealing with undead.”
Green could not help but let a ghost of a scowl cross his face briefly.
He wanted to know how the hell Wolf claimed to know the exact capabilities of the Initiative’s nullifier technology. Not even that Scorpion’s Hand fleet that had attempted the assault on Eden had gotten into the Minerva system proper to show its effects.
Not to mention how confident that Paladin had been at the idea of being able to take on demons easily with their ‘holy’ weapons. Every attempt at modeling combat scenarios failed if the unpredictable factor of Bouzaculan or demon magic was taken into account.
It was all too possible that the demons’ magic might simply circumvent most defenses, whether magical or conventional.
And if Wolf claimed to know how a nullifier field interacted with demons exactly, despite the very nature of GDI’s nullifier technology still being a highly classified state secret, then there was a very real risk of a magical breach of the Initiative’s highly isolated R&D datasphere.
Wolf was already a very large security threat to GDI itself, if hostile forces managed to get more juicy information on GDI’s magic-countering technology out of him through whatever means…
Green feared the worst. More hostile groups like the Scorpion’s Hand could run riot across the multiverse, ravaging world after world, system after system in their insane xenophobic crusades.
He could not let that happen. He would not.
Well, Green was as subtle as a hippo with a hernia. Sighing, Wolf pointed to the red glowing scars that went down his face.
“If you want to know how I know these things, Admiral, it’s because of Seraph.” Wolf said, “Nothing’s a secret from Seraph, and since I’m connected to their network directly, I get the latest buzz. Now, I’m not going to go and spout out your secrets – that’s a disaster in the making – you can rest assured on that.”
His tone was calm, his words sincere.
“Now, if you’re going to throttle me, I’d actually advise you didn’t do that.” He spoke, “You’d only cause a PR nightmare, and no one, not even someone with the mentality of a Turian on steroids, wants to deal with that shit.”
If Seraph somehow had access to a physically isolated network, much less the one used by R&D, that was already a high priority red flag for GDI’s infosec protocols.
Regardless of Wolf’s intentions, access like that was a glaring backdoor that had to be shut down immediately.
Silently notifying Red(M) and Serina via a private QEC burst transmission to conduct an emergency full infosec update immediately, Green looked at Wolf with an expression like icy stone.
“Even revealing this access in front of so many is grounds for espionage charges, Wolf. Intentions aside, this is impermissible.”
At the same time, Seraph’s connection to the Initiative datasphere suddenly cut out, as Serina reinforced the security AIs twelvefold and more or less expelled Seraph from every Initiative network, whether public or private.
A physical access-only network was already secure enough thanks to the nature of physics itself, but it was always worth ensuring the safety of. Checking three hundred times over that Seraph no longer had any remaining presence in the R&D datasphere, Serina sent a confirmatory message to both Red(M) and Green.
Of course, Green said nothing about that, merely pointing back to the strategic map. “The primary goal of inhibitory efforts is to prevent any portals from being formed by critical Scorpion’s Hand leaders to escape otherwise certain deaths. I would have confirmed the kill of Arachne personally had she not otherwise escaped.”
Knowing that the Empire of Hope was the first of the Coalition to actually engage the Scorpion’s Hand in the ongoing reclamation effort, Green addressed that as well.
“The alternative would be to use holy magic from Astrid’s Church to prevent these portals, but we want to ensure this planetwide for the moment. If we’re unable to prevent them from using portals to escape, attempting to kill Scorpion’s Hand leaders is a futile effort.”
“I had only the best intentions in mind when doing it.” Wolf said coolly, “You GDI Blokes just forced my hand.”
He shifted a bit as Green spoke, noticeably antsy. Once Green spoke to the EoH representative, Wolf stepped out to have a smoke. As he tried to light a cigarette, he found Yellow had followed him.
“Can’t a guy have a smoke in peace?” Wolf asked.
To that, Yellow gave a firm shake of the head. “No. You will have to thank your personal medical system, basic civilian version though it may be, for preventing and fixing any lung damage.”
She folded her arms, the blonde giving a serious look of strong disapproval. “Verdammt, Emperor, you should know better than to spit at another nation’s official like you did with Admiral Green. Most other nations would have gone to war over that.”
Sometimes, Yellow wondered if Wolf ever realized how fortunate he was having the Initiative as an ally and not an enemy. Incident by incident, their patience was being seriously tested.
“As for what you just said about your access through Seraph…your benign intentions mean nothing if others can exploit it. You have a responsibility to your people, Wolf. Uphold it, and you can start by not blatantly divulging information like a child.”
Yellow turned, returning into the tent. But before she did, she gave one last look at Wolf. “Whatever happens later…make sure this conflict is the last, for good. Our people can’t take much more of this. Not now, not ever.”
And with that, the Fleet Admiral left Wolf standing alone.
Initiative Archival Network 